DEARMAN & MOLLETT

Annie Tier is one of those ancestors, whom I find hard to envisage somehow, even though she was in the living memory of my mother and her siblings.   But I didn’t hear anything about her.  Initially I used the portrait above to stand in for the many hard-working wives of late nineteenth century tradesmen - her husband was a shipwright and draughtsman - for to me she was more of a type than an actual person.  But then my cousin unearthed the photograph at left.  This is the real Annie Tier - and indeed it shows a woman who has lived a life of toil and tribulation I think.  Indeed she looks a little grim - but perhaps the eyes are more gentle than a first glance would suggest.

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Her parentage is a bit of a mystery.  Well we know who her mother is, but not her father.  We can guess, but it is very probably just that and not based on any facts at all.  So a mysterious beginning, but a clear later life, well documented in census records.  I guess it's not a very exciting life, but even the most ordinary lives, as we shall see, have their own little excitements or disasters.