Lucy Ann Carrott (1878-1952)

It's something of a family joke that we're descended from Boggs and Carrotts.

Florence Mary Bogg was my paternal grandmother. Lucy Ann Carrott entered the family a generation earlier, as my paternal great-grandmother. (That is, Florence Mary married my grandfather while Lucy Ann was his mother).

Lucy Ann Carrott was born on 31 July 1878 in Withern, Lincolnshire. What we know about her life is drawn entirely from the records in the national archives - census returns along with birth and marriage certificates.

Her parents were William and Ann Carrott. William Carrott had married Ann Watson on 11 March 1861 in Aby, Lincolnshire. They had an incredible 12 children, with Lucy Ann coming second to last in 1878.

Withern is a small village with population of 457 in 1881, when Lucy Ann was aged two. The family lived on Peter's Lane and were still there ten years later, in 1891.

A decade later, on census night 1901, Lucy Ann was a married woman living in Stickford, Lincolnshire, with her new husband, Edward Henry Knowles.

They had married just a few weeks earlier on 21 February, in the Wesleyan Chapel, Alford. Stickford is about 15 miles south west of Withern, where her parents continued to live, at least until 1911.

Edward Henry and Lucy Ann had three children: Vincent Edward (my grandfather, b.1903), Evelyn and Leonard Cornelius. 

The 1911 census shows Edward Henry and Lucy Ann living, with their children, in Stickford.  It is this census that reveals their having four children, but only three were living by 1911.

Beyond this date I have no information about Lucy Ann Carrott, other than she died in 1952. She outlived her husband by around three years, he having died in 1949.

Both are buried in Hundleby church yard, their grave marked by a simple low stone.