Please come with me into the time machine and we'll go back a few days . . .
So, it's May 9th and Benjamin Ephraim Lamartin Culpin was born today in 1848 in Buntingford, the son of Millice & Sarah (nee Barrett). He appeared, with the family, in Fore Street and then Railway Street (both in Stevenage) in the next two censuses and then married Eliza Matthews in the town in 1870.
Although he didn't grow up to be a blacksmith, this particular apple didn't fall far from the tree - he became a boot & legging manufacturer and seems to have trained half his children to help him!
He & Eliza produced six or seven children (I'm not sure who Mildred Clara belonged to) over the next twelve years; Agnes, Herbert Miall, Wallace Goodwin, Ewart Gladstone, Charlotte Ellard & Ellen Matthews . . . plus or minus the aforementioned Mildred Clara.
Herbert appears to have joined the Admiralty as a clerk; he married Kate Norton and lived until 1954. Wallace married Annie Coubrough in 1897 and died of meningitis in 1912. Ewart Gladstone (cracking name) became quite well known within the London County Council but you'll have to wait until his birthday to hear more about him.
Charlotte married Frederick Longney and I last "saw" her coming back from Montreal in 1921 with her husband and one surviving son. Ellen tied the knot with William Sharp in 1908 and . . . that's all I know about her. Another one, methinks, for the long list of "when the 1911 census comes under my Findmypast subscription"!
I found Ben again in a trade directory in Ilford in 1914; he & Eliza ended up in Sussex, where both of them died in Battle - Ben in 1928 and Eliza in 1943.
Back to the present now . . . .
More soon.
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