ANN ELIZA HORNETT : 1838 - 1929
Ann Eliza Hornett was born at the then family home of 6 Duke Street, Marylebone, on 3rd October 1838. She was baptised on 28th October at Christ Church, Marylebone, when her father's occupation was recorded as 'plasterer', indicating a move into the building trades which remained a constant feature of the family's life for many years. Ann was recorded in the 1841 census, living with her family in Houghton Street, Strand, and in the 1851 census by when they had moved to 20 Wych Street, also in the Strand district.
As a 12 year old, Ann was at school in 1851 but having become a young woman of 22, she had left her home by 1861 when she was living in Orchard Road, Ealing, as housekeeper for her aged grandfather, John Atkins. Less than a year after the census, Ann married William Ockleshaw Shotter, at St John's Church, Waterloo; William had been born in Brentford in September 1840 and was working as as assistant to his father, Thomas, who was a 'cowkeeper'. This occupation referred to someone who kept a cow or two at their home
as a source of fresh milk for the neighbourhood and it remained William's occupation throughout his life.
The early years of their lives together appear to have been spent living at Boars Head Yard, Brentford, where William's parents also lived for many years. By 1871, William and Ann had 5 children, 4 girls and followed by a boy, and a further 4 girls were added in the succeeding 10 years. Unusually, all of these children survived to adulthood and all were recorded still living with their parents at the time of the 1881 census. They had then moved to 125 High Street, Brentford, where William had added 'pork butcher'
to his ongoing cowkeeping while the eldest daughter, Alice, had been working aa a pupil teacher. The second child, Ada, had no occupation and the next five - Anna, Florence, William, Edith and Beatrice - were all at school; the 2 youngest, Maud and Lottie, were still at home. Living next door, at number 126, was the family of Robert Whenman, whose daughter Elizabeth later married Ann Eliza's nephew, Ernest Hornett, in 1895.
Sadly for the Shotters, William died in 1885, aged only 44, leaving Ann Eliza to bring up her younger children alone and she also took on the role of caring for her widowed and aged mother, Elizabeth Hornett, who was then in her late 70s. The eldest daughter, Alice Hornett Shotter, married her cousin James Edward William Shotter, in July 1886,
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