Common Ancestor Tales

Ruby Colvin Smith was born in Alexandria, Egypt to Blanche Colvin and George Simpson Smith. She lost her father aged one.

After her father died Blanche and her two very young children left Egypt and went to stay with George’s family in Edinburgh. Blanche is recorded in the 1901 census as training to be a nurse in Edinburgh. Her father in law William Smith was the gatekeeper at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

In 1911 Blanche married again to an older man, Pantaleon Schilizzi, also in Alexandria. The couple had two further daughters. The Schilizzi family were in shipping carrying out active trade between Liverpool and Alexandria. Ruby’s brother William George Richard Smith, joined up right at the start of the war he was lost in 1917 at Ypres during WW2. He was 21.

Ruby married Jim at Holy Trinity churct, Walton Breck, Liverpool in 1920. They had two daughters. They spent their married life firstly in Egypt and later in Bangor.

Ruby worked with Jim at a Hillgrove prep school in Bangor. They then moved to Wrexham. After Jim died Ruby spent her final years living in Chester near her younger daughter.

Evelyn Maud Fisher was born in Sri-Lanka and baptised at Badulla . She was the youngest of 3 children born to her parents: Francis Conrad Fisher and Florence Letitia Fuller. Her father was also born and brought up in Sri Lanka. His brother was the British first sea lord Jacky Fisher. Francis Conrad died tragically when Evelyn was 9 years old.

I think the family then returned to England in quite difficult financial circumstances.

There is one record of her mother living in Bedford. Her sister Irene is recorded as going to school in Bedford. Florence died when Evelyn was 17 and at that point Florence was living in a cottage in Wavendon, Bucks where the Fisher family are from.

It is likely that the orphaned Evelyn and Irene (aged 20) were then sent to live with her elder brother, Conrad in Sri Lanka. He was certainly living in Sri Lanka around this time and stayed there for his entire working life retiring to england in his sixties.

Both the girls married husbands born and raised in Sri Lanka. There are no records of their marriages in England so I assume they married in Sri Lanka.

Evelyn married George and they had six children born between England and Sri Lanka. In 1919 she was hostess to the Prince of Wales when he visited Sri Lanka on his way home from Australia.

She was sadly widowed in her thirties in 1923. She had to return to the UK with her 6 young children. Initially she lived with Eleanor Smiles (her aunt) who was widowed and living in Fulham (11 Hurlingham Gardens). Apparently Eleanor liked to be called Mrs Fuller Smiles… for comic effect.

By 1927 she had moved to Bedford. Hearing of her plight the Queen granted one of her children a place in the royal infant orphanage in Wanstead. Evelyn did find schools for all the children – they were helped a great deal by members of the wider family in particular the Donkin family who helped my grandfather and some of the others get started in the world.

By the 1939 census she is recorded as living in Hammersmith.

She was famous in the family for her embroidery that she also sold to make extra money. Many members of the family still have cushions, aprons and pictures covered in her handiwork.

Evelyn lived until she was 93 and was a very good granny and great granny. I remember visiting her very vividly.

George Dawson Templer was born to George William Templer and Fanny Mary Dawson. George was a twin and was born in Surbiton, Surrey whilst his mother was visiting from Sri Lanka. His mother went on to have 9 children including a second set of twins straight afterwards.

His father George William Templer was born in Sri Lanka and both George’s worked for the British Government. His mother Fanny came from a fairly international family herself but was born in LLanelly, Wales where her father was a Port Master.

It is unclear where George spent his childhood. We know that his twin Henry Buller Templer did not ever go to Sri Lanka and stayed with his grandmother. Henry went to Westminster school for four years. But there is no record of George attending the school.

George spent a year training in India at the Royal Forestry school at Dehra Dan. He then worked in Jaffna, Sri Lanka as the Assistant Conservator of forests and spent a year sharing a bungalow with Leonard Woolf (later of the Bloomsbury set and husband to Veronica) in Jaffna. Leonard writes about the menagerie of animals they kept together. George’s son Basil was later to keep up this family tradition. Although Leonard is quite dismissive of George in a letter to his friend Strachley they actually did become good friends.

Whilst Leonard was away back in the UK George married Evelyn and this seems to have put an end to their interactions.

George held various positions in the forestry commission and was eventually promoted to Assistant Surveyor of the forests in Sri Lanka.

He died tragically by suicide in Sri Lanka aged 43 when he suffered a “nervous breakdown” as Evelyn described it in a newspaper article in 1927.