Captain Franklin’s moccasin: many mysteries
solved!
So, back to
the mysteries of the moccasin…There are far more clues with this object than
are normally found with museum collections! One of the best is a note from the
donor in the Museum’s “related documents file” for the collection. The RDF, as
it is known in the Museum, is where we put all the correspondence related to
acquiring objects and any bits and bobs of notes that come in with objects. The
RDF for the moccasin includes a handwritten note by someone in the donor’s
family:
"4 shoes, knife set, 2 chop sticks? bone
implements, money maps etc bought by Mother at Gawdy Hall sale 1938-9? Some or
all are connected with the Franklin expedition Esquimo"
Really, you
don’t get much better than this in museum research!
We know
that the moccasin was given by Frances Griffin to Mary Ann Gilbert, her aunt by
marriage. We also know, thanks to this note, that the moccasin was purchased at
the sale at Gawdy Hall, and we know from research on the Gawdy Hall sale that
it occurred in July 1938.
So how did
the moccasin get from its second owner, Mary Ann Gilbert, to Gawdy Hall?
Mary Ann
Gilbert married Davies Giddy Gilbert in 1808. Their surviving children were
John Davies Gilbert, who like his father became an important Fellow of the
Royal Society and its president, and three daughters, Catherine, Anne, and
Hester Elizabeth, cousins of the Griffin sisters.
More clues are found in a local history volume, Eastbourne Memories, by George F.
Chambers (1910), a fine gossipy book which reads very much as an extended oral
account of one man’s reminiscences. It contains a very helpful anecdote
describing the author’s connection with the extended Gilbert family, including
Hester—and Lady Franklin:
The
East-Bourne house was occupied during many years by Mrs. Sancroft Holmes, Mr. J. D. Gilbert's widowed sister, and her son
and four daughters. During that occupation I was a frequent visitor there
and made the acquaintance of two ladies the widows of two men who had at the middle
of the 19th Century occupied very prominent positions in the public eye, Sir
James Kay-Shuttleworth and Sir John Franklin. …Mrs. Holmes afterwards went to live in Norfolk, and died there in 1885.
Her son, Mr. J. S. Holmes, is a landed proprietor in Norfolk, living at Gawdy
Hall, near Harleston. (p14-15, italics mine)
So John
Davies Gilbert’s sister Hester went on to be Mrs Sancroft Holmes, and lived
after her widowhood with her children at the Davies Gilbert family home in
Eastbourne, Gildredge Manor. Jane, Lady Franklin, visited her cousin there. And
Hester, who was Mrs Sancroft Holmes, had close ties by marriage to Gawdy Hall.
Doing a bit of research around these bits of information reveals that Hester
married William Sancroft Holmes in 1840, and was widowed in 1849.
It was through cousin Hester’s marriage that the
moccasin ended up in the Gawdy Hall sale. William Sancroft Holmes, her husband,
was born there in 1815. George Chambers noted that Hester’s son, ‘Mr. J. S. Holmes, is a landed
proprietor in Norfolk, living at Gawdy Hall, near Harleston,’ which would have
been because he inherited it from his father. It makes perfect sense that he
would have taken his widowed mother there with him in her old age. At some time
during her married life, Hester took the moccasin to Gawdy Hall, where it
entered the collections there before she died in 1885.
So after
Frances’ gift of the moccasin to Mary Ann Gilbert, it came into the possession
of Mary Ann’s daughter Hester. And sometime between then and Hester’s death in
1885, the moccasin must have passed to her son, who took it to his home, Gawdy
Hall.
Hester’s
husband William Sancroft Holmes had something of a collection, mostly of
African weapons and other miscellaneous ethnographic objects. At some point he
lent it briefly for a display—the location and purpose fo this is unknown, but
it came back to Gawdy Hall with small handwritten labels. One of these now in
the Museum’s RDF is written on the back of his calling card:
It didn’t
stay there, though, because Gawdy Hall, everything in it, and the entire estate
was sold at auction in July 1938. Hester and Wiliam’s son, John Sancroft
Holmes, died in 1920; the Hall required extensive repair by then and the heirs
decided it was too expensive. There’s
an amazing auction bill for the sale at the English Heritage Archive, listing
everything to be sold: Gawdy Hall and its gardens, glasshouses, and stables,
three lodges near the Hall, 5 farms, four sets of cottages, and associated
properties, were all sold at auction. It was there that the moccasin was purchased by
the man who gave it to the Pitt Rivers Museum.
But how
did the moccasin get to Captain John Franklin in the first place? Stay tuned…
