Bessie Wolff (Leigh) family tree
George/Gerard Wolff (b. 1858, d. 1927)
m. 1889 to Sarah Fresco (b. 1855, d. 1895)
|--- Louisa (b. 1891)
|--- Alec (b. 1894)
m. 1899 to Flora (Bloomah) Sugarman(1865-1943)
|
|--- Henrietta (b. 1900)
|
|--- Sidney Samuel (b. 1901)
|
|--- Elizabeth Rose (Bessie) (b. Sept 1904)
|
|--- Henry Hyman & Arthur Abraham (twins b. 1907)
|
|--- Lesley (28 Dec 1912)
After 2 marriages George/Gerard had 8 children. The years shown above might be one out depending on whether a birthday was before or after census day
Louise, Alec, Hettie and the twins never married and had no children.
Sidney Wolff married Naomi C. Marshall
Sidney seems to have started using the forenames Ernest S. not Sidney Samuel judging from 1920’S electoral rolls and on his marriage certificate. Why was this important to him? They had 3 children:
Christine
Phyliss
Margaret
Elizabeth Rose .(Bessie) married Joe/Joseph Levenspiel
They changed surname c. 1940 to Leigh although Bessie probably used the surname Leigh some time earlier than Joe.
The Levenspiel family tree has been extensively documented by Mary-Jo Levenspiel - see https://levenspiel.com/family-trees.
They had three children:
George Jeffery (known as Jeff)
Ralph David (known as David)
Martin John (known as Martin)
Leslie Wolff married Agnes Gillett.
They too had 3 children
Jenepher
Christopher
Gerard
Martin's notes on the Wolff family ancestors
In 2008 I (Martin Leigh) looked at the census records from 1881 onwards and looked again in 2022/3. This is the 2023/4 version.
The census took place every 10 years. So, you can trace families in 1881, 1891, 1901... The last census which can be searched on-line is 1921, which became available in 2021. The census of 1931 was destroyed in a fire, there was no 1941 census, and the next census was 1951.
My search was made difficult because names are often misspelt (misspelled) and over the years people change name. My daughter Lisa is Elizabeth on her birth certificate, but we always call her Lisa and so does everyone else. In addition to the census, you can search the index of Births Marriages and Deaths (BMD) and if you’re lucky find when and where they were born or died or married and the maiden name of the woman. BMD is an index and not the actual certificate, but you can often get enough information from the index.
At the end of this note are PDF’s or scans of the documents I’ve found, and pictures of the places people lived.
Actually, I worked backwards in time, but I’ll start at the beginning with what I learned from the 1881 census.
Before 1911 a census enumerator took notes, and these were written up neatly later. This was of course subject to spelling/transcription errors. From 1911, the “Head of family” had to fill in a form. You can see the difficulty heads had with filling it in with lots of alterations, but it is their original handwriting on the form.
1881 Census
This shows a Woolf (sic) family living at 12 Crispin Street, Spitalfields (in Middlesex, London). The county of “Middlesex” no longer exists, although it still has a cricket team. The Crispin Street area like much of the City and the East End of London, has been redeveloped. Crispin Street is right next to Spitalfields Market. Below is a 2021 picture of the only un-redeveloped corner of the street and an entrance to the market. Spitalfields was a wholesale fruit and vegetable market serving the East end of London, (rather less well known than Covent Garden).
For hundreds of years Spitalfields was an immigrant area. Wikipedia says “After the 1820s, Spitalfields fell into decline, gaining a reputation as a cheap area in which to live, proving a magnet to numerous waves of immigrants. Jewish refugees filled the area, mainly fleeing Pogroms in the Russian Empire, while some were entrepreneurs from the Netherlands. Between the 1880s and 1970s, Spitalfields was one of the largest Jewish communities in England, having more than forty synagogues”.
The fruit and veg market has moved out to Leyton and today the Spitalfields building holds a trendy fashion and artists market.
In 1881 the Woolfs at 12 Crispin Street are:
Henry (50 born in Holland) a cigar maker.
Louisa his wife (48 born in Holland) and 9 children
Elias 25 b. Holland, unemployed clerk
Gerard 23 b. Holland, a fruit dealer (I assume in the nearby market)
Harriet 21 b. Holland, a tailoress
Elizabeth 19 b. Holland, a tailoress
Louis 16 b. Holland, another cigar maker
Rosetta 12 b. Holland, a scholar
William 9 b. Holland, a scholar
Nathan 6 b. Middlesex Goodman’s Fields (also in the East end of London, Aldgate)
Solomon 3 b. Spitalfields (Louisa was then 45-ish, quite old for having a baby?)
Now, this tells us:
1) That Henry and his family moved to England between the arrivals of William and Nathan
i.e. between 1872 and 1875, so there is no point in looking for Woolfs in the 1871 census. Further backward exploration would have to be in Holland. Sidney said Amsterdam.
2) My grandfather George’s first name was then Gerard (and even this may be an anglicisation) and must be why my aunt Louise chose Gerard for her professional name, and why I have a cousin Gerard. I originally thought that Gerard was the name of Louise’s brother Alec who died, but it was her Dad’s.
3) With all those 1881 siblings, there must be dozens of cousin Woolfs in England
4) Holland was famous for “Dutch cigars”, so they probably came with that trade from Holland.
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