Talk:The Wodehouse

new but unsourced info

I am delighted to see more information added to the article, in this case by User:J.morgan836, but alas it is unsourced. Would it be possible to add references to the sentences, or failing that, to disclose them here? BrainyBabe (talk) 17:41, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

There are quite a few sources that could be used to improve this Wodehouse article.

I think it is clear that Samuel Hellier 1699-1751 is the key motivator of the music collection. His father also Samuel Hellier seems to have obtained the Wodehouse by 'marriage' - the date is unclear. The details of the Wodehouse book collection are discussed in an article by Percy Young and makes this sequence pretty clear. The early books all largely belong to Samuel Hellier II (because of the inscriptions in them - Queens College Oxford etc) The Stradivarius is already in the family by 1740.

Source: Percy M Young: Samuel Hellier: A Collector with a purpose, from The Book Collector, Autumn 1990 Volume 39 No 3.

Prior to Samuel Hellier I (d 1727) I have some information on the Bache and Wodehouse families who owned the Wodehouse in the middle ages. In my ancestry I am descended from Rev Thomas Shaw not the Helliers so I have nor pursued it so keenly. I have never found how Samuel Hellier I is related to the Bache family. It is not obvious.

We also need to say that Rev Thomas Shaw (1732-1812) also did a fair bit of work on the house. (There is a contemporary source for this) He is rector of St John's Wolverhampton that is a far more important post than Perpetual Curate of Claverly, - a post that appears to be little more than a sinecure. I can correct the wording around this myself, if you want.

Details of Thomas Shaw-Hellier (1802-1870) of Rodbaston Hall can be checked with the censuses. He is the father of Col TBSH (uncle Brad). The latter is back at the Wodehouse well before 1890. Censuses would be able to pin the decades down a bit more closely. I think that James Shaw-Hellier (1759-1827) and his eldest son are landed gentry, farmers and huntsmen. The subsequent generations of Shaw Hellier vicars are ALL in the non Wodehouse branch of the family. So the Shaw-Helliers in the Wodehouse are no more connected to the CofE than any other country squire. There is a false emphasis in the article here that needs to be corrected.

I need to dig a bit further in my records. I have a lot more material which I can revisit and be more precise about sources.

Please don't get me wrong - the article is very good with a lot of things I didnt know. Thats all for starters.

J.morgan836 (talk) 18:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I am so glad to have another knowledgeable person to contribute to this article. Your very readable family history site is of course not an academic source, but with your help we can go back a stage and cite the sources you yourself have used. You have sources (e.g. The Book Collector) that I lack; are these all off-line and non-digitised, or is there an electronic way to share them? (Perhaps privately, by email, which does not break copyright. I'd love to see even a scanned version.)

Your recent additions to the Wikipedia article sound useful, but alas they lack references, and WP needs a source for every assertion or fact. I am happy to help with formatting the footnotes if you would like me to. Let's work on what we can here, on the talk page first. You have added:

The Wodehouse was acquired by Samuel Hellier by the 1720's. He was Oxford educated, keen on modernization and open to new and foreign ideas. He was someone who first had a passion for collecting and had already accumulated a substantial library and the core of an important collection of musical instruments. He died in 1751. His only son and heir of the same name was 14...

How can those facts be sourced?

For a period in the middle of the century Thomas Shaw-Hellier, the grandson and direct heir of the Reverend Thomas Shaw rented out the property. Being a keen huntsman he preferred the country seats of Packwood House and latterly Rodbaston Hall.

Likewise, how can this be sourced? What does "direct heir" mean? Is that Packwood House or Packwood Hall? Did he own those two country seats?

One thing that would help, that you could do right away, is to add the birth and death dates of the people you are sure about -- I imagine that means taken from the census?

I will come back another time to some of the points you raise above, lest this discussion beomce unwieldy on the screen. Again, great to have you on board! BrainyBabe (talk) 18:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes the first amended para about the middle Samuel Hellier is all deducible from the Percy Young 1990 article. You can also separately see that he matriculates at Queens College, Oxford in 1727 (?) - Oxford Alumni List (Fox) but that whole statement can cite the Percy Young article - it might still be in print but I dont think is available electronically.

Thomas Shaw Hellier of Rodbaston Hall and Packwood House (sic) can be cited from the censuses - though I have many other pieces of corroborative evidence. I did not know about the Gladstone story - I just knew that TSH was not living at the Wodehouse. He did not own Packwood House but was Master of Foxhounds over there (North Warwickshire) This is not relevant for any article on the Wodehouse anyway.

A direct heir is an heir who is descended directly! Seems straightforward to me! J.morgan836 (talk) 22:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Just did a few more edits to better balance what I wrote. I also corrected the point that Rev Thomas Shaw was primarily the minister (sic) at St John Wolverhampton - later reinforced by the word 'worked' later on in the article. The CofE Clergy Database gives some flaky dates for all these appointments. I know a lot about the Rectorship of Enville but that is another story - a post he also held. I think the sources you already quote make it clear that this man has a plethora of clerical offices - many held simultaneously.

I removed the notion that Samuel Hellier's will of 1784 requiring a change of name was a common practice. Some aristocrats certainly may have changed names to maintain the family name - I do not think it was common practice to leave a large estate to "a friend" who is in no way related by marriage or blood - to imply this was common is certainly misleading. Unless you think otherwise...

The 'references' in this article are impossibly cumbersome in my view but I know nothing of Wikipedia's quirky practices and would not want to! You can add the Percy Young article as it is the important source of all information I have added on Samuel Hellier (1699-1751). It would corroborate a few more points of what you have in other secondary/tertiary sources.

You also need to cite Samuel Hellier's will as an obvious primary source - this is publicly available at the National Archives. Again this may mean that you do not have so many 'googled' references.

I think that ties up most of my minor corrections. I think the article still has large gaps in it. I am not really sure of its overall purpose and direction as most of what I can help with is about the people not the house. You probably need the help of John Phillips for that.

Please feel free to continue to link to my website I am updating it all the time. Perhaps I will go back and do some more work on the Shaw-Helliers. You should understand that I have a lot more material than is in the public area.

Good luck with improving this. J.morgan836 (talk) 10:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

a source for the sisters and most of C20

Records of the Shaw Hellier sisters of the Wombourne WodehousFrom

From the Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies, covering 1894 - 1965. Description: This series relates to the Shaw Hellier sisters, Miss EMP Shaw Hellier and Miss DH Shaw Hellier who inherited and lived at the Wombourne Wodehouse. The records in this series relate to the personal investments of the sisters and the financial running of the Estate. Admin History: Dorothy Simpson was born on 12th September 1895 in Baldock, Herts, to Evelyn Simpson and Fanny E A Phillips. She had three other siblings, a sister Evelyn Mary Penelope Simpson who was born on 17th July 1890, and two brothers, John and Arthur. John died at a very early age, and Arthur being the only son left was killed in World War I. In 1909 their father Evelyn Simpson changed his name in order to inherit the Shaw-Hellier estate from his uncle Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier. The Simpson family were already a wealthy family as they owned the Simpson Brewery in Baldock since the 1770s. In 1922 their father passed away leaving the entire estate to her sister Evelyn M P Simpson and two other people. Evelyn and Dorothy both changed their last names in order to comply with the inheritance of the estate. Evelyn Mary Penelope Shaw-Hellier died in 1975 leaving her sister Dorothy H Shaw-Hellier as owner of The Wodehouse in Wombourne. Dorothy was involed in a unfortunate traffic accident on the 4th July 1985 to which she died two hours later at The Royal Hospital in Wolverhampton. Ref No: D-SSW/3/SWH [1] BrainyBabe (talk) 23:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

TBS-H was a Mason

Apparently. See Irish Masonic History for more on Thomas's life, including his Masonry. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:16, 4 May 2014 (UTC)