Today is the May Day Bank holiday Monday but unlike last week when it was warm and sunny it is cool outside. But after a couple of weeks of blue skies and no rain I was pleased to hear the heavy downpour on Saturday night.
I was also very pleased to hear a cuckoo early one morning and to see a swirl of swallows on my way home yesterday. I am gardening, cleaning out pots of weeds and replanting with flowers. Many pots have been taken over by Herb Robert which apparently has medicinal uses and can be a sign of good luck but I am afraid it is having to go!!
I am having a look at the moment at Ellerker history. My friend is churchwarden and asked if I knew any more about the Levitt family who gave a lovely window to the church. My history group visited several years ago but there is more information now online.
So here goes. The Levitt name is well represented in the Ellerker, Kirkella and South Cave areas and there is much more about them in the fascinating Diary of Robert Sharp, the South Cave schoolmaster whose diary runs from 1812- 1837. I have taken much of the family information below from it.
In 1754 John Levitt, widower of South Cave married Hannah Norrison of the hamlet of Bentley at Rowley church. The Norrisons were a long established family in the area and were connected with several local famiiles, including the Marshalls.
John and Hannah had a large family including Hannah born 1755, John born 1756, Thomas born 1758, William born 1759, Nancy born 1761, Robert born 1762. Then in 1766 they named a son Norrison Levitt, beginning a naming tradition which lasted several generations.
In 1818 Thomas Levitt married Ann Marshall, daughter of Richard at South Cave. The following year their son Norrison Marshall Levitt was born. Thomas had a sister Hannah.
Then in 1831 a terrible tragedy occurred. This is the report from the Hull Packet of June 21st 1831
On Thursday last, about five o'clock in the evening, this town and neighbourhood were visited with a short, but most tremendous hurricane of thunder, lightning, rain and hail. The electric flashes were most terrific,
We regret to add that the storm was attended with fatal consequences. Mr Norrison Marshall, only son of Mr Richard Marshall, of South Cave, had been in Hull, purchasing two waggon loads, of bones, which he had sent home; and, at the moment .the rain was beginning (contrary.to the urgent request of Mr. M Lyon, of' the White Horse, Carr-lane, where he had been stopping,) he set out upon his return, on horseback.
He had, however, scarcely proceeded a quarter of a mile, when the rain falling in torrents, he took shelter under a tree adjoining this end of the Brown Cow, a small white-house, on the Anlaby Road, near the end of Love-lane. Immediately afterwards, there was a terrific flash of lightning, which struck the tree, and the unfortunate young man and his horse were killed on the spot! Some of the bark on the upper part of the tree was taken off; the trunk is perforated as with bullets and a large, piece was shivered from a post beneath the tree
The landlord of the house was sitting at the end of the room near the tree and by the force of the shock he was thrown out of his chair; the back part of his neck was also scorched. The inmates of the house were unconscious of the awful results, until they heard the crying of a child when they found that a little boy, named Topping, seven years of age and had also sought shelter under the tree and that although he had escaped the strike of the lightning, the horse had fallen upon him, and his thigh was broken'. The body of Mr N Marshall was removed into the the house, and Dr Munton was sent for but, of course, medical skill was unavailing.
The deceased appeared to be about 25 years of age. The electric fluid had struck the left. side of his body, near the heart and travelled downwards, by the inner portion of the thigh, and expended itself when it when it reached his knee. In its course, the dress of the deceased was cut, as if by a knife, especially the shirt and small clothes. The course of the fluid is indicated by a great discolouration, and, in many parts, actual abrasion of the skin, presenting to the eye more of the appearance left by the ignition of a train of gunpowder, than any thing to which we can compare it.
A messenger, was dispatched, with the melancholy tidings to Mr Marshall's family.
He has, since been removed to his own house where we understand, his mother lies in a very precarious state of health.
There was a large funeral in South Cave and sadly only a few days later Mrs Hannah Marshall [nee Jubb] died.
Norrison Marshall had been, as we say today, in a relationship with Hannah Levitt, his sister in law and it soon became known after Norrison's death that she was pregnant. In January 1832 she gave birth to twins. She named them Norrison Marshall Levitt and Marshall Norrison Levitt.
Sadly, soon after birth baby Marshall died. Robert Sharp tells us that the South Cave curate [the vicar was away] refused to bury the child as he had been baptised by a Dissenting minister
South Cave had an Independent chapel with its own minister. Some of the records are online but not all - and so we cannot see the baptism. Presumably Norrison was baptised at the same time. And I do not know where the burial would have then taken place.
Baby Norrison seems to have been brought up by his Marshall family and in 1841 he was 10 years old living with his grandfather Richard Marshall at Castle Farm South Cave and with his uncle and aunt Thomas and Ann Levitt and his big cousin 35, Norrison who was then 19,
In 1851 aged 19 Norrison was farming at Mount Airey, 256 acres and living with him was his mother Hannah, then aged 51. I cannot find her after this.
By 1861 he was with his grandfather Richard Marshall, Thomas and Ann Levitt and the older Norrison. They were all living in Ellerker in a farmhouse, possibly Brookholme
By 1871 Richard had died [1864] as had Thomas [1870]. Ann is listed as a widow and farmer, her son Norrison was the farm manager but interestingly young Norrison, her nephew is listed as an annuitant.
Young Norrison in 1881 had married Hannah and aged 49 was a dairyman at West End South Cave.
In 1891 aged 59 he was still in West End with his wife and living on his own means
Meanwhile in 1881 the older Norrison, who never married, was still living in Ellerker. By 1881 he had a housekeeper Grace Coultous. She remained with him until his death in March 1898. He was buried at South Cave.
As an aside she married George Stobbart in 1898 and continued to live at Brookholme until her death in 1932. Her niece Annie Kirk continued to live there until 1939. My mother, whose grandmother was a Coultous told how as a child she went to stay with Mrs Stobbart at Ellerker. And family tradition says that earlier my grandfather Robert Nurse from Eastrington was working at Brookholme when he met my grandmother Elsie Davis from South Cave.
But back to the Levitt story. In 1897 Norrison Marshall Levitt had commissioned a stained glass window to replace the plain glass in the east window of Ellerker church.
The inscription reads that it commemorates
Richard Marshall and Thomas and Anne Levitt, and was erected by Norrison Marshall Levitt grandson of the first named, son of Thomas and Anne aforesaid. 1897.'
Tradition says that figures in the window represent Thomas and Anne and perhaps the child is the tragic Norrison Marshall. It is sometimes known as the Ascension window.
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| Part of the inscription |
On 4th June 1898 the Levitt window was dedicated at the same time as the new organ by the bishop of Beverley.
Later that year Mrs Grace Stobbart, nee Coultous gave the lectern in memory of Norrison Marshall Levitt
When 'young' Norrison died in 1905 the newspaper report said
.Another of the old residents bas been removed from South Cave through death in the person of Mr Norrison Levitt, whoso remains were interred in the South Cave Cemetery on Thursday afternoon. Deceased was the last member of the family to bear the name of Levitt, which, along with the family of Marshall, have for years been connected with South Cave.
It is an interesting tale, sometime tragic, but no one can deny the beauty of the lovely Levitt window.
