A group effort originally created the Bartley Archive as a research resource.Thank you to everyone who donated their research and time, or who lent their family treasures. It is so satisfying to now be bringing the materials we have collected to a wider audience and a new group of researchers. Thanks also for your emails of support and requests for information.Today I am continuing the series on the children of Robert BARTLEY and Betsy BENEST.
Louisa Bartley
Louisa was the eighth
child of the family. She was baptised at St Helier on the 15th of March 1835.
Although the children continued to be baptised in the Town Church the family
followed the Wesleyan faith. John Wesley had visited the Islands in 1787 and
Methodism had a strong following on Jersey. The King St chapel was their place
of worship until Wesley St was built in 1827. Louisa entered the Chapel Sunday
School for training on 21 March 1852, leaving on 31 March the next year to
become a Sunday School teacher.[1]
Remaining single all her life
Louisa became responsible for running the family home at Union Court. She
nursed her parents in their last years. When her Father passed away in 1857,
she assumed guardianship of the two
youngest children Amelia and Alfred.
Robert and Edward had already
emigrated to New Zealand. The family home was sold and Louisa went to live with
Jane and Charles Hamon, taking Amelia and Alfred with her.
Charles Hamon then took over as
the male head of the family on Jersey.
Louisa acted as housekeeper and
governess to the Hamon’s large family, as well as being actively involved in
the Hamon drapery business. On census forms she described her occupation as “drapery
assistant”. She was clearly very much more than that to her family and to her
church.
She remained active at Chapel,
along with her brothers in law William Vonberg and Charles Hamon, who are
recorded as trustees of the Chapel in land agreements. Despite later ill health
she continued to support the family until her death on the 7th of July 1884.
[1] Jersey Archives J/C/A/A/1 Treasurers
Accounts and Admissions Register Methodist Chapel, Wesley St, St Helier. 1852
