Sunday 4 November 2012

Louisa Bartley



  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