My name is Caroline Beck, nee Theaker. I am the niece of George William Theaker.

I just by chance happened to come across your website as I was curious to discover whether there was anything under the Theaker name on the Yahoo search engine, low and behold i find that there is!!

I was drawn particularly to the Theaker War Dead section to see if there was perhaps any mention of my uncle, George William Theaker, who was killed in action at the battle of Knightsbridge, 1942 (actually before the battle of Alamein as it states on the website). Not expecting to find anything, I came across his name and the details of his regiment. It is extremely moving for me to see my Uncle's name acknowledged and commemorated in this way.

Of course, as the youngest child growing up in a warm, loving family, I always knew about the existence of my Uncle George, from the stories my father would tell me and my two sisters and brother, but as is often the case, it was not until I grew older and was more able to comprehend the devastating effect that my Uncle's death had on his mother, my father and my aunt, (their father had passed away aged 55 in mid/late 1930's), that I realised the true measure and profound goodness of this young man who died aged 23.

My aunt, Gwen Theaker, who is now 91 and very frail has lived every day with fond thoughts of her brother and never got over his death. My dear father, Gervase Theaker, who is now 82 often relays stories about his brother and particularly about their childhood days growing up in Staveley, Derbyshire, in 1920/30's. A time fraught with economic difficulty, poverty and social injustice. My father has some wonderful photos of himself and my Uncle together as small children, along with photos of my Uncle after he had joined the Army. In fact my father has a large collection of letters that his brother wrote to him and his sister during the war together with photographs of himself and his comrades in Egypt. I have opened the box of letters and read the contents only once before, a very thought provoking and moving experience. The last letter he wrote was 17th May 1942, which was exactly 20 years before I was born. In the letter he explained that he couldn't tell of his exact whereabouts due to security reasons, but that he was to be going out on manoevres on a mission he understood to be extremely dangerous. That letter will stay in my mind for evermore. My Uncle was a religious young man and the local Padre to the regiment wrote to my Grandmother following his death and told of his courageous yet gentle spirit, in spite of the awful circumstances he found himself in. Along way from Middlecroft Road, Staveley.

My father joined the RAF at the age of 19 and was part of the flight maintenance crew based in North Africa throughout the war. In fact last year, I took my father on a visit to RAF Lossiemouth which is where he was put through his flight training as a young man, a rather nostalgic trip as although the site had changed immensely, many of the original buildings that my father knew were still in tact, it became acutely apparent that as we were taken to see various parts of the original site, we could tell from the look on my father's face that we were approaching a building he was once very familiar with and suddenly he was there, transported back to 1943. The beach bar that had become the favourite watering hole for him and his army pals was still there, as if the passing of time had made a conscious decision to change as little as possible and instead intended for it to be found in the manner it was last seen by my father. Inside it was apparently still the same, the old memories came flooding back, images, voices, laughter and the camaraderie was all there, even for just a few minutes.

After the war, my father trained as a draughtsman in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. After having worked his way up working for several firms in Chesterfield, he moved my family to Swansea to take a job as a mining engineer. I had a wonderful childhood, growing up in the 1960's to be cosetted by two older sisters and teased mercilessly by an elder brother. Money was scarce, but what we as children didn't have materially, it was more than made up for by wonderful, warm, loving and selfless parents who gave everything to ensure the happiness and comfort of their children What child could ask for more than this?

After gaining a solid reputation as a coal preparation engineer, my father became renowned across the world for his expertise in coal preparation engineering. He travelled extensively before he was offered the post of Chief Engineer for one of the industry's largest firms based in South Manchester, a job which took him to all parts of the world, from Canada to South America, from North America to South Africa, from India to Australia.

My father has been retired now for almost 18 years. For the passed 18 months he has been writing his memoirs, a history of his family, from his early childhood years, through his apprenticeship days, his years spent in the RAF and later onto marrying and raising a family. As part of these memoirs, in fact there is a photograph of his mother together with her brothers, sisters and in laws, dating from around 1900.

Needless to say, I am immensley proud of my family's history and achievements in the face of hardship and adversity.

I shall show this website to my father when I visit at Christmas, he will be extremely interested, I wouldn't be surprised if there are names in the Theaker tree that he recognises, he used to talk of his ancestors travelling by horse and cart from Worksop to Retford to buy and sell goods.

My father's father was also from Scrooby, Gervase Theaker. He was born in around 1880 and died aged 55 in 1935, he married Gertrude Hodgson and they had 3 children, George William Theaker (my uncle), Gervase Theaker, (my father) Gwen Theaker (my aunt). My Grandfather's family owned a brick yard and when he was young they moved to Bothamsall, I'm not sure how many brothers and sisters he had but I shall try to find out more information from my father.

My grandfather (George) - his father was William Theaker and my grandfather's mother was Elizabeth who died aged 46 I believe. However, I think my grandfather was actually born in Bothomsall and then moved to Scrooby becase he was brought up by his grandmother, who was also Elizabeth and his grandfather was James.    My grandfather had a sister called Alice and I think Edith and several brothers.   So there could be a connection here between our families.

It is also possible that the Cornelius Theaker who married in the same quarter is the brother of Gervas. On the IGI the is a Cornelius christened with parents of the same names as those of Gervas - all within a year or two of each other in Eaton.

Please bear in mind the above when looking at the info below.

The extract below from the marriage index is of the Apr May Jun quarter of 1851.

2nd email from Rod Strong

I guess that there may be some entries in the Baptismal Register for Bothamsall (and possibly the Marriage Register), but I do not have access to these. They are though in the Nottinghamshire Archives in Nottingham. If you wanted to really dig into this family there is also the village school log-book, a record of day to day events, kept by the head-teacher, which I think might cover some of the period though whether you would find specific reference to any little Theakers would probably depend how naughty they had been.

  Provisional family report for the Bothamsall Theakers

Descendants of Thomas Theaker

Generation No. 1

1.  THOMAS¹ THEAKER  He married MARY XXX. 

Child of THOMAS THEAKER and MARY XXX is:

2.                i.       GERVAS² THEAKER, b. Abt. 1826; d. Abt. 1880.

Generation No. 2

2.  GERVAS² THEAKER (THOMAS¹) was born Abt. 1826, and died Abt. 1880.  He married ALICE XXX Abt. 1851.  She was born Abt. 1829 in East Markham, Notts..

Children of GERVAS THEAKER and ALICE XXX are:

3.                i.       WILLIAM³ THEAKER, b. Abt. 1854, Markham Moor.

                  ii.       SARAH THEAKER, b. Abt. 1857, East Markham, Notts..

                 iii.       THOMAS THEAKER, b. Abt. 1859, East Markham, Notts..

                 iv.       GEORGE THEAKER, b. Abt. 1861, Bothamsall.

                  v.       ANNIE THEAKER, b. Abt. 1864, Bothamsall.

                 vi.       JOHN THEAKER, b. Abt. 1866, Bothamsall.

                vii.       EMMA THEAKER, b. Abt. 1868, Bothamsall.

Generation No. 3

3.  WILLIAM³ THEAKER (GERVAS², THOMAS¹) was born Abt. 1854 in Markham Moor¹.  He married ELIZABETH XXX.  She was born Abt. 1858 in Retford.

Children of WILLIAM THEAKER and ELIZABETH XXX are:

                   i.       ALICE⁴ THEAKER, b. 1882, Bothamsall.

4.               ii.       GERVASE THEAKER, b. 1883, Bothamsall.

                 iii.       SARAH THEAKER, b. 1885, Bothamsall.

More About SARAH THEAKER:

Census: 1901, servant - not at home

                 iv.       GEORGE THEAKER, b. 1888, Bothamsall.

                  v.       HARRIET THEAKER, b. 1889, Bothamsall.

                 vi.       JOHN THEAKER, b. 1892, Bothamsall.

                vii.       HARRY THEAKER, b. 1894, Bothamsall.

               viii.       RUTH THEAKER, b. 1897, Bothamsall.

                  ix.       EDITH THEAKER, b. 1899, Bothamsall.

Generation No. 4

4.  GERVASE⁴ THEAKER (WILLIAM³, GERVAS², THOMAS¹) was born 1883 in Bothamsall.

Children of GERVASE THEAKER are:

                   i.       GWEN⁵ THEAKER, b. Abt. 1913.

                  ii.       GEORGE WILLIAM THEAKER, b. Abt. 1919.

                 iii.       GERVASE THEAKER, b. Abt. 1922.

  Endnotes

1.  1901 census.

Below is what I (Steve) found on the 1901 census