| Great Aunt Emma, by Sybil Brand.
[Emma Pullen was also known as Mary Ann]
Emma Pullen was my grandfather`s sister and was born well over a hundred years ago. This is a brief sketch of her life as told me by my mother and various relatives who`ve filled in some of the missing pieces. It`s true but as entertaining, I think as a good deal of fiction.
Like any girl in any age she wanted to know what her future would be. Would she marry or would she die single?
On an autumn afternoon in her `teens she looked for a bramble leaf with five segments, plucked it, and held it in her hand. Then she recited this incantation:
I pluck a bramble of Five
And I shall see my true love alive.
She looked up. "Why" said Emma, "here come old Tom May. I know I shall never have him."
But she did.
Thomas May was a wealthy farmer and Lord of the Manor at West Mersea. He lived at a pleasant house, the Hall, important enough architecturally to be included in Dr. Pevsner`s book. Her father, my great-grandfather, was a small seed grower and she knew her destiny was domestic service.
My own grandfather had no opinion of too much education for girls. He was sure a girl who played the piano would be quite incapable of scrubbing floors.
Great grandfather`s ideas would be more rigid still. This happened before Queen Victoria came to the throne and Florence Nightingale`s revolutionary theories about what women should do hadn`t startled the world then.
So my great-aunt went into Mr. May`s household as his housemaid.
He had buried four wives and wanted a fifth, so proposed to the cook, but she refused him. He proposed to the housemaid and she said "yes."
History doesn`t record whether the cook stayed on under the new mistress.
* * *
I often wonder how my ancestress got on with the social round. You`ll have realised already her grammar wasn`t perfect and, like Sam Weller and his father she used w`s for v`s.
My mother used to tell the story of how she visited her crowd of nieces one day and wanted them to go to a certain meeting.
They all made excuses. "You must persewere" said Great Aunt Emma.
My skittish aunt, Aunt Kitty, immediately wrote a piece of doggerel which ran like this:
In a persewering house
On a persewering day
A persewering aunt came to tea...
After that, Great Aunt Emma`s "persewerance" was forever enshrined in the family annals. However, such solecisms were common enough in those days and her married life went smoothly.
Mr. and Mrs. May had one son, Edward. Only recently a cousin told me for the first time of a brown hide trunk which was in the family till a few years ago.
It was Edward May`s school trunk.
* * *
Thomas May must have died first but his son didn`t long survive him. Drains, or the lack of them, were a menace then and at 21 Edward died of typhoid fever, so his mother was left widowed and childless. The estate went to another branch of the May family and great-aunt Emma left the Hall. She hadn`t been forgotten in her husband`s will, though, and was left with a good income and a house which was then known as Leakeys but now as Brierley Hall.
Evidently she was still an attractive woman. The photo with this article was taken in old age and cannot do justice to her youth. (I date it about 1870. Connoisseurs will notice she`s wearing an old fashioned style of headdress; a cap with lappets under her bonnet. That wasn`t high fashion even in 1850 but a countrywoman would be slow to change).
She soon had two suitors. One whose name I`ve never heard was so anxious to press his suit he would hide in bushes at the road-side and waylay her. The roads were quiet then with only an occasional farm tumbril passing or the clip clop of a high stepping carriage horse, but someone saw him.
He wasn`t the successful one. My great aunt married John Ward of Rewsalls Farm, East Mersea. "He liked a bit of horseflesh" my father said. Horse breeding wasn`t a money making proposition in his hands; he was so hard up bailiffs were occupying the farm on his wedding day but were warned off by his friends. No doubt my great aunt`s money put him on his feet again.
The Wards were prime movers in the building of the present Methodist Church in Mersea and John Ward was an original trustee. Then 40 years after their death, it was my delight as a child to sit perched high above the congregation in their pew, put up the flapped table and open the book drawer which is now in my pantry.
The children of the Methodist Day and Sunday School went in waggons to Rewsalls Farm for their summer treats, so it seems only fitting that part of the farm land there now houses the Youth Camp which `teenagers of many nationalities use as a jumping off ground for tours of England.
From Essex County Standard 7 February 1964. Transcribed by Joe Vince, July 2025.
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Bean and May families
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