Robert (October 20, 1866-October 9, 1948)
Robert had two illegitimate children by a girl named Jeanette Manning.
Jeanette’s parents were drowned when travelling home in their punt down
the River Blackwater from Maldon Hythe to Heybridge Basin in 1877.
Jeanette and her older sister Julia were sent to the Halstead Industrial
School for Girls where they received a religious and moral education as
well as industrial training.
 Their first child, a girl, died aged 10 months, but the second, a boy
named Robert Wright Manning survived. Although Robert had promised to
marry Jeanette this didn’t happen and he left Maldon to live in London.
Robert later married Alice Sarah Jacobs from Bethnal Green in 1891, and
they had nine children, of whom four survived infancy: Mary Isabella,
Grace Evaline, Robert James, and Harold. The children were all born in
north London, excepting Robert Jr, who was born in Southend on Sea.
At one time Robert ran a public house in north London, at the corner of
Weedington Road and Marsden Street, what is now Talacre Road and Marsden
St. ( In September 2000 on a trip to the London Metropolitan Archives we
discovered that Robert had been the licensee for the "Prince Albert" for
only one year - from 14th April 1897 to April 20 1898. The owner of the
premises was The Camden Brewery Co. of Hawley Crescent. ) The building
was destroyed in the blitz.
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 The family went to the US on the S.S. Philadelphia in the autumn of
1902, and it seems that William Charles had lined up a job with Singer
in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for Robert. They all lived out their lives
in Pittsburgh. He sold life insurance door to door and bought a 78 acre
farm in Saxonburg, PA where he lived for the rest of his life. Robert
became a US citizen on December 29 1922. |
