The Family Floyd: Latest Working Model

Briefing a potential research partner today. In so doing, summarized what I think I know since the last time I speculated on the Family Floyd.

1. Emma Floyd: born Bethnal Green 2 May 1823, christened St Matthews, Bethnal Green 28 May in the presence of both parents (1 and 2 below). Father's occupation listed as schoolmaster. I have a pretty clear skeletal chronology of her life as Emma Harding the actress (1842-1856), Emma Hardinge and Emma Harding Britten the spiritualist (1856-1899). I know NOTHING about her life other than what she herself has told us, prior to 1842.
2. Her father, Ebenezer Floyd. Near as I can tell, he is Ebenezer, son of Ebenezer (?) and grandson of Ebenezer. His father/grandfather was of sufficient stature in Minehead to get referenced in books of the period (we're talking the 1750s here). I guestimate that Ebenezer was born circa 1795 in Minehead. I see his marriage record in the GENUKI data (the marriage is conventionally recorded as taking place in Misterton, but according to GENUKI, took place in Minehead). (See #3 below). Who was he? Who were his people? What was his situation when he married Ann Sophia? The marriage was by license and not by banns, which could mean "they were middle class" and could mean "the marriage was hurried". He is listed as a "mariner" (GENUKI) and as a "schoolmaster" (Emma's christening record) -- was he? Both? What was the tie to London? Was he in the coasting trade? Did he have family/friends there? Did his wife? How, when (1834 or 1835, in Bristol, I think) and where did he die?
3. Her mother, Ann(e) Sophia Bro(o)mf(i)eld. She also shows up in the GENUKI data: marriage, christening of children. In the 1871 British census (where she appears to be Anne F Floyd?) she listed her birthplace as Liverpool. I can find (in ancestry.com and genealogy.com data sets) only one Bromfield family having children in Liverpool at that time (again, circa 1795, I'm thinking) and *no* Ann(e). Who was she? Who were her people? How well educated was she? What was her situation when she married Ebenezer? How did the two come to meet? Is this a classic "merchant's daughter meets local freighting sailor during a delivery" kind of story? Emma supported her mother her entire life (in fairness, in the 1870s, she bought her mother an annuity and had her mother live with her sister Margaret and her husband). Was Ann delicate in some way? Ill-suited for the rough-and-tumble life of a young-ish widow?
4. The oldest daughter, Frances Ann, christened August 20, 1820 in Minehead. Emma never mentions her. Yet there she is, in the GENUKI data, 9 months after the marriage (give or take). What became of her? This is important because I *surmise* she married youngish -- around the time of her father's death -- and that Margaret and perhaps Thomas lived with her rather than with Emma and Ann Sophia after Ebenezer's death. But Margaret was only 5 years old when her father died... There's some suggestion in the UK census data that she may have married a John Jackson, becoming Frances Jackson, with whom a "Margaret Floyd" age 10 is living in the 1841 census. Is that our Frances, and our Margaret? If so, then I think I have Ann Sophia and Emma (middle initial D) Floyd, living in Lambeth in 1841 -- sans Margaret (who's with her sister Frances Floyd Jackson) and sans Thomas (who's....where?)
5. Thomas Floyd. Christened in Calne 26 April 1826. Dead 25 October 1842, aboard the HMS Minden in the China Sea, after an illness. Took ship aboard the HMS Vixen 10 September 1841. Where is he between his father's death in 1834/35 and 1841? With Ebenezer's relatives? He's not with Frances (if I am right on #3) and he doesn't appear with my AS Floyd and Emma D Floyd in Lambeth -- but he DOES list "Westminster" as his normal residence when takes ship, suggesting he's been living with Emma and Ann Sophia.
6. The family's life -- where did they live in Minehead? Where in Bristol? For what dates? What were their surroundings? What was Ebenezer doing? Emma, her whole life, had both an attraction to, and a dread of, dense urban areas. She was scarred by her time in London, and she idealized her time in Minehead/Bristol, writing in her Autobiography that she was known even as a child for her musical and psychic abilities and that she loved to roam the field and abandoned abbeys and ruins. Poetic license? Based in fact?

Sausage-making. Not pretty.

The Family Floyd

begins to piece itself together, but only just. All information in this post subject to revision -- consider this notes from the field.

Father definitely Ebenezer, son of Ebenezer, born circa 1795, and noted as the christening of several of his children.

Mother Ann Sophia, possibly Bromfield or Bromville, born circa 1798, possibly daughter of a clergyman. Also present at the christening of children. Known at times as Amy Sophia, and A. S. Floyd, and A. S. Harding, interestingly enough, when she traveled first to the US with "Miss Emma Harding".

Marriage of Ebenezer and Ann Sophia takes place on 9 December in Minehead, not Misterton, as often reported, and by license rather than by banns, which may say something about Ann Sophia's socioeconomic status, and may say something about the hurried-ness of the marriage.

News flash:Elder sister, Frances Ann, born probably in Minehead, christened at Minehead on 20 August 1820. She disappears from the records almost immediately thereafter, and is not part of the post-Ebenezer household in London. Current hypothesis: early death.

News flash:Brother Tom, who "died young" and acted as one of EHB's controls early on in her career, has been found in the records. He was born 17 March 1826, and christened in Calne, Wiltshire, on 26 April 1826. He also disappears from the records almost immediately, and is not part of the post-Ebenezer London household, which would be consistent with the tale that Tom died young, and at sea, or overseas.

Add younger sister Margaret's christening to the geographical mix, and we get a very interesting pattern.

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At A, Margaret's christening. At B, Thomas' christening. At C, the parents' marriage and Frances Ann's christening. And then, way over on the right, D: Emma's christening in Bethnal Green.

We know, from EHB's Autobiography that the family was living in the vicinity of Bristol up until Ebenezer's death (in 1834?) -- perhaps within walking distance of the Avon, into which Emma contemplated throwing herself before being called back by the voice of her father. So, the Bristol-centric cluster of the marriage and the other childrens' christenings makes sense.

Emma's an outlier, and the question is: why? Ann Sophia's relatives in the vicinity? Father in the coasting trade by this time - if there was a coasting trade between Bristol and the Thames at the time?

Emma, the Master of Lindsay and Elongation

Getting Emma in a room with the Master of Lindsay and Viscount Adare (who, remember, famously saw D. D. Home levitate himself out a window in Buckingham Gate) goes some way toward helping flesh out the plausibility of various theories about just who made up that 'Orphic Circle' that used Emma Floyd as their clairvoyante.

Here we have Emma and her mother, in that room with Adair and the Master of Lindsay, watching D. D. Home elongate himself.

This from The Spiritual Magazine of September 1868, in which one may also find the second in a series of heretofore uncollected "Questions and Impromptu Answers" by "Miss Hardinge", who at that point in 1868 needed no first name qualifier for readers of that magazine.

Emma herself does refer indirectly to this incident, in Modern American Spiritualism on page 146. Emma knew Home in the US.