The Family Background
of
OSCAR THEODORE (BECK) BULMER
The earliest ancestor on the Bulmer side of whom anything definite is known was Christopher Bulmer, a farmer, who lived at Hesket Grange, Felixkirk, near Northallerton, Yorks, in the middle of the 18th century. He sent his son Edward, born 1760, as an apprentice to a wine merchant in Bristol, where he married a lady called Mary Clements, who bore him at least three sons and one daughter but died, probably in childbirth, in 1802.
About this time Edward Bulmer bought a wine business in Widemarsh Street, Hereford, and moved to Hereford with his three young sons, Edward, Charles and Richard. The daughter, Mary Anne, went to a boarding school at Chepstow. Edward seems to have been successful in business, became a member of the Common Council, a Freeman of the City, and Mayor of Hereford.
His two elder sons, Edward and Charles, married two sisters, Isabella and Fanny, daughters of the cathedral organist John Clarke-Whitfield, who was also Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge and died in 1836. An account of his life is given in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Edward Bulmer the second and Isabella Whitfield were married in Hereford Cathedral in 1832 and lived at Elmhurst, Aylestone Hill. He was Rector of Moreton-on-Lugg and a Minor Canon of the Cathedral. They had five sons and one daughter, and Beck’s paternal grandfather was the second son, Charles Henry (1833-1918), Rector of Credenhill 1861-1910, and Chaplain of St. Mary’s Hospital, Burghill, 1872-1889.
Henry married in 1862 Mary Cockrem (1833-1925), daughter of a Torquay bookseller, who bore him a daughter and two sons. The elder son, Edward Frederick, was Beck’s father (1865-1941).
His mother’s father, George Sebastian Rittner (1845-1908), came from Germany to Liverpool about 1870 to join the business of his mother’s brother, Gottfried Eyssen, who imported ivory and mother of pearl. He married in 1872 Helene Passavant, of Frankfurt, whose family were of Huguenot origin and had a silk business. Beck’s mother was their elder daughter Sophie (1874-1968).
Among Beck’s more remote ancestors the following are of special interest:-
Sir Henry Spelman M.P. (1564-1640), buried in Westminster Abbey, was one of the founders of the original Society of Antiquaries. He was the first lawyer to attempt to codify the laws of England, and is included in John Aubrey’s "Brief Lives".
Sir Ralph Whitfield, who married Spelman’s daughter, was Sergeant-at-Arms to King Charles I, and lent the King money (see DNB).
Johann Matthias Bansa, Count of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 17th century, was an ancestor of George Rittner’s mother. He is said to have made a fortune by supplying the armies of both sides in the Thirty Years War.
OUTLINE CHRONOLOGY of O.T.B.’s LIFE.
1913 (March 29) Born at Adam's Hill
1917 Started lessons with Ruby Davis
1921-3 Hereford Cathedral Prep School
1923-7 Bengeo School, Hertford
1927-30 Shrewsbury School
1930-1 With H.B. Mayor and M. Gilkes
1931-2 University of Grenoble
1952 With Fraulein Koch at Jugenheim
1932-5 King’s College, Cambridge
1935 With H.P. Bulmer & Co. Ltd., Hereford
1935-6 Intensive Business Course in London
1936 With H.P. Bulmer & Co. Ltd., Hereford
1936-7 Wye College, Kent
1937-9 Farming the Whettons, Broxwood
1938 (October) Joined Territorials
1939-44 Home service with Herefordshire Regiment
1943 (February 27) Married Miss Jennifer Robinson
1944 (January 29) Birth of a daughter, Susan
1944 (August) Embarked for Normandy
1944 (September 10th) Killed in action in Belgium