my 2x great grandfather

return to index page

Thomas English Pyman was born in December 1843, the first child of George Pyman and Elizabeth English. He married Mary Ann Jobling in (1842-1905) in nearby South Shields in 1865. Mary Ann was the niece of another shipowner and broker, James Jobling, although her own father Roger was a grocer by trade. Thomas and Mary Ann moved into West House in Clarence Road, West Hartlepool. As George Pyman's eldest son and traditional heir, Thomas played a significant role in the running of the family's main coal merchant business, George Pyman & Co, becoming a partner in 1872. He was also widely involved in local civic affairs in West Hartlepool. 

The family grew quickly. Elizabeth English Pyman was born in 1866, followed by my great grandmother Lucy Jane Pyman in 1868. Other surviving children were Nellie Pyman (1870-1931), George Pyman (1872-1915), Jane Pyman Pyman (1873-1945), May Pyman (1876-1954), Linda Pyman (1876-??), Thomas English Pyman (1878-1939) and Alexander Arr Pyman (1882-1958). At the time of the 1881 Census, the family were resident in what were presumably temporary  premises at Eden Cottage in Linden Grove, Hutton Rudby, south of Middlesborough. By 1891, they were back at West House. A year later however, Thomas English Pyman died, aged just 48. He was succeeded at George Pyman & Co by his younger brother, also George.

What happened to Thomas's family after his early death? Lucy Jane married Frederick William Maclean two years later, in 1894. Jane Pyman Pyman married Roger Bell, a son of George Pyman the elder's partner in Pyman Bell of Newcastle, in 1897.  The younger George Pyman married May Peele in 1898. Thomas English Pyman II also married, but not until around 1910. Youngest child Alexander Arr Pyman married Ellen Turnbull in 1914. May Pyman was still unmarried at the age of 25. She was visiting the Cradock family in Wakefield, Yorkshire on the night of the Census. However I can find no record of Thomas's widow Mary Ann Pyman in the 1901 Census, nor of her daughter Nellie. 

For more on the Pyman family, see Nicola Roberts' Pyman Family website, and especially Peter Hogg's book, The Pyman Story