Hands, John

Gender: Male

Cecil Sharp visited John Hands on 9 April 1909 whens he sang him the song ‘The Bitter Withy’. Sharp also noted that Mrs Hands Junior had a tune variant for the first line and Mrs Hands only knew the words of the last verse. At this time John had two sons, George Aston Hands and William John Hands.

John Hands was baptised 4 July 1846 in Snowshill. John’s parents, William and Anne (formerly Russell) married on 14 February 1847. His family were labourers, unable to read or write as was his grandfather, also called John, who was from Didbrook. John’s father, William, was born in Oxfordshire but his mother was from Snowshill. He and his two younger brothers, Joseph and William, spent their youth in Snowshill. He also had another brother, William, who died in infancy and a sister, Mary, who married a Thomas Russell early in 1847. In 1877 he married Caroline Aston, the daughter of Richard Aston, a labourer of Snowshill, and by then both had enough education to sign the marriage register. They continued living in a cottage in Snowshill and John became a shoemaker. They had four children: George born 1876, Ann born 1878, Sally born 1881 and William John, born 1882. John’s wife, Caroline, died in 1913 aged 69 and John died in 1925 aged 77. Both were buried in Snowshill.

John and Caroline’s children

George became a stone quarry labourer and continued to live in Snowshill with his wife, Ann and daughters, Violet Kathleen L. and Lilian A. M. Hands – Violet later married Arthur F. Hadley in 1929. George Aston Hands was killed in the First World War on 18 December 1917 in Salonika where he was a Private in the 9^th (Service) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment.

Ann, now calling herself Annie, was working as a domestic servant in the Vicarage in Didbrook in 1901. Ann Mary Hands, a widow, possibly Ann who had reverted to her maiden name, married Oliver P. James on 17 March 1920.

Sally married William Thomas Godwin, a carpenter from St Luke’s, Gloucester, in Snowshill in November 1914. She died in Gloucester in 1958.

William John became a police constable and in 1911 he was boarding at the police station with Police Sergeant Collin and his family at 5, Hopewell Street, Gloucester. He married Annie Louisa Dixon, who had been living nearby in Barton Street, Gloucester, at the end of 1913.

In the First World War he enlisted as a private in the 1st 6th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment and was killed in action in France/Flanders on 9 October 1917 and is remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial at Zonnebeke, Ypres, Belgium. Annie then remarried, to Walter M. Petch, in 1919. She died on 27 December 1947 whilst living at 317 Barton Street, Gloucester. Administration was given to her husband, Walter Mackrill Petch, who was then working as an engineer’s storekeeper.

Annie Louisa Dixon

Notes by Carol Davies March 2015 with thanks to the Crawley family tree on Ancestry.com