From the Memoirs of a Genealogist’s Ancestors
Image by Ideogram 3.0, on Abacus.ai, July 2025
“In every house, a different heartbeat; in every room, a memory waiting to be found.”
— From the Memoirs of a Genealogist—a thread that runs through me
Chapter 12: Two Doorways on Oxford Lane
1861: I picture it often—that narrow bend of Oxford Lane where two households, so different in tempo, shared the same soft air of spring. At number 7, the Oxford Arms, my great-great-grandparents kept a house that rarely slept. Samuel Goodman, aged 54 in that census year, had once been a farmer. Now he was the licensed victualler, the inn’s steady heartbeat, pouring cider with a farmer’s grip and listening with a farmer’s ear—always half-tuned to trouble.
His wife, Harriett, my 3x great-grandmother, held the reins of that household with quiet mastery. At only 42, she had already raised children, survived hardship, and managed the demands of an inn filled with travellers, lodgers, and a husband whose work blurred the lines between public and private life. Their son Thomas, sixteen, was learning the carpenter’s trade—his fingers stained with pitch and his back already bowing to a working man’s burden. Little Alice, just thirteen then, was a scholar by census label, though no doubt she earned her keep helping clean tankards and sweep the back stairs.
That same year, soldiers slept under their roof. A married sergeant, a bachelor corporal, and two Irish hawkers—strangers on paper, but for a time part of the Goodman household story. The inn must have hummed with clashing boots, stewed meat, and the mingled accents of Devon, Cornwall, Ireland, and war.
Next door, at number 8, life moved to a gentler rhythm. My 4x great-grandfather, Samuel Allery, aged 77, no longer dug the gardens of the gentry or poured the pints at Lord Nelson. He was “formerly a gardener and an innkeeper,” retired in name, if not in spirit. His wife, Alice, who was one year his junior, held the hearth beside him. Their rooms were quieter, lined with small comforts and steady habits. They took in a lodger, Susan Turpin, a schoolmistress of fifty-seven years, whose voice must have carried like clear ink on a slate. I imagine her reading the local paper aloud by candlelight, Alice nodding beside her with thin hands folded in her lap.
One house teeming with life and service. The other was seasoned and reflective.
And somewhere between the two, a thread that runs through me.
It is amazing what detail can be extracted from a census record; in this case, the census record from 1861 for the Goodman family, living at 8 Oxford Lane, Totnes.
With the help of AI, I have the transcript for both households in this story. From these few facts, the story of Samuel Goodman and his family begin to emerge.
It was with fresh eyes that I noticed the Samuel Allery was also on this census, living right next door with Alice his wife. Samuel and Alice are Harriett’s parents.
Claude has also extrapolated some interesting observations: