Mary Jane Harris 1843 - 1921

John Roulstone's wife, Mary Jane Harris was the daughter of Samuel Harris, Innkeeper, and Jane Hobbis.

Samuel's origins are proving difficult to track. He first appears in Swindon, Wiltshire in 1841 as a Beer Seller along with a Thomas Harris (both ages given as 25 which could be anything between 25 - 29 as they were rounded down to nearest 5 years in this census). A few weeks later he married Jane in Swindon and his occupation was Inn Keeper. By the 1851 census he was Publican at the 'Bay Tree' in Grove, Berkshire and gave his birthplace as Gritton (Gretton?), Northamptonshire although no baptism has yet been found in Gretton or the surrounding parishes. The marriage certificate gives Samuel's father as John Harris who was a Carrier by trade. There is a John Harris, occupation Carrier, at Bugbrooke in Northamptonshire who married in 1814.

Samuel was buried at Grove on 2nd February 1854 aged 39 but there is no trace of Samuel's death certificate at the GRO or at the Oxfordshire Register Office which now covers this district.
Note - 3 other Samuel Harris deaths on the GRO index for this quarter at Chelsea, Truro and Walsall have all been checked in case he was away from home at the time he died.

Jane was the daughter of John Hobbis and Jane Burt who were married at Wantage in 1811. After Samuel's death Jane remarried the following year to William Giles and had four more children. William took over as publican at the Bay Tree Inn until at least 1866. Jane died age 76 of Cerebral Disease and Coma (probably a stroke).

A mystery I've yet to solve is why the family were in France when their son John was born in Rouen.

John Hobbis Harris was a Master Plumber and founded his business in 1872. Harris Brothers Ltd is now in its fifth generation. John married Elizabeth Emily Saunders and had seven children. The first of these, born 1874 and named after his father became a Baptist Minister and along with his wife Alice Seeley went to the Belgian Congo in 1898 where they were to work as missionaries. At the time the Free State of Congo under King Leopold was getting into debt but wild rubber grew there. This coincided with Dunlop's production of the first rubber tyres, firstly for bicycles and later for cars.and Leopold saw the opportunity to raise money. A regime of terror began. The Congolese people were forced to collect quotas of rubber. The penalty for refusing or being unable to collect enough rubber was death or mutilation, typically having their hands or feet severed, homes were burned and whole communities destroyed. Appalled by the atrocities he had witnessed, Rev. John Hobbis Harris toured the United States and England lecturing and campaiging against this modern slavery. Alice was a photographer and supported John's work with pictorial evidence. John spent the rest of his life campaigning for human rights and was knighted for his work, he died in 1940.

"Lined up…are 40 emaciated sons of an African village, each carrying his little basket of rubber. The toll of rubber is weighed and accepted, but…four baskets are short of the demand. The order is brutally short and sharp - quickly the first defaulter is seized by four lusty 'executioners', thrown on the bare ground, pinioned hands and feet, whilst a fifth steps forward carrying a long whip of twisted hippo hide. Swiftly and without cessation the whip falls, and the sharp corrugated edges cut deep into the flesh - on back, shoulders and buttocks blood spurts from a dozen places. In vain, the victim twists in the grip of the executioners, and then the whip cuts other parts of the quivering body...

Following hard upon this decisive incident was another. Breakfast was just finished when an African father rushed up the veranda steps of our mud house and laid upon the ground the hand and foot of his little daughter, whose age could not have been more than five years."

From an account given by Rev. John Harris, Baptist Missionary after returning from Congo 1906, quoted in King Leopold's Ghost, by Adam Hochschild.

Some of Alice's photographs can be seen at www.panos.co.uk - enter harris and congo in the search.