William Archer and Elizabeth Gilder's wedding in 1902:

So much information - where to start? See the ‘Faces’ views and the names list to identify people. Well, the bride Elizabeth Gilder (now Archer) has her two sisters Annie and Alice Gilder as bridesmaids, and her sisters-in-law Helena and Kate Archer likewise. The groom has his younger brother, Bert, as his best man, and most of his sisters are there, but not his elder brother Ernest (who is married and living in Holland - where William has been living and working until about a year before his wedding). Equally, I notice that ‘Uncle James’ Archer is another notable (but in his case, locally-living) absentee, who made William a (relatively) very rich man about 20 years later when he died. George Blake, who would probably have made William an equally rich man, when he died, also in the mid-1920s, is very much there. He is standing directly behind William, and with his beard and moustache looks a man not to be trifled-with. George Blake is in fact William’s ‘father-in-law’ in the sense that Lizzie Gilder grew up in his home in Little Clarendon Street, Oxford, from the age of about 7, after her father, Walter Gilder (standing directly behind her, with a moustache)  and his second wife (standing beside him on his LHS), and her sisters, left Oxford for Hinckley in about 1885. Sad to mention these things ‘on a wedding day’, but they must have represented an enormous actuality, though things had doubtless very much settled down by 1902.

I must add that 1902 was the year that George Jackson Churchward became Chief Engineer of the Great Western Railway. What has that to do with this wedding group? Answer: GJC was ‘cousin-by-marriage’ of Olive Emma Archer(OEA), the groom’s mother, who is standing directly behind Helena Archer, the bridesmaid sitting next to the groom on his RHS (her left shoulder touching his right). Spefically, OEA’s father (Edward Reed)’s sister Eliza, was married to Matthew Churchward a farmer at Stoke Gabriel, Devon, brother of GJC’s father, George Churchward. Edward Reed is the bearded gentleman at the extreme RHS of this photo, at the end of the row behind the bride and groom. (Click here to go to his identifying ‘face’ photo). i.e. OEA’s ‘Aunt Eliza’ had a certain 'George Jackson Churchward' as her nephew. These were the great years of the Great Western. GJC had taken over from James Dean as Carriage and Wagon Superintendant, and in 1904, GJC’s engine ‘City of Truro’ was to be clocked, famously, at 100 mph on the Ocean Mails express. GJC is the ‘father’ of Great Western locomotive design, in many ways. Sadly, he seems to have been relatively or totally unknown to the Archer family, so far as the records and conversation known to me to date, are concerned!

(Added 2.2.15): The marriage certificate gives the wedding date as 7th August 1902 at (of course) Walton Street Methodist chapel, the groom being entered as “Commercial Clerk”, and the bride is residing with her adoptive (but not actually adopting-in-law) father, George Blake at 35 Warborough Road, Oxford, and her father is shown as Walter Gilder, “Tailor’s Cutter”. The witnesses are Alfred George Archer, Herbert J. Archer, S.M. Gilder (this may be Walter Gilder’s 2nd wife), Helena Archer, A.A. Gilder, George Blake, Alice Emma Gilder, and the Minister of the chapel is Fred C. Wright. The couple were to have five children including twins in 1914, a third daughter (Nora) in 1908, my father, Fred in 1905, and his brother Arthur three years before that. 

qaa© Philip B Archer 2014