Ernest Archer - Early 20th Century aviator of the Blériot school, and automotive importer:

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Names: a)Ernest Archer (but, 12.4.05, were his initials “T.E.”, as indicated by the postcard showing him with his flying machine at Twello, which is marked: “Archer T.E.”? (9.10.06): Might be Thomas (an ‘Archer’ name) Ernest Archer;(Added 22.10.2014: Answer: “ARCHER TE TWELLO” merely means “Archer at Twello” in Dutch (per Klaas Sijsling, a Dutch visitor to this website): So: he is ERNEST ALBERT ARCHER and (29.5.16) the above reference to ‘TE’ simply arises from a lack of knowledge of the Dutch language on my part, which I retain as a (to me) interesting example of how one may easily go wrong in these matters:

b) See Oxford Mail article: Ernest Albert Archer;
c) So need to find some formal papers: birth/ marriage/ death certificate(s); (22.10.2014): Yes, the data from dutch websites (e.g. see Bilthoven cemetery under “Dates” below)provided by Klaas Sijsling confirm the names Ernest Albert.

Dates:     Not yet known (pba 9th July 2003)The “Flight”  magazine article on French-registered aviators shows his date of birth as “02 Ma 1874” so 2nd Mar or May 1874;(Per Oxford Mail article of 12.9.60): died “nearly seven years ago in Bilthoven” so he died approx  Oct 1953 to Jan 1954; (so aged about 80).Data from Netherlands websites make clear: a) above names: Ernest Albert; and b) Born: 02.03.1874 (place not shown, but 1881 census data included in his younger brother William’s cv, clearly shows he was born in Wells, Somerset, the family’s first family-home); c) died 20.11.1953 (place not shown, but presumably Bilthoven as he is buried there and lived there); so he was aged 79 and nearly 9 months;
Ernest Archer is buried at Bilthoven Den en Rust cemetery, of which the online record (click here to go to the record) which shows his dates as: Born: 02.03.1874; Died: 20.11.1953. The same record shows his daughter Johanna Cornelia Archer as: Born: 02.10.1901; Died: 07.09.1980. So, both lived to about 79 - he, to about 8 months more and she, to about one month less.

Parents:

Third (say pba’s manuscript notes) child of: Alfred George Archer and Olive Emma Archer (formerly Reed). See the cv of his younger brother William (to be found in the “Somerville House” section of this website) for much more family detail.
He is not currently shown on the “General Family Tree” but he is the elder brother (by about 4 years) of William George Reed Archer (born 1878) who is shown and is identified by the big red arrow in the “Tree Link to Somerville” page of that section.


Education:       (Per Oxford Mail article): “Educated at the old Oxford Wesleyan Day School in New Inn Hall Street, then presided over by the redoubtable Joseph Richardson, one of the outstanding schoolmasters of his generation....” 


Married:  

(A dutch lady): Marie (per 1960s family tree notes).
(Added 22.10.2014 from information provided, see below, by a visitor to this site): Maria Geertruida van Dongen, daughter of Steven van Dongen and Johanna Cornelia van Dongen neé Konings - see death certificate at: click here
Death certificate text (translated by Google translate): 

Death Certificate: Geertruida Maria van Dongen, 09-10-1944
Deceased:   Maria Geertruida van Dongen
Date of death : 09-10-1944
Place of death : De Bilt Act
Date: 12-10-1944  
City: De Bilt
Partner : Ernest Albert Archep 
Father: Steven van Dongen
Mother:   Johanna Cornelia Konings
Access number : 1221 marital status of the municipalities in the province of Utrecht Inventory number: 1428 Record number: 181

Gertruida Maria van Dongen’s dates (from the Bilthoven Den en Rust cemetery’s online records (click here and go to “D” for van Dongen): Born: 16.05.1875; Died: 09.10.1944

The Netherlands online marriage register (click here) shows: (translated by Google translate): 
Marriage Albert Ernest Archer 27-04-1898 Raamsdonk:
Raamsdonk municipality Source Type book Name Registry Wedding Registry 1898 code RDK_H_1898 Period register 1898 Act Number 6
Place Raamsdonk
Date 27-04-1898  
Groom Ernest Albert Archer; Birthplace Wells ( England) Age 24;  
Bride Maria Geertruida van Dongen; Birthplace Raamsdonk Age 22;  
Father groom Alfred George Archer   Mother groom Olive Emma Reed;  
Father bride Steven van Dongen   Mother bride Johanna Cornelia King;

So, it is clear that Ernie met Maria at Raamsdonk, and she was a local girl, two years younger than him, and they named their children, Alfred Steven after his English grandfather (Alfred George Archer) and his Dutch grandfather (Steven van Dongen); and Johanna Cornelia after her Dutch grandmother (Johanna Cornelia Konings [King]);

Children: 

(12.4.05): The photo of the family group taken by E.C. Hall of 5, The Plain, St. Clements, is marked in pencil: “Ernie, Marie, Alfred, Johanna”.

A Netherlands online site (click here) shows as follows:
a) Alfred Steven: Born: 28.09.1899 at Raamsdonk;
b) Johanna Cornelia: Born: 02.10.1901 at Helmond, and adds: "Comments Father : occupation Director Eener Papierfabriek age 27 Location parents : Helmond” (translated by Google translate), so perhaps by 1901 Ernest was in a management role in a paper factory in Helmond


Occupation:  
Early years training in the paper industry factories of his (Reed) uncle Albert Edwin Reed at Maidstone, Kent and at Kaisersveer, Holland (click here for a photo of the Kaisersveer papierfabriek); then switched to the automotive industry;
Bought and sold motor vehicles.The Oxford Mail article refers to his involvement in fleet vehicle ownership. No other evidence of this has come to hand. The same article refers to the use of “catapult elastic” in his aircraft;


Lived:      

Holland most of his life…. (his working life). It appears that during his period at the  Keizersveer Raamsdonksveer paper mill, he resided there. As indeed seems likley to have been the case with his younger brother, William. Subsequently he appears to have lived at Bilthoven, at No.13 Jan Steenlaan - an address which appears still to exist.


Other biographical details: 

  1. FGBA said that Ernest came over  to England occasionally to buy vehicles;
  2. (per FGBA 30th December 1989): Ernie was invited by his uncle (Ernest Albert Reed), his mother’s brother, to Netherlands to try the paper business, but presumably didn’t like it or was not successful and went into the motor business, and became a Ford (Lincoln) dealer and used to come over with big Lincoln cars quite often;
  3. Flew a biplane on Port Meadow in the 1920s; (11.5.2014: a monoplane, not a biplane - as can be clearly seen from the photographs. I suspect it is ‘a Bleriot’ in general design, as suggested by the ‘Flight’ article listing early aviators, which I have seen.(pba.ends). 29.5.16: Have not found and cannot recollect the origin of this ‘Port Meadow’ reference, which I therefore classify as possibly ‘family history apocrypha’. It seems somewhat unlikely in view of the (now) certain knowledge that Ernie’s flying in Holland came to an abrupt end with the crashing of the Dutch aviation group’s Blériot XI. However it is something to pursue when the opportunity arises.
  4. See postcard showing Ernest in flight and marked: “Archer T.E. Twello” which has written in pencil on the message side, some text in French which presumably may have been copied from his French flying licence: “Certifie que Mr. Archer – Ernest, nè a Wells, de Nationalite Anglaise a ete nomme Pilote Aviateur, le 9 Aout 1910. Le President de la Commission L’Aviation: F.Nean. No.214. (and on the other side of the text side of the card is written: August 1910, L’Aero Club de France,  Paris.”. Printed on the text side of the card is the name and address of the (I assume) printer of the card: “Snel-Fotografie ‘Davo’, J.H.Rutgers, Nieuwstraat 26, Deventer.”; (pba: 12.4.05);
  5. (per FGBA 30th December 1989): Lived his whole life (added 29.5.16: ‘but this actually means most of his working and subsequent life’) in Netherlands and had a Ford dealership/big garage/ and FGBA went over when aged 20;
  6. Sold “a Ford every day”. Came over to visit  family.  Had a Ford Lincoln. Very big. Collected Morris  cars to sell in Netherlands. Link (click here) to a Dutch website providing information about Ernest Archer’s business importing Morris cars into the Netherlands;
  7. There is a question of why William Archer went home (from the Kaisersveer Papierfabriek) to Oxford in 1900 whereas his elder brother Ernest stayed in the Netherlands. An important factor here is the Boer War of 1899 - 1902 in South Africa, which led to strong anti-British feeling in the Netherlands. Another factor is that both brothers probably lacked any significant technical/scientific qualifications of relevance to the business of paper-manufacturing. Another factor is that Ernest had married a local Netherlands girl in 1898, whereas William hadn’t, and William went home to Oxford and married an Oxford girl in 1902. Also Ernest had found an alternative (to the paper mill) employment (selling Oxford-made motor cars) in NL, and I think William wasn’t interested in that. An interesting aspect of that latter factor is that William Archer’s eldest son Arthur (born 1903) was, like his uncle Ernest, intensely interested in Morris cars and wanted to (and did) join the Morris motor-car manufacturing firm, and worked for that group for a good many years (including driving an MG Sports car in the Monté Carlo Rally) before finally being persuaded to join his father in the AC&Co transport business.


Background to Ernest’s flying – history of flying (to put his flying in (approx) 1912 in context, most of the following information coming from Joshua Levine’s book ‘On a wing and a prayer’):

  1. (page 8 of ‘On a wing….’): 1737: Poet Thomas Gray imagines the sky as a battlefield: ‘The day will come when thou shalt lift thine eyes/ To watch a long drawn battle of the skies/ ….’
  2. 17.12.1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright, bicycle shop owners from Dayton, Ohio, flew the first aircraft, powered by a tiny petrol engine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They flew 120 feet at a height of 10 feet. This was 9 years before the date of Ernest Archer’s 1912 flying licence;
  3. 0n 5.10.1905 the Wright brothers flew 24 miles at a speed of 38 miles per hour, but subsequently kept very quiet about their achievement, with a view to selling the project to the US or other military authorities, but actually did not achieve this;
  4. September 1906, the first machine took to the air outside the US, flown by Alberto Santos-Dumont, at Bagatelle, near Paris, unaware of the advances made by the Wright brothers;
  5. August 1908, Wilbur Wright demonstrates the ‘Wright Flyer’ at Hunaudieres near Le Mans, and in July 1909 sold the machine to ‘the US Army’, but in the years that followed became mired in  patent litigation.
  6. Later, Orville Wright said: ‘We were just a couple of kids with a bike shop, who wanted to get this contraption up in the air. It was a hobby. We had no idea …. (that aircraft would be dropping bombs’;
  7. In 1908 the first flying machine took to the air in Britain. It was flown by an American, Samuel Cody. Cody was cowboy, actor, kite inventor, balloonist, aviator and eccentric and had arrived in Britain in 1901 bringing his Wild West stage shown with him. October 1908 his machine, powered by an Antoinette engine flew 1390 feet;
  8. May 1909, John Moore-Brabazon became the first British man to fly an aircraft in Britain. Five months later he collected a prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail for being the first person to fly a circular mile in a British aircraft;
  9. Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail was worried that the country was falling dangerously behind its rivals and attempted to rouse public concern by announcing that Britain was ‘no longer an island’, and offering a new prize to the first pilot to fly across the English Channel;
  10. On 25th July 1909 the prize was won by the Frenchman (!) Louis Bleriot, flying his own monoplane from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes;
  11. This  (page 13 of ‘On a wing..’): ‘hastened British aircraft development. Across the country, engineers and mechanics began to adapt their skills to the design and construction of flying machines. Frederick Handley-Page … (who became a celebrated aeronautical engineer) .. was working out of a shed in Barking, with a coppersmith, Charles Tye, as his sole assistant. His first aircraft was called the ‘Yellow Peril’ (after the colour of the yellow cellulose material on the wings);
  12. AV Rowe, a marine engineer from Manchester, who had made detailed observations of birds while at sea, in 1908, four months before Cody’s first flight, almost took to the air in a machine of his own design, but never quite made it off the  ground;
  13. Geoffrey de Havilland (of Mosquito and Comet fame) started to work on his own aircraft in a shed off the Fulham Road, in the same year (1908). He flew the machine 18 months later from a hilltop on the Hampshire Downs. It flew for 35 yards, crashed, and was wrecked; 
  14. 1909: introduction of French ‘Gnome’ so-called rotary engine with better power-to-weight ratio and less vibration and better cooling due (it says) to rotation of cylinder block around the crankshaft. Powered flight became a far more practical proposition;
  15. 1910: Flying gripped the British public’s imagination. Establishment of Claude Grahame-White’s ‘London Aerodrome’ for aerial displays and joyrides. Frederick Handley-Page would send his aircraft ‘Yellow Peril’ there to give joyrides;
  16. April 1911: establishment of the ‘Army Aircraft Factory, later renamed the Royal Aircraft Factory, at Farnborough. Geoffrey de Havilland joined the factory as a designer. The factory produced a series of aircraft, each classified by type: (i) the BE (Bleriot Experimental) was a ‘tractor biplane’; and (ii) the FE (Farman Experimental) was a ‘pusher’ biplane with the propeller behind the fuselage; a third type, with the elevators at the front, was the SE (Santos Dumont Experimental); and the final type was the RE (Reconnaissance Experimental); and versions of these were produced throughout the Great War;

  

Oxford Mail Article:

Oxford Mail article of September 12th 1960:

Headline:  An aviation pioneer of 50 years ago

Caption of photograph: Mr. Archer's "do-it-yourself" plane, powered by a motor-cycle engine!­

Introduction: ­John Owen recalls the career of Ernest Archer, son of an Oxford Inland Revenue Officer, who built his own aeroplane half a century ago.

The fact that James Sadler, the 18th century balloon­ist, famous in his day for be­ing the first man to attain a height of 13,000 ft. in a gasbag is Oxford's earliest link with aeronautics, is well known, but that a former Oxford school­boy was also to become a pioneer in aviation more than 100 years later, is known only to a few people. ,

He was Ernest Albert. Archer, son of Alfred George Archer, the Inland Revenue officer for the Oxford district, and just over half a century ago he made and flew his own  aircraft.

Educated at the old Oxford Wesleyan Day School in New Inn Hall Street, then presided over by the redoubtable Joseph Richardson, one of the outstanding schoolmasters of his generation, he left to join a paper manufacturing firm at Dartford in Kent This was  controlled by his uncle, Albert  Read, his mother's brother, and the member of a family well known in the paper world.

Later on he was sent by his uncle to Holland to manage a Dutch paper pulp factory at Keizersveer on the river Maas, near Utrecht, and he was never to return to England, except as a visitor, for the rest of his long life.

He was a most capable engineer, whose hobby was his work and he was devoted to anything mechanical. It was typical of him that when he saw his first motor-car while he was on honeymoon in Paris, he left his bride of a few days on the pavement while he ran after the vehicle to question the driver and examine the new machine.

From that moment his interest in the internal combustion engine grew – before that it was steam and water power which had concerned him – and for the rest of his life he was intimately connected with the motor industry, primarily as the owner of one of the largest fleets of passenger carrying vehicles in Holland.

Aeroplanes fascinated him too, and soon he was back in France at Pav, then one of the chief centres for the air-minded enthusiasts, where he learnt to fly. Just over a year after Bleriot had flown the Channel for the first time, he qualified and obtained his licence as a “pilote-aviateur” on August 9, 1910. It was the 214th licence to be issued by the Aero-Club de France.

Thus equipped he went home to Holland and built his own aeroplane (please click on the bold text)

It was a wonderful machine (please click on the bold text) on the lines familiar to those interested in the aircraft of those days. Powered by a motor-cycle engine, it taxied on motor-cycle wheels, the springs of which were formed of catapult elastic.

The fuselage was made of bamboo and strips of the same wood provided the ribs of the wings which were covered with cotton cloth – but it flew, an object of exciting interest to people who came long distances to Twello to watch the manoeuvres of the intrepid aeronaut.

Mr Archer died nearly seven years ago at Bilthoven, which had been his home for many years, and though his feats in the air are unknown in his native land they are not forgotten by the Dutch who have accorded him a niche in their official, national history of aviation achievement. (04/11/2005)


Notes and questions:

  1. Was Ernest Albert Archer named Albert after Albert Edwin Reed – his mother’s brother (so, his uncle)? (**) His brother William was named (William George) Reed after that branch of the family.(**);
  2. And my (pba’s) father Frederick George Blake Archer was unmistakeably named after Mr George Blake, furniture store proprietor and step-father to FGBA’s mother (Elizabeth Archer nee Gilder), and employer to WGRA for (I believe) probably most of the first two decades of the 20th century, until his Uncle James left his wealth and business interests to WGRA in or around 1925.
  3. His work in the A.E. Reed factories  in Dartford and at  Keizersveer near Utrecht (Raamsdonksveer?) in Holland led to him effectively never forming part of the ‘Archer clan’ in Oxford, as from (according to the Oxford Mail article) the time he left school, though Dad said he did visit (from Holland) quite often during his years as an importer of motor cars.
  4. And why, I wonder, did both of those two enterprising young men throw up the opportunity to be part of the growing Reed Group paper empire? I suppose we shall never know, unless it could be found in, for example, a biography of Albert Edwin Reed, whose obituaries I already have. Any of a thousand reasons, I suppose, including a wish for more independence than working in that organisation would have allowed. Both Ernest Archer and William Archer ended up working in their own businesses.


Significant Further Information (added 22.10.2014 and amended/corrected 11.2.2015) kindly provided by a visitor to this website:

The following text, pasted verbatim, together with much other, related, information, was very kindly provided by Klaas Jan Sijsling, an authoritative [**] writer on early Dutch aviation, to whom I am extremely  grateful, as it adds very considerably (not least by way of correction) to the above story about my great-uncle Ernest, his aviation exploits, and the family living in the Netherlands of which he formed a part, none of whom I have ever met. Perhaps, as a result of Klaas Jan Sijsling’s help and this website itself, one fine day that omission may be made good. That would be a wonderful thing. And (added 12.4.15): Klaas Jan also provided me with very significant help with the Dutch family history aspects of Alfred Ernest Archer’s family, some of which appears above on this page and some on a page entitled: “Information from Klaas Jan Sijsling”. So, with that preamble, here is part of the new information supplied by Klaas Jan Sijsling:
[**] His book on the subject can be found at: (click here). Perhaps a better link is: (click here). which provides two pages of photographs from the book.

"The photo of the aeroplane shows     ARCHER TE  TWELLO 

The meaning of TE in "Archer TE" is not Thomas Ernest. The Dutch TE stands for the English AT or IN. So read Archer at Twello. 

Around April 1910 Ernest Albert Archer was appointed aviator of the Eerste Nederlandsche Vliegvereeniging (E.N.V.), which in English roughly translates to First Dutch Flying Association. The E.N.V. then ordered a Blériot XI in France.

In August 1910 the plane arrived at the Molenhei, a flying ground of the E.N.V. near Gilze-Rijen. Archer, who in the previous month had successfully performed his flights for the flying certificate in France, flew this Blériot for the first time at the Molenhei on August 9. A gust of wind then resulted in a broken wing and propeller.

Demonstrations at the Molenhei were announced for the period August 28 - September 4.

Aviators: Archer and the Russian Ladislas Lewkowicz. The latter flew a Blériot XI as well. The wind allowed flying only on August 28, August 30 and September 1 (duration of the flights of Ernest mostly 1 - 3 minutes). On the last day of those three Archer and Lewkowicz flew at the same time. Until then the Dutch people had not seen two aeroplanes in the air at the same time.

Subsequently demonstrations were announced in Twello (near Deventer) for the period 14 - 19 October. Aviator: Archer. The weather prohibited all flying on the first two days. On October 16th Archer made (two test flights and) two short flights (2½ and 1½ minutes) and on October 17th all went wrong: after a flight of 1 minute with a bad working propeller he installed another one and tried to fly again. Unfortunately the plane would not climb and Archer flew in the direction of a farm and a tree. It was not possible to fly between that tree and the farm; the plane hit the tree and pitched forward into a hedge. The Blériot incurred heavy damage, but Archer was unhurt. 

After the repair of the monoplane Archer took to instructing the pupils of the E.N.V. He helped them, but not for long. He was rarely seen at the Molenhei after December 1910 and did not fly anymore, the probable reason being the penalty of paying the bill in case of an accident.”

(Added 01.11.2014), also from Klaas Jan Sijsling, in response to my questions about how Ernest Archer gained his flying experience for his appointment as aviator of the First Dutch Flying Association. So I paste below Klaas Jan Sijsling’s reply dated 25.10.2014:

"Around April 1910 Archer was appointed as an aviator of the E.N.V. according to the newspaper Bredasche Courant. Undoubtedly this was conditional on obtaining his certificate in the future, as Archer did not have any flying experience at this time.

When leaving for France he asked the reporter of Algemeen Handelsblad (a paper in Amsterdam) to report nothing about him as long as he (Archer) did not achieve anything (a proof of modesty according to the reporter).

Archer used the planes of the Blériot school to learn flying (at Pau and Issy).

In 1910 there was another Archer who built his own plane. He was called Walter Archer and lived in Salida (Colorado). Perhaps the reporter of the Oxford Mail mistook Ernest for Walter. The "Dutch" Archer did not build a plane in the Netherlands. The plane on both photographs is the Blériot XI of the E.N.V”.

So, it seems clear that Ernest Archer definitely did not carry out the early aircraft manufacturing (and perhaps design) work which has previously been suggested. The aircraft he flew were clearly not his own, but those of the Blériot Schools at Pau and Issy, and of the Dutch Flying Association (“ENV”), and the latter was a Bleriot XI ordered by the E.N.V. from the Bleriot factory in France. Take a look at this link (click here) to find out about Bleriot XIs and compare these with Ernest Archer’s aircraft in his photos - it is very clear that Klaas Jan is right. As to whether Ernest Archer later ‘flew a biplane on Port Meadow’, is another question. He may have done so, using his French-acquired qualification and his experience acquired in both France and Holland. That claim requires investigation. Presumably permission from The Freemen of Oxford would have been required, so that is an avenue of investigation for me to pursue.

But he did apparently have the necessary 'go-ahead-spirit' to apply for and secure the position of aviator for the E.N.V. and then to get his training at the Bleriot schools at Pau and Issy, and to qualify as a pilot (click here for a link to see his entry at No. 214 in the register of qualifying pilots). And despite this he was pleasantly modest too!  I paste below information from the Wikipedia page linked-to the above, about Bleriot’s aviation schools, from which it is clearly likely that Ernest Archer got his training free on the basis of the Bleriot XI ordered by the E.N.V.:

"Louis Blériot established his first flying school at Etampes near Rouen in 1909. Another was started at Pau, where the climate made year-round flying more practical, in early 1910 and in September 1910 a third was established at Hendon Aerodrome near London. A considerable number of pilots were trained: by 1914 nearly 1,000 pilots had gained their Aero Club de France license at the Blériot schools, around half the total number of licences issued.[12] Flight training was offered free to those who had bought a Blériot aircraft: for others it initially cost 2,000 francs, this being reduced to 800 francs in 1912. A gifted pupil favoured by good weather could gain his license in as little as eight days, although for some it took as long as six weeks. There were no dual control aircraft in these early days, training simply consisting of basic instruction on the use of the controls followed by solo taxying exercises, progressing to short straight-line flights and then to circuits. To gain a license a pilot had to make three circular flights of more than 5 km (3 mi), landing within 150 m (490 ft) of a designated point.[13]"

More about Ernest Archer’s aviation activities:

(Added 12.3.2015), also from Klaas Jan Sijsling, in response to my questions about the aviation activities of Archer and Lewkowikz in their Bleriot XI aircraft.  So I paste below Klaas Jan Sijsling’s reply dated 16.2.2015):

You posed a question about Archer, Lewkowicz and the Blériots XI. Please find here some background information. 

Archer and Lewkowicz successfully performed their flights for the flying certificate in July, at Issy-les-Moulineaux in France, on the same day. (So very likely both men then knew each other well.) 

Both men were asked to fly at the meeting (of the E.N.V.) at the Molenhei (1910, August 28 - September 4). 

At this meeting, Archer flew the Blériot XI of the E.N.V.

Lewkowicz flew in that meeting also a Blériot XI, most probably bought by himself, so his own plane. (Lewkowicz wasn't an employee of the E.N.V. and I never read about a consortium in which he was an employee. Maybe he was rich or had received an inheritance; it often happened in those days that young people, after receiving an inheritance, spent this money to learn to fly and to buy an aeroplane.) 

The Blériot XI was the famous monoplane in which Blériot crossed the Channel. Blériot sold a lot of planes of this famous type, including one for the E.N.V. and one for Lewkowicz.

(Added by pba 15.3.15): here is a link to a You tube video giving a wonderful insight into what Great Uncle Ernie was doing in 1909: click here

From Wikipedia 11.05.2014:

Re Ernest’s Uncle Albert Edwin Reed (his mother’s brother):

Albert Edwin Reed

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Albert Edwin Reed (1846–1920) was the founder of Reed Elsevier, formerly Reed International, one the United Kingdom's largest professional publishing businesses.

Career: Entering the paper industry as a boy, Albert Reed first managed or part-owned paper businesses before he acquired a fire-damaged building, Upper Tovil Mill, near Maidstone in Kent in 1894.[1] Albert Reed specialised in the production of paper suitable for halftoneblocks[2] for which there was considerable demand at the time and by 1903 he owned seven mills.[2] Under his leadership the business expanded rapidly securing an order to supply newsprint for the Daily Mirror in 1904.[2] Reed was importing paper from a mill in Canada by 1911.[3]

He died in 1920, leaving the management of the business to his twin sons.[2]

Other interests[

Reed was a staunch Methodist and a philanthropist.[1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkJymMK33Zk

qaa© Philip B Archer 2014