Image Ref : VAR06 0096.tif

'Grandfather Pridham' (1812– c.1872)

This is one of nine images from a photograph album that was handed in to the Oxfam shop in Totnes. An article in the Totnes Times (date unknown) tried unsuccessfully to trace the identities of those shown. However, very brief information on a few of them, together with research online, has enabled us to identify most of them and provided strong clues to the others. The three key images in the identification process were VAR06 0090, VAR06 0091 and VAR06 0096. Charles Pridham was born in Plymouth on 19 December 1812 to Joseph Pridham and Maria Dawkins. When he was baptised, early in 1813 at Plymouth Charles the Martyr, Joseph’s occupation is recorded as ‘Attorney at Law’. Charles married Susanna Rachel Prideaux in Plymouth in 1841. Like his father-in-law, Walter Prideaux, he was the father of six sons and four daughters. He studied at Oxford (as recorded in the censuses) and gives his occupation as ‘schoolmaster’, but it looks as if he did more than this. He travelled extensively: census data and other information place him in Guernsey, Wilford Lodge in Co. Mayo in Ireland, and various locations in and around Bristol. Various censuses record the children in his household born in these different places. He died around 1872 or so in Bristol.