my 2x great grandfather

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Thomas English Pyman was born in December 1843, the first child of George Pyman and Elizabeth English. He married Mary Ann Jobling (1842-1905) in nearby South Shields in 1865. Thomas and Mary Ann moved into West House in Clarence Road (later Victoria Road), West Hartlepool. As George Pyman's eldest son and traditional heir, Thomas played a significant role in the running of the family's main coal merchant business, George Pyman & Co, becoming a partner in 1872. He was also widely involved in local civic affairs in West Hartlepool. 

The family grew quickly. Elizabeth English Pyman (known as Lillie) was born in 1866, followed by my great grandmother Lucy Jane Pyman in 1868. Other surviving children were Nellie Pyman (1870-1931), George Pyman (1872-1915), Jane Pyman Pyman (1873-1945), May Pyman (1876-1954), Thomas English Pyman (1878-1939) and Alexander Arr Pyman (1882-1958). At the time of the 1881 Census, the family were resident in what were presumably temporary premises at Eden Cottage in Linden Grove, Hutton Rudby, south of Middlesborough. By 1891, they were back at West House. A year later however, Thomas English Pyman died, aged just 48. He was succeeded at George Pyman & Co by his younger brother, also George.

What happened to Thomas's family after his untimely death? Lucy Jane married Frederick William Maclean two years later, in 1894, and had two sons, one of whom was my grandfather. 

The eldest of the siblings, Lillie, never married. She became head of the household at West House, and remained there until her death in 1939. Nellie Pyman also never married, but appears to have taken up a career in nursing after her mother's death. In 1911, she was living in a boarding house in Harrogate, and described in the Census as a nurse. Her address at the time of her death is given as Bootham Park in York. There are certainly some other grand houses in that area of the city, but the only one known as "Bootham Park" was then, and is indeed still today, a psychiatric and geriatric hospital. Presumably Nellie was working there as a nurse (or possibly patient).  

The younger George Pyman married May Peele in 1898. They had two surviving children, Gwynneth Gertrude Pyman (1899-1977) and Noel Pyman (1905-1970). Like his father, George died young, aged just 43. His widow moved to Harrogate and lived there until 1933. Of their children, Gwynneth became a great traveller, visiting many distant countries during the 1930s. She died in Yorkshire in 1977. She never married. Noel married Anne Proctor and had at least three children, whose lines continue.

Jane Pyman Pyman married Roger Bell, a son of George Pyman the elder's partner in Pyman Bell of Newcastle, in 1897. They had four surviving sons. Thomas English Pyman II also married, but not until his mid-50s, to Alma Lea in 1932. At the time of the Census he was still living at West House with sister Lillie. Youngest child Alexander Arr Pyman appears to be missing from the 1901 and 1911 Census records but married Ellen Turnbull in 1914, and had a child, also Alexander Arr Pyman (1917-1992). His line continues. May Pyman was still unmarried at the age of 25. She was visiting the Cradock family in Wakefield, Yorkshire on the night of the 1901 Census, for reasons unknown. 

For more on the Pyman family, see Peter Hogg's book, The Pyman Story