Mary Elizabeth Dehane was the first cousin of Henry Evans. After the Evans family left Pendeford Hall in about 1860, the bachelor Henry continued to live in the Tettenhall Road with his mother, Mary Evans, nee Shaw-Hellier. Mary Elizabeth Dehane had married Captain Henry Segrave of Ely House, Tettenhall Road on 21 Nov 1850 and were close neighbours as well as cousins.
Captain Henry Segrave (1823-1906), whose family were Irish landowners in co Wicklow, was Chief Constable of Wolverhampton from about 1857. A number of photos of his and Mary’s children have survived and were kept in Florence Evans‘ photo album. The three sisters were direct contemporaries of Florence – they are Frances Emma (b 1853), Mary Clare (bap 16 Dec 1859) and Edith Dorothy Blanche (bap 4 Aug 1863).
Henry’s children were brought up and baptised, some in Catholic churches, in Wolverhampton. His oldest daughter Frances married Sir John Talbot-Power in Wolverhampton in 1876. Mary married George Stopford in London in 1888 and Edith married Henry Samuel Close in Dublin in 1890. All three husbands were Irish aristocrats or landowners.
Captain Henry Segrave’s youngest son Charles William Segrave (bap 9 May 1867) married an American, Mary Lucy Harwood.
Sources and Notes
- Florence Marten’s Photo Album
- Baptisms at SS Mary and John, Wolverhampton, Roman Catholic Church, Findmypast
- The Catholic baptisms seem a little bit of a conundrum. The Wolverhampton Irish Catholic community, mainly lower class labouring immigrants, is discussed in some detail on the Wolverhampton History web site. Captain Segrave seems to have been instrumental in keeping the peace when a series of Anti-Catholic lectures came to town.
- Henry Evans was active in the Wolverhampton Volunteers who certainly liaised with Captain Segrave’s constabulary.
- It seems likely that the Segrave family knew both the Evans family and the Marten family of Penn Hall in 1860’s Wolverhampton. However, they are absent from the eventual wedding in 1889, probably because they had already returned to Ireland by then.
- A number of the Dehane family, Captain Segrave himself and Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier (all ‘cousins’) were Freemasons. Henry Evans, the bank manager, was apparently not. See Lodge details held by Ancestry.com