1673-1837
Key dates
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1673
Birth of John Bracher, Blacksmith of Tisbury
1709 Sept 10
Birth of Lawrence Bracher, Blacksmith of Salisbury
1713
Death of John Bracher
1752 April 22
Birth of Thomas Bracher, son of Lawrence and Martha Bracher (nee Fleet)​
Tinsmith of Salisbury, Wiltshire
1759 Nov 12
Death of Lawrence Bracher, aged 50, Salisbury
1792 May 4
Birth of Henry James Bracher, Salisbury
1794 August 22
Birth of George Bracher, Salisbury
1796 Oct 10
Death of Thomas Bracher, aged 44, Salisbury
1808 Dec 29
Death of Frances Bracher, aged 57. The three living children, Sophia, Henry and George assume the business.
1812 Dec 21
Henry and George Bracher publicly announce they are continuing the family trade of tin-plate worker and braziers, following the death of their sister Sophia
1815 March 23
Marriage of Henry Bracher to Mary Anne Stickland
1815 May 11
Marriage of George Bracher to Sarah Jukes
1816 April 12
Birth of George Bracher (junior), Salisbury, Wilts
1817 March 18
Partnership between George and Henry James Bracher is dissolved.
Henry continues the business as a sole trader
1817 April 10
George assumes the tea and grocery business of Francis Stokes in Wincanton, Somerset
1818 Feb 17
Henry Bracher born to George and Sarah Bracher
1820 Dec 9
Death of Sarah Bracher (nee Jukes) in Wincanton
1821 Dec 25
Death of Henry Bracher, aged 3 years, 10 months
1823 Feb 7
Re-marriage of George Bracher (senior) to Elizabeth Howes of Wincanton
1823, Dec 3
Birth of Elizabeth Fanny to George and Elizabeth Bracher
1825 April 2
Birth of Emma Sophia to George and Elizabeth Bracher at Wincanton
1826 May 12
Birth of Mary Ann to George and Elizabeth Bracher at Wincanton
1829 June 27
Birth of John Howes to George and Elizabeth Bracher at Wincanton
1832 March 10
Birth of Nathan to George and Elizabeth Bracher at Wincanton
1834 June 15
Birth of Jethro to George and Elizabeth Bracher at Kingweston.
George and Elizabeth are tenants to Wm.Dickinson Esq of Kingweston House, Kingweston, Somerset
1835 August 3
Prospectus issued for the Wiltshire & Dorset Bank
1835 Dec 14
Henry James Bracher announces his retirement from the business of 'furnishing-ironmonger, and cutler, brazier, tinplate worker, bell hanger, whitesmith etc'. He is listed among the initial directors of the new Wiltshire & Dorset Bank
1837
George and Elizabeth Bracher leave Kingweston
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It is not until about the 1830s that our ancestors begin to emerge as flesh and blood people. Their letters to one another not only provide facts and timelines, but also convey something of their personalities. Prior to the 1830s, the Bracher forebears remain shadow figures and, unfortunately, are little more than notations in parish registers.
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Genealogical research by Ian Bracher of Sydney has located the epi-centre of early Brachers is the small village of Tisbury in Wiltshire and their consistent family career lineage was that of blacksmith/ farrier/ tinsmith. The earliest possible date for this line of Brachers may be Robert Bracher, Blacksmith of Tisbury, who lived between 1520 and 1577. His son Lawrence (1542-1593 was also a blacksmith in Tisbury, with his son, Samuel (1568-1642) also following the career line. Samuel's son Lawrence (1615-1686, and his son Lawrence (1641-1705) were farriers in Tisbury and both married women called Elizabeth.
However, while the above is yet to be genealogically verified, the first confirmed earliest known Bracher of this line is John Bracher, who was born 1673 in Tisbury. He was a blacksmith and died age 40 in 1713. His son, Lawrence Bracher, was born September 10th 1709. Lawrence's marriage to Martha Fleet produced a son, Thomas Bracher, on April 22nd, 1752. Thomas was only seven when father Lawrence died in 1759. Both father and mother worked as Tinplate Makers in Salisbury, so it can only be surmised that after Lawrence's death, Martha carried on the work, no doubt assisted by her son Thomas from an early age.
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Thomas married Frances (surname unknown) around the mid 1770s and on May 2nd, 1778 welcomed their first born child, Sarah, followed by Sophia in January 1780, Frances in August 1782, Elizabeth in late 1784, and Ann in April, 1788. After siring five daughters, a son, James, finally arrived to Thomas and Frances on January 8, 1790, but he died at just over 12 months of age. A second son, Henry James, came into the world on May 4th, 1792 and their third son, George, was born on August 22nd, 1794.
Thomas Bracher died in 1796 and, with three children still under 8 years of age, his wife Frances continued the tinplate business, presumably with the assistance of Sophia, then aged 16. Three of her children - Sarah, Elizabeth and James - had died before the births of Henry James and George. Another two children - Ann and Frances - died before 1806. By the time Frances died in the Oatmeal-row, Salisbury on December 29th, 1808, only three children of the original family of eight children were still alive.
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Daughter Sophia carried on the tinplate business, and when she died on December 18th, 1812, age 33, it was left to Henry James, 20, and George, 18, to continue the business in Salisbury's Market Place. They both lived into old age. It was the Georgian era. George 3rd reigned and not only did the naming of their last born honour the monarch, but it also began a genealogical string of ‘George’ Brachers that spanned nearly two centuries, only ceasing with the death of his great grandson, George Reginald Alberto Bracher, in Melbourne in 1972.
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The business must have grown, because in March 1814 George and Henry acquired another Tin-Plate and Brazier business, located in Silver Street, Salisbury, which they ran in conjunction with the business in the Market Place.
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Twenty three year old Henry James married Mary Ann Stickland, at St James in Poole, Dorset in March 1815. Their first daughter, Sophia, was born exactly nine months later in December 1815.
Perhaps not to be outdone, his younger brother George married 17 year old Sarah Jukes at St Mary the Virgin Church of England, Upton Scudmore, Wiltshire two months later in May 1815. George was noted in the local newspaper report as a 'brazier', that is, a craftsperson who works in brass, an alloy created by combining the base metals of copper and zinc, and which was ideal for ship fittings and plumbing. Sarah was born in the town of Gosport, on the western shore of the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. Her father John, and no doubt her mother Sarah, worked in their bakery, grocery and cheese business. They had left Gosport in September 1810 and moved to Warminster, where John set up another grocery business in the marketplace. Upton Scudmore is barely 3kms away.
George and Sarah produced their first son, also named George, in Salisbury on April 12th, 1816. Napoleon and the French Army had been defeated at Waterloo in June 1815, but the national celebration was quickly tempered by what became known as 'the year without a summer'. The 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano in the East Indies - the largest eruption known on the planet in 10,000 years - spewed enormous amounts of dust and sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, which spread around the globe, cutting sunlight and distorting wind patterns. There was almost total crop failure across England and Ireland because of the continuous rain and low temperatures, with Wiltshire's agricultural base particularly hit hard. It was into this portentous scenario that the future progenitor of the Brachers in Australia was born.
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Henry and George Bracher announced the dissolution of their business partnership in March 1817, leaving Henry to continue the business as a sole trader. Presumably there was no acrimony involved, because the following year, on February 17th, 1818, George and Sarah's second son was born and they named him Henry. The month after they had parted business company, George took over the grocery and tea importing business of Francis Stokes in Wincanton, Somerset (which still continues under that name today in the Salisbury marketplace).
With two small boys and a new business, life for George and Sarah must have been busy and fulfilling. In May 1819 George was also advertising himself as the Wincanton agent for Sun Life Assurance, and in October 1820, he was seeking a 'youth of respectability' as an apprentice. The need for help may have been because Sarah was in the latter stages of confinement with a third child. As so often happened in that era, tragedy was just around the corner. On December 9th, 1820 Sarah died from unknown causes, which may lead us to surmise that it could have been from complications arising from child birth or from the latter stages of her confinement. She was buried in the graveyard of the Mill Street Independent Church, Wincanton.
A grieving George was left with a four year old and a two year old son to care for. However, twelve months later - December 25th, 1821 - young Henry also died, aged three years and ten months, leaving only George Senior and five year old George Junior as the family unit. Henry was also buried at the Mill St Church in Wincanton, presumably interred with his mother.
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George and his son remained wife and mother-less for three years, until George married Elizabeth Howes of Wincanton, Somerset on February 7th, 1823. Elizabeth was the eldest daughter of John and Emma Howes, who had lived in Fordingbridge (Hampshire). She was probably about the same age as her husband, as she had been baptised in Fordingbridge in 1800. Elizabeth’s father was a draper, who by time of her marriage had moved to Wincanton. Wincanton had been a market town of some significance and relative prosperity for several centuries. By the 1830s it boasted a population of more than 2,000 people.
We can safely speculate that the business world brought the grocer George and the drapery family Howes into close contact. George and his second wife appear to have applied themselves to their business and family lives diligently and according to a fairly strict Methodist ethos, though Elizabeth hardly had time to work in the business, as their first child, Elizabeth Fanny was born ten months later - December 1823 - and then a succession of children in 1825 (Emma Sophia), 1826 (Mary Ann), 1829 (John Howes), 1832 (Nathan) and 1834 (Jethro).
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The Bracher household in Wincanton must have been at capacity by the mid 1830s: six children under 10 years of age, plus 18 year old George, his father and step-mother. By February 1834 George is listed as a farming tenant of William Dickinson Esq, of Kingweston House, Kingweston in South Somerset, near Glastonbury. This small village, about 70km from Salisbury and Wincanton, is based around a beautiful 1710 mansion and an impressive church. The last advertisement for Sun Life Assurance showing George as the Wincanton agent was placed in the local paper during June 1832. We can only assume that George and Elizabeth had sold the grocery business and were trying their hand on the land, while awaiting their next venture. They remained at Kingweston until early 1837.
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The commercial rewards of shop keeping must have been reasonable because in December 1835 Henry James Bracher advertised in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal of his retirement from " ......the Business of Furnishing-Ironmonger, and Cutler, Brazier, Tin-plate Worker, Bell Hangar, Whitesmith &c". He "returns his most grateful acknowledgments to the Nobility, Gentry and Public in general...". In August of that year (1835) the prospectus for the Wilts & Dorset Bank was launched and by December 14th, 1835 Henry's name appeared among the initial directors of the new bank. and his signature also appeared on the Bank's deed settlement. Both Henry and George were listed alongside each other among the 496 shareholders in the September 1836 shareholder register for the Bank. 10,326 shares had been allotted to the 496 shareholders. Henry was described as 'Gentleman, Salisbury', while George was listed as "Farmer, Kingweston, Somerset'.
The bank expanded rapidly and by 1837 it had 37 branches and agencies. In 1836 George was listed as Manager of the Sherbourne branch of the Wiltshire and Dorset Bank, so it is presumed that he had left the farming life at Kingweston and moved to Sherbourne. The next notation for George and family appears in the records for the Methodist Parish of Sherborne, Dorset, where on June 30th 1837 all of George and Elizabeth's children were baptised. His rise in the banking world was rapid, for by 1840 he was described in the local paper as Secretary to the Company of the Wiltshire and Dorset Bank and living at Guilder Lane in Salisbury, with wife Elizabeth, children Elizabeth, Emma, Nathan and Jethro, together with a domestic servant.
The report of the sixth annual meeting of the banking company, held on February 14th 1842, re-elected Henry James to the general Board of Directors for another year, and it thanked George, as Secretary, for acting as General Manager of the bank while the position was vacant. The accolade was somewhat tainted the following fortnight in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal. The newspaper reported a furious Thomas Cavendish of the bank, who had responded to the official thanks by claiming that "..as these duties were done by myself, I cannot suffer this false and barefaced attempt to raise Mr Bracher at my expense to pass unnoticed." Cavendish had prepared a Statement of Facts about the case, which is today housed in the Stephen Moulton Collection in the U.K. Such a public and vehement denial by the employee may point to the fact that George's ability may not have been to the standards of the day expected of such office. We should remember that George had probably received minimal education because of the early death of his father and the fact that he was probably actively engaged in the family business with his brother from an early age. Despite his commercial success during the next thirty years, his experience by the late 1830s was possibly limited to the daily regimen of operating tin-smithing, and later grocery, businesses in small towns located in a still very agricultural area of England. However, it should be remembered that the role of Secretary to a Company in that era was a much less significant and powerful position than the role of Company Secretary in today's corporate world. It was, perhaps, more akin to today's role as an Executive Officer to the Board. Notwithstanding, George's contribution to the early bank was significant and it was not until the 1861 census that George Bracher is no longer listed as 'Secretary', but rather as ‘Landed Proprietor’ and by 1871 was simply described as 'deriving income from banks’.
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The success of the new bank is not surprising. The great expansion of trade and industry in the second half of the 18th century created the need for monetary services in provincial England. The need for fixed and working capital in the regions was not being met by London’s private banks or by the Bank of England. It was left to provincial businessmen – typically industrialists, traders and local revenue collectors - to meet the regional needs.
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By 1808 there were 800 private banks outside the capital, but the massive expansion under the Industrial Revolution demanded huge financial backing, which could only be met through the resources of banks with more than six proprietors. A new act in 1826 for the “better regulation and co-partnership of certain bankers in England” permitted the establishment of banking companies with any number of shareholders and Right of Note issue for banks beyond a 65 mile radius of London. The first 'joint-stock' bank was opened in Lancaster in 1826 and the new style banks quickly absorbed many of the private banks. It also resulted in the opening of hundreds of branches to service rural areas and industrial cities. In 1833, joint-stock banks were permitted to operate in London and a parliamentary act confirmed the legality of cheques drawn upon them. This facilitated more rapid commercial transactions.
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It was this scenario that led to the 1835 founding of the Wiltshire and Dorset Banking Company in Salisbury by 400 shareholders, or ‘proprietors’ as they were then known. Major funding came from the Manchester area of northern England, but the balance of shareholders were mostly farmers, millers, grocers, solicitors, merchants and surgeons. It was the first joint stock bank in the area and it quickly absorbed a number of local private banks, including Salisbury’s first private bank, Pinckney Bros, founded in 1811. It opened 24 branches in its first year alone and over the years the company provided employment and management opportunity for various Bracher family members.
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It is probably use of the term ‘proprietors’ instead of ‘shareholders’ at that time that may have created a belief among some of today's family that the Wiltshire and Dorset Banking Company was founded by Henry and George Bracher.
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The Bracher brothers - Henry and George -were just two of a large group of people behind the bank, which, by 1914, when it was taken over by Lloyds Bank, had absorbed 10 private banks and had a network of 100 branches stretching from Gloucestershire to Dorset. This cast metal plaque still embellishes the entrance to Salisbury's Lloyds-TSB Bank.
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Despite a career built solidly on capitalist endeavour, George Bracher Snr’s association with social reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858) may seem surprising. Welsh-born Owen is now regarded as the ‘Father of British Socialism’. The turmoil and recession in England during the post Napoleonic War era increased the call for social transformation. It was a time of rapid social change, maturing capitalism and of industrialism gaining momentum. Owen’s New Lanark cotton mill and industrial village for workers in Scotland set new standards in worker welfare.
Owen pointed out the harmful consequences of a largely urbanised society based on profit and the market economy, which increased competitiveness and individualism, diminished communal life, social relationships and self-sufficiency. However Owen was far from being a Luddite. He recognised the incorporation of the machine as a boon to the common people, but only when man was ‘master of the machine’. In fact, ‘Owenism’, as it became known, was an ideology and movement that existed within capitalism, with strict adherence to the Law and eschewing direct political change. Owen used his personal fortune to fund many of the social experiments, but increasingly relied on the support of major capitalist backers, via joint stock private enterprises. This is where successful store keeper and banking official George Bracher Snr had his connection.
Better described as ‘Utopian Socialism’ (at a time when socialism was a middle class movement), it was later known as ‘Communitarianism’ to denote a system of organisation based on small cooperative land settlements. It was a movement that had grown out of the earlier traditions of French political and rationalist theories, espoused by English writers such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and Thomas Paine, and embraced by the working classes during the late 1700s, through friendly societies and trade clubs. The communal use of land and mutual aid was at the heart of the movement, and especially of the social experiments that proliferated around England during the 2nd quarter of the 1800s. Groups of followers lived communally in privately-owned (joint-stock) properties. They spade-tilled the land, shared the workload, the food grown and any profit generated. It was a friendly grass-roots movement that believed in individual dignity, religious tolerance, equality of the sexes, self and mutual education for all, and the general dissemination of knowledge. George and his family’s shift from Wincanton to Kingweston in 1834, to live in what appears to have been a communal agricultural setting, may be explained by an adherence to the Owen-inspired communitarian movement and social experimentation.
‘Owenism’ sat fairly comfortably within the establishment until 1817, when Owen roundly denounced established religion, which was interpreted as a threat to the nation. It set him on a path of resistance and built emnity in many quarters. Owen rejected the notion of original sin and believed that culpability for misery stemmed from ignorance, not wickedness. Despite this opposition, Owen still enjoyed considerable support among influential quarters, including the Duke of Kent. However, the anti-religious aspect of the movement would probably not have sat comfortably with George and his family. During a later commercial court case for the bank, George strongly denied the accusation that he was an ‘Owenite’. However, the humble beginnings of George’s parents family, George’s small amount of education, but his passion for learning was possibly a great seeding-ground for a belief in utopian socialism.
Robert Owen secured capital to start his last communal living flagship ‘Queenwood’ on the Wiltshgire border in 1840 from a consortium of friends, including George Bracher, who loaned 2,500 pounds to the venture and gained the involvement of the chairman of the Wiltshire and Dorset Bank. However, internal troubles saw Owen removed from the control of Queenwood in 1842 and by 1844 we have a record of George attempting to recover his money. In 1845 he was approached by a Special Congress of the movement in London to be an ‘assigned Trustee’ of Queenwood to help oversee its wind-up. Robert Owen had not only sought the help of his capitalist followers, but had also relied on their know-how to make it work. He relied on the managerial classes because he believed the working class lacked organizational experience. George’s money and business acumen, therefore, was sought to make the experiment work, and then called upon to help tidy-up the mess after its failure.
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‘Communitarianism’ as a movement largely finished with the financial collapse of Queenwood in 1845, but the planning and community experiments between 1820 and 1845 had a major influence on the labor movement in England during the late 1800s.