Part of the Earley family tree (Great-uncle)
Family background
Albert Frederic Acton was born on 2 April 1859 at Waverley Street, Nottingham, the youngest child (of 3) born to Thomas Lowe Acton (1819–1880), a bank manager, and his wife Mary née Lowe (1821–1902). He was baptised at St Peter’s Church, Nottingham on 27 April 1859.
Albert was educated at Nottingham School and Wellington College before being admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge in June 1878. He graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1878 and them attended the Theological College at Chichester.
At Wellington, Albert was a member of the college cricket team and played for the first XI between 1875 and 1878. In a drawn match against MCC on 11 July 1877, he took 6 wickets and scored 30 runs. He continued to play at Cambridge, but never made the University XI.
In December 1888, he was licenced as a curate at Stourpaine and Stepleton in Dorset and was ordained priest a year later. At the 1891 census, he was living in West Street, Stourpaine with a housekeeper, Jane Chaffey
In 1894, he left Stourpaine to take up a curacy at St George’s Church, Fordington (then a village just to the east of Dorchester).
He spent three years as curate at Fordington, and then between 1897 and 1901 he had various short term posts, including a year at Tolpuddle, where he was living in March 1901, as a lodger with Elizabeth Bullew, the village postmistress.
in December 1901, he was installed as Rector at St John’s, West Grimstead, near Salisbury, where he was to remain for five years. In October 1906, he transferred to St Michael the Archangel Church, Brixton Deverill near Warminster, where he was to minister for the next 14 years.
Marriage and children
On 6 November 1906, aged 47, he married 19-year old Emmeline Mary Earley (known as Emily). The wedding was held at St Mary’s Church at Shirehampton, near Bristol, the home of his friend Revd. Hector Alexander Powell who conducted the wedding ceremony.
The couple had two daughters born at Brixton Deverill: Elizabeth Mary, born on 26 March 1909, and Susan Hilda, born on 15 May 1914.
In March 1920, the family sailed to Sydney, Australia on board the SS Berrima of the Peninsular and Oriental Line, where Albert was appointed a minor Canon at Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle. Their third child, John Reginald was born in Newcastle on 30 January 1921.
The family returned to London in July 1922 on board the P & O ship SS Baradine, following which Albert was appointed vicar at Edington, near Westbury, Wiltshire, until 1924 when he started to suffer with ill-health.
From 1924 to 1930, he had no parish, but was licensed to minister in the Dioceses of Sarum, Bath & Wells, and Bristol, before moving to Norfolk in 1932, where he was vicar at East Dereham in 1932-33.
Albert Acton died, aged 79, with a cerebral haemorrhage, at home in Stiffkey Road, in Wells-next-the-Sea on 20 September 1938. His funeral was held at St Nicholas Church in Wells on 23 September and was attended by a large number of members of the clergy as well as family and friends.
Later family history
Emily survived her husband by 26 years and died in November 1964.
Elizabeth married George Gouldsmith, a hotelier, in 1936. She died in December 2002.
Susan married twice: firstly to George Child, a salesman, in 1933 and, after his death, to Robert Wood in 1948. She died in 1975.
John married Margaret Mitchell in 1943. He died in 2022, aged 101. He was an electronics engineer and worked on valves etc., being the inventor of the Dekatron cathode tube. (See this article for the full story.)