True-life adventures of four Frome families

A BOOK published this month follows the true-life adventures of four Frome families as they navigate their way through the 18th and 19th centuries – and the story of two illegitimate births. 

Behind the new book, ‘Frome Fables’, is writer Keith Browning, who discovered a long forgotten family connection to Frome when researching his family tree. 

About the inspiration behind his new book and the journey to getting it published, Keith said, “’Before Christmas Week 2004, I knew nothing about the family tree on my father’s side, but while sorting through a file of old papers, I came across an old brown envelope with just a few words scribbled on the back. These were the names of my grandfather, Arthur Browning, and his father, George Browning. This chance discovery coincided with the end of the first series of ‘Who Do You Think You Are’, and the online release of UK censuses for 1881 and 1901.  

“My father, Hugh, had been told by his mother that the Browning side had ‘no relations worth talking about’. However, the censuses showed that Arthur was the second youngest in a family of 13 children and that his father, George had been born in the town of Frome, in 1830. 

“The 1881 census also gave me the first mention of the town of Frome, although by then George’s family were living in Whitechapel, in London’s East End. A chance contact with a cousin who I knew nothing about, told me a little of the family history that had been kept from my father.  

“There were plenty of family rumours and mysteries, especially surrounding the identity of George Browning’s wife, Sarah Louisa Cooper, because on their marriage certificate the space for the name of her father was left blank. The rumour gained greater interest, because it was thought the absentee father was someone of importance, perhaps a member of the Earl of Cork’s family. 

“So began my 15-year journey of discovery, the hunt for the father of my great grandmother, an amazing adventure with plenty of twists and turns. There is a strong element of ‘upstairs-downstairs’ in this story, but the majority of the tale features quite ordinary people, several of who lived the most extraordinary lives. Their stories would challenge the imagination and ingenuity of fictional writers from any genre and from any generation, but in this case they are all real people going about their everyday business. 

“The story is a complicated one, told through the lives of three individuals George Browning, James Hancock and Sarah Louisa Cooper. Their stories are inter-twined but they all have their origins in north-east Somerset, in the parishes south of Bath and those that surround the town of Frome, hence the title – Frome Fables. 

“The storyline begins in the 1750s and takes us from the rural parishes of Witham Friary, Marston and Nunney, into Frome and across the border into Wiltshire. We trace their journey on to the Dunkerton Valley, where many stayed put and lived out their lives in Peasedown, Dunkerton and Wellow. For some it was then on to South Wales and when the work ran out, they moved north to Liverpool or across the ocean to Pennsylvania. Others headed towards the great metropolis of London. 

“What makes Frome Fables stand out from other family stories is that it seems more like an evening TV drama or detective thriller. There is a complex cover-up of an illegitimate birth, which involves a newborn having her name changed at least twice and then left behind by her mother in Peasedown, when the family moved to South Wales. This unwanted child was later to marry George Browning, a soldier nearly twice her age, who she had never met before, who was already her first cousin. 

“George Browning’s life was like a British version of Forrest Gump, turning up at key moments in British history – riots and gaslighting in Frome, the Indian Mutiny, Jack the Ripper, the rise of trade unions and the birth of the Labour Party. George and his family were active participants not idle onlookers in each event. 

“Elsewhere we have the story of a simple working man who ‘married’ four times, with no sign of a death or divorce anywhere amongst his wives. Like so many of the answers in Frome Fables, they are revealed as the story develops so there is very much a ‘detective’ air to the format and so find out who did what to who you will need to read the book. 

“We also have a man, Ephraim Cooper, who should have been hanged at Ilchester gaol in 1821, aged 25, but who lived to be 80 and produced the most amazing family – a grandson who became a ‘technologist’ who patented a ‘heat exchange pump’ in 1887 (refrigerator), who in turn sired a lady who lived to be 10 days short of her century, but who 75 years earlier had been Britain’s first female ‘aeroplanist’. (There are photos of her flying in 1911). 

“Take the family lines of these two, Ephraim Cooper and Sarah Louisa Cooper backwards and we end up on the doorstep of Marston House and the antics of the family of the 7th and 8th Earls of Cork. It is here that ‘upstairs’ met ‘downstairs’. and the final tale attempts to unravel the mystery of the identity of Sarah Louisa’s father.” 

Keith’s book, “Frome Fables’, is available from Hunting Raven Books in Cheap Street, and the Frome Heritage Museum at North Parade – it costs £14.99.