Part 19

A Memory of Middle Rainton.

My Family
I am trying to sort out my recollections of the family history. Most of what I know is from word of mouth mainly from relations who are now dead. Also, this record may not be right, but as far as I can recall it is correct and is what has been passed on to me. You can feel free to use this any way you wish, or pass it on to anyone who is interested. You can use this with the Family Tree, which again I am passing on to you, this is also made up from what I have heard from older relations, and is also only correct as far as I know, and has not been researched by me. This, of course, will only be of use to you on your mother’s side of the family. Feel free to ask me about anything that might be of interest to you.

So let’s start at the beginning, as far as I know.
The family came originally from the west coast of Ireland, in county Mayo. They left Ireland due to the famine in the 1840's, some went to America and others to the North East of England, Co Durham. The family surname was then Spellman.
What happened to the American side I don’t know, only that my great gran, Margaret Wilson, always maintained that the man who became head of the RC church in America, Cardinal Spellman, in the 1940 period was a relation.

Well the Spellmans came to England, and in time married into the Caine family. The only relation I am aware of on the Caine side was Peter Caine who married and was the father of Alex and Rio, who as you know lived in a large house in Hexam, Nr Newcastle. They had servants at the house, and also German prisoners of war working for them in the 1940s.

Margaret Caine married George Wilson, this must have been in the 1880's at a guess, and had 13 children, two who died young and the rest who mostly married and left home. Margaret lived, at times, first in a place called Great Lumley (I know the house), then on to Newbottle, and finally to Middle Rainton, a small pit village, this would be about 1912. They lived in the largest house in the village, Krone House, and when the large pub, The Fox & Hounds closed, she bought it and converted into the family home. This would be in the 1930s. Times were hard, great granddad had borrowed money in the 1890s to go to California as to take part in the gold rush. He never found anything and had to send for his fare home. This, of course, took some time, but he did come back to his wife and children. The only thing he brought home was some large fir cones, for which he was ribbed for some time. He later became a gamekeeper on a large estate, and always worked black labs - the last one called Nell. Sad story about Nell; the dogs were not allowed into the house, but slept in the kennels in the yard. When great granddad was ill and near to death, Nell came indoors and slept at the foot of the stairs. Just before he died, she went upstairs to see him, she survived him only by weeks.

The family kept horses, pigs, and hens etc, for the produce, and also to kill and eat as required. Margaret had set up a wet fish business while he was away and most of the brothers worked at this until they were married and left home. The fish business went on until even after I left home, and most of the carts still had the title Margaret Wilson Fish Merchant on them. The fish was bought from the quay at North Shields, some 25 miles away, so someone had to go there early in the morning by horse and cart to buy the fish off the boats to bring back to Rainton to be sold.
There was no spare time for anyone, everybody had a job to do, If it was not selling fish, it was looking after horses, and other animals, feeding, cleaning, grooming etc. The women had a house full of men to feed and look after, as even in the 1950s there were about 6 people in the house. So it was busy, but Margaret RULED, even the ones who had left home, her word was final. Great granddad died before I was born so it must have been 1930s. Margaret lived to 99yrs and 9 months and died about 1945, I still remember, as I was there at the end.

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