The Harvey Family: Andover Shopkeepers

Andover is a town in the northern part of the county of Hampshire in England, north of  Southampton and about sixty-five miles southwest of London. For more than 140 years the Harvey family owned shops in the High Street of Andover.

The history of the Harvey family at Andover only goes back to the arrival of William Kernott Harvey in the 1840s.  Before he moved to Andover, the family had lived for many generations in or near the town of Brading on the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight is located along the southern coast of England near Southampton.

Several generations of William's Harvey ancestors were farmers at Adgestone Farm, just outside Brading.  We know that William Kernott Harvey was baptized at Brading on February 19, 1821 and was the son of William and Frances Harvey.  Undoubtedly the child received his middle name to honor the family of his father's grandmother, as there were no male Kernotts to carry on the family name.  That name continued to be passed down as a middle name through several generations of his descendants.

The identity of William Kernott Harvey's father William has not yet been proven.  There were two different William Harveys in this family.  They were first cousins, both being grandsons of George Harvey and Mary Kernott who married at Brading in 1739 and lived at Adgestone Farm.  Whether we descend from George and Mary's son John (b. 1740) or their son William (b. 1750) is yet to be determined.  Both sons remained at Adgestone Farm.  George Harvey was the earliest family member associated with Adgestone Farm.  His parents, John Harvey and Mary Rogers, lived at Arreton and Newchurch.  George was baptized at Newchurch in 1704.

Little is known about William Kernott Harvey's early years.  The baptismal records at Brading show only one sibling, John Sandys Harvey, christened on March 31, 1828.  He died about six months later.  Whether there were others whose names do not appear in the baptismal records is unknown.

Presumably young William grew up on the farm helping with such tasks as taking care of the animals and planting and harvesting crops.  One fact which we do know about his early life is that in 1837, when he was only sixteen years old, he joined the ranks of the temperance movement.  He remained a warm advocate of temperance, a member of local temperance societies, and a total abstainer from the consumption of alcohol for the rest of his life.

At some point in his youth, he decided that he did not want to spend his life on the farm and was apprenticed to a tailor to learn that trade.  Like most apprentices, William's goal was to establish his own tailoring shop. When the time came to open a shop, he selected Andover.  William opened a shop at 78 High Street, probably in the middle to late 1840s when he was around 25 years of age.  He moved into the living quarters upstairs over the shop.

The 1851 census of Andover shows that William married soon after his arrival in Andover.  By the time of the census, he was 30 years old, his wife Jane (born in Andover) was 21, and his daughter Jane was 2.

Around 1851, William began following a vegetarian diet.  He continued as a vegetarian for the rest of his life, a choice followed by many of his descendants.

I have not determined what happened to William's first wife, but they had another child in 1853 or 1854 and then Jane probably died.  On April 5, 1855, William Kernott Harvey returned to his hometown of Brading to marry Mary Toms Warder, daughter of Brading shoemaker William Warder and his wife Mary Toms.  Mary had been born on November 26, 1824, at Brading.  Probably William knew Mary and her family when he was growing up in Brading.  One of Mary's younger brothers became a tailor, so perhaps he and William had even served as apprentices together.

William and Mary returned to Andover after the wedding and he resumed his work in the shop while Mary took care of the growing family.  Besides the daughters by the first marriage, Mary gave birth to two sons -- William Warder Harvey (named after his grandfather) and Frederick Robert Harvey (possibly his second name came from his uncle Robert Warder, the name Robert goes back several generations in that family).

As William and Mary's sons grew older, undoubtedly they helped in the tailor shop.  William, the oldest, showed a talent for music, however, and began moving toward a career as an organist.  Frederick, the younger son, became an apprentice to his father and was destined to take over the family business.  In the 1881 census of Andover, Frederick was age 16 and his occupation is listed as tailor.

William Kernott Harvey died on July 3, 1884, at the age of 63, and was buried in the cemetery beside St. Mary's church.
Frederick was only 19 when his father died and soon decided not to continue the tailoring business.  In the 1891 census, he gave his occupation as printer and stationer.  Frederick had married Sarah A. Gregory of Lower Clatford on October 21, 1885, at the Congregational Church in Andover.  Besides Frederick and Sarah, other residents of 78 High Street at the time of the 1891 census were their son Frederick William Kernott Harvey (age 4), the widowed Mary Warder Harvey (age 66), and a fifteen-year old servant named Lizzie Laurence.

Frederick and Sarah were avid bicyclists from early in their marriage and they founded an organization known as the Blue Cross Bicycle brigade.  He also served as a sub-postmaster for a quarter of a century.

Following in his father's footsteps, Frederick was a lifelong teetotaler and nonsmoker.  He was also a leader of the anti-vaccinationists.  Among his many temperance activities, he was Honorary Secretary of the Andover and District Band of Hope and Union.  Sarah was Superintendent of the Victoria Jubilee Lodge of Juvenile Good Templars and a member of the Hampshire District Lodge of the Order.

Over the years, Frederick's business interests increased in scope.  Besides the printing shop, he opened a bicycle shop, a branch post office, a general store, a cafe, etc.  Eventually he took over the three shops adjacent to number 78 on the same side of the High Street (numbers 74, 76, and 80) and two shops across the street (numbers 85 and 87).

Frederick and Sarah's family lost two children in early childhood, but five survived to adulthood -- four sons and a daughter.  The oldest son, Frederick William Kernott Harvey (known to family and friends as "Kernie"), grew up around the shops and spent his entire career there.  When he married and started a family, they moved into the living quarters over 85 High Street, across the street from his parents.

Most of the other Harvey children were involved in the family businesses at some point in their lives.  For instance, Ronald ran the Acre Gardens where flowers, vegetables, and fruit were grown for the shops.  When Frederick decided to expand into the wholesale trade, Victor took on the job of driving a van around the countryside, supplying shops in various villages around Andover with newspapers, candy, and cigarettes.  In later years, even some of Frederick and Sarah's grandchildren worked in the family business.

Frederick remained an active businessman until he retired in 1950, at the age of 84.  He lived another two years, dying on December 12, 1952.  At the time of his death, the fixtures from the tailoring trade remained in the back of the shop at 78 High Street as a link to its past.

After Frederick's death, the family gradually closed many of the shops.  The shop at 78 was run as a newsagent/confectionery shop by his son Ronald's family until the 1990s when it was finally sold out of family hands after over 150 years of ownership.