The Tatum Family 1845 to 1930

The Tatam family came to Little Eaton in 1845 as tenant farmers of Elms Farm and Furlong Cottage, both owned by Jedidiah Strutt.

Thomas Tatam was over 60 when he took over the farm at The Elms and married Mary who was 40 years his junior. The farm was 160 acres and Thomas employed 2 men and 2 boys.

Their 7 children were all well educated. Their daughters Mary, Ann, Sarah and Grace were boarders at a school in Spondon. Ann married Arthur Haslam (later Sir Arthur, owner of the refrigerator company and Breadsall Priory) and Sarah married Joseph Ragdale, a wealthy bleacher from Lancashire.

The boys also went away to school, Frank passing Cambridge University exams in 1878. When Thomas Tatam died in 1864, his wife Mary carried on the farm with the help of her brother William Alvey who moved into Holme Cottage. Her eldest son Thomas William died aged 34 in 1884, leaving his money to his brother, John Joseph.

John Joseph Tatam married Annie Downing in 1891 and they were farming at The Elms until about 1908. By 1901, there was a live-in governess, Annie Frazer.  His rent was £408 p.a. John Joseph was a pillar of Little Eaton Society, a member of the Parish Council and the School Board. However, he left Little Eaton in 1908 for Oxfordshire to become a farrier.

They had six children living with them in Oxfordshire: John Norman, Alfred Webster, Grace, Hilda Dorothy, Nora and Frank. Their eldest son, John Norman Downing Tatam, back in Little Eaton in the 1920s, married his cousin Gwendoline Elizabeth Downing. Her memories are recorded in Peter Lyne’s book By Little Eaton Waters. Alfred Webster Tatum (born 1899), a fitter at Haslem’s factory, was found drowned in 1923.

Sarah Tatam (Thomas and Mary’s third daughter) married Joseph Ragdale, a wealthy bleacher, in 1887. She was his second wife. They lived in Bury, Lancashire with Joseph’s son, John (b.1879) and daughter Mary Ann (b.1880) until about 1902 when they returned to Little Eaton to live at The Furlongs.

Mary, Sarah’s mother, left The Elms and came to live with her daughter at The Furlongs. She died a year later in 1903. Sarah’s husband Joseph Ragdale died in 1908, bequeathing some money to Frank Radford Tatam, his brother in-law.

By the 1911 Census Sarah is 56, a widow living at The Furlongs with her nieces: Kathleen Mary Tatam aged 15 and Sarah Josephine Tatam aged 13.

These 3 children were the son and daughters of Sarah’s brother, John Joseph and his wife Annie. Sarah died in 1924 and The Furlongs was put up for sale shortly after.

Joseph Tatum (nephew of Thomas) became tenant of Furlong Cottage in 1845 as a farmer of 21 acres. His son William called himself a brewer, working at the brewery at Elms Farm. His eldest son, Joseph, was killed at Ypres in the first world war and his second son Charles was injured.