Great-aunt and step-grandmother of Agatha Christie, Margaret was the key inspiration for Dame Agatha's fictional detective Miss Jane Marple.
Birth year is an estimate; she was probably born in December 1828. According to the cemetery register, Margaret is buried in grave 13; however, there is a slight possibility that she may actually be in grave 12, as suggested by the inscription on the tombstone over that grave.
She was the daughter of painter/plumber/glazier Thomas West (1797-1844) of Chichester and his second wife, Mary Ann Hoare Kelsey (1794-1843) of Prinsted, Sussex, who had married in May 1828. She was a granddaughter of yeoman farmer Harry Kelsey and his wife, Margaret Lang Hoare Kelsey; her paternal grandparents were Thomas West senior (1761-1817), plumber and glazier of Chichester, and his wife, Henrietta Westmuckett* (1775-1832). Margaret was baptized on 6 January 1829 at the sub-deanery, St. Peter the Great's (at that time, those parishioners worshiped in the north transept of Chichester Cathedral). Eventually, she had five full-blood siblings; in addition, through her father's first wife, Sophia Shepherd, she had six older half-siblings, although three of those children died young.
By the time she was 15, Margaret had lost both her parents to pulmonary tuberculosis. Maternal uncle Richard Kelsey, who now ran the family farm in Prinsted, became guardian to his sister's children. Two of her Kelsey aunts, Margaret Lang and Fanny, later trained her in hotel management, and she worked in Portsmouth hotels for more than a decade, including the George Hotel (destroyed in WWII) in the High Street, Portsea Island--aunt Margaret Lang Kelsey had become the innkeeper there in 1843; in the 1851 census, following Margaret Lang's bankruptcy, her sister Frances "Fanny" Kelsey is listed as innkeeper. These were independent-minded single women, and they were strong influences on their niece.
Margaret West became the second wife of widowed American businessman Nathaniel Frary Miller on 18 April 1863, at St. John the Baptist's Church in Westbourne, Sussex. The groom was a junior partner in a wholesale dry goods firm based in New York City; he ran their office and warehouse in St. Peter's Square, Manchester. Just two weeks before their wedding, the bride's brother-in-law Frederick Boehmer had died, leaving his widow, Margaret's sister Mary, in strained financial circumstances. The newlyweds offered to foster one of the Boehmer children, Clarissa Margaret ("Clara"), who despite being just 9 years old, signed as an official witness to Margaret's wedding; the other witnesses were uncle Richard Kelsey and Nathaniel's friend Roderick Beers Perry.
After living for several months in Manchester, where Nathaniel had had "a settled place of residence" since the mid-1850s, this newly formed family removed to Timperley, Cheshire, about seven miles from the great--and dirty--industrial city. Their large detached house stood in its own garden and orchards, with a stable and coach house behind. Nathaniel had a son by his first marriage, Frederick Alvah Miller ("Fred", age 16 when his father remarried), who lived in New York City but traveled extensively, and visited them many times at Timperley Villa.
During their short marriage, Nathaniel took Margaret to the United States at least three times, in 1864, 1865, and 1868. In addition, they went to Vichy in 1865, and there were apparently also trips to Paris, a city Nathaniel had visited several times previously; in later years, Margaret continued to order some of her clothes from a Paris salon.
A document dated 31 May 1865 describes Nathaniel as "recently retired". On 17 May 1866, he became a British citizen, which entitled him to own British freehold property--and that very day he purchased from Richard Kelsey the farmhouse and land in Prinsted which had been in Margaret's family as a copyhold for centuries. This he quickly gifted to his wife, who used the messuage to provide a secure and dignified retirement home for the aging relatives who had cared for her and her orphaned siblings twenty years earlier. The trustee for her new trust fund was Edward Clark, husband of Margaret's first cousin Fanny Crowder. (According to a 1913 history of Westbourne parish, the Kelseys' 400-year old farmhouse burned down on Goodwood Cup Day in 1876**; it must have been Margaret who subsequently built the charming villa called Fraryhurst on the same spot, which still stands there.) The Millers themselves continued to reside in Timperley: Nathaniel was registered to vote there in 1868, and the September 1868 codicil to his will states he was then a resident "of Timperley, in the County of Chester".
For several years, Nathaniel had been suffering from liver disease. He died in May 1869 at Prinsted. Margaret, accompanied by her niece Clara, her sister Mary, stepson Fred, and Fred's uncle, escorted the coffin across the Atlantic for burial in New York. The three British ladies remained in the U.S. for almost three months. For the rest of her life, Margaret carefully preserved under glass the great wreath of wax flowers that had stood upon Nathaniel's coffin; a sepia photograph of his gravesite, with its imposing 17' high granite obelisk, hung on her wall. She died in the mahogany four-poster bed they had shared. In 1878, a new church, St. John the Evangelist's, was consecrated in the recently founded parish of Southbourne, which encompassed the property where Nathaniel had passed away; Margaret paid for the five-panel stained glass window for the church's west wall, which is dedicated to her husband's memory.
He had left her well-provided for. Her money, at least in her later years, was managed by a man of sound judgement and loyalty, William Bayley, who by 1861 was working for Nathaniel in Manchester; Bayley witnessed the codicil to Nathaniel's will, and was named as an executor of Margaret's will (in the event, he predeceased her). Despite her comfortable income, attractive personality, and pleasing appearance, Margaret chose never to remarry, remaining a widow for fifty years.
After her husband's death, Margaret remained in their Cheshire home for several years (she was there in the 1871 census, as well as the 1874 and 1876 directories). Circa 1877, she made a dramatic move, settling into a 10-room detached house at 9 Craven Gardens (sometimes written as 99 Uxbridge Road--the two addresses are the same house) in Ealing, about five miles west of Kensington Gardens, London. Her widowed sister Mary West Boehmer moved to Bayswater about the same time; another sister, Ada Maria Caroline West Gunning-Moore, and her husband Jack, a London barrister, had a large house in Kensington then, although they spent much time in Ireland, and later moved there permanently. Their half-sister Fanny West Broome lived nearby in Brixton, Surrey, with her husband, Richard, a civil engineer. And in 1886, Mary Boehmer's brother-in-law Charles chose to retire with his wife and their four children to a house within a mile of Margaret's residence. Family ties were always strong: Margaret and her sister Ada helped to raise their orphaned nieces Florence Hyllyard (illegitimate daughter of sister Susannah West; in 1899 Florrie married Clara's brother Ernest, who was her first cousin), and Alice Maria and Fanny Jane Bunn (daughters of their half-sister Jane West Bunn). Margaret also maintained contact with her youngest brother, Richard Preston West, who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1861. Sadly, their brother Harry West had died at sea in 1861 whilst serving aboard HMS Snake.
When Clara Boehmer grew up, she married Nathaniel's son, Fred Miller. Their third and youngest child grew up to be Agatha Christie; Clara and Fred's eldest child, Margaret Frary Miller ("Madge"), was named for Margaret West Miller, who was one of her godmothers, and for Nathaniel (Frary was the surname of his mother's stepfather). While her parents and sister were in America December 1895-May 1896, Agatha lived with her great-aunt Margaret (who was also her step-grandmother). She remembered that her grandmother Mary Boehmer spent every Sunday in Ealing, along with Mary's sons, Ernest and Harry (and probably Harry's wife, Samina "Minnie" Macartney, whom he married in April 1890).
Margaret was always an important part of her niece Clara's family, who called her "Auntie-Grannie". She's described as a generous, energetic, and sociable woman who enjoyed playing rambunctious games with great-niece Agatha, hosting gossipy tea parties for her "Ealing cronies", growing roses, going to the theatre, writing endless letters, and shopping at the Army & Navy Stores, where her nephew Harry Miller Boehmer was Chief Clerk and later Assistant Secretary. Margaret loved to read and to give books; she was also a prolific knitter and crocheter. An efficient housekeeper, she earned lifelong loyalty from her cook Hannah Dyson, who remained with her for more than thirty years.
She had a shrewd, rather cynical side as well. Like Miss Jane Marple, Agatha tells us, Margaret "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and [was], with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right."
In her mid-80s, she moved to Torquay to live with Clara at Ashfield, Barton Road, and it was there that she died a few years later at age 90 from gallbladder disease. She is buried here with Clara, Madge, and her stepson, Fred Miller, who had become so attached to Margaret, he called her "Mother".
_____________________________________
*Henrietta Westmuckett West's maiden surname is the likely inspiration for a pen name used by her great-great-granddaughter Agatha Christie: Mary Westmacott.
**John Henry Mee and L.F. Salzmann. Bourne in the Past: Being a History of the Parish of Westbourne. Hove, Sussex, England: Cambridge's, 1913. Page 5.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
Birth year is an estimate; she was probably born in December 1828. According to the cemetery register, Margaret is buried in grave 13; however, there is a slight possibility that she may actually be in grave 12, as suggested by the inscription on the tombstone over that grave.
She was the daughter of painter/plumber/glazier Thomas West (1797-1844) of Chichester and his second wife, Mary Ann Hoare Kelsey (1794-1843) of Prinsted, Sussex, who had married in May 1828. She was a granddaughter of yeoman farmer Harry Kelsey and his wife, Margaret Lang Hoare Kelsey; her paternal grandparents were Thomas West senior (1761-1817), plumber and glazier of Chichester, and his wife, Henrietta Westmuckett* (1775-1832). Margaret was baptized on 6 January 1829 at the sub-deanery, St. Peter the Great's (at that time, those parishioners worshiped in the north transept of Chichester Cathedral). Eventually, she had five full-blood siblings; in addition, through her father's first wife, Sophia Shepherd, she had six older half-siblings, although three of those children died young.
By the time she was 15, Margaret had lost both her parents to pulmonary tuberculosis. Maternal uncle Richard Kelsey, who now ran the family farm in Prinsted, became guardian to his sister's children. Two of her Kelsey aunts, Margaret Lang and Fanny, later trained her in hotel management, and she worked in Portsmouth hotels for more than a decade, including the George Hotel (destroyed in WWII) in the High Street, Portsea Island--aunt Margaret Lang Kelsey had become the innkeeper there in 1843; in the 1851 census, following Margaret Lang's bankruptcy, her sister Frances "Fanny" Kelsey is listed as innkeeper. These were independent-minded single women, and they were strong influences on their niece.
Margaret West became the second wife of widowed American businessman Nathaniel Frary Miller on 18 April 1863, at St. John the Baptist's Church in Westbourne, Sussex. The groom was a junior partner in a wholesale dry goods firm based in New York City; he ran their office and warehouse in St. Peter's Square, Manchester. Just two weeks before their wedding, the bride's brother-in-law Frederick Boehmer had died, leaving his widow, Margaret's sister Mary, in strained financial circumstances. The newlyweds offered to foster one of the Boehmer children, Clarissa Margaret ("Clara"), who despite being just 9 years old, signed as an official witness to Margaret's wedding; the other witnesses were uncle Richard Kelsey and Nathaniel's friend Roderick Beers Perry.
After living for several months in Manchester, where Nathaniel had had "a settled place of residence" since the mid-1850s, this newly formed family removed to Timperley, Cheshire, about seven miles from the great--and dirty--industrial city. Their large detached house stood in its own garden and orchards, with a stable and coach house behind. Nathaniel had a son by his first marriage, Frederick Alvah Miller ("Fred", age 16 when his father remarried), who lived in New York City but traveled extensively, and visited them many times at Timperley Villa.
During their short marriage, Nathaniel took Margaret to the United States at least three times, in 1864, 1865, and 1868. In addition, they went to Vichy in 1865, and there were apparently also trips to Paris, a city Nathaniel had visited several times previously; in later years, Margaret continued to order some of her clothes from a Paris salon.
A document dated 31 May 1865 describes Nathaniel as "recently retired". On 17 May 1866, he became a British citizen, which entitled him to own British freehold property--and that very day he purchased from Richard Kelsey the farmhouse and land in Prinsted which had been in Margaret's family as a copyhold for centuries. This he quickly gifted to his wife, who used the messuage to provide a secure and dignified retirement home for the aging relatives who had cared for her and her orphaned siblings twenty years earlier. The trustee for her new trust fund was Edward Clark, husband of Margaret's first cousin Fanny Crowder. (According to a 1913 history of Westbourne parish, the Kelseys' 400-year old farmhouse burned down on Goodwood Cup Day in 1876**; it must have been Margaret who subsequently built the charming villa called Fraryhurst on the same spot, which still stands there.) The Millers themselves continued to reside in Timperley: Nathaniel was registered to vote there in 1868, and the September 1868 codicil to his will states he was then a resident "of Timperley, in the County of Chester".
For several years, Nathaniel had been suffering from liver disease. He died in May 1869 at Prinsted. Margaret, accompanied by her niece Clara, her sister Mary, stepson Fred, and Fred's uncle, escorted the coffin across the Atlantic for burial in New York. The three British ladies remained in the U.S. for almost three months. For the rest of her life, Margaret carefully preserved under glass the great wreath of wax flowers that had stood upon Nathaniel's coffin; a sepia photograph of his gravesite, with its imposing 17' high granite obelisk, hung on her wall. She died in the mahogany four-poster bed they had shared. In 1878, a new church, St. John the Evangelist's, was consecrated in the recently founded parish of Southbourne, which encompassed the property where Nathaniel had passed away; Margaret paid for the five-panel stained glass window for the church's west wall, which is dedicated to her husband's memory.
He had left her well-provided for. Her money, at least in her later years, was managed by a man of sound judgement and loyalty, William Bayley, who by 1861 was working for Nathaniel in Manchester; Bayley witnessed the codicil to Nathaniel's will, and was named as an executor of Margaret's will (in the event, he predeceased her). Despite her comfortable income, attractive personality, and pleasing appearance, Margaret chose never to remarry, remaining a widow for fifty years.
After her husband's death, Margaret remained in their Cheshire home for several years (she was there in the 1871 census, as well as the 1874 and 1876 directories). Circa 1877, she made a dramatic move, settling into a 10-room detached house at 9 Craven Gardens (sometimes written as 99 Uxbridge Road--the two addresses are the same house) in Ealing, about five miles west of Kensington Gardens, London. Her widowed sister Mary West Boehmer moved to Bayswater about the same time; another sister, Ada Maria Caroline West Gunning-Moore, and her husband Jack, a London barrister, had a large house in Kensington then, although they spent much time in Ireland, and later moved there permanently. Their half-sister Fanny West Broome lived nearby in Brixton, Surrey, with her husband, Richard, a civil engineer. And in 1886, Mary Boehmer's brother-in-law Charles chose to retire with his wife and their four children to a house within a mile of Margaret's residence. Family ties were always strong: Margaret and her sister Ada helped to raise their orphaned nieces Florence Hyllyard (illegitimate daughter of sister Susannah West; in 1899 Florrie married Clara's brother Ernest, who was her first cousin), and Alice Maria and Fanny Jane Bunn (daughters of their half-sister Jane West Bunn). Margaret also maintained contact with her youngest brother, Richard Preston West, who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1861. Sadly, their brother Harry West had died at sea in 1861 whilst serving aboard HMS Snake.
When Clara Boehmer grew up, she married Nathaniel's son, Fred Miller. Their third and youngest child grew up to be Agatha Christie; Clara and Fred's eldest child, Margaret Frary Miller ("Madge"), was named for Margaret West Miller, who was one of her godmothers, and for Nathaniel (Frary was the surname of his mother's stepfather). While her parents and sister were in America December 1895-May 1896, Agatha lived with her great-aunt Margaret (who was also her step-grandmother). She remembered that her grandmother Mary Boehmer spent every Sunday in Ealing, along with Mary's sons, Ernest and Harry (and probably Harry's wife, Samina "Minnie" Macartney, whom he married in April 1890).
Margaret was always an important part of her niece Clara's family, who called her "Auntie-Grannie". She's described as a generous, energetic, and sociable woman who enjoyed playing rambunctious games with great-niece Agatha, hosting gossipy tea parties for her "Ealing cronies", growing roses, going to the theatre, writing endless letters, and shopping at the Army & Navy Stores, where her nephew Harry Miller Boehmer was Chief Clerk and later Assistant Secretary. Margaret loved to read and to give books; she was also a prolific knitter and crocheter. An efficient housekeeper, she earned lifelong loyalty from her cook Hannah Dyson, who remained with her for more than thirty years.
She had a shrewd, rather cynical side as well. Like Miss Jane Marple, Agatha tells us, Margaret "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and [was], with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right."
In her mid-80s, she moved to Torquay to live with Clara at Ashfield, Barton Road, and it was there that she died a few years later at age 90 from gallbladder disease. She is buried here with Clara, Madge, and her stepson, Fred Miller, who had become so attached to Margaret, he called her "Mother".
_____________________________________
*Henrietta Westmuckett West's maiden surname is the likely inspiration for a pen name used by her great-great-granddaughter Agatha Christie: Mary Westmacott.
**John Henry Mee and L.F. Salzmann. Bourne in the Past: Being a History of the Parish of Westbourne. Hove, Sussex, England: Cambridge's, 1913. Page 5.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
Great-aunt and step-grandmother of Agatha Christie, Margaret was the key inspiration for Dame Agatha's fictional detective Miss Jane Marple.
Birth year is an estimate; she was probably born in December 1828. According to the cemetery register, Margaret is buried in grave 13; however, there is a slight possibility that she may actually be in grave 12, as suggested by the inscription on the tombstone over that grave.
She was the daughter of painter/plumber/glazier Thomas West (1797-1844) of Chichester and his second wife, Mary Ann Hoare Kelsey (1794-1843) of Prinsted, Sussex, who had married in May 1828. She was a granddaughter of yeoman farmer Harry Kelsey and his wife, Margaret Lang Hoare Kelsey; her paternal grandparents were Thomas West senior (1761-1817), plumber and glazier of Chichester, and his wife, Henrietta Westmuckett* (1775-1832). Margaret was baptized on 6 January 1829 at the sub-deanery, St. Peter the Great's (at that time, those parishioners worshiped in the north transept of Chichester Cathedral). Eventually, she had five full-blood siblings; in addition, through her father's first wife, Sophia Shepherd, she had six older half-siblings, although three of those children died young.
By the time she was 15, Margaret had lost both her parents to pulmonary tuberculosis. Maternal uncle Richard Kelsey, who now ran the family farm in Prinsted, became guardian to his sister's children. Two of her Kelsey aunts, Margaret Lang and Fanny, later trained her in hotel management, and she worked in Portsmouth hotels for more than a decade, including the George Hotel (destroyed in WWII) in the High Street, Portsea Island--aunt Margaret Lang Kelsey had become the innkeeper there in 1843; in the 1851 census, following Margaret Lang's bankruptcy, her sister Frances "Fanny" Kelsey is listed as innkeeper. These were independent-minded single women, and they were strong influences on their niece.
Margaret West became the second wife of widowed American businessman Nathaniel Frary Miller on 18 April 1863, at St. John the Baptist's Church in Westbourne, Sussex. The groom was a junior partner in a wholesale dry goods firm based in New York City; he ran their office and warehouse in St. Peter's Square, Manchester. Just two weeks before their wedding, the bride's brother-in-law Frederick Boehmer had died, leaving his widow, Margaret's sister Mary, in strained financial circumstances. The newlyweds offered to foster one of the Boehmer children, Clarissa Margaret ("Clara"), who despite being just 9 years old, signed as an official witness to Margaret's wedding; the other witnesses were uncle Richard Kelsey and Nathaniel's friend Roderick Beers Perry.
After living for several months in Manchester, where Nathaniel had had "a settled place of residence" since the mid-1850s, this newly formed family removed to Timperley, Cheshire, about seven miles from the great--and dirty--industrial city. Their large detached house stood in its own garden and orchards, with a stable and coach house behind. Nathaniel had a son by his first marriage, Frederick Alvah Miller ("Fred", age 16 when his father remarried), who lived in New York City but traveled extensively, and visited them many times at Timperley Villa.
During their short marriage, Nathaniel took Margaret to the United States at least three times, in 1864, 1865, and 1868. In addition, they went to Vichy in 1865, and there were apparently also trips to Paris, a city Nathaniel had visited several times previously; in later years, Margaret continued to order some of her clothes from a Paris salon.
A document dated 31 May 1865 describes Nathaniel as "recently retired". On 17 May 1866, he became a British citizen, which entitled him to own British freehold property--and that very day he purchased from Richard Kelsey the farmhouse and land in Prinsted which had been in Margaret's family as a copyhold for centuries. This he quickly gifted to his wife, who used the messuage to provide a secure and dignified retirement home for the aging relatives who had cared for her and her orphaned siblings twenty years earlier. The trustee for her new trust fund was Edward Clark, husband of Margaret's first cousin Fanny Crowder. (According to a 1913 history of Westbourne parish, the Kelseys' 400-year old farmhouse burned down on Goodwood Cup Day in 1876**; it must have been Margaret who subsequently built the charming villa called Fraryhurst on the same spot, which still stands there.) The Millers themselves continued to reside in Timperley: Nathaniel was registered to vote there in 1868, and the September 1868 codicil to his will states he was then a resident "of Timperley, in the County of Chester".
For several years, Nathaniel had been suffering from liver disease. He died in May 1869 at Prinsted. Margaret, accompanied by her niece Clara, her sister Mary, stepson Fred, and Fred's uncle, escorted the coffin across the Atlantic for burial in New York. The three British ladies remained in the U.S. for almost three months. For the rest of her life, Margaret carefully preserved under glass the great wreath of wax flowers that had stood upon Nathaniel's coffin; a sepia photograph of his gravesite, with its imposing 17' high granite obelisk, hung on her wall. She died in the mahogany four-poster bed they had shared. In 1878, a new church, St. John the Evangelist's, was consecrated in the recently founded parish of Southbourne, which encompassed the property where Nathaniel had passed away; Margaret paid for the five-panel stained glass window for the church's west wall, which is dedicated to her husband's memory.
He had left her well-provided for. Her money, at least in her later years, was managed by a man of sound judgement and loyalty, William Bayley, who by 1861 was working for Nathaniel in Manchester; Bayley witnessed the codicil to Nathaniel's will, and was named as an executor of Margaret's will (in the event, he predeceased her). Despite her comfortable income, attractive personality, and pleasing appearance, Margaret chose never to remarry, remaining a widow for fifty years.
After her husband's death, Margaret remained in their Cheshire home for several years (she was there in the 1871 census, as well as the 1874 and 1876 directories). Circa 1877, she made a dramatic move, settling into a 10-room detached house at 9 Craven Gardens (sometimes written as 99 Uxbridge Road--the two addresses are the same house) in Ealing, about five miles west of Kensington Gardens, London. Her widowed sister Mary West Boehmer moved to Bayswater about the same time; another sister, Ada Maria Caroline West Gunning-Moore, and her husband Jack, a London barrister, had a large house in Kensington then, although they spent much time in Ireland, and later moved there permanently. Their half-sister Fanny West Broome lived nearby in Brixton, Surrey, with her husband, Richard, a civil engineer. And in 1886, Mary Boehmer's brother-in-law Charles chose to retire with his wife and their four children to a house within a mile of Margaret's residence. Family ties were always strong: Margaret and her sister Ada helped to raise their orphaned nieces Florence Hyllyard (illegitimate daughter of sister Susannah West; in 1899 Florrie married Clara's brother Ernest, who was her first cousin), and Alice Maria and Fanny Jane Bunn (daughters of their half-sister Jane West Bunn). Margaret also maintained contact with her youngest brother, Richard Preston West, who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1861. Sadly, their brother Harry West had died at sea in 1861 whilst serving aboard HMS Snake.
When Clara Boehmer grew up, she married Nathaniel's son, Fred Miller. Their third and youngest child grew up to be Agatha Christie; Clara and Fred's eldest child, Margaret Frary Miller ("Madge"), was named for Margaret West Miller, who was one of her godmothers, and for Nathaniel (Frary was the surname of his mother's stepfather). While her parents and sister were in America December 1895-May 1896, Agatha lived with her great-aunt Margaret (who was also her step-grandmother). She remembered that her grandmother Mary Boehmer spent every Sunday in Ealing, along with Mary's sons, Ernest and Harry (and probably Harry's wife, Samina "Minnie" Macartney, whom he married in April 1890).
Margaret was always an important part of her niece Clara's family, who called her "Auntie-Grannie". She's described as a generous, energetic, and sociable woman who enjoyed playing rambunctious games with great-niece Agatha, hosting gossipy tea parties for her "Ealing cronies", growing roses, going to the theatre, writing endless letters, and shopping at the Army & Navy Stores, where her nephew Harry Miller Boehmer was Chief Clerk and later Assistant Secretary. Margaret loved to read and to give books; she was also a prolific knitter and crocheter. An efficient housekeeper, she earned lifelong loyalty from her cook Hannah Dyson, who remained with her for more than thirty years.
She had a shrewd, rather cynical side as well. Like Miss Jane Marple, Agatha tells us, Margaret "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and [was], with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right."
In her mid-80s, she moved to Torquay to live with Clara at Ashfield, Barton Road, and it was there that she died a few years later at age 90 from gallbladder disease. She is buried here with Clara, Madge, and her stepson, Fred Miller, who had become so attached to Margaret, he called her "Mother".
_____________________________________
*Henrietta Westmuckett West's maiden surname is the likely inspiration for a pen name used by her great-great-granddaughter Agatha Christie: Mary Westmacott.
**John Henry Mee and L.F. Salzmann. Bourne in the Past: Being a History of the Parish of Westbourne. Hove, Sussex, England: Cambridge's, 1913. Page 5.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
Birth year is an estimate; she was probably born in December 1828. According to the cemetery register, Margaret is buried in grave 13; however, there is a slight possibility that she may actually be in grave 12, as suggested by the inscription on the tombstone over that grave.
She was the daughter of painter/plumber/glazier Thomas West (1797-1844) of Chichester and his second wife, Mary Ann Hoare Kelsey (1794-1843) of Prinsted, Sussex, who had married in May 1828. She was a granddaughter of yeoman farmer Harry Kelsey and his wife, Margaret Lang Hoare Kelsey; her paternal grandparents were Thomas West senior (1761-1817), plumber and glazier of Chichester, and his wife, Henrietta Westmuckett* (1775-1832). Margaret was baptized on 6 January 1829 at the sub-deanery, St. Peter the Great's (at that time, those parishioners worshiped in the north transept of Chichester Cathedral). Eventually, she had five full-blood siblings; in addition, through her father's first wife, Sophia Shepherd, she had six older half-siblings, although three of those children died young.
By the time she was 15, Margaret had lost both her parents to pulmonary tuberculosis. Maternal uncle Richard Kelsey, who now ran the family farm in Prinsted, became guardian to his sister's children. Two of her Kelsey aunts, Margaret Lang and Fanny, later trained her in hotel management, and she worked in Portsmouth hotels for more than a decade, including the George Hotel (destroyed in WWII) in the High Street, Portsea Island--aunt Margaret Lang Kelsey had become the innkeeper there in 1843; in the 1851 census, following Margaret Lang's bankruptcy, her sister Frances "Fanny" Kelsey is listed as innkeeper. These were independent-minded single women, and they were strong influences on their niece.
Margaret West became the second wife of widowed American businessman Nathaniel Frary Miller on 18 April 1863, at St. John the Baptist's Church in Westbourne, Sussex. The groom was a junior partner in a wholesale dry goods firm based in New York City; he ran their office and warehouse in St. Peter's Square, Manchester. Just two weeks before their wedding, the bride's brother-in-law Frederick Boehmer had died, leaving his widow, Margaret's sister Mary, in strained financial circumstances. The newlyweds offered to foster one of the Boehmer children, Clarissa Margaret ("Clara"), who despite being just 9 years old, signed as an official witness to Margaret's wedding; the other witnesses were uncle Richard Kelsey and Nathaniel's friend Roderick Beers Perry.
After living for several months in Manchester, where Nathaniel had had "a settled place of residence" since the mid-1850s, this newly formed family removed to Timperley, Cheshire, about seven miles from the great--and dirty--industrial city. Their large detached house stood in its own garden and orchards, with a stable and coach house behind. Nathaniel had a son by his first marriage, Frederick Alvah Miller ("Fred", age 16 when his father remarried), who lived in New York City but traveled extensively, and visited them many times at Timperley Villa.
During their short marriage, Nathaniel took Margaret to the United States at least three times, in 1864, 1865, and 1868. In addition, they went to Vichy in 1865, and there were apparently also trips to Paris, a city Nathaniel had visited several times previously; in later years, Margaret continued to order some of her clothes from a Paris salon.
A document dated 31 May 1865 describes Nathaniel as "recently retired". On 17 May 1866, he became a British citizen, which entitled him to own British freehold property--and that very day he purchased from Richard Kelsey the farmhouse and land in Prinsted which had been in Margaret's family as a copyhold for centuries. This he quickly gifted to his wife, who used the messuage to provide a secure and dignified retirement home for the aging relatives who had cared for her and her orphaned siblings twenty years earlier. The trustee for her new trust fund was Edward Clark, husband of Margaret's first cousin Fanny Crowder. (According to a 1913 history of Westbourne parish, the Kelseys' 400-year old farmhouse burned down on Goodwood Cup Day in 1876**; it must have been Margaret who subsequently built the charming villa called Fraryhurst on the same spot, which still stands there.) The Millers themselves continued to reside in Timperley: Nathaniel was registered to vote there in 1868, and the September 1868 codicil to his will states he was then a resident "of Timperley, in the County of Chester".
For several years, Nathaniel had been suffering from liver disease. He died in May 1869 at Prinsted. Margaret, accompanied by her niece Clara, her sister Mary, stepson Fred, and Fred's uncle, escorted the coffin across the Atlantic for burial in New York. The three British ladies remained in the U.S. for almost three months. For the rest of her life, Margaret carefully preserved under glass the great wreath of wax flowers that had stood upon Nathaniel's coffin; a sepia photograph of his gravesite, with its imposing 17' high granite obelisk, hung on her wall. She died in the mahogany four-poster bed they had shared. In 1878, a new church, St. John the Evangelist's, was consecrated in the recently founded parish of Southbourne, which encompassed the property where Nathaniel had passed away; Margaret paid for the five-panel stained glass window for the church's west wall, which is dedicated to her husband's memory.
He had left her well-provided for. Her money, at least in her later years, was managed by a man of sound judgement and loyalty, William Bayley, who by 1861 was working for Nathaniel in Manchester; Bayley witnessed the codicil to Nathaniel's will, and was named as an executor of Margaret's will (in the event, he predeceased her). Despite her comfortable income, attractive personality, and pleasing appearance, Margaret chose never to remarry, remaining a widow for fifty years.
After her husband's death, Margaret remained in their Cheshire home for several years (she was there in the 1871 census, as well as the 1874 and 1876 directories). Circa 1877, she made a dramatic move, settling into a 10-room detached house at 9 Craven Gardens (sometimes written as 99 Uxbridge Road--the two addresses are the same house) in Ealing, about five miles west of Kensington Gardens, London. Her widowed sister Mary West Boehmer moved to Bayswater about the same time; another sister, Ada Maria Caroline West Gunning-Moore, and her husband Jack, a London barrister, had a large house in Kensington then, although they spent much time in Ireland, and later moved there permanently. Their half-sister Fanny West Broome lived nearby in Brixton, Surrey, with her husband, Richard, a civil engineer. And in 1886, Mary Boehmer's brother-in-law Charles chose to retire with his wife and their four children to a house within a mile of Margaret's residence. Family ties were always strong: Margaret and her sister Ada helped to raise their orphaned nieces Florence Hyllyard (illegitimate daughter of sister Susannah West; in 1899 Florrie married Clara's brother Ernest, who was her first cousin), and Alice Maria and Fanny Jane Bunn (daughters of their half-sister Jane West Bunn). Margaret also maintained contact with her youngest brother, Richard Preston West, who had immigrated to the U.S. in 1861. Sadly, their brother Harry West had died at sea in 1861 whilst serving aboard HMS Snake.
When Clara Boehmer grew up, she married Nathaniel's son, Fred Miller. Their third and youngest child grew up to be Agatha Christie; Clara and Fred's eldest child, Margaret Frary Miller ("Madge"), was named for Margaret West Miller, who was one of her godmothers, and for Nathaniel (Frary was the surname of his mother's stepfather). While her parents and sister were in America December 1895-May 1896, Agatha lived with her great-aunt Margaret (who was also her step-grandmother). She remembered that her grandmother Mary Boehmer spent every Sunday in Ealing, along with Mary's sons, Ernest and Harry (and probably Harry's wife, Samina "Minnie" Macartney, whom he married in April 1890).
Margaret was always an important part of her niece Clara's family, who called her "Auntie-Grannie". She's described as a generous, energetic, and sociable woman who enjoyed playing rambunctious games with great-niece Agatha, hosting gossipy tea parties for her "Ealing cronies", growing roses, going to the theatre, writing endless letters, and shopping at the Army & Navy Stores, where her nephew Harry Miller Boehmer was Chief Clerk and later Assistant Secretary. Margaret loved to read and to give books; she was also a prolific knitter and crocheter. An efficient housekeeper, she earned lifelong loyalty from her cook Hannah Dyson, who remained with her for more than thirty years.
She had a shrewd, rather cynical side as well. Like Miss Jane Marple, Agatha tells us, Margaret "always expected the worst of everyone and everything, and [was], with almost frightening accuracy, usually proved right."
In her mid-80s, she moved to Torquay to live with Clara at Ashfield, Barton Road, and it was there that she died a few years later at age 90 from gallbladder disease. She is buried here with Clara, Madge, and her stepson, Fred Miller, who had become so attached to Margaret, he called her "Mother".
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*Henrietta Westmuckett West's maiden surname is the likely inspiration for a pen name used by her great-great-granddaughter Agatha Christie: Mary Westmacott.
**John Henry Mee and L.F. Salzmann. Bourne in the Past: Being a History of the Parish of Westbourne. Hove, Sussex, England: Cambridge's, 1913. Page 5.
--Tosca-by-the-River 2019
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