CHARLES PARTRIDGE

Anyone who has researched their family history in one of the branches of the County Record Office in Suffolk is likely to have benefited from the work of Charles Partridge through his transcriptions of parish registers and memorial inscriptions in the county. His notebooks are available on microfiche at the three branches of the Suffolk Record Office and it is mainly due to him that the county is so well covered with regard to register and churchyard transcription, but who was Charles Partridge? An account of his life is not easy due to the fact that he was extremely diffident, his articles were often unsigned or only initialled. 
I know of just two photographs of him, one taken while in Nigeria and the  one below taken on 15th June 1947 at the pound in Wrentham, Suffolk.

ANCESTRY
Charles Stanley Partridge was born at Offton Place on 10th February 1872 and died 21st December 1955 in Stowmarket. His father Charles Thomas Partridge came to live in Stowmarket when he married Catherine Hewitt daughter of William Hewitt a merchant in the town. Charles Thomas Partridge’s father was Thomas Partridge (1800 - 1875) of Aldham Hall near Hadleigh who had married Catherine Sheldrake.

EDUCATION
Charles was educated at Queen Elizabeth School, Ipswich and studied Theology at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Graduating in 1895 and gaining his M.A in 1901  He became interested in anthropology and was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
In 1901 he founded and was first editor of "The Suffolk Miscellany", a journal of genealogy and local history.

COLONIAL SERVICE
In December 1904 he arrived as a District Commissioner at Ikot Ekpene in Nigeria. This was the original "White Man's Grave", so called because so many of the administrators and missionaries succumbed to tropical diseases. While in Nigeria he took an interest in the various peoples of that country and published a book of his own  photographs and commentary entitled “Cross River Natives”. He also wrote a romance in the Rider Haggard style entitled  "King Edward's Ring" under the pseudonym "Peregrine Atbush" which was published by the East Anglian Times in 1908.

CHARLES PARTRIDGE AND MARY SLESSOR
On his arrival in Nigeria his position brought him into contact with the missionary Mary Slessor. They became friends through the common bond of their deep interest in the people of the country. Although Partridge did not share Mary's devout religious  background, he appreciated Mary's down to earth, no nonsense attitude. They remained friends until Mary's death in 1915. Partridge kept the letters Mary had written to him and donated them together with other material including a recording he had made of Mary reciting the parable of the prodigal son in the native Efik language to Dundee museum. Although the letters were fewer when Partridge was posted to Lagos he never failed to send Mary a plum pudding at Christmas! In a letter he sent to Dundee Museum in 1950 he wrote.
"She was a very remarkable woman. I look back on her friendship with reverence - one of the greatest honours that have befallen me - and I had and still have a superstitious feeling that she has been and still is one of my Guardian Angels. (I have been twice seized by cannibals, thrice shipwrecked, etc., etc.!) This belief exists in spite of my being agnostic. ----- Excepting Miss Slessor, I thoroughly disapprove of all missionaries!"
The remarkable story of Mary Slessor's work in Nigeria is told in "God And One Redhead, Mary Slessor Of Calabar" by Carol Christian and Gladys Plummer. This contains extracts from Mary Slessor's letters to Partridge. Full transcripts of the letters can also be found at the Dundee Library and Museum Site 

He remained in Nigeria until 1915 when he joined the army, serving in Greece and Italy.
After leaving the army he was able to devote much of his time to his lifelong interests of local history and genealogy. He had started transcribing the churchyard inscriptions and parish registers in the area around Stowmarket in the 1890`s, a task which he continued for many year in other parts of the county and beyond. However, he omitted to transcribe the registers of the town where he lived, Stowmarket. The churchyard was transcribed by H. Lingwood, but the registers except for marriages up to 1753 had to wait until the 1990’s when members of the Suffolk Family History Society transcribed most of them. It has been suggested that there was a disagreement between himself and Stowmarket church, he wrote several letters to the press criticizing the condition of the churchyard and the plan to lay all the stones flat, saying correctly that they would soon become overgrown with grass and eventually buried.
Charles Partridge researched the history of many families of the county including of course the Partridges, tracing his ancestors back to John Pertriche of Bradfield St. Clare (1518? - 1558).
The results of his research into the Partridge family were presented in a typescript book, a copy of which is at the Suffolk Record Ipswich, as are many of the family trees which he drew up.
During the 1920’s he wrote a series of articles for the East Anglian Daily Times under the name “Silly Suffolk”. These were concerned with local history and were full of anecdotes and stories which are still well worth reading.

His home in Stowmarket was at 20 Tavern Street, a large house on the corner of Violet Hill. Sheltered housing for the elderly has been built at the rear of this property and named Partridge Court in his memory. The house is now divided into flats and called Charles House.
When Charles Partridge died in 1955 his obituary in The Times spoke of his “love of truth and dislike of pomposity” and that he was a “born scholar with an excellent memory, wide interests and an exact knowledge”. All family history researchers can feel grateful to him for his work.

Stowmarket Local History Group
2009
email neil@stowman.plus.com