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The Edgoose and Related Families'
Genealogical Project
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1833 - 1887 (53 years)
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Name |
ENSOR, James Frederic |
Born |
27 Oct 1833 |
Brussels, Belgium |
Gender |
Male |
Died |
14 Apr 1887 |
Ostend, Belgium |
Person ID |
I8863 |
Edgoose |
Last Modified |
30 Jan 2024 |
Father |
ENSOR, James Rainford, b. 6 Mar 1804, Wallasey, Cheshire , d. 14 Dec 1877, Nottingham Registration District, Nottinghamshire (Age 73 years) |
Mother |
ANDREW, Ann, b. Between 1815 and 1816, Finchley, Middlesex , d. 16 May 1904, London (Age ~ 89 years) |
Married |
16 Jul 1833 |
Stoke Newington, Middlesex |
Family ID |
F2911 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
Family |
HAEGHEMAN, Maria Catharina Lodewijke, b. 24 Apr 1835, Ostend, Belgium , d. 1915, Ostend, Belgium (Age 79 years) |
Married |
4 May 1859 |
Ostend, Belgium |
Children |
| 1. ENSOR, James Sidney, b. 13 Apr 1860, Ostend, Belgium , d. 19 Nov 1949, Ostend, Belgium (Age 89 years) |
| 2. ENSOR, Mariette, b. 29 Aug 1861, Ostend, Belgium , d. 27 Dec 1945 (Age 84 years) |
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Last Modified |
19 Mar 2024 |
Family ID |
F3127 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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Notes |
- JAMES FREDERIC ENSOR 1833-1887
According to Nick GRIBBLE he was born in Brussels, Belgium, on 27 October 1833.
He was baptised at St. Mary's, Worsbrough, Yorkshire, on 27 December 1835, son of James Frederick ENSOR and Anne (sic).
(FamilySearch)
James Frederic ENSOR, born in Brussels of English parents, was a cultivated man who studied engineering in England and Germany.
On 17 October 1854 he enrolled at the faculty of medicine at the Rheische Friedrich Wilhems
University in Bonn, Germany, but left at the end of the academic year. He returned to England and worked as a civil engineer.
He met his future wife, Marie Catherine Louise HAEGHEMAN whilst holidaying in Ostend, Belgium, with his parents. He married her in Ostend on 4 May 1859. Not long after the birth of their first child, James Sidney ENSOR, on 13 April 1860 he left alone for the United States in an attempt to find work as a civil engineer. His plans were thwarted by the outbreak of hostilities which led to the Civil War and he returned to Belgium a few months later. The birth of his daughter, Mariette, followed on 29 August 1861. She came to be known as 'Mitche'.
Ostend was a small seaside resort town. Marie followed in her parents' footsteps and opened a souvenir and gift shop to support the family. The shop sold Chinese goods, seashells, and Carnival masks, elements that were eventually to have a strong influence on their son James Sidney ENSORS's art. James Frederic ENSOR ran the HAEGHEMAN shop with little enthusiasm and even less expertise. By 1875 the business was insolvent and the HAEGHEMANs assumed control of the finances.
In a letter he wrote to the Belgian critic Jules du Jardin dated 28 October 1899 his son James Sidney ENSOR, the famous painter, provided some insight into the life of his parents:
"My father married in Ostend in 1859. He was a very
knowledgeable man who spoke several languages. Remarkably
handsome and prodigiously strong. He had a high forehead and
his whole appearance bore the stamp of majesty. He always
inspired a kind of fearful respect in me. He truly was a superior
man. He was knowledgeable in many fields. He had extraordinary
musical abilities. He had pursued serious studies at
the universities of Heidelberg and Bonn. He was familiar with
the most complex scientific questions, the hardest calculations
were child’s play to him. Old people in Ostend still speak of
him with admiration and enthusiasm. He was a perfect gentleman.
His projects, too vast and beyond the grasp of the doctrinaire
bourgeois of the time, were not appreciated and, worse still,
distorted and all his great goals and lofty projects were
thwarted. Over time my father was deeply hurt by the attitude
of the Ostend public, composed at that time largely of hoteliers
who had made a lot of money, brewers, ship-owners, exploitative
merchants, who had become enemies of any innovative advance;
he preferred to cut himself off completely and afterwards sought
the company of more humble people. He died in 1886. My
mother, daughter of Ostend sea-shell sellers, continued her
parents’ trade and I spent my childhood in the paternal shop
surrounded by curiosities from the sea."
(www.hatjecantz.de/leseproben/9783775724654_06.pdf)
(James Ensor, Lettres, edited by Xavier Tricot, Brussels, Labor, 1999, p. 275–77.)
"James Frederick ENSOR of 21 rampe-de-Flandre, Ostend, Belgium, died 14 April 1887. Administration 6 March (1905) to James Sidney Edouard ENSOR artist. Effects £2276 17s 10d."
(National Probate Calendar 1905)
NOTES & QUERIES:
Sources used:
Familysearch
Wikipedia
Anna Swinbourne: "Meeting James ENSOR"
www.hatjecantz.de/leseproben/9783775724654_06.pdf
James Ensor, Lettres, edited by Xavier Tricot, Brussels, Labor, 1999
National Probate Calendar
(revised 17.10.2011)
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