From Hammond and Scull's Addenda and Corrigenda to The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2006) Vol. 2: Reader’s Guide -
John Benjamin and Mary Jane Tolkien had at least eight children: *Arthur Reuel, Tolkien’s father (1857–1896); Mabel (?1858–1937, not to be confused with *Mabel Tolkien, née Suffield, Tolkien’s mother; m. Thomas Evans Mitton, b. ?1856); Grace Bindley (1861–1947, m. William Charles Mountain, 1862–1928); Florence Mary (b. 1863, m. Tom Hadley); Frank Winslow (1864–1867); Howard Charles (1866–1867); Wilfrid Henry (1870–1938, spelled ‘Wilfred’ in census records); and Laurence George H. (b. 1873, m. Grace D., b. ?1873).The ‘Myers Newcastle Time Line’ website by Alan Myers states that Tolkien visited Newcastle upon Tyne in each of the years 1910–1912, but offers no evidence for these dates.
Christine Ahmed, in the article ‘William Mountain: A Northern Industrialist, Now Forgotten’ and in the article ‘Tolkien in Newcastle’, provides details of the life of Tolkien’s uncle William Mountain, an industrialist who for twenty-four years led the company Ernest Scott and Mountain, maker of electric lighting for mills and factories, as well as pumps, dynamos, and high-speed engines for railways and collieries. In 1913, the firm having expanded too quickly, it was bought by C.A. Parsons. Mountain became a consultant, went into a partnership with his son and son-in-law, and worked in a wire manufacturing business. He was a member of the local Literary and Philosophical Society, and in 1925 became a Vice-President of the North East Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (now the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers).
Mountain and his family lived in the Newcastle upon Tyne area at 9 St George’s Terrace, Jesmond; in South Street, Hexham; at ‘The Hermitage’, a twenty-room house in Sheriff Hill, Gateshead; and in Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle. According to Ahmed, Tolkien’s paternal grandmother (i.e. Mary Jane Tolkien) ‘stayed with the Mountains from 1911 to 1915 when she died’, but gives no source for this statement; a Mary J. Tolkien is, however, listed in official death records as having died at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1915. William and Grace Mountain are buried in Jesmond Old Cemetery in Newcastle; an article on the cemetery’s website illustrates their joint gravestone, which gives his date of death as 26 January 1928, and hers in March 1947 (we cannot make out the day from the photo).
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Jesmond Old Cemetery is included in the route of one of my daily walks - so I took the opportunity to fill in a missing detail from Scull and Hammond's account above; namely, the exact date on which Tolkien's Aunt Grace died - which they could not read from the photo.
As you can see, she is listed as having died on 3rd March 1947.
The cross is made of very light grey granite, and the grave is situated about 75 yards from the North-West corner and 10 yards from the South-West wall. It is being rapidly broken apart by the expansion of living stumps of shrubs that - until about a decade ago, covered and concealed the grave.
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His Aunt Grace had an important role in the young Tolkien's life, as (apparently) the major source of orally-transmitted family history concerning what little was known of their German ancestors. As Humphrey Carpenter wrote in his biography of 1977 (lightly laced with some of Carpenter's characteristic snide commentary!):
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There was, however, Ronald’s Aunt Grace, his father’s younger sister, who told him stories of the Tolkien ancestors; stories which sounded improbable but which were, said Aunt Grace, firmly based on fact.
She alleged that the family name had originally been ‘von Hohenzollern’, for they had emanated from the Hohenzollern district of the Holy Roman Empire. A certain George von Hohenzollern had, she said, fought on the side of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He had shown great daring in leading an unofficial raid against the Turks and capturing the Sultan’s standard.
This (said Aunt Grace) was why he was given the nickname Tollkuhn, ‘foolhardy’; and the name stuck.
The family was also supposed to have connections with France and to have intermarried with the nobility in that country, where they acquired a French version of their nickname, du Temeraire.
Opinion differed among the Tolkiens as to why and when their ancestors had come to England. The more prosaic said it was in 1756 to escape the Prussian invasion of Saxony, where they had lands. Aunt Grace preferred the more romantic (if implausible) story of how one of the du Temeraires had fled across the Channel in 1794 to escape the guillotine, apparently then assuming a form of the old name, ‘Tolkien’. This gentleman was reputedly an accomplished harpsichordist and clock-repairer.
Certainly the story - typical of the kind of tale that middle-class families tell about their origins - gave colour to the presence of Tolkiens in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century, making their living as clock and watch manufacturers and piano-makers. And it was as a piano-maker and music-seller that John Benjamin Tolkien, Arthur’s father, had come to Birmingham and set up business some years later.
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