109 Chesterton Road

History of 109 Chesterton Road

1925 – 1931 Agnata Frances Butler née Ramsay

Agnata had previously lived at 16 Brookside in 1920. She died in May 1931.

For her biography see Wikipedia. She was a classics scholar and one of the first generation of women to take the classics tripos at Cambridge. In 1887 she was placed top in her year prompting the cartoon in Punch.

Punch cartoon from 1887

In 2025 Robert Dann sent the following note:

My father, although born in Durham, North Carolina, was raised in Cambridge from 1949, after his family returned there following the early death of his father the previous year. He mentioned that his parents owned a big house on Chesterton Road where they lived prior to emigrating to the USA in 1935 and lamented that, as they were advised to sell the property during the War [1939-1945], his mother had to buy a much smaller house on De Freville Avenue [9a] where she lived with her children and a succession of lodgers until the mid-1960’s.

William “Jack” Dann & Eileen, 1930

Research on Ancestry.com has confirmed that the property in question was 109 Chesterton Road. Below is their outgoing passenger information which was recorded in January 1935:

109 Chesterton Road, Dann family, outgoing passenger record January 1935

I am not sure when my grandparents purchased 109 Chesterton Road, however they are likely to have been the next occupants following Agnata Frances Butler’s death in 1931. They married in 1930 and my grandfather’s parents died between 1929 and 1931, leaving him with an inheritance which, combined with his income as a professor of Biochemistry, would have helped them to purchase the property.

William “Jack” Dann

An interesting connection that I note from the Wikipedia entry on Agnata Frances Butler is that her husband, Henry Montagu Butler was master of Trinity College, which was also my grandfather’s alma mater.

If the above is of interest to you, here is an obituary of my grandfather, William John Dann (1904-1948), although the date they arrived at Durham is listed as 1934 when it was, in fact, 1935.

William “Jack” Dann had married Eileen Morley while a student at Cambridge. In 1921 he had been living with his parents in Sheffield. In 1940 he is living with his family in Durham, North Carolina, where he is an associate professor:

William “Jack” Dann, 35

Eileen, 35

John M, 4

Mary, 2