Samuel, the fourth child of John & Agnes Schumacher, of Kilfinane, Co. Limerick was born in an already crowded little thatched, three-room stone cottage in Ballyriggan on the 20th January 1887, and he was baptized a week later in Kilfinane Parish Church. Nothing is known of his childhood or adolescence except that he is at home, and shown as being a 14 year-old scholar at the time of the Ireland Census of 1901. By the time of the 2nd April 1911 Ireland Census he has left home, presumably for Chertsey in the County of Surrey, England. It would be a safe bet that this was because his older brother George had already settled there, and his brother Thomas John either lived there, or close by.
It was probably in Chertsey that Samuel met Martha Ellen Oke and they were married by special licence in St. Paul’s Church, in the Parish of Addlestone, Surrey on Christmas Day 1915. Samuel at that time was a Motor Driver. Martha Ellen was 35 at the time of her marriage to 28 year old Samuel and was living in her parents home at 122 Eastworth Road, Chertsey.
In 1916 or 1917, Samuel enlisted in London as Private 149726, Royal Army Service Corps (Motor Transport) and in September 1917 he transferred to the 14th Bn, Gloucestershire Rgt, becoming Private 38727. The 14th Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment was part of 105th Brigade, 35th Division. In October 1917 the 35th Division moved to Arras, where it then came under the command of XIV Corps, Fifth Army, and on the night of 21/22 October the 14th Battalion was taking part in the attack on Houthulst Forest and Panama House during which it succeeded in capturing and holding its objectives. David Read (Soldiers of Gloucester Museum) followed up this information, after his examination of the Records of the Army Service Corps, saying that Samuel transferred to the 14th Gloucesters around 24th September 1917 and joined the 14th Battalion in the field five days later. He concludes that the most likely scenario, therefore, is that Samuel was captured while with the 14th Gloucesters, sometime between October 1917 and February 1918, perhaps the most likely dates being the 21st 22nd October 1917.
Samuel died on Monday 16 Sept 1918, aged 31, less than two months before the war ended and is buried in Cologne Southern Cemetery.
Although it has been speculated that Samuel was taken prisoner and that upon his death was buried in Cologne, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records for this cemetery show that men who died during the operations on German soil, in the latter stages of the war, were also subsequently gathered for reburial in the Cologne Southern Cemetery.
Samuel’s widow, Martha, continued to live in her Oke family home at 122 Eastworth Road, Chertsey, for fifty years after Samuel’s death until she died on the 28th December 1962.
Samuel and Martha’s only known child was Eileen who was born on the 31st October 1916 at home in Eastworth Road, Chertsey. She never married and Phone Book records show that she lived in her mother’s Eastworth Road house until at least 1961. Thereafter we find her living at 35 Douglas Road, Addlestone until at least 1980. At the time of her death (in St. Peter’s Hospital, Chertsey) she is shown as being a retired Civil Servant and was living at 56 Schroder Court, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey.Eileen died at the age of 73.
