#52Ancestors, Week 12, Misfortune

Misfortune. Lucky one week, unlucky the next ? A series of unfortunate events ?

Some years ago while doing some searching “alongside” my 4^th cousin in the UK about the family line we share, and more particularly her branch of that line we came across a very sad discovery.

Two of my great grandmother’s cousins; brothers, moved their families from Wolverhampton to Glasgow around the turn of the century. The elder brother went first with his wife and young son between 1894 and 1897. About ten years later the younger brother followed with his wife and three young children.

Arthur and Martha (yes it’s true) had already lost one baby aged about eighteen months before travelling north. On the 1911 Scots census it stated that they had had eight children but only four were living. That itself was quite sad to learn. The determination to go on, to have more babies when you have lost so many in infancy, just astounds me.

From ScotlandsPeople we had built a picture of their family including the “unknown” children who had lived briefly between 1901 and 1911. Then an email arrived from my cousin to say she had been doing some more searching.

She had purchased the death certificate for Martha, who had died in February 1930. Martha it seemed came to an unfortunate end, so the search of newspapers began to see what might be uncovered. And this is where the misfortune became apparent.

The newspaper reported that Arthur had come home in the middle of the day for his dinner and discovered the grisly scene. It was reported that Martha was greatly upset about the death of her daughter Emma who had died earlier in the week and been buried the previous day. The timing of Emma’s death had brought to the surface the memory of another daughter who had died aged sixteen, just three years earlier.

What was going on here ?

But, this was a double tragedy as Martha did not just take her own life, she also had inflicted serious injury to their youngest daughter who died soon after Arthur had arrived home. Martha’s despair must have been enormous, and the guilt for Arthur; that had he been moments earlier he may have been able to avert the tragedy.

This led me to use up my credits on ScotlandsPeople and purchase more death certificates. The names of the unknown babies were discovered and the causes of death for their children.

Martha Agnes	23 November 1905	16m	Broncho-Pneumonia 28days Cardiac Asthemia 1day
Charles	13 January 1907	7w	Premature Birth Asthemia
Frederick	9 March 1909	6m	Acute Bronchitis Convulsions
Minnie Mildred	9 February 1927	16	Percarditis ? Endocarditis, Cardiac Failure
Emma Elizabeth	4 February 1930	30	Embolism of Heart
Martha	8 February 1930	56	Haemorrhage, cut throat
Martha	8 February 1930	11	Haemorrhage , cut throat
Arthur George	9 July 1932 –	31	Cardiac Failure, Acute endocarditis, Mitral Stenosis

It all pointed sadly to a genetic heart defect, seemingly passed on to at least six of their children.

How difficult must it have been to live with that, and how unjust must it have seemed that you lost so many babies. In December 1906 when baby Charles was born, Arthur’s seventeen year old unmarried half sister Ellen was staying with the family and gave birth to her own daughter at their home that month.

I wonder how each mother felt, one bereft and one grateful.

#52Ancestors, Week 11, Lucky

I have been thinking long and hard about this one – all the way into Week 12 !

I don’t know if anyone had a dog named Lucky. I am pretty sure there is no-one called Fortuna or anything similar hiding somewhere in my tree. The only two relatively lucky people though sheer luck that I can think of, I have already written about before. My great grand uncle Walter who did pretty darned well on the Thames goldfields and then on the Coolgardie fields of Western Australia; and my daughter’s great great grand aunt Carrie who won a tiara in an Art Union raffle.

When I mentioned my dilemma to my daughter she simply said “The luck of the Irish.” Very cliché – but LUCKY she said that, and LUCKY that I asked her because suddenly there was my inspiration.

There is not a lot of Irish in my tree, but there are a lot of DNA connections it seems for that small branch. That is another topic though and I feel I need to spend a lot more time researching those families.

There is even less in my daughter’s paternal tree. Imagine my surprise when I discovered some years ago that one of her Irish families was from the same county as mine.

So where does luck come into it ? Wait and see.

Richard Gibson married Harriet Irvine in Kiama, New South Wales, Australia on 3 June 1870. She was the daughter of Irish immigrants, who had been living in Jamberoo since early 1840. Their marriage certificate gave no clues about where he was born. Much later, from his death certificate just the county Cavan was provided.

I did however come across his arrival to New South Wales in 1867 on the Light Horse. There was a lot of information on these pages including confirmation of his parent’s names and that he had a brother James in Sydney. There was also a place name – Killishandra (sic), Cavan.

So I began to see what I could find out about Killishandra, which turned out to be Killeshandra. I posted questions on RootsChat in 2009 and later on Ancestry message boards. I contacted a person through RootsChat who had access to the few surviving pieces of the 1841 Irish census – and they were for Cavan.

And here is the LUCKY bit. The parish for Killeshandra had survived and he was able to send me the information about the whole family.

The Irish census’, for anyone who has not looked at them, are a mine of information ! Remember this is 1841 too.

The family was made up of :

William, 51, farmer, head of the household, married in 1815

Sydney, 42, wife

Mary, 23, daughter

Jane, 18, daughter

Ufemy (sic), 13, daughter

Emily, 13, daughter

James, 9, son

Ephram (sic), 7, son

Richard, 4 months, son

In addition to this on another page where listed “those who have left the house or died since the 1831 census”

Hester, 21, daughter, in America, house servant

Margaret, 13, daughter, deceased, died 1838

William, 1 month, son, deceased, died 1836

George, 16, son, deceased, died 1839

Wm Henry, 1 month, son, deceased, died 1840

I’ve not been able to find too much more about them. I have emailed someone in the past who was a descendant of Mary or Jane and today while searching I rediscovered some messages to a descendant of Emily as well. I think that James was married to a sister of Richard’s wife Harriet, and that Ephraim also went to America.

Reading this back, I think it is time I made a more concerted research effort on all my Irish folk. Unfortunately changes of email provider and hardware over the years has meant that I have lost the traces of some of my earlier messages.

Maybe some of them will get their DNA tested so that I can sort that puzzle out too.

#52Ancestors, Week 10, Strong Woman

We don’t all have a well known inspirational woman in our family trees. We can’t all lay claim to Florence Nightingale, Maya Angelou, Mother Teresa, Marie Curie, Emmeline Pankhurst or Joan of Arc. But within all our trees there are some pretty amazing ladies, I’m sure.

Who do I choose to write about this week ?

One of my pioneer great great grandmothers who came with their husband and children to take a chance on a new life; a better life, in a country so far away from England it was hard to comprehend ? They had no idea what the land was like, whether the earth was arable and whether they would be able to grow the crops they had always grown. Many of them had not seen the sea or lived near to it; yet they were prepared to travel over it on a cramped, leaky sailing ship for about three months – and give it a go. Not like now, when we plan our holidays and escape through colour brochures and online.

Or my great great grandmother who left her apparently unhappy marriage in New Zealand and took her youngest three children to start a new life in Australia ? Not just leaving behind her husband, but ten other children, her mother, brothers and sisters. Why not just move away to another district ?

Perhaps my great grandmother’s cousin, whose family had joined the Mormon Church and emigrated from Wiltshire to Utah ? She married at eighteen to a church elder thirty five years her senior; becoming his fourth wife. Did she know that two of those wives were still alive, that one had left him, but the other was still married to him ? She stayed. When he died, and the laws of the church had changed and disinherited her for not being his legal wife, she contested his will. Argued for her share AGAINST her children – and WON.

Or my great grandmother, born in Marlborough and raised in the Horowhenua, who left school when she was about 14 to help at home with younger siblings or with her older, married sister's new families. Then married four years later and began her own family, passing on all her domestic skills to her daughters.

What about my grandmother whose childhood family life was not so dissimilar to some we see on the news today ? She still took a chance, married and made a successful family for her children with values and traditions which have been passed on to her children and grandchildren.

Then in my daughter’s paternal family; what about her 8xgreat grandmother, daughter of the Ewen (Dubh) Cameron 5^th Lochiel and 17^th chieftain, from his 3^rd marriage. Married aged about 15 to a Campbell. The two families did not always get along. How did she feel as a pawn in her father’s powerplay ? One of her sons was Colin, the Red Fox of the Appin Murders ‘fame’.

Or her 5xgreat grandmother who came to Australia with her family as shepherds and never spoke a word of English in her life. Gaelic, through and through. She endured the dry heat of what is now the ACT and likely pined for the cooler climes of the Highlands. Who brought with her five sons and six daughters, but not one son married to carry on the name.

Or her 3x great grandmother who gave birth to twins in the workhouse when she was nineteen. Named their father on the bastardy bond and returned to work as a domestic servant until she was able to remove the surviving child from the workhouse and provide a home with her new husband five years later.

So you see, it is too hard to pick one. If not for these women though, the wives of bakers, farmers, millers, shepherds and labourers, we would not be here. 

It is time to remind women everywhere that we HAVE a voice, that we ARE strong. All of us, in our own way. That we CAN do anything.

But also, remember that not all our problems are the fault of men. There ARE good men in the world, there always have been. Men who want better for their children, who are willing to take on the child of another man and raise it as their own, who are gentle and caring. We should NOT let society and the media tell us otherwise. We should have some faith in humanity as we stand up for each other.

You don't need to be a tall poppy, and an inspiration to the whole human race, you just need to be the best YOU that you can be. Who knows, maybe someday someone will look back and say "I just want to be like her."

Here’s to STRONG women

May we KNOW them

May we BE them

May we RAISE them.

-Unknown

We are the grand daughters

Of all the WITCHES

You were never able to burn.

-Unknown

I am strong

I am invincible

I am woman.

-Helen Reddy

#52Ancestors, Week 9, Where There's a Will

So, a Will, or a fiercely determined (where there is a will there’s a way) person, or just someone named William.

I have decided to go with a Will this week, and discovering it took a fair bit of determination as well.

Susanna(h) Davies was born about 1774 in or near Wellington, Shropshire, England. Her parents, Thomas and Sarah, had her baptised at All Saints, Wellington on 8 April 1774. I don’t know anything more about her until she married Thomas Hulett at the same church on 15 April 1793. Did she have siblings ? What was her father’s occupation ? Where did they live exactly ? Those are questions to solve another time.

Susanna was my 4 x great grandmother. She and her husband Thomas raised a family of seven children who were all baptised at All Saints Wellington. They may have lived all the time in Lawley, as that is the place where Susanna is recorded as living on the 1841 and 1851 UK census’. Lawley is a small village between Wellington and Malinslee, now almost on the outskirts of Telford.

Their second daughter Sarah, was my 3 x great grandmother. Until recently I had focused more on her and her descendants than on her siblings, or on discovering more about her parents.  That was until a close match popped up in my DNA results which led me back to this family and one of Susanna’s sons. That find spurred me on to find as much as I could about all of Thomas and Susanna’s children.

I have managed to track them all through census’, bdm’s and probate indexes now. Only three married and had children. In my searching though I realised when Susanna had died and purchased a pdf of her death record from www.gro.gov.uk in their current trial. Thomas had died before 1841 as Susanna is widowed on the 1841 census.

I had always thought of my Shropshire ancestors as Ag labs, workers – as opposed to landowners or tradespeople. Nothing wrong with that; the majority of us come from simple, hardworking beginnings. On the 1851 census though, Susanna was recorded as being the “Occupier of a farm 90 acres, employing 2 men.” So not the owner of the land it would seem, but financially able to employ people to work the land for her. When I came across a copy of her will on Ancestry and deciphered it with much help from 4^th cousins and my Dad, it seemed they definitely were not “just” Ag Labs.

Susanna’s will named all her children apart from Sarah, who was already married at the time of her death in May 1856, and indeed at the time that Susanna wrote her will in December 1846. Did she feel that Sarah was already well taken care of ? Or perhaps she did not approve of Sarah’s marriage. (As an aside Sarah and her husband, an Ag Lab, had married at St Peter’s Wolverhampton in July 1836 when Sarah would have been at least 3 months pregnant, their first child was baptised in January 1837.)

This is the transcription of the will (with still a few odd words to decipher)

Lawley

IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN

I Susanna Hulett being of sound state of mind do hereby ordain this to be my last will and testament renouncing and revoking all others. First I nominate and appoint as my executor and executrix my son John Hulett and my daughter Mary Ann Hulett. Secondly I give and bequeath to my son Thomas Hulett my daughters Mary Ann Elizabeth Hulett Elizabeth Hulett and Martha Hulett the whole of my property consisting of the household furniture live and the food stock on the Farm. Also my interest in One Hundred Pounds xxxx in the Long Annuities to be equally divided share and share alike after all my just debts and funeral expenses are paid. Thirdly it is my request that as my son John Hulett has received considerably more than his share of my property that he will afford every assistance in his power to my son William Hulett. This done and executed on the eleventh day of December one thousand eight hundred and forty six. In the testimony whereof? I hereby to submit my case in the presence of the following witnesses. Susanna Hulett

Witnesses – Robert Howden Heston – W Taylor

And an image of the original copy which was made when the will was proven and probate granted

The will itself follows the prescribed pattern that is still common today. Beginning by stating the place and name of the person making the will, and that they are lucid and aware of the details they are writing, or dictating to someone to write if they are unable to write themselves. After this the first action is to name the people chosen to be the executors. They are the ones who will give statements after the death to verify who they are and that they knew the person. They may have to give affidavits to the court as well.

The second action is to name the beneficiaries and the instruction. It was here where the surprise came. Susanna may have not owned the land she was farming, but she did own the livestock, bequeathing them along with all her household furniture and food which likely included crops being grown to her unmarried daughters and her son Thomas. In addition to this she directed that they share in her interest from some annuities. Now I’m not sure what those annuities were, but £100 is a fair amount of money to have in her own right in 1856, not at all what I was expecting to read.

Then thirdly a separate instruction regarding to her son John. She states that since he has already received more than his share of her property that he takes care to assist William, the eldest child of the family. At this point I am still not sure why she made this instruction and did not include William with her other unmarried children. Perhaps he had a disability. In the 1841 and 1851 census’ William had been living with his mother and working on the farm. In 1861 he was working on Lawley Farm, employed as a Cow Man.

Then to close the will is signed and dated, and witnessed.

The timing of the writing of the will could be significant. 11 December 1846. John was married in January 1846 and his first child born later that year. John was a publican, he had been a butcher when he married. Perhaps his mother gave him some financial assistance to change career and secure a lease on a hotel. I have spied some documents in county archives that may help answer that question, but first I need to save some money so that I can make a trip there.

To add to this change in my understanding of Susanna’s social standing. John’s eldest daughter can be found attending a school in Shifnal on the 1861 census, where the teachers included French and German. One of his sons became a Mining & Civil Engineer. Investigating all that can wait for another time though.