#52Ancestors, Close to Home

What do you do when you have been widowed a second time and have five children; three of them under three years of age; the youngest less than two weeks old ?

Look for a replacement, that’s what. And if there was an ideal candidate close by; right on your doorstep, next door or even IN your house – even better.

Thomas Kelsey, my 2 times great grandfather had three wives. This piece of information was one of the things that lit the fire for genealogy for me as a child. I didn’t know anyone who had more than one wife. My grandmother had two instances in her immediate family ! This grandfather married three times, her other grandfather married twice. I was hooked !

Thomas married his first wife Mary James, my 2 times great grandmother in the Bethel Primitive Methodist Chapel in Dudley in 1875. Thomas was employed with the Great Western Railway. By the time of their marriage he had worked his way up from a shunter to a railway guard.

He and his young wife lived in Junction Street, Wolverhampton where they had two children before Mary passed away leaving a son, almost 3, and a 10 month old daughter. These two children were taken in by Mary’s father and her unmarried sister and spent at least the next six years with them in Dudley.

Thomas remarried in 1886 to Louisa Charlotte Rudd. In 1881 she had been a Nurse Domestic on the census, maybe her field of employment made her an ideal candidate to take on his children and have them returned to him. There is no-one to ask how they met so we will never know for sure. It is also not clear how quickly after this marriage that his children were welcomed back into his home.

Thomas and Louisa had three children in quick succession, and sadly she passed away just nine days after the birth of the 3^rd baby in 1890.

Twelve months later at the 1891 census, Louisa’s elder unmarried sister Clara and her widowed father are living with Thomas and his five children in Dunstall Road. Clara is listed as House Keeper. So to be fair, Thomas didn’t rush into a 3^rd marriage. But he did marry Clara three years later just four months before the birth of their daughter.