Brick Wall Time
Aug. 8th, 2008 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaceyI've been galloping through the generations - racing ahead with my family history on best Beloved's side of the family so this week I decided to take another look at my maternal side and see if I could get back any further beyond the Crows (or Crowes) and the Shaws that are almost within living memory.
It was this lot that sparked off my interest in the first place because i had photographs of my maternal grandmother's parents and grandparents.
This is George Crow and Eliza Lindley. They had ten kids including my great grandmother, Emma and I've managed to trace them on all the census returns back as far as 1861 when George and Eliza are 22 and 19, married with 9 month old Mary, so they must have married when Eliza was barely 18. They live at Dickinson Square, Darton. But I can't find any trace of them prior to that, either on the 1851 or the 1841 census, so I don't know anything about their family before their marriage. I can't trace birth certificates for either one of them via BMD (Birth Marriage Death) indexes but George was born in 1838 and the new registration act which started in 1837 was followed a bit patchily for the first few years.
OK... so the obvious thing is to get the marriage certificate which give the name and occupation of the fathers of the bride and groom. So I sent for it a few days ago and this morning the certificate arrives and... Eliza Lindley is the daughter of Thomas Lindley, a nailmaker. Now that's interesting because there were old deserted nailmakers workshops in Mapplewell village when my mum was growing up and I can remember them (just) standing derelict in the early 1950s.
But George? Nothing. Nada. Zip, Zilch. George doesn't have a dad.
It looks like he's a bastard... and now it looks as though the only way I'll find him is by going and staring at microfiches of the Darton Parish registers in Wakefield to find a Crow female having a baby out of wedlock in 1838. Hmmmm.... I'm not sure I'm that dedicated to the project.
I had a bit more luck with the Shaws though after a shaky start. Though I'm not sure you'd call it 'luck' exactly.
James Alfred Shaw, a miner by the age of 16 was the son of Henry Shaw who started out life down the pit but ended up as a shopkeeper. I found a wife for Henry, Martha, on the 1881 census and was happy with that. And then found an earlier census which shows him as a widower with three children, living as a lodger at the home of Mary Yeardley (who is described as a simpleton!). One of those three children was James Alfred, so Martha wasn't in the blood-line I was looking for. I needed to know who the deceased wife was. Much searching later revealed her to be... Elizabeth Yeardley, so the simpleton is probably Elizabeth's mother and is in the bloodline.
So today I traced my family lines back to a simpleton and a bastard. Ho-hum!
Oh, wait a minute... I went back and checked again. The writing was scrappy. She wasn't a simpleton at all - she was a seamstress, but they've written it as sempstress. I'm almost disappointed.
It was this lot that sparked off my interest in the first place because i had photographs of my maternal grandmother's parents and grandparents.
This is George Crow and Eliza Lindley. They had ten kids including my great grandmother, Emma and I've managed to trace them on all the census returns back as far as 1861 when George and Eliza are 22 and 19, married with 9 month old Mary, so they must have married when Eliza was barely 18. They live at Dickinson Square, Darton. But I can't find any trace of them prior to that, either on the 1851 or the 1841 census, so I don't know anything about their family before their marriage. I can't trace birth certificates for either one of them via BMD (Birth Marriage Death) indexes but George was born in 1838 and the new registration act which started in 1837 was followed a bit patchily for the first few years.
OK... so the obvious thing is to get the marriage certificate which give the name and occupation of the fathers of the bride and groom. So I sent for it a few days ago and this morning the certificate arrives and... Eliza Lindley is the daughter of Thomas Lindley, a nailmaker. Now that's interesting because there were old deserted nailmakers workshops in Mapplewell village when my mum was growing up and I can remember them (just) standing derelict in the early 1950s.
But George? Nothing. Nada. Zip, Zilch. George doesn't have a dad.
It looks like he's a bastard... and now it looks as though the only way I'll find him is by going and staring at microfiches of the Darton Parish registers in Wakefield to find a Crow female having a baby out of wedlock in 1838. Hmmmm.... I'm not sure I'm that dedicated to the project.
I had a bit more luck with the Shaws though after a shaky start. Though I'm not sure you'd call it 'luck' exactly.
James Alfred Shaw, a miner by the age of 16 was the son of Henry Shaw who started out life down the pit but ended up as a shopkeeper. I found a wife for Henry, Martha, on the 1881 census and was happy with that. And then found an earlier census which shows him as a widower with three children, living as a lodger at the home of Mary Yeardley (who is described as a simpleton!). One of those three children was James Alfred, so Martha wasn't in the blood-line I was looking for. I needed to know who the deceased wife was. Much searching later revealed her to be... Elizabeth Yeardley, so the simpleton is probably Elizabeth's mother and is in the bloodline.
So today I traced my family lines back to a simpleton and a bastard. Ho-hum!
Oh, wait a minute... I went back and checked again. The writing was scrappy. She wasn't a simpleton at all - she was a seamstress, but they've written it as sempstress. I'm almost disappointed.
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no subject
Date: Aug. 10th, 2008 09:06 am (UTC)Shame it didn't last.
I've got Shaws in my researches but they're in Derbyshire
no subject
Date: Aug. 11th, 2008 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2008 10:57 am (UTC)It was supposed to be Hart. Though I can't find a reference to a death of her first husband, and my great-grandfather Hart most definitely wasn't widowed, and divorces were not usual in their class so I think it's a case of 'poor man's divorce' i.e. bigamy, or outright pretence on both parts. My respectable little grandmother was probably illegitimate (though I don't think she would have known)
no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2008 05:29 pm (UTC)Though my paternal grandmother was separated from her first (and only) real husband in the 1930s they never divorced. My respectable schoolteacher granny changed her name by deed poll to the name of her second 'husband' so she was legally called Trigg. (Not that she ever admitted it, of course.) However I guess I should be able to find a record of that somewhere now.
I don't know who refused whom the divorce or whether it was just too expensive and troublesome in those days for people of that class.
My grandfather had another woman but they never cohabited, though she did have a son by him who was a secret until my great-grandmother's will was read and she left a legacy to 'Michael Lockyer'. Until that moment my did hadn't known he had a half brother.
To this day we've never met him or even known where to find him.
Apparently when my grandfather died (I was only five - he died before my great grandmother) his ladyfriend, Margaret, didn't come to the funeral but there were just three red roses on the coffin.
I'm sure if they'd been able to marry they would have done.
Apparently she was a teacher (or even the head I think) at a fairly strict C of E school and presumably she had the baby in secret. Any whiff or impropriety would have meant the end of her career. At least that's how it was told to me
no subject
Date: Aug. 12th, 2008 05:40 pm (UTC)Though my paternal grandmother was separated from her first (and only) real husband in the 1930s they never divorced. My respectable schoolteacher granny changed her name by deed poll to the name of her second 'husband' so she was legally called Trigg. (Not that she ever admitted it, of course.) However I guess I should be able to find a record of that somewhere now.
I don't know who refused whom the divorce or whether it was just too expensive and troublesome in those days for people of that class.
My grandfather had another woman but they never cohabited, though she did have a son by him who was a secret until my great-grandmother's will was read and she left a legacy to 'Michael Lockyer'. Until that moment my did hadn't known he had a half brother.
To this day we've never met him or even known where to find him.
Apparently when my grandfather died (I was only five - he died before my great grandmother) his ladyfriend, Margaret, didn't come to the funeral but there were just three red roses on the coffin.
I'm sure if they'd been able to marry they would have done.
Apparently she was a teacher (or even the head I think) at a fairly strict C of E school and presumably she had the baby in secret. Any whiff or impropriety would have meant the end of her career. At least that's how it was told to me