Thank you for your reply, and I would welcome any information that you might find regarding this family.
It is mentioned that Mathew's first wife Jessie Anne was buried in a Kidd grave in Armagh, possibly with Sarah (Sally) her mother. Sarah's father, William Lodge Kidd has a memorial window in St. Marks cathedral.
In this string Keith Dawson says that Mathew's second wife Anne died at Belfast and was buried at Killyman.
I may be speculating, but I think I know why Anne Sophia's existence was left out of the contemporary material we have from that time. We have a recollection from Charles Leonard Dobbin Maxwell, a grandson and executor of William Hewetson Mathew's who would have known his stepmother very well and yet he and all of his siblings omit to mention her.
I do not want to be harsh to Anne's memory but I think there is a very good reason for this and this new discovery about her marrying William could be the missing piece of this family puzzle.
To explain I need to jump forward a generation down from Sarah to her second eldest daughter Mary Jane Dobbin Maxwell born 1886, by her marriage to Thomas Dobbin Maxwell.
In Sheffield in 1891, Mary (May) a nurse, married John William Staniforth M.D.
John kept a journal and in it he writes about Mary's Irish family.
John gives hint of the existence of Anna Sophia, but in a disguised way, describing her as an aunt. I think it is because Jack was not directly connected to the tragic events that unfolded at Belturbet that he felt able to record what happened.
As I have said before, Mathew's daughter Sarah married Thomas Dobbin Maxwell. They produced four children, Jessie Wilhelmina, she died of consumption aged 21 and is buried with her father in Lisnaskea, Mary Jane Dobbin, Leonard Dobbin and Thomasina Olivia Maud (initials Tom after her father).
Thomas died in March 1871 and Sarah and the four children moved from Lisnaskea to Belturbet to live with her father, and now it seems, her step mother Anna Sophia. In January 1879 Sarah married Hugh Willis Thomson M.D. (it was also his second marriage) They lived at Riversdale House, Belturbet.
Hugh and Sarah had five children, Benjamin, Hugh, James Dalziel, Kathleen Johanna and Phyllis Eileen.
Hugh died May 29th 1885 and Sarah and their four youngest children, one only five weeks old, moved back to live with her father William and presumably her step mother Anna Sophia.
Two years later Sarah died and was buried with the Kidds in Armagh. At about the same time, Benjamin Thomson died. The remaining four children continued to live with their grandfather and step grand mother.
On I June 1889 William died, leaving the four children orphans.
It is here that I quote from John Staniforth's journal; which he addressed to his children
"Dear old Mr Mathew had been both father and mother to them, and when he was gone they had practically nobody to turn to for guidance and support"
He goes on: "Under these circumstances your mother (Jane Mary Dobbin Staniforth), Ina and Leonard decided to put all of their money into a common fund, and to make themselves responsible for the education and upbringing of their little brothers and sisters. This was tyrannically over ruled by a certain Aunt, whose name I need not mention, and almost before they knew what was happening, all four children had been spirited away. They were told at the time that they would never know what had become of the children; but after a long and painstaking inquiries they subsequently found that they had all been adopted".
"Kathleen was adopted by a Dr Robinson, of Sheffield. Phyllis by a certain Miss Skarrett, also in England, I am not sure if they ever heard who had adopted Hugh and James. At any rate, they never saw either of the boys again"
It was during Mary's search for the adopted Kathleen that she met John.
Unknown to Mary, in December 1894 an appeal was published in the London Standard by the Royal Asylum of St Anne's Society, Redhill Surrey, by a Miss Kersteman of Dublin for sponsors for Hugh aged 10. Beyond St Anne's I have not been able to find anything more about what happened to him between 1889 and 1894 or after that.
James died in a shipwreck off Cape Horn aged 18.
