BALL - MARRIOTT marriage: South Normanton 1869

[Designer Jeans]

Very strange

1861 census Brickyard, South Normanton

Levi Ball head m 35 Coal Miner b South Normanton
Hannah Ball wife m 37 b South Normanton
John Ball son 11 Coal Miner b South Normanton

[Newfloridian]

What is strange is that I can't find Levi Ball in the 1851 census (although the enumerator wrote the surname of the other Ball families to look like Bale)

Levi Ball married Maria Haywood on March 5th 1849. She died (presumably in or after childbirth) at the end of 1851. Levi married again in 1852 to Hannah Burnham (hence the Hannah in the 1861 census)

Levi and Maria has two children - John, as in this thread, and Maria . Maria had a previous son named German. As far as I'm aware Levi and Hannah did not have any children.

I haven't found Levi in the 1871 census either

Alan

[sunflower]

1871 census
South Normanton

Levi Ball 49 Coalminer born Sth Normanton
Hannah Ball wife 50 born Hillcote Derbyshire
Maria Ball 19 dau Seamer born Sth Normanton
Levi Ball 1 grandson born Sth Normanton
(There is a burial for Levi Ball 14 Sept 1872 aged 3 at Sth Normanton)

Carol

[Newfloridian]

Many thanks.

Levi Ball (b 1870) was the son of Maria Ball - also on the 1871 census. She was the daughter of Levi Ball and his first wife Maria Haywood.



Alan

[Designer Jeans]

Familysearch 1851 census Hilltop South Normanton

Loney Ball head mar 23 coal miner
Mariah Ball wife mar 25
Jermon Haywood son 2
John Ball son 1 

all born South Normanton

[trish1120]

Good work Designer Jeans

[Newfloridian]

This is one of those little vignettes which makes family history (as opposed to genealogy) so fascinating.

There is a certain sadness about that 1851 census return - and an unanswered question or two. Levi Ball married Maria Haywood on March 5th 1849 (Mansfield 15 695 JFM 1849). It is obvious, therefore, from the census that Maria had already given birth to a child and well within six months of the ceremony  (Mansfield 15 545 JFM 1849)

Records show that the boy was registered as Haywood and he never changed it - even to the point of his marriage to Harriett Camm in 1889.  The oddity though is why Maria gave him that name (I have seen it written as Jerman, Jermon and German). Clearly finding children born before marriage was not unusual (in fact some places seem to have felt it de rigeur for a girl to have a child before marriage to prove she was capable of child bearing!). However, more often than not, this close to the marriage and the child would have accepted the husband's surname in later documentation.

Levi and Maria did have two children (John - early months 1850 and Mary - OND 1851) but sadly Maria died just before Christmas the same year, presumably as a result of childbirth.

So, why German (or similar)? A given name like that was sometimes used as a pointer to a putative father. Was there a Mr German in South Normanton at the time? Not that I've discovered.  There is however another little boy in the South Normanton census of 1851 with the same (or similar) given name - Jerman Gaskin. Again the census return (and similarly the 1861 census) aren't particularly helpful in declaring who the mother was. Age-wise I'm presuming it was the eldest daughter Ann. Also I haven't as yet definitively tied the Ball and Gaskin (or Gascoigne) families together yet - although another Ann Gaskin married William Ball in 1841.

Even more curious is the entry in the new indexes provided by the GRO which give the mother's maiden name back to 1837.  On the same page (Mansfield 15 553 J 1846) I found the following:
GASCOIGNE, GERMAN Mother's maiden name: -
GASCOIGNE, Herman  Mother's maiden name: MOKES

One door opens, another closes!!

Alan

[Designer Jeans]

I've come across the name German a number of times in the area and have a German Whysall somewhere on my tree.  German Pole d 1765 was the High Sheriff of Derbyshire.  The de la Pole family go a long way back in Derbyshire and have impressive connections - Curzon, Chandos, de Ferrers, Babbington etc.  The christian name German comes up again and again.

I have a similar illegitimacy issue in nearby Pinxton, but fortunately a handed down story to go with it.    Eliza Charlesworth was in service and the father of her illegitimate child Jeremiah, despite Eliza'a best endeavours, was her employer.  She married Joseph Clarke a year later.