I would be extremely grateful for any help in locating the birth or parentage of my 2nd great grandmother Mary Ann Cartwright nee Clark. Mary Ann Clark was born in St Pancras in about 1817 and her death was registered in Edmonton, Middlesex in Q4 1893.
She can be seen with her husband Davenport Cartwright (1814 Market Harborough - 1879 Islington) and children in the 1841 census (in Leicester), the 1851 and 1861 censuses (in Nottingham) and the 1871 census (in Bedford). In 1881 she appears in Nottingham with her son Davenport William Cartwright. I haven’t found her in 1891.
The later census entries give her birth as about 1817 in St Pancras, and the GRO entries for her children’s birth give her maiden name as Clark, or occasionally Clarke.
Mary Ann Clark married Davenport Cartwright by licence in a Church of England ceremony in Birmingham St Martin on 30 Sept 1836. Neither the licence nor the marriage register shows the bride or groom’s parents; she is shown on the marriage register as a spinster of this parish and he as a bachelor of St Mary Leicester. The marriage licence shows him as a hosier, which agrees with the description of ‘retired hosier’ on the 1861 census.
I don’t know why someone born in St Pancras would have married in Birmingham, or how the couple met. I have been unable to find a christening that is likely to be her or a will that might be her parents’.
The couple’s religion may be relevant. In the 1851 census, Davenport Cartwright describes himself as a ‘priest in the Catholic Apostolic Church’ which was founded in the 1830s (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Apostolic_Church). The couple’s children were given names like ‘Irving’ and ‘Rickman’ relating to leading lights of that church, and at least some of them (including my great grandmother Agnes) continued to be active members. It was probably the church which took them from Leicester to both Nottingham and Bedford, both of which were church strongholds.
Davenport himself was christened in a non-conformist ceremony in Market Harborough on 20 Jan 1815, although he was christened again in a CofE ceremony in St Martins Leicester on 30 August 1829. I can only speculate why a convinced non-conformist had a CofE christening at age 15; perhaps he needed it for an apprenticeship, although I haven’t found a record of one. (Interestingly he married seven years and one month after his christening.)
Many of my mother’s direct ancestors seem to have been brought together by a shared membership of the Catholic Apostolic Church or its non-conformist forerunners, so it may be that Mary Ann Clark or her parents were also members. If so this may have led them to Birmingham, which was also an early centre.
Mary Ann is easily the earliest brick wall in my family tree, and I would be enormously grateful for any help that rootschatters could give in getting past it
Alan Watson
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Topic: Clark of St Pancras (Read 975 times)