RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: anajet on Monday 24 September 18 11:56 BST (UK)
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Hello,
This is my first post on RootsChat although I have read many posts in the course of my research into my family tree.
I am trying to find out why an ancestor would have gone from East London to Nottingham and the likelihood of a Nottinghamshire 4yo child being placed into the Berner Street School in East London possibly for the disabled.
The details I have are:
William Guy 1849 born in Fiskerton Nottinghamshire
de facto with Sarah Jane Watson (known as Jane) 1855 - 31st August 1881(parents are William & Ann)
Children
Mary Ann Guy 1877 - before 1885
Elizabeth Jane Guy 1878 - 1898 (I need to order her death certificate to be sure)
In the 1881 census the family are living at 3 Halifax Square Nottingham with Sarah's brother John Watson and William is working as a labourer.
I believe Sarah Jane Watson died on the 31st August 1881 of phthisis (pulmonary tuberculosis) at Balloon Court. This was not her home, but it was a few streets away from her home. Her husband was not the informant, it was another woman named Sarah.
I think that the following happened, but I am not sure how realistic it would be in 1881
William took Mary Ann to the Berner Street School in East London and enrolled her on the 29th September 1881 her address is listed as 17 Morgan Street. She didn't have any disabilities recorded beside her name in the census 5 months earlier. He met his next defacto partner Sarah Ann Wager, youngest daughter of John William Wager sealing wax maker, thirteen years his junior. (not so concerned that this is unrealistic its just information I have) Mary Ann contracted laryngitis and passed away on 1st March 1882 aged five in the presence of her aunt Emma Fallon at 17 Morgan Street St George in the East London (death certificate). She had to have died before 1885 because William named his third daughter Mary Ann.
At the next census in 1891 the family are living at 2 Eagle Place Alison Rise Nottingham North East:
William (born Fiskerton) 1849 (horse keeper)
Sarah Ann (born East London) 1863 - 1908
Elizabeth Jane (born Nottingham) aged 12
Mary Ann (born Great Gonerby) aged 6
Ada (born Nottingham) aged 1 1890 - 23rd December 1910 (She died of a chest complaint - Ada is my 2nd great grandmother - her details are definite and confirmed by my Grandad - I'm pretty lucky)
William's wife Sarah Ann is consistently recorded in census records as being born in East London - is it feasible she moved that far or why would a labourer from Nottinghamshire go to London? Because these family members are born in different places, I am confident I am tracking the right people in the census records. There are two more children, John William and Thomas Henry, born after 1891 if that is relevant. At the next census William is working as a railway labourer.
I am open to any advice or pointers if I've followed the wrong people, but mostly would like suggestions as to possibilities for how a 22yo woman from East London formed a relationship with a 35yo man from Nottingham.
Many thanks
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I think that is a very interesting question, and I hope we get an answer, supporting your research. I have a similar mystery, about how my great great grandparents met. He was a watchmaker in Hartlepool, and met his future wife who was from the East End of London. Quite what he was doing so far away from home briefly before their wedding I cannot imagine. It must have been a very brief courtship. Sadly a very difficult birth ensured that their marriage did not last very long, but did produce my great grandmother even if her twin brother died soon after birth.
Martin
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I haven't looked at any of the detail but could the answer be in your narrative.
You have said that daughter Mary Ann passed away in London in the presence of her aunt Emma Fallon. I don't know whether this was a maternal or paternal aunt but was somebody in the family already present in London so maybe this was why the father travelled to London. Presumably he was unable to look after Mary Ann himself and took her to an aunt to be cared for - within a month of her mother's death.
Just a possibility.
Pheno
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Checked NFHS cds and there are no baptisms coming up for the children. Or burial for the first wife.
As mentioned earlier, travel was not uncommon. My great grandmother came from Moray in Scotland and married her husband in Nottinghamshire....no connections at all for the Scottish family in Nottinghamshire.
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I have two brothers in my tree, both farm labourers in Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, who married women from Carlton, Nottinghamshire on the same day.
Like you, I considered this to be unusual and what I did was trace the extended family of the two women and found that one actually had family roots in Yaxley. She was previously married to another man in Nottinghamshire, and when he died I assume she went back to Yaxley to be supported by family. But she bought a friend with her, and they both got married to those two brothers.
Since then, I have found other instances of local men marrying "foreign" women who actually turned out to have local relatives.
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Greetings, and a warm welcome to Rootschat.
As you will see from other posts, movement around the country was not uncommon during Victorian times when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
Why the East End of London to Nottingham?
One possibility could be that the silk weaving industry in London (particularly around Spitalfields) was collapsing. Where would an unemployed weaver go? Probably to the cotton mills of Lancashire or to the hosiery or lace factories in Nottingham.
It would be interesting to see what jobs Sarah Jane's siblings and forebears did.
Philip
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Hi and welcome to rootschat ;D
People moved around more than we realise, they moved for work and skilled workers were highly prized...how they connected to that work/employer might have been just travel and see, a friend, neighbour or family member might have gone/told them there is work, they may have been working for an employer who had land/estate/company elsewhere and moved them to another area it happened with my great great grandfather who was an Agr Lab worked for a gentleman landowner in Durham, who moved him to Lincolnshire where he was Gamekeeper and later gave his daughter a job in another estate he owned in Bristol , even his employers family looked after him/his wifes burial as they are buried in the employers family area of the cemetery along with large white marble head stone/edging and all the employers family are named as attending what was a very large funeral for a Gamekeeper there was also 'recruitment agents' sent out to various other places to recruit workers
Halifax Square Nottingham is centre of the Lace Market area, so highly likely someone was a very skilled Lace Maker
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There was very considerable transmigration in the UK in the 18th and 19th Century due to the industrial revolution. In my own family, several brothers of my grandfather moved to London from Forest of Dean due to GWR.
The reason Henry VIII had PR's kept from 1538 was he didn't want families wandering the countryside looking for work and causing civil disorder.
A lot earlier, there is a record of 4 to 6 men from the North West, owing allegiance to the Duke of Lancaster, walking south to sign up with Henry V's army which fought the Battle of Agincourt 1415.
There were still people c1900 who had never gone more than 10 miles from home. It looks like transmigration speeded up even more in the 20th Century.
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Map of trains 1850
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/3019110
Even before trains I have someone (Catherine, father a farmer well to do enough to leave a will but that’s all) from a small village near Stafford marry in London in 1767. Their first baby they took back to Staffordshire for baptism. Youngest sister (Joan) then went to London to join sister after death of their father. She married an American Loyalist. (Ie American who fought on the side of the British in the war of independence )
At some point Catherine and her husband and family moved to Warminster in Wiltshire (where I think the husband was from) but they kept in touch with Joan and family because Joan’s husband (the Loyalist) was declared the guardian of Catherine’s youngest daughter after the death of the husband and father in 1799. (Thank goodness - as it was the final proof I needed that I had the right family as I too couldn’t believe they had moved around so much)
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Quite so, thanks for drawing attention. David and Charles of Newton Abbot published first edition of Ordnance Survey maps with railways, railways their speciality. I have their Hereford and Gloucester one.
A lot of people emigrated to the American colonies before the Civil war and then returned to fight for Parliment.
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Thank you to everyone - you have all given me so much information and so much to think about. I apologise for the delay in my reply, I have been very busy with work but you have all inspired me to keep investigating more of my tree - so many people to look into. I had no idea that people moved around so much. What an eye opener.
Thanks again