Flathers Death Record Newcastle upon Tyne

[gflats]

Greetings,  Seeking confirmation of a death for Eli Flathers who was last found in the 1851 Census.  Three of his children were born Northumberland (Byker) between 1848 and 1852.  His last child born November of 1854 in United States.  I can find no record of Eli coming to the United States and assume he died in 1854.  His wife Mary Ann (Kay) Flathers was found remarried in the 1860 Census in Massachusetts.  Any help locating Eli would be appreciated.

gflats

[Jebber]

Cannot see an Eli, but could this be him spelt ELY?

1860 March, qtr, Ely FLATHERS, Hunslet vol 9b, page 181.

Jebber

[gflats]

Jebber, 

I had seen the Ely listed and wondered about ordering the record.  Possibly the parents names would be listed.  Thanks.

gflats

[Jebber]

Unfortunately English death certificates do not show the names of parents, except for a child, where the father's names is shown.

Death certificate show date and place of death, name, sex, age, occupation, cause of death, informant and residence of informant, date registered and the name of Registrar.

Jebber.

[gflats]

I do know that he was born in 1818 in Holbeck.  If he passed away in 1860, that would make him about 41-42 years old.  If that is the case, it is most likely the same person.  The remaining question would be why his wife left him and took the children with her in 1854 and remarried before 1860? 

gflats

[Jebber]

At that time if a marriage broke down, apart from being incredibly expensive, a husband could divorce his wife for adultery, but a wife had to prove not only her husbands adultery, that it had bee aggravated by cruelty or other offenses.  Many couples simply parted and either lived with a new partner or underwent a bigamous marriage away from the parish where they were known.

This could explain why Eli's wife went of to America and married there.

Jebber

[gflats]

From what I have found....  Mary Ann showed up in the 1860 census near Boston, Massachusetts and worked in a cotton mill along with her new husband Alfred Robinson.  Alfred is shown in the census to have been born in England.  Alfred and Mary Ann show up again in the 1870 census as living in upstate New York and then she is found in 1880 living with her son George in Lawrence, Massachusetts using the name Flathers again.  All of her children were grown by then and it would not seem logical that she would have changed it back for their sakes.  I have not been able to secure any marriage or passenger records for Mary Ann and Alfred.  In the 1841 English Census, Eli is living with his future wife's family.  Mary was 15 and he was 20.  By the following year they were married and their eldest daughter came along very shortly thereafter.  So it would be possible that she did leave and come to America with Alfred Robinson and Eli died in 1860 in England.  Proving it will be a challenge though.     

[Jebber]

If you have not fond any marriage in the US and Mary Ann reverted to the name FLATHERS in 1880, it looks as if she and Alfred simply cohabited rather than resorting to bigamy. As you say, you are going to have a difficult job proving what happened, in every tree, there is always seems to be one family that causes problems.

Jebber

[Valda]

The date of the 1860 census in Massachusetts is 16th July
The Ely Flathers death is in the March quarter of 1860 (Janaury, Febuary, March) in Hunslet registration district (West Yorkshire) not the Newcastle area where the family you are interested in was last seen and where Joseph's birth was registered in 1852. On the otherhand Holbeck is in West Yorkshire (Leeds area just like Hunslet) and there is a birth registration for a Samuel at the right time in Hunslet registration district.

Births Dec 1855   
Flathers  Samuel    Hunslet  9b 247

However there are Flathers families registering events in Hunslet registration district from the 1840s onwards including this birth.

Births Dec 1858 
Flathers  Eli     Hunslet  9b 243

The death registration in 1860 is far more likely to be this child than the adult Eli from Newcastle. There is no Eli/Ely Flathers on the 1861 census.

What evidence (other than a lack of finding a death registration in Massachucetts - presuming the family went straight there) do you have that Eli did not go to America with his family? You say you don't have emigration records for the family?

If Eli had died, there would be nothing to stop his widow remarrying. If not there would be little to stop her in America divorcing Eli. However in England if she committed adultery she would have no right to her children. Fleeing and 'stealing' her children from her wronged husband would not have been an easy task. Her eldest child was 18 in 1860.

On the 1860 census Alfred Robinson is 43 born England and a flax dresser. He has a daughter Sarah (no Sarah with the Flathers family in 1851) also born England aged 18.
There are no people of this age - father and daughter on the English census of 1851 nor on the American census of 1850. The nearest I can find is an Alfred Robinson aged 20 (adult ages - those over 15, usually rounded down to the nearest 5 on the 1841 census) a flax dresser on the 1841 census in Holbeck and born Yorkshire. If Alfred and his family emigrated to America in the late 1840s (or between the 1850 American census and the 1851 English census) it might be as a family known to Eli's Holbeck family, the two families met again in America.

If there is no death for Eli registered in the centralised in English civil registration system, surely it is more likely he died either on board ship or somewhere in the U.S?

Regards

Valda