Just to let you know that we are making good progress with the Marshes. I won't post a full account yet because there is more I want to do, but the following interim report may be of interest:
Betty Mellor is shown as "Female Servant" age about 20 - 24 in the Joshua Marsh household in Flushhouse in 1841, and Joseph also shows up, aged 3 months so that all ties in nicely with the dictionary.
Joshua had several younger siblings but most may not have survived childhood.
Joshua's father, John Marsh, appears to have died around June 1839, and his mother, Hannah, remarried - to a Peter Gyte (or Gite) in about September 1840. It is these two adults who appear with the Marsh children and Betty and Joseph Mellor in the 1841 census. There do not appear to have been any subsequent Gyte/Gite children.
I have not yet linked Mary Crossland (Joshua's wife) to my Cros(s)lands though I have high hopes.
Another fascinating fact which only came to light yesterday is that Joshua's surviving sister, the conveniently unusually-named Tirzah Marsh, married a John Crossland in June 1855! Could this be a case of brother and sister marrying sister and brother? We'll see. Tirzah Crosland (the spelling seems to be interchangeable with Crossland) died in the Huddersfield district in 1910 age 77, putting her year of birth at around 1833.
Robert