soooooo confused!!!

[rachelralph]

  hubby is getting fed up here LOL still havent moved to go do the shopping! instead i opened up the tree and started looking again!

i looked briedfly at marriages of a william hale to a lucy, and couldnt find any. but then i suppose if she wasnt divorced from willaim bone then she couldnt have married. then again maybe william hale is william bone?! 

you meantioned sarah being born to lucy, any luck finding a record of james?  i have his birth as abt 1838 bt i am wondering if it may have been just before lucy married william bone. then again if lucy married william bone after james was born then william obviously didnt care much and they should all still be together!
oh my i best get on, thanks again xx

[dee-jay]

Whenever I encounter a birth c1831 and no sign of a male partner for 7 years, my mind turns to Swing Riots and transportation ..... 

[rachelralph]

yes i have already come across some transportees in my tree in relation to the swing riots. i havent actually checked any of the criminal registars yet.

[dee-jay]

I did note that Lucy's death was registered as BONE:

FreeBMD Deaths Jun 1874   BONE Lucy  67  Alton  2c 91

[rachelralph]

yes that made me wonder too, as on the 71 census she is also BONE. i am just going round in circles here. i did think if i looked for lucy's sister ann then i might have come across lucy but no such luck, ann died quite young and her husband james bne remarried

[Little Nell]

you meantioned sarah being born to lucy, any luck finding a record of james?

You would have heard me yell 'Eureka' if I had.

Lucy was too poor to have considered divorce - divorce was only for the rich since before 1858, it required an Act of Parliament.  Lucy seems to have been on parish relief a lot of the time.

No idea if William Hale is William Bone.

The 1837 marriage certificate seems an obvious initial step to establish the names of fathers and status of the couple.

Nell 

[dee-jay]

What is rather intriguing/exciting is that copy certificates of the LASHAM girls' baptisms, marriages, and their parents' marriage are altogether in the file concerning the Oakhanger cottage that Lucy's father built, which James/Ann BONE subsequently sold.  How fortuitous is that?

[rachelralph]

i am wondering whether anyone could look prehaps for a birth of james hale born abt 1838 rather than lasham or bone.  the hale name i have a funny feeling is relevant somehow but i cant figure out how. long shot i know but maybe mr hale got lucy pregnant and allowed james to be baptised with his name, very unlikey i know but worth a shot is someone doesnt mind looking.

[dee-jay]

There were some HALEs at Selborne but the Revd COBBOLD was a very uncompromising man, very much loathed by the majority of his poor parishioners, who suffered very low wages due to excessive tithes levied on the farmers for whom the ag labs worked.

Unfortunately, it appears that the earliest available Board of Guardians' Minute Book for the Alton Union dates from the mid-1840s.  However, there are some general accounts that might reveal the parochial history of Poor Relief 1820s - 1840s.  I think Nell is right:  the starting point is the marriage cert for Lucy.

One aspect that did strike me:  COBBOLD was killed in an accident in London in the 1840s.  If the presence of the certificates with the deeds for the Oakhanger cottage sale c1851 is an indication of possible litigation, Lucy's share - if any - from the proceeds of the sale would have stirred an interest from the Guardians to recoup their expenditure on relieving her and her family.

If you'd like to learn a bit about the local social history during the Swing Riots, take a look at Peter Higginbotham's website and enter Selborne in the search box:    http://users.ox.ac.uk/~peter/workhouse/