The 1851 census shows Eliza Cook, widowed, age 29, a servant, b Dunbar Haddington, a pauper in Sheffield Union Workhouse, Moorfields, Sheffield, Yorkshire, with her son William Cook age 2m b Sheffield.
William Cook was born 22 Jan 1851 at 1 Court Spring Street Sheffield, mother Eliza Cook, no father recorded. Which suggests the child was illegitimate, father unknown. I cannot find any Cooks in Dunbar, which suggests the contrary.
If she were married, she might have been Elizabeth Ogilvie bpt 24 Apr 1821 to John Ogilvie & Elizabeth Niel [sic] or Elizabeth Cribbes bpt 28 Jul 1822 to George Cribbes & Jean Purves.
1. Cannot find anything else about this mother and son.
2. Does anyone know about the Cribbes family?
3. Or indeed any Cook families in Dunbar in the 1820s?
4. John Ogilvie blacksmith in Haddington & Elizabeth Neill have an MI there, showing their connections with Dunbar. Can anyone expand upon their family?
My gtgdmother Hannah Preston is recorded as being born in 1853 in Glasgow to Elizabeth Ogilvie, her fourth child. To cut a long story short, this birth record implies there were two children born sometime between 1844 and 1851 of which there is absolutely no record. Having found this 1851 census record, I'm looking at the possibility my Elizabeth Ogilvie abandoned her family, had two children (one of whom was this William Cook), then when destitute and in the poorhouse returned to her erstwhile husband, to have this fourth child (born after he married someone else!). If that's far-fetched, the alternatives are just as bad if not worse.