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Dreary lives.

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  • Dreary lives.

    No tragedy here (well, only the usual) but I really felt quite depressed after I had finished tracing this family.

    Sarah Trafford, born in 1826 into a fairly comfortable farming family, nevertheless is in service by the time she is 12.

    In 1847 she has an illegitimate son, Arthur, who is with his grandparents in 1851. In 1861 Sarah and Arthur are living together and Sarah is a Laundress.

    In 1868 she finally gets herself a husband, who is 20 years older than herself and at the age of 43, gives birth to their son in 1870.

    Her new husband promptly dies on her and by 1871 she is a widow again, with her two sons living with her, aged 25 and 2!

    Arthur Trafford marries in 1873. His wife is dead by 1875, aged 22 and leaves him with a daughter Ada.

    1881 sees Sarah Trafford, a widow, oat cake maker(!) her widowed son Arthur, his daughter, and her young son from her marriage. They are still together in 1891 but in 1901, Joseph Rhodes has made a run for it and married. Astonishingly, he is a Technical Chemist, married to an artist (oil painter, own account).

    Sarah and her son Arthur and granddaughter Ada are still living together in1901.

    Arthur died in 1902 and so did Joseph. Haven't found Sarah's death yet but...oh, what a dreary life they all led.

    Yes, I know it's only a snapshot every ten years - they might have been out every night razzing it up, but I just feel the gloom coming off them.

    Needed to share that, sorry!

    OC

  • #2
    My "Solomon Grundy" tale is about Alice from Devon whose father was a coachman. At the age of 17 she's in London, married to a merchant seaman also from Devon. Two years later her daughter is born and a year after that they are divorced, she having taken up with a married Scottish clerk. A year later they have a child.

    They are together for another 4 years when he dies of TB, two years after his wife's death. A couple of years later she marries a twice-widowed publican 30 years her senior. A litle ray of sunshine is that her father is a witness at the wedding. But then she too dies of TB, just over a year later, just before her 28th. birthday.

    Her husband dies about three years later, and her first husband, now captain of a coaster, dies of apoplexy five years later, while sailing up a German river on the eve of his 46th. birthday.

    And finally, the daughter, having been brought up by her grandparents, loses them both by the age of 10.
    Uncle John - Passed away March 2020

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    • #3
      My gt x 2 grandfather Emmets Matthews was born, married and died in Whichford, Warwickshire. He is on every census, increasing in age 10 years each time, from 1841-71 as labourer. He and his wife had 8 children, most of whom moved away.
      His wife registered Emmets' death when she herself was already suffering from the disease from which she died the following month.

      I remember getting very excited when I found that although Emmets was married in his native village on the marriage cert it actually states that he was "of the parish of Long Compton" which proved he did get away - to the next parish!!!!

      However, I am very grateful to Emmets. His unusual surname (after the maiden name of his paternal grandmother) enabled me to identify the correct parents for him (2 sets of Richard & Ann having children at the same time - the Richard whose Mum was Anne Emmets helped to sort him out) plus the fact that many of Emmets' grand and great grandchildren had Emmets as a first or middle name, helped me sort out the Matthews that were from my family.
      ~ with love from Little Nell~
      Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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      • #4
        One of my ancestors had an illegitimate child, never married, took in her two adult brothers when they went blind, and looked after them until they died. I suppose she got her reward in heaven, but she can't have had much fun in life.

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        • #5
          Best mate has an ancestor, Mary Lanning, whose mother dies at an early age. She shuttles about all over the place, before marrying John Wall, a sealing wax maker in Lambeth. After a few years, he dies in Soho, leaving her with a clutch of small children. Again, she is moving all over the place, often lodging with relatives.
          Her daughters marry: Emma to the latest of a line of feckless ne'er do wells (best mate's ancestors), Mary Jane to Thomas Lanning, a second cousin. She produces a brood of children then dies, promptly followed by Tom.
          Granny in her sixties has to start again from scratch, bringing up a family on her own. This task is no doubt made harder by the fact that one of the girls is what the census describes as an imbecile.
          This seems such a sad existence, characterised by early loss after early loss. No stories have filtered down about this woman. But there are masses of stories regarding Granny Lanning. Before we did any research, we thought that this was best mate's ancestor. Instead the stories appear to relate to at least THREE different Granny Lannings, mainly on Tom's side of the family.
          These stories must have been told to the orphans by their Granny Wall and picked up by their cousins.
          Mary Wall nee Lanning clearly had a hard life, with more than her fair share of knocks, but she bequeathed her grandchildren a wonderful treasury of family tales in which all the women emerge as feisty and resourceful.
          Phoenix - with charred feathers
          Researching Skillings from Norfolk, Sworn from Salisbury and Adams in Malborough, Devon.

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          • #6
            I think women had to be feisty and resourceful then, didn't they? No benefits system worth mentioning, constant fear of the rentman calling, outbreaks of illness to be feared at all times.

            I don't know what their thoughts were, but I am certain that they wouldn't be worrying about whether their handbag matched their shoes. Probably wondering if their shoes could last another year or two!
            ~ with love from Little Nell~
            Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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            • #7
              Phoenix

              I get the feeling that Sarah Trafford was a resourceful woman too - after all those years of domestic drudgery and laundering, I nearly wept when I saw her calling herself an "oatcake maker".

              This must have seemed such a cushy job after that. What small aspirations to have but how commendable when she could have just laid down and died.

              The Traffords as a whole never get much off the ground as a family - my direct ancestor Mary Trafford bled to death after the birth of her eleventh child, when she was just 32 years of age.

              I knew that eleventh child very well...cheerful, hardworking, very resourceful, never married and someone else's slave all her life.

              OC

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              • #8
                Given that they lived in the Elephant & Castle area and the more populous parts of London north of the river, I would agree with you Nell, so I don't know what to make of one of the unproveable legends:

                Granny Lanning is held up by highwaymen. She quickly bundles all her jewels into her shawl and when confronted, says "Pray do not wake my baby" and is let on her way without losing the jewels!
                Phoenix - with charred feathers
                Researching Skillings from Norfolk, Sworn from Salisbury and Adams in Malborough, Devon.

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                • #9
                  OC

                  Dreadful, when you think what women's lives were like -victims of their sex and biology.
                  My gt x 2 grandmother Ann had an elder brother who spent most of his life in Broadmoor. She had twin sons that died within weeks of their birth. She herself bled to death having her 8th (stillborn) child at the age of 38. She wasn't to know, but her eldest daughter died aged 40. These are some of my Gloucestershire lot, who seem marked for tragedy - madness, suicide, illegitimate children farmed out, many, many deaths before the age of 25.
                  ~ with love from Little Nell~
                  Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                  • #10
                    I must confess, OC, that you look at some of the women who were charwomen, laundrymaids and agricultural labourers, you know that they must have had lives of unbelievable hardness.

                    I find it really difficult when looking at the records, particularly parish records, trying to work out what sort of life an ag lab would have lived. Were they day labourers, with an ever present fear of the workhouse, or skilled men in decent cottages? I tend to place them all in Mummersetshire, which I know is wrong, but difficult to avoid.
                    Phoenix - with charred feathers
                    Researching Skillings from Norfolk, Sworn from Salisbury and Adams in Malborough, Devon.

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                    • #11
                      Yes, I think some ag labs had definite jobs - I've found them as oxmen or ploughmen for example. But a lot were hired by the day and there wasn't much work in the winter. I know my Dad told me his Dad and brothers (born on the Norfolk marshes) all moved to London, as the only work available was badly paid and erratic farm labouring, or fishing (and gt grannie thought that was too dangerous).

                      Which is why 4 of them joined the Met and one the City of London police. My grandfather was too small for either, though allegedly the strongest of the lot.
                      ~ with love from Little Nell~
                      Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                      • #12
                        I can't imagine what the life of an Agri Lab was like - except it was hard!

                        But they were resourceful!!!

                        A number of my ancestors were Agri Lab shepherds. One had a very lucrative sideline smuggling. He would wait until the barrels of brandy had been rolled into the village, then drive his sheep back and forth to cover the tracks, for which he was well rewarded!

                        Another was known by his employer as a "stout man". Apparently he was whippet thin, but invariably had a rabbit or two, or a couple of pheasants shoved up his shepherd's smock, into which he had sewn a big inside pocket.

                        Another of my Agri Labs couldnt afford a horse to plough his own bit of land, so trained the family pig to pull the plough!

                        Bless 'em.

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                        • #13
                          However hard the life of an ag lab, I should think it was infinitely preferable to working in the mills and factories.

                          At least an ag lab always had access to a few potatoes, cabbage and the odd rabbit, unlike the townies.

                          Most of my early ag labs were weavers as well with a handloom, so nearly always possible to earn a few pennies somehow.

                          OC

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                          • #14
                            OC

                            Generally my ag labs lived to a reasonable (70s-80s) old age (a handful to their 90s. I guess they had fresh air, exercise and ready access as you say to vegetables. They would have done what needed doing, not necessarily clocking on and off as in a factory, and would probably have been left to get on with it rather than having a foreman breathing down their necks.

                            My gt x 3 grandfather Robert Chowns rented a cottage with an orchard. He sold the fruit from the orchard which covered his rent & rates, and also kept a few pigs. He spent over 20 years living in a privately-endowed almshouse of just 6 inhabitants, he got 1/- a week to spend on meat, new boots every year and had a chapel to pray in. He lived to be 93.
                            ~ with love from Little Nell~
                            Chowns, Dunt, Emms, Mealing, Purvey & Smoothy

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                            • #15
                              Yes, my ag labs generally lived to a ripe old age, barring the odd accident. They didn't start dying young till they moved into the cities and TB got them.

                              OC

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