Discover Genealogy

Wednesday, 3 June 2015

Remarriages and Blended Families

Back in January 2015 I wrote about mixed or blended families and how common they are in almost everyone’s family tree – blog post Don’t Forget About Those Half-Brothers and Sisters.

In three of the parishes I look after as an Online Parish Clerk, Cornwood, Plympton St. Mary and Plympton St. Maurice, the church registers contain a great many entries of second and, sometimes, third marriages of residents. I took the time to go through the lists to see how many remarriages had occurred and if there were any trends in the numbers.

The oldest entries do not always have a lot of information about the individuals who married but most parishes appear to have consistently recorded whether the bride and/or groom were widows or widowers. Following are the numbers of entries in the marriage registers for the three parishes that indicate whether one or both parties were widowed:

Plympton St. Mary
	Total Marriages	Widows & Widowers			% of Total Marriages	Both Parties Widowed
	Total Marriages	Females	Males	Total	% of Total Marriages	Number	% of Total
1600-1649	659	15	0	15	2.3%	0
1650-1699	498	3	2	5	1.0%	0
1700-1749	432	15	0	15	3.5%	0
1750-1799	571	24	1	25	4.4%	0
1800-1849	608	37	55	74	12.2%	18	24.3%
1850-1899	761	41	75	95	12.5%	21	22.1%
1900-1949	1054	46	67	96	9.1%	17	17.7%
Totals	4583	181	200	325	7.1%

Plympton St. Maurice
	Total Marriages	Widows & Widowers			% of Total Marriages % of Total	Both Parties Widowed
	Total Marriages	Females	Males	Number	% of Total Marriages % of Total	Number	% of Total
1600-1649	156	4	1	5	3.1%	0
1650-1699	299	7	0	7	2.3%	0
1700-1749	188	4	0	4	2.1%	0
1750-1799	168	9	12	18	10.7%	3	16.7%
1800-1849	170	7	20	22	12.9%	5	22.7%
1850-1899	204	19	16	26	12.8%	9	34.6%
1900-1949	305	9	9	14	4.6%	4	28.6%
Totals	1490	59	58	96	6.4%

Cornwood
	Total Marriages	Widows & Widowers			% of Total Marriages	Both Parties Widowed
	Total Marriages	Females	Males	Total	% of Total Marriages	Number	% of Total
1600-1649	No records prior to 1685
1650-1699	77	0	0	0	0.00%	0
1700-1749	166	0	0	0	0.00%	0
1750-1799	234	17	6	23	9.83%	0
1800-1849	285	13	17	22	7.72%	8	36.4%
1850-1899	316	10	12	17	5.38%	5	29.4%
1900-1949	288	8	12	13	4.51%	7	53.9%
Totals	1366	48	47	75	5.49%

One of the results of the analysis that stood out was the increase in number and percentage of remarriages over the decades, except in Cornwood parish. Also, in the early periods (17^th century) the records indicate that the preponderance of people marrying for a second time was women. By the 19^th century there were a great many more widowers than widows exchanging vows. I might have expected the reverse for the first half of the 19^th century as many men had been killed in the war with Napoleon which must have left many widows at home needing support. Interestingly, until the late 1700s there were no marriages recorded where both parties were widowed.

We know that life expectancy was not great in the 1600s and 1700s. Occasionally epidemics would sweep through parishes causing untimely deaths. It is quite conceivable that men, because of their hard physical labour may have been more apt to be killed in accidents or die at a younger age. Men were also engaged as soldiers. In times of conflict or war, more men would have died, in many cases leaving young wives and families to fend for themselves.

The substantial increase in the numbers of remarriages, in particular, the number of widowers taking a second wife, do not appear to be related to major conflicts or diseases. Families with children were the most vulnerable when one parent was lost. Both widows and widowers married very soon after the death of their spouses in order to keep a household stable. As noted before formal adoption was not recognized until the early 1900s in England but families still needed two parents to ensure economic conditions remained firm and that the needs of children were fulfilled. The second marriage created many blended families I wrote about in my January post.

Perhaps, by the 1800s, women had more ability, through at least basic education, and opportunity, in growing communities and with industrial enterprises, to find employment outside the traditional home which had for centuries centred on the work of the husband. Thus women’s need to remarry was somewhat alleviated. Men, on the other hand, especially those with young children, needed a stay-at-home wife and mother in their household and would be more likely to remarry – and quickly.

A number of second marriages were between older people, often after both of them had been widowed – probably marriages of convenience as much as economic need. This was certainly true in Cornwood parish which is mainly a farming community. Before 1800, no second marriages involved both parties being widowed. In the 20% century over half of such marriages were between widowed people – the greater majority of them over 60 years of age.

There is no ready answer for all of the numbers yet. A study of particular families involved and a review of the causes of death of the spouses would shed more light on the matter.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Bastards! (Oops!)

I’ve never really studied illegitimacy in genealogical records much. My wife’s grandfather was one and I think it plagued him all of his life. We found his birth record very early on in the search of his family history and there it was, written plain as day, “Illegitimate”. On many formal records, he gave erroneous data about his parentage, showing the name of a non-existent father on his two marriage records and the first name of a step-father on his military attestation papers. He told stories about his upbringing that only had a grain of truth to them. He was apparently a very difficult man to live with, especially to his children, and I wonder if the start he had in life was not something that in part at least resulted in those poor attitudes.

In poring through thousands of parish register entries as an Online Parish Clerk I have come across many baptism entries for “base children”. A great number of them were born in and lived with their single mothers in the local workhouse which probably contributed to the relaxed morals.

It seemed that there were many periods when quite a lot of illegitimate children were baptized but I had not done any in-depth study to demonstrate the fact. A comment in an article or blog – I don’t remember now where I saw it – prompted me to go back to the baptism registers of those Devon parishes I look after and actually count them. The numbers and trends were surprising! Below is a table showing the illegitimate births in the four parishes, broken down in 50-year periods. The totals include:

· children who were identified in the register as “base born” (the most common description) or “illegitimate”

· children whose mothers were shown as single women

· children where no father was listed, no occupation was shown for the mother or where the occupation suggested the woman was single, such as a servant

Beginning in the mid-1800s, even while population was increasing in these parishes, baptisms were declining. Births after 1837 were required to be registered with civil authorities so the parish records became less important in terms of showing all children born in an area. Notwithstanding this fact, the ratios of illegitimacy to total baptisms may still be representative of the total population.

Plympton St. Mary Parish, Devon
	Female	Male	Total Illegitimate	% Illegitimate	Total Baptisms
1600-1649	27	39	66	2.97%	2,223
1650-1699	21	16	37	1.99%	1,856
1700-1749	33	34	67	4.55%	1,472
1750-1799	60	75	135	6.62%	2,039
1800-1849	118	151	269	8.01%	3,359
1850-1899	214	258	472	11.75%	4,017
1900-1949	91	79	170	5.41%	3,143

The questions from this data are why certain areas and certain periods have a large proportion of illegitimate births.

In Plympton St. Mary, the largest parish in terms of population, a peak was reached during the second half of the 19^th century with almost 12% of births from single mothers. The rate of illegitimate births had been increasing gradually since the late 1700s but rapidly increased during the 1800s. Many of the small villages east of Plymouth grew into large towns, gradually coalescing into a more urban centre around Plympton St. Maurice. The population of Plympton St. Mary grew from 1,562 in 1801 to 3,812 in 1901.

There appears to have been rapid expansion and economic development throughout the 19^th century in the Plympton region perhaps due to nearby Plymouth becoming a major seaport and attracting new industry. Its port would have been a major draw to import and export businesses. My own 3^rd great-grandfather, and at least one of his brothers, moved from the rural parish of Cornwood to Underwood Village in Plympton St. Mary in the early 1850s. Both were carpenters, no doubt seeking work in the bustling building industry.

So did the hive of activity draw many more single people to the area with the natural result being more social interaction that would have been the case in quiet rural parishes? Did the port city have a more transient population where quick interactions of people occurred but permanent bonds did not develop?

A workhouse was established in Plympton St. Mary in 1836. That institution attracted many destitute individuals and families who were crowded into the facility. Relationships very likely developed between individuals as result of that closeness in living conditions leading, of course, to unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. The residence show for over 350 of the base children baptized was the workhouse.

The fact of increased illegitimacy rates appears firm. The reasons as yet are not really understood. Answers might be forthcoming with research on the actual families involved to see where the individuals, mothers primarily, originated and how they came to be in the state they found themselves – one generally of economic plight.

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

A Surprising and Disturbing Ancestral Discovery

I came across a transcription of a will of one of my 5^th great-grandfathers the other day and its contents surprised me. In the 1806 document he left seven of his surviving adult children a “negro” boy or girl. It is the first reference I have found that one of my ancestors owned slaves and it was (still is) a shock.

I understand that south of the Mason-Dixon Line – this family lived in Kentucky – slave-ownership was not uncommon in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Most of us probably think it was always someone else’s family that participated in this abhorrent practice, so it is all the more disturbing to find it was present among your own direct ancestors.

There is no changing history and no use in trying to apologize for someone who lived over two hundred years ago. The facts, in this case a will, are part of a public record and there no point in trying to hide it. In this case I have no need to publish the man’s name (I will just refer to him as “Grandfather George”) as there may be other direct descendants who may feel more sting because their surname is the same as his.

This ancestor left an estate comprised of a “plantation” of 108 acres, surely a farm of good size for the area and time. The eldest son received those lands in total as was the tradition and law of primogeniture. His siblings each were “given” a slave (there is no other word to describe them), four of them girls and three, boys. What is jarring to read is that each of the people handed over in the will firstly were named, reminding us that they were real people, and, at the same time, equated to each having a value of 80 pounds, demonstrating to us that they were considered chattels.

Grandfather George also gave two women slaves “their liberty to be under the control of none but the laws of the land & supported in their decline of life by exers”, presumed to mean that these people would receive monetary and other assistance from the estate. I suppose this might demonstrate that Grandfather George had some sort of compassion for the people he “owned” and who had served him, perhaps not always commonplace among such men.

There is no mention of other slaves having been owned by Grandfather George but it is hard to imagine a 108-acres farm being handed over without most of the labour force that had been in place at the time. The 1810 US census for Bourbon County, Kentucky, shows the family of Grandfather George’s eldest son, who had inherited the farm, had two slaves – another shock once I realized this was probably my ancestor.

A slave owned by a daughter of Grandfather George also was granted freedom, such event to occur upon her death. A “Deed by Heirs” was executed by the children of this woman in 1828, 14 years after the death of their father who had “expressed a wish that said Isaac should be set free and emancipated at the death of” their mother. The mother did not die until 1849, however, so it is unknown whether Isaac was still owned until then or even alive when she passed on. At any rate, the document does reveal that at least some members of the family were still slave-owners well into the 1800s. I will look for other descendants of Grandfather George now to see how many were involved in the practice.

As a Canadian prairie boy born in the mid-20^th century, this is not a subject I am familiar with, nor comfortable about. As I indicated, it is part of history, though. We cannot pretend it did not happen but we can be still be startled by a discovery that some ancestors played a part.

I am learning about slavery in Kentucky on these websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Kentucky

https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/4033

http://www.ket.org/kentuckystory/program5.htm

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Kentucky_African_Americans

https://www.ucumberlands.edu/academics/history/files/vol10/JeremiahTaylor98.html

http://nkaa.uky.edu/record.php?note_id=2283