Family knowledge about the Rawcliffe line was vague. My mother knew little apart from the fact "granny" (Maria Rawcliffe) came from "over Wyre" i.e.north of the River Wyre - a network of small villages, but where exactly was not known, plus the fact she had two sisters, Anne who married a farmer and Jane who married a Fleetwood man named Riley. There was also an intriguing anecdote about Granny had a step-brother Jo Brekall. So not a lot to go on.
Research through the standard sources of certificates, census returns, Ancestry Family Search and Lancashire Parochial Records Online revealed it to be a story of eight daughters, the early death of their mother; a step mother and four half-brothers and sisters - twelve children in all. They illustrated the vicissitudes of Victorian life, with infant deaths, illegitimacy, early widowhood, remarriages, and the discovery of my first emigrant ancestor seeking a new life in the USA.
My great great grandfather Robert Rawcliffe lived 1821-1904, dying at the age of 84. He married Jane Carr in 1846, with the following children born to the marriage.
1. Anne (1847-1928) - was the first first
of eight daughter. named after her
paternal grandmother. In the 1861 census she was living away from home as a 13 year old servant. Aged about 25 she had an illegitimate daughter Jane Alice, and a year later married gamekeeper Robert Roskell. One of her three daughters was named Maria, after her youngest (surviving ) sister, my great grandmother (I liked that link). But burial records revealed deaths in the family - infant twin son Matthew died at three weeks old in 1882 and eldest daughter Jane died in 1887, aged only fourteen; with husband Robert dying in 1894 at the young age of 42.
By the time of the 1901 Census, Anne, a grocer/shopkeeper had moved from a small rural village to the town of Fleetwood, where she married her second husband John Jenkinson. She died 4 April 1928 and was buried, not in Fleetwood, but beside
her first husband and young children at St. Anne's Church, Singleton. Her age on her gravestone was given as 79.
2. Jane (1850-1926) - was the second daughter, named after her mother and paternal grandmother. She married Thomas Riley in 1873. The photograph below came from an
internet contact descendant and shows four generations of their family.
Jane Riley, nee Rawcliffe with her son George (left)
grandson (Jack) and Jack's baby son George Robert who did not survive infancy.
3. Margaret (1852-1852) - third daughter was born 11th November 1852, but only lived for three weeks, buried 4th December 1882.
4. Alice (1853-1930) - the fourth daughter was christened Alice Margaret, perhaps in remembrance of the baby sister who had died a year earlier. In the 1871 census she was a domestic servant, and two years later married John Mason, a general labourer. Six children were born and then In 1886-87 the they took the momentous decision to leave the fishing port of Fleetwood for the teeming tenements of Brooklyn, New York. where they had a further five children. Alice is my blog success story, as my third cousin, a descendant of Alice's youngest daughter Florence, found my blog and gave me a wo.dnerful connection of stories and photographs.
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| Alice Mason, nee Rawcliffe with her husband and three of their eleven children
5. Jennet (1856-1902) - In 1873, 18 year old Jennet was a witness a the marriage of her sister Jane toThomas Riley, with the other witness Thomas's brother Richard. Five years later Jennet and Richard married. but happiness was short lived for Richard died in 1891 aged just 33. Jennet remarried a seaman, Edward Alexander Braham. but again their marriage was cut short, with the death of Jennet in 1902 - the first of the five surviving Rawcliffe sisters to die.
 7. Peggy (1861-1861) - was the last of the Rawcliffe sisters to be traced. Her short life lasted only sixteen days. 8. Martha (1863-1863) - the baptism entry for Martha was a puzzle, for she was given the middle name "Septima" meaning seventh daughter, - yet she was the eighth. Also how did her parents, with Robert an agricultural labourer, and with Jane making their mark on their marriage certificate know about the Latin inspired name? The third puzzle - why did my great grandmother Maria adopt the name Martha for many official records, including her marriage certificate? Maria could hardly have remembered her baby sister. |
So Robert's wife, Jane,
gave birth to eight children in a sixteen year period Jane was
aged 44 at the birth of her youngest daughter Martha and died two years later,
buried on 4th May 1865, leaving her five young daughters
motherless at the ages of 6, 8, 11, 14 and 17. Jane and her baby daughters were all buried at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Hambleton. Unfortunately there are no gravestones, and no listings in monumental inscriptions for Robert Rawcliffe's family.
In 1875 Robert married his second wife Elizabeth Brekall, twenty years his junior and they had four children in six years:
9. Grace (1876-?) - perhaps named after Robert's sister Grace.
10. John (1878 -?) - perhaps named after his maternal grandfather.
11. Robert (1879-1883) - a record of Hambleton church recorded the burial of young 4 year old Robert.
12. Margaret (1881-?)
No baptism records were traced for this seocnd group of Rawcliffe children and more research needs to be done into their lives.
But there was a second dimension to Robert's second marriage. For Elizabeth Brekall came to the marriage with three children of her own - Dorothy, Mary Ellen, and Joseph (the Joe Brekall of my mother's family story). I naturally assumed they were children of Elizabethan's first husband - the classic family history mistake - do not assume! For her wedding certificate to Robert identified Elizabeth as a spinster.
One cannot help speculate on the circumstances that led Elizabeth tp bear three illegitimate children over a thirteen year span. The children were all baptised, but no father named on the record. The earlier census returns showed that Elizabeth and her children were living with her parents, with her father an agricultural labourer, so times must have been hard.
The 1881 census showed a crowded Rawcliffe household with father Robert 61, an agricultural labourer, Elizabeth 41 and six children, ranging from 2 months old to eleven. Ten years on it was depleted family with just Joseph and John, living at home.
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In 1875 Robert married his second wife Elizabeth Brekall, twenty years his junior and they had four children in six years:
9. Grace (1876-?) - perhaps named after Robert's sister Grace.
10. John (1878 -?) - perhaps named after his maternal grandfather.
11. Robert (1879-1883) - a record of Hambleton church recorded the burial of young 4 year old Robert.
12. Margaret (1881-?)
No baptism records were traced for this seocnd group of Rawcliffe children and more research needs to be done into their lives.
But there was a second dimension to Robert's second marriage. For Elizabeth Brekall came to the marriage with three children of her own - Dorothy, Mary Ellen, and Joseph (the Joe Brekall of my mother's family story). I naturally assumed they were children of Elizabethan's first husband - the classic family history mistake - do not assume! For her wedding certificate to Robert identified Elizabeth as a spinster.
One cannot help speculate on the circumstances that led Elizabeth tp bear three illegitimate children over a thirteen year span. The children were all baptised, but no father named on the record. The earlier census returns showed that Elizabeth and her children were living with her parents, with her father an agricultural labourer, so times must have been hard.
The 1881 census showed a crowded Rawcliffe household with father Robert 61, an agricultural labourer, Elizabeth 41 and six children, ranging from 2 months old to eleven. Ten years on it was depleted family with just Joseph and John, living at home.
Robert, senior was to live until the age of 83, buried at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Hambleton 14th April 1904, twenty one years after the burial of his young namesake son.
To use a term in current use, this was a truly "blended" family,
of 12 half-siblings and 4 step-siblings.
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