The 12 Children of Robert Rawcliffe: 52 Ancestors - Wk.12

"12" is appropriately the prompt for week 12 of the "52 Ancestors" Challenge and I am writing about my great great grandfather Robert Rawcliffe of Hambleton, near Fleetwood, Lancashire. 

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.  

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. 

6.  Maria (1859-1919) - my great grandmother is at the heart of my family history research and writing, featuring regularly on my blog. She married James Danson at the age of eighteen and ironically, as one of many sisters, went on to have ten sons (eight surviving infancy), and o.ne daughter Jennie. 

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 4^th 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. 

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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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