Great Grandmother's Eleven Sisters: Sepia Saturday

My great grandmother Maria Rawcliffe (left)  0f Hambleton , Lancashire  was one of eight sisters,  two half-sisters and two step-sisters -  twelve in all.  

 

Maria’s was a story of  eight daughters, born to my great great grandparents,  the early death of their mother;   a stepmother  who came to the marriage with two illegitimate daughters, and subsequently bore two half sisters.   

 

The life of the Rawcliffe  family illustrated the vicissitudes of Victorian society   with infant deaths, illegitimacy, early widowhood, remarriages, plus 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 83. He married Jane Carr in 1846, withe birth of Maria's sisters as follows:

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 aunt. ). But burial records revealed early 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, was  a grocer/shopkeeper  and had  moved from a small rural village of Thistleton  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.(right)   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 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 wonderful collection  of stories and photographs.  

 

 Alice (centre) with her husband John Mason, and their eight surviving children.  

5.  Jennet (1856-1902)  - in 1873 she was a witness at the marriage of her sister Jane to Thomas 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.  The census of that year saw Jennet a widow with son Thomas 9 years old. Daughter Jane was traced to the home of Jennet's sister.  Jennet remarried a seaman Edward Alexander Braham.  But again their marriage was cut short with the death of Jennet in 1902, aged 45 - the first of the five surviving Rawcliffe sisters to die.  

 

6.  (The birth of my grandmother - Maria (1859-1919). 

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 Maria 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 1875 Robert married his second wife Elizabeth Brekall, twenty years his junior and they had four children in six years, including two daughters - half sisters to my great grandmother.

9. Grace (1876-?) - perhaps named after Robert's sister,  Grace.  In the 1891 census she was a domestic servant in Wardley’s, a pub on the banks of the River Wyre , near Hambleton.

10,   Margaret (1881-?)  No baptism records were traced for this second 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, ia son and two daughters:

10. Dorothy, born in 1861 in Stalmine, Lancashire. More research need here.  

11. Mary Ellen,  born in 1869 in Stalmine Lancashire.  By  the time of the 1901 census, she was married to John Walmsley Raby  and had two daughters.  Also with with the family was Mary's mother Elizabeth Rawcliffe, nee Brekall.  Was she just visiting on census  night, because her husband Robert did not die until 1904?   Elizabeth was still with the Raby family in the 1911 census.      

  

So at the age of 16, Maria acquired two new step sisters. I naturally assumed they were children of Elizabeth'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 to bear three illegitimate children over a thirteen year span. The children were all baptised,  but no father named on their 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, a farmer of three acres,   Elizabeth 41 and  six children, ranging from two  months old to eleven years .  

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Maria (1859-1919)
Perhaps not surprisingly,  my great grandmother Maria  appears to have left home not long after her father's second marriage.   She married James Danson in 1877 at the age of 18, with the address on her marriage certificate that of her eldest married sister Anne.   

The sisters remained close, judging by the tradition of naming their daughters after their sisters, with Anne, Jane and Jennet all ending their lives in the town of Fleetwood. 

Maria is at the heart of my family history research and writing, featuring regularly on my blog. Ironically, as one of so many sisters, she went on to have ten sons (eight surviving infancy), and finally her only daughter Jennie. 

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