Sunday, May 21, 2017

Sunday’s Obituary: Mary A. Howard

Since I am currently focusing on the family of my 3great-grandmother Mary A. Howard, it seems appropriate that’s today’s obituary should be hers. It is more of what I would call a death notice or a funeral notice than an obituary, not providing even her first name, but it does provide a date of death. It is, indeed, the only source I have yet obtained that does so.

The notice appeared on page 8 of the Chelmsford Chronicle on 19 Apr 1901.

MALDON.
The funeral of Mrs. Filby, mother of Mr. Wm. Filby, of the Star Inn, took place at the Cemetery on Thursday afternoon. She died on Saturday last at the ripe old age of 90.

That makes her death on 13 Apr 1901 and her burial on 18 Apr 1901. Since she died in Maldon and it says only that her funeral was at “the Cemetery,” I presume that she must have been buried at Maldon Cemetery, and on that presumption I have added her record to Findagrave.

The western part of Maldon Cemetery


Source:

Maldon,” The Chelmsford Chronicle, 19 Apr 1901, p. 8, col. 2; digital images, The British Newspaper Archive (http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk : accessed 21 May 2017), Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Mary A. Howard: Her Baptism

The Church of St. Mary & Margaret, Stow Maries


My 3great-grandmother Mary A. Howard’s birth date and place is recorded somewhat inconsistently throughout the census years, as the following chart will show.

Census Year
Birth Place
Age
Estimated Birth Year
1841
Essex
24
1817
1851
Purleigh
37
1814
1861
Stowe Marie
47
1814
1871
Purleigh
57
1814
1881
Purleigh
67
1814
1891
Stow
79
1812
1901
Purleigh
90
1811

As you can see, her birth date ranges from 1811 to 1817, but is most often recorded as 1814. Her birth place is either Purleigh or some sort of spelling variation of Stow Maries, except, of course, in the 1841 census which records only whether she was born within the county.

According to the cover letter to the Purleigh parish register extracts I was sent, the earliest record of a baptism of any Howard child in Purleigh is that of Hannah Howard in 1817. So that makes it unlikely that Mary A. was born, or at least baptized, in Purleigh. There is, on the other hand, a record of the baptism of a Mary Howard on 29 Jan 1815 in Stow-Maries. This is a fairly close match to the census records, since four of them agree that she was born in about 1814 (29 Jan 1815 is within a month of that) and two of them identify her birth place as Stow Maries. If she were raised mostly in Purleigh, that would explain why Purleigh is often reported as her place of birth.

Looking back to the baptismal record, Mary’s parents are identified as John and Mary Howard. This lends support to the hypothesis, alluded to in a former post, that the John and Mary Howard appearing on the same page as the Filby household in the 1841 census are her parents.

Since the baptismal record was found at FamilySearch, I did an online search on the entire microfilm cited. If you look at any indexed record found at FamilySearch, on the right-hand side of the page you will see a table labeled with the title of the database. Below that are items such as “Indexing Project (Batch) Number” and “System Origin.” Usually the last item is “GS Film number,” which is the microfilm number. First I copy that number and paste it into the “Film/Fiche Number” search box on the Catalog search page. (I prefer to do this in a separate tab of my browser so that the record I began at is still easily accessible.) This search will result in a list of the titles associated with that film number. In this case, there are seven items, all of them Bishop’s transcripts for various parishes in Essex, one of them Stow-Maries. Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of to search a single item, so it is vital to know that this film number is associated with multiple items.

There are at least two ways to arrive at the next step. You could click on one of the search results, scroll down to the microfilm details, find the appropriate film in the list, and then click on the magnifying glass next to it. I prefer to return to the record where I began (remember, I have kept it open in a separate tab) and click on the GS Film number. Either way, you will arrive at an alphabetical results list of all the records indexed for the film number.

Since I learned that this film is associated with seven different locations, I entered “Stow-Maries,” spelling it as it is spelled in the record, into the “Search with a life event: Any Place” search bar. (I used the “Any Place” option because I wanted to be sure to include all the records, not only baptisms.) In the surname bar I entered “Howard.”

Only one other record for a Howard in Stow Maries appears. It is the 1802 burial of a Charles Howard. However, this film is not completely indexed, so that is not to say that there are no other Howards in the parish register of Stow Maries. But until I am able to view the original register, this is all the information I have about the family’s time in that village.

(The FamilySearch site has very recently—within the last week or so—added digital images of the relevant film, but as of the writing of this post, I have been unable to view them. Either the site is suffering technical difficulties that have not yet been resolved, or the images are accessible only to members with an LDS account.)



Sources:



1841 census of England, Essex, parish of Purleigh, folio 23, page 5, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 8 Oct 2007); citing PRO HO 107/327/22.



1851 census of England, Essex, Snoreham, folio 301, page 30, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Mar 2007); citing PRO HO 107/1778.



1861 census of England, Essex, Snoreham, folio 48A, page 23-24, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 9/1089.



1871 census of England, Essex, parish of Latchingdon, folio 49, page 16, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 10/1673.



1881 census of England, Essex, parish of Latchingdon, parliamentary borough of Maldon, rural sanitary district of Maldon, folio 44, page 10, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 11/1775.



1891 census of England, Essex, Civil Parish of Canewdon, Rural Sanitary District of Rochford, Parliamentary Division of South East Essex, folio 93, page 1, household of George Amos; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 11 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 12/1393.



1901 census of England, Essex, part of civil and eccesiastical parish of St. Peter, parliamentary division of Maldon, town of Maldon, folio 28, page 14, household of William Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 19 Mar 2007); citing PRO RG 13/1691.



“England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” database, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 23 Apr 2017), entry for Mary Howards 1815 christening; citing Stow-Maries, Essex, England, reference; FHL microfilm 1,702,600. Index based upon data collected by the Genealogical Society of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Mary A. Howard: Her Illegitimate Child

Purleigh Church: All Saints


In the past few weeks several distant cousins have contacted me, all interested in the same neglected branch of my family. Obviously, with so much outside interest, that branch can no longer stay neglected.

My paternal grandma Aileen Underwood’s mom was Flora Amos, whose mom was Elizabeth Filby, whose mom was Mary A. Howard. Until recently, that was very nearly the extent of my knowledge about Mary A. Howard. I had found her in the 1841 census, working as a housekeeper for her future husband, John Filby. The previous household enumerated was headed by a John Howard, who was of the right age and surname to be her father, but I had never gotten around to seriously researching that possibility.

I had researched the John Filby family forward, finding their children, etc., after 1841, but had done very little on Mary Howard’s roots. Once, someone contacted me with the information that Mary Howard had given birth to an illegitimate child before marrying John Filby, but as I could find nothing to support that assertion in the documents I had compiled, I soon dropped that line of research.

But now a wealth of information has dropped into my lap! Although the Howard branch of my family has been long neglected by me, it has not been neglected by my new-found cousins. The task of evaluating and compiling all this information has been delightful, but also brain-twisting and, at times, downright confusing. It seems a good idea to lay out the evidence and my thinking in a series of blog posts as I reach conclusions.

The most basic conclusion I have reached thus far is that Mary Howard did, indeed, have an illegitimate child. I might never have found him on my own, but he did exist. An abstract of the Purleigh baptismal register, sent to me by one of my cousins, shows the baptism of “Joseph, illegitimate son of Mary Howard, Purleigh, Spinster” on 1 Aug 1841. Although he never appears in the same household as his mother, his name is sometimes recorded as Howard, sometimes Filby, tying him with this family. [I cannot take credit for originating these thoughts; they were sent to me by one of my cousins. But I do agree with them.] In the 1851 census he is found working as a servant under the name Joseph Filby. He appears in the Jul-Aug-Sep 1860 quarter of the Civil Registration Marriage Index, under the name Joseph Howard. Given the volume and page number given, his bride is either Mary Kingsbury or Ruth Peeke. The 1861 census quickly answers that question, as Joseph and his wife Ruth are residing with her parents, John and Sarah Peeke. Their surname is recorded as Filby. In 1871 Joseph, Ruth, and their children are again recorded as Howard, but in 1881, 1891, 1901, and 1911 the household is Filby.

In 1911, conveniently, the person filling out the sheet apparently misunderstood the instructions. Joseph and Ruth are on the first two lines, with the information that Ruth had given birth to 11 children, but only four were still living. The next eleven lines proceed to list all 11 children, with the age they would be in 1911. They are crossed out in blue, but still easily legible.



Sources:


1841 census of England, Essex, parish of Purleigh, folio 23, page 5, household of John Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 8 Oct 2007); citing PRO HO 107/327/22.

1841 census of England, Essex, parish of Purleigh, folio 23, page 6, household of John Howard; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 23 Apr 2017); citing PRO HO 107/327/22.

(Purleigh, Essex, England), "Baptisms 1813-1860," p. 126, no. 1002, baptism of Joseph Howard (1841) (abstracted by Noel Clark); FHL microfilm 1,472,666.

1851 census of England, Essex, Purleigh parish, Rochester ecclesiastical district, folio 347, page 30, Joseph Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2017); citing PRO HO 107/1778.

Graham Hart, Ben Laurie, Camilla von Massenbach and David Mayall, "England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1837-1915," database, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 7 May 2017), entry for Joseph Howard, volume 4a, page 255, Jul-Aug-Sep quarter 1860, Maldon district; citing the General Register Office's England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes.

1861 census of England, Essex, District 3, Latchingdon, folio 45, page 17, household of John Peeke; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2017); citing PRO RG 9/1089.

1871 census of England, Essex, Parish of Latchingdon Essex, District 3, Snoreham, folio 53, page 23-24, household of Joseph Howard; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2017); citing PRO RG 10/1673.

1881 census of England, Essex, Latchingdon parish, parliamentary borough and rural sanitary district of Maldon, folio 40, page 2, household of Joseph Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2017); citing PRO RG 11/1775.

1891 census of England, Essex, civil and eccesiastical parish of Latchingdon, rural sanitary district of Maldon, parliamentary division of S.E. Essex, folio 12, page 1, household of Joseph Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 22 Apr 2017); citing PRO RG 12/1397.

1901 census of England, Essex, Latchingdon with Snoreham Entire civil parish, ecclesiastical parish of Latchingdon St. Michael with Snoreham St. Peter entire, rural district of Maldon, Southeastern parliamentary division, village of Latchingdon, folio 13, page 1, household of Joseph Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 7 May 2017); citing PRO RG 13/1690.

1911 census of England, Essex, Deadway Bridge, Latchingdon, Maldon, Essex, household of Joseph Filby; digital images, Ancestry, Ancestry (www.ancestry.com : accessed 7 May 2017); citing RG 78, RG 14 PN 10204, registration district (RD) 196, sub district (SD) 2, enumeration district (ED) 11, schedule number (SN) 2.