The story begins with John Baker my 4th great grandfather (maternal). Born in North Newington, Oxfordshire, England in 1814.
At the tender age of twenty-one, he married his sweetheart Esther Bayliss. Esther was born in Halford, Shropshire in 1816 and was only nineteen when they married on May 11th, 1835. Here's some music from that time.
They were married at St Martin's in Birmingham.
By the age of twenty-seven, and twenty-five they start showing up in the 1841 census as a family. At that time they were living in Halford, and John was a tailor. By Victorian standards they were happily middle class.
This census has him aged 25, but you'll see why that's incorrect later on.
The 1851 census.
The 1861 census.
 The 1871 census.  Esther died shortly after this census was taken, aged fifty-five in 1871. She and John had been married for over thirty-six years and had eight surviving children (from these censuses we can't tell if any children pre-deceased them). Still searching for the 1881 census. The 1891 census shows John living with his youngest daughter Frances, who like her dad was a tailoress.  John passed away in 1896, aged eighty-two years of age. He was buried alongside his wife and two of his daughters Annie (1895?) and Frances (1913?). Thank you to the genealogy group on Facebook for helping decipher this gravestone.  During there lives they saw four monarchs in England; George III, George IV, William IV and Queen Victoria. They were born in the Georgian era, lived through the Regency era and married and raised their family during the early Victorian era. |
No comments:
Post a Comment