Last time, you heard about the tragedy that befell the Jobbern family after the almost simultaneous deaths of the two eldest children. This week, one line on a gravestone helped me begin to piece together where Catherine and her daughters went…and what they resorted to along the way.
Stage 1 – Manchester
Catherine and her two remaining daughters had clearly left Thomas in Birmingham by 1847. But where had they gone? They hadn’t remained in Birmingham, they were nowhere to be found in the 1851 Census.
Sarah Ann
The first one of them to be located was Sarah Ann. She had married John Baptist Bradshaw on 17th August 1847 at Manchester Cathedral. She gave her father’s name and profession as Thomas Jobern, silversmith which was a clear match.
Neither her mother nor her sister had witnessed this marriage, so I wasn’t sure if she’d arrived in Manchester alone at this stage. It turned out that they had also married on the same day at the Roman Catholic church of St Augustine in Chorlton Upon Medlock, a mile away. This helpfully also further confirmed her identity by naming her mother as Catherine.
They’d not kept the marriage a secret, publishing it in the marriage notices of several newspapers in Manchester and Liverpool.
Sarah Ann and John were easily found in the 1851 census in Hulme, Manchester. Further confirmation that this was the right Sarah Ann was provided by her birthplace of Handsworth, which was in the correct area of Birmingham. They had no children at this stage, but did have both a servant and a lodger. John was a wine and spirit merchant’s agent. She had clearly moved up in the world.
Catherine and Jane
So where were her sister and mother? The 1851 Manchester Census is very difficult to read in some parts due to water damage, but I eventually found Jane with her mother, now known as Catherine Fowler, also in Hulme, lodging with the Hayhurst family.
Interestingly Jane was described as a ‘Professor of Music’, while Catherine was a Monthly Nurse. Catherine’s name had changed to Fowler and she was described as a widow. The GRO index had a marriage between a Catherine Jobbern and a William Fowler listed for 1845 – so I ordered it.
Though she described herself as a widow at this marriage too, we know Thomas was still alive till 1851. This was the first bigamous marriage I stumbled across. One of the witnesses was her daughter Sarah Ann. This was a pattern that would repeat. I found William in 1841 with his first wife Jane, but do not know for sure that he was the widower he claimed to be either. It is probable that Catherine was telling the truth when she claimed to be a widow of her second marriage (if not the first!) in the census, as I’ve not yet found any trace of William beyond their marriage. I’m deciding whether to invest in the pot luck of death certificates to find him with such a common name – sometimes you need to avoid the rabbit holes!
So it appears that Thomas’ wife and both his daughters left him in Birmingham very soon after the deaths of Caroline and Thomas junior in 1844.
No further signs of them were apparent in Manchester so I began a broader search for Fowlers and Job(b)erns. One line on gravestone posted at FindAGrave suddenly revealed where they had gone.
Stage 2 – USA – ‘One line on a Gravestone…’
Catherine and both her daughters were buried together in Stamford, Connecticut in the US! One line on the gravestone showed beyond doubt it was the right people. However, the whole stone raised questions of its own.
Whoever had commissioned the gravestone did so after the death of Sarah in 1911 as it was obviously all carved at the same time. And they wanted it to be clear that Catherine Fowler had been married to Thomas Jobern, and that her daughters were his daughters. This is what tied the gravestone to the family from Birmingham and Manchester. Who that person was remains a mystery that I’m trying to get to the bottom of, but I have my suspicions (to be revealed later!)
What it also revealed was the husbands of the daughters. But wait, where was John Baptist Bradshaw? Sarah Ann’s husband was named as Isaac Wood! More on that later.
Sarah Ann
I managed to find John and Sarah Ann Bradshaw living next door to Catherine and Jane in New York City in the 1860 Census.
John and Sarah Ann had had two daughters, mistakenly recorded as having been born in Mississippi. The vital records for Boston, Massachusetts reveal that this was actually where they had been born. So John had made it to the US with them sometime in the early 1850s.
I can find none of them in the 1870 US Census yet. Nor the 1871 England & Wales Census. But why would I even look there? Well…
…guess where I found the marriage of Sarah Ann and Isaac Wood in 1869? Manchester!!
Both state they are widowed. It is the correct Sarah Ann. Her father is named as Thomas Jobern, though he has mysteriously become a ‘manager’ rather than a silversmith now. Digging into Isaac’s background explains why. He came from quite a respected and well-to-do family in the US. Sarah Ann was reinventing her background. Both of her teenage daughters witnessed this bigamous marriage, as she had her mother’s.
In truth, neither party to this marriage were widowed. This too is a bigamous marriage. Isaac had left his wife, Eliza Jane (nee Griffith) who was alive and kicking for at least two further censuses, and their two daughters, Eliza Jane Wood and Catherine Cole Wood. John Baptist Bradshaw appears to have died in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1881.
I don’t know how long Sarah Ann’s marriage to Isaac lasted. She is next found in the 1881 Census in Chinley, Derbyshire with her daughters (helpfully confirming their birthplace as Boston), listed as married, but Isaac is not with them, and I have found him in neither the 1881 Census, nor back in the US in the 1880 Census. He died in 1895 in the ‘House for Aged Men’ in Brooklyn, New York. This was a charity home, so he had fallen on hard times (perhaps disowned by his family for his actions?). He is buried in the Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Sarah Ann and her daughters had returned to the US by 1900 (probably before 1891 as they cannot be found in the 1891 English Census and Louisa married in 1896 in the US). She was living in Broad St, Stamford with her married daughter Louisa in both the 1900 and 1910 Censuses. The 1900 Census indicates her immigration was in 1854 which fits well with the birth of her daughter Louisa in Boston in the same year.
Sarah Ann died in Stamford on 24th November 1911. Multiple death notices were published in the newspapers of Stamford and Bridgeport in Connecticut, Boston and New York. These provide evidence of her further embellishing the story of her background. Her father was said to have been an aide to the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. Ahem. If you recall from the first blog on the Jobbern family, his service records show him as a private, discharged with a very bad conduct record, and he had never served outside of Scotland and Ireland on garrison duty only.
Catherine and Jane
Catherine had died in Fairfield County, Connecticut in 1874, and Jane on 4 May 1877 in Stamford. Sometime between 1860 and 1877 Jane had married an Isaac Hull. No trace of this marriage has yet been found on either side of the Atlantic, and thus far her life between these years remains a mystery. Her death notice provides nothing more than her date and place of death as Mrs Jane M Hull.
Clearly, this story is far from over. It is complicated by lack of documentary evidence to show when the transAtlantic movements took place. I’m yet to find them on any passenger lists, though they seem to have travelled across the ocean on several occasions. They also seem to have dodged some censuses though I’m still trying to find them. Some digging into other US sources such as tax records, directories, probates, land records etc may reveal more. It is an ongoing project as I am fascinated by these women!
But what of that one line on the gravestone?
Who could have had a vested interest in having a link recorded between Catherine, her daughters and the ne’er-do-well Thomas Jobbern? Everyone who had known him in the USA was dead. Or were they?
If you cast your mind back to the beginning of this story, Thomas had a brother John, my stepdad’s direct ancestor. He too had had ‘issues’ and was long dead, but he had several children including a daughter, Caroline Jobber. Long before any of the Jobbern branch story came to light I had known she had emigrated to the US in 1867. Indeed, most of the DNA matches to my Dad come from this US branch of the Jobber family. What’s more, she too had settled in Connecticut. I suspect she, as Thomas and Catherine’s niece, was behind the one line on the gravestone that revealed Catherine’s secret.
One line on a gravestone and a lifetime of subterfuge is gradually being unravelled…