Tag: familyhistory

Recently I decided to take my focus off the ancestors further back in my tree to fill in some details on more recent generations. It’s always good to come back periodically and review what is now available to flesh out the stories of our relatives. So many new sources are constantly being made available! And when it comes to railway tragedies, it is very likely that multiple records will be left.

John Rigby and Charlotte Teague

John Rigby was born in 1837 in Shoreditch to a silk weaver also named John and his wife Sarah Morter (last mentioned here). However, he did not follow his father into the declining silk industry but became a cigar maker. He married Charlotte Teague, the third daughter of Enoch Teague and Sarah Townley in 1861 at Christchurch Spitalfields.

Together they had 8 children, the first three of whom were born in London, the remainder in Leicester. John and Charlotte had relocated about 1868, where John worked and eventually became a foreman in a cigar factory. It is possible he worked with Joseph Carey ‘John’ Merrick, who became known as ‘the Elephant Man’, as they were both working in a cigar factory and living very close to one another during the mid-1870s.

John Rigby Junior and the Railway Tragedy

John and Charlotte’s eldest son, also called John was born in 1862 in Hackney. He too became a cigar maker. Of all the children of John and Charlotte, I had never found what became of John after the 1891 census. At that stage, he too had moved cities, from Leicester to Sheffield, also to work as a foreman in a cigar factory belonging to Messrs J Morris & Son of Whitechapel and Sheffield. He had a wife, Mary Ann (nee Hall) who he had married in 1887 and two children, John and George both born in Sheffield. After that, he appeared to have disappeared in a puff of (cigar?) smoke and I abandoned him for a decade or two. It was now time to see what I could find about his later life.

Once again, the newspapers came to the rescue. They have become my absolute go-to source these days given the accident-proneness of my family!

The reason I hadn’t found John in any later censuses was that he hadn’t lived to see 1901. From the newspaper reports following his death, it seemed that John had become very depressed during 1900. He was convinced that his employers were unhappy with him. He thought that he was about to lose his job (something they strenuously denied at his inquest).

Trip to London

At Easter, he went to visit his father in Leicester, who was determined to cheer him up. John Senior bought railway excursion tickets for himself, John, and one of the younger Rigby brothers to visit London for a few days.

Approaching London, there was a long tunnel at Haverstock Hill. The train carriages were unlit. John took the opportunity of the darkness to smash the carriage window and leap out onto the tracks. His father tried to grab his coat but was unsuccessful. John was then horrifically killed by a train passing in the opposite direction.

The death and subsequent inquest were reported in several newspapers with varying levels of detail. In none of them did it report which brother had been in the carriage with the two John Rigbys.

It is hard to imagine how traumatising this would have been for both his father and this brother, and what impact it may have had on their later lives.

There were three younger brothers of John who were alive at the time – George, Charles and Alfred. Charles was my great-grandfather and I suspect that he might have been the brother on the train.

Why? He effectively became estranged from the family. Although he was still in Leicester in 1901, by 1911 he had moved to Bedworth, by 1915 he was in Coventry, and he ended up in Birmingham by the following year, where he lived out the rest of his (short) life. His father died in 1917, and his will reveals bequests to all of his living children…except Charles.

The rest of the Rigby family remained in Leicester and by all accounts were close to one another. I wonder if Charles somehow got the blame for not saving his brother? Pure speculation on my part and probably unable ever to be confirmed one way or another. Of course that is not the only possible reason for his estrangement from the family, but that’s for another blog post.

Two families with railway tragedies in common

You may remember a railway tragedy in the Swinbourne branch of my family, which I wrote about here. Well, the two families impacted by railway tragedy happened to merge. Charles Rigby married Leah Barnett (nee Swinbourne) in 1916. His brother and her son, both killed by trains. What are the odds of that?

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…

I’m in the middle of some research into my stepdad’s Jobber/Jobbern family. It can be hugely helpful when a surname is unusual. In this case, it’s been a slow old slog and only recently it has gathered pace. The catalyst was a single line on a gravestone in faraway Stamford, Connecticut. More on THAT in the next blog! This has turned into a two-parter to save your eyes, dear readers!

This is the story (or as much as I have currently found!) of the family of Thomas Jobbern, the brother of Dad’s great-great-great-grandfather John Jobber. Notice the slightly different surnames – Dad always said that the family name ‘was originally Jobbern’. This has turned out to be true – from his 3 x great-grandfather down, they have all been Jobber. His brother Thomas’ line continued with the ‘n’ at the end of the name. The two variants were often used interchangeably in many other Jobber/Jobbern families. The number of ‘b’s in the name is also variable.

The Jobberns

Thomas and John were the sons of Thomas Jobbern, born 1756 in Whittington, Staffordshire to Solomon and Truth (nee Hodgson) Jobbern. Thomas senior was the first known military man in the family. He served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 6th Regiment of Foot. Somewhere along the way, in either Ireland or Nova Scotia based on his service records, he picked up a wife, Caroline. Their marriage has not yet been found. I’m currently favouring Ireland as both his sons followed in his footsteps. They both joined the military and married Irish women while stationed there. As a result, my Dad has a healthy dose of Irish DNA from this and subsequent repeats in later generations!

Thomas Jobbern (1795-1851) and his family

Thomas junior was born on the 3rd March 1795 in Birmingham, Warwickshire according to his military records. Thank goodness for the thoroughness of the military as there is no baptism yet to be found for either he or his brother. He joined the 90th Regiment of Foot in 1811 and served in the 2nd Battalion. This battalion was on garrison duty in Scotland and Ireland for the entire time of his service. There has been no record found yet of his marriage to Catherine, born about 1796 in Ireland, though at least as you’ll discover later, I now know her maiden name…thanks to one line on a gravestone.

Together they had four children: Caroline Mary (born about 1819), Thomas (born about 1820), Sarah Ann (born 1822) and Jane M (born 1826). The 1841 census suggests they were all born in Warwickshire, however it is much more likely that the first two were born elsewhere. Thomas was not discharged from the army until 1820 at which time he was in Stockport, Cheshire. Although his discharge was on medical grounds, his conduct was noted as ‘very bad’. This may have some bearing on later events.

Tragedy Strikes the Jobbern Family

In 1843, Caroline Mary Jobbern married Samuel Homer, a coach builder. Only 10 months later she was dead at the age of 25. She died on the 4th April 1844 at her father’s residence and was buried at Hockley All Saints church six days later. Her cause of death was described as ‘water on the lungs’. The modern term is ‘pleural effusion’ and can have many causes ranging from infections, pneumonia, TB and cancer through to trauma. We do not know what the cause was in Caroline’s case as it does not appear to have been investigated further.

As if this wasn’t enough, just two days after she was buried, her 24-year-old brother Thomas also died. He too passed away at his father’s home and this time of consumption, now known as tuberculosis (TB). This may lend weight to this also being the cause of Caroline’s pleural effusion but we will never know.

The deaths of the two eldest Jobbern children were so close to one another that they appear as consecutive entries in the parish burial register.

One can only imagine what devastating impact this would have had on the Jobbern family. The father, already known to be troubled, the mother who had lost her two eldest children, and the two young daughters remaining must have suffered agonies of grief. And it does not seem to have brought them closer together.

There are several military pension documents over the ensuing years, and in one from October 1847 the note was made that he had no family. Wait, WHAT? There were no deaths registered for any of them, so where did they go?

Thomas Jobbern Dies

The Returns of Payment for September 1851 noted that his pension was ceased due to his death on 10th September of that year. Remember that date. He did not die until late 1851.

This meant that I should be able to find him in the 1851 census. His burial record indicated his residence was Price St, Birmingham. Even a manual trawl, household by household fails to reveal him in this street. In fact, he cannot be found anywhere on the 1851 Census at all, despite using all the tricks to find someone on every site that holds this census. I wonder if he was sleeping rough by then and missed being enumerated. Or perhaps he sent the enumerator away in a drunken rage, refusing to take part. Again, we’ll likely never know.

But what about the missing family members? Their deaths hadn’t been recorded between their last mention in the 1841 Census and their absence in 1847. Where were they? That is a story in itself…and one for next time as the Jobbern family plot thickens…