Mary, Who Were You?

Despite all that the advertisements claim about family history research being easier with the advent of on-line searches by the score, countless millions of events now indexed and all the rest, I can't believe my ever-extending list of ancestors who just refuse to be traced is unique.  We could be forgiven for thinking that people a century or two ago conspired to make life difficult for prying descendants who are trying to uncover all their little secrets.

My general pattern of activity of late in that field has been the filling-in of gaps in the basic details of some of my closer relatives; the one who has attracted this present ire is but one example.  The story began with my maternal grandmother's aunt, who married the eldest of eight brothers and this tale starts with one of those brothers, the third of the eight, named Joseph Munford.

I already knew that he was born in Norfolk in the first quarter of 1851 and that he died in Co. Durham fifty-two years later.  He was married to Mary and they had three children, Elizabeth, Joseph junior and Fred.  I even knew when the children were born and had identified the deaths of the two sons but there, three years or so ago, I'd left it.

Just before Christmas, I tried to find out more.  My research path seemed so straightforward.  Since I last looked at this family, the GRO has published indexes that show the maiden name of the mothers of all children whose births have been registered since 1837.  I already had the children's birth records; all I needed to do was look up those three entries in this index, identify their mother and look up the marriage.  If only it were that simple!  I found the three entries all right but the first showed the name Patterson, the second Fulcher and the third nothing at all ... which is usually the sign that the birth was illegitimate.

Then I remembered that I had located the family's entry on the 1911 census.  I looked at this again.  Here, sure enough, was Mary, now a widow, with her three children.  She had given her age as 50 ... although she had been consistently aged 30, 40 and 49 in the three previous censuses.  Maybe she looked young for her age and sought a new partner; Joseph had been dead 8 years by then.  Mary had completed the so-called fertility data although, as a widow, she didn't need to.  She had had eight children: the three living with her and five who had died.  This would account for these three being aged 29, 19 and 9.

I turned again to the indexes.  I found no less than ten Munford - or Mumford (the names became easily confused, even by the people themselves) - children between 1874 and 1894, all registered in the same Auckland district and all with the surname Patterson (except for one that was Pattison).  The list didn't, of course, include Joseph, who had been registered to a mother named Fulcher.  It was about then that I realised that, although the birth of Elizabeth was in the March quarter of 1881, she hadn't appeared on the census that year ... and, when she was listed in 1891, it was as a nine-year-old.  Now, for most of their married life they had lived in Merrington Lane, Spennymoor but, in 1881, Joseph and Mary had been living at Ferry Hill, which was in the neighbouring district, Stockton; there was a birth of an Elizabeth Munford in Stockton in the September quarter of 1881, with the mother's maiden name given as Fulshaw ... not too much of a stretch of the imagination from Fulcher!

Was I following a false lead looking for Patterson (or similar)?  Were there lots of births to Fulcher mothers as well?  After checking both districts, I could find only the two I already knew about, whether registered as Munford or Mumford.  I decided to begin another search 'from the other end'.  In 1881, Mary's birthplace had been given as Winfarthing, Norfolk, the same as Joseph's; later it was curtailed to Norfolk, with no place name.  I looked first for a Munford-Patterson marriage in Norfolk, not expecting much success, because Joseph was already living in lodgings in Co. Durham in 1871.  I opened the search nationwide, still with no success.  There was an Auckland marriage in 1874 of Robert Munford to either Mary Ann Ridley or Elizabeth Pattison which caught my eye because Joseph's father was named Robert, which could imply a confused parish clerk, but for this to be the one I sought, it would also need the brides' names to be mixed up as well.  Furthermore, there was no birth registered anywhere in Norfolk between 1837 and 1856 for either of these women.

What can I make of my researches?  With any certainty, nothing.  By assuming some degree of deception, a number of possibilities emerge, none of them convincing.  Mary might have been born locally in Co. Durham or have migrated from a third area to meet Joseph in that area.  Maybe they just called themselves by his name without being married.  If she really were Mary Patterson, did she lie about her age and, if so, by how much?  If her '50 in 1911' claim were correct, she could have been living as a housewife in 1881 and saying she was 30, but would she already have had three children, the earliest registered six years before?  If she were really Mary Fulshaw, or Fulcher (which fits the two elder surviving children), is it likely that she would have had no intervening children? If that really were the situation, why, as a '50-year-old' widow in 1911, would she have claimed five more who had died?  Would this have won her a 'sympathy vote' of some kind with a prospective suitor?

As I stray into the world of fantasy, I ask, could there have been two women involved?  Could Mary have died after the birth of the second surviving child and replaced by a 'younger model'?  It wouldn't be the first time for a second wife to share the same name as the first.  I did say 'fantasy'.  There are no suitable death or marriage records in the Auckland district for those years ... I didn't look further afield.  And anyway, why would such a second wife lie about the children when, as a widow, she wouldn't have to supply that information anyway?  And why would the four of them all be living together?  We could imagine the 9-year-old's situation, especially if this woman were his real mother anyway, but in that instance what would keep the two elder ones at home?

The deaths of these two ladies is also shrouded in conjecture.  The only death I could find for Mary Mumford in the right age-range was in Worthing in 1937.  You couldn't get much further from home than that!  As for Elizabeth, her daughter, ... there is a death of a 56-year-old Elizabeth Mumford in 1939 in Durham Western district (age too young), but the only two marriages of that name in the Durham area are one in 1913 to Walter Smith (but the bride has a middle initial 'U'), or one in 1938 to Fred Storey.  Without a certificate to indicate ages, the latter is a possibility, and could fit in with some notion of caring for an ailing mother on the south coast. There are a number of women on the 1939 register with that name, but none apparently married to Fred (although many married women were not with their husbands in September 1939!) and two possible death records exist for a 75-year-old Elizabeth Storey, one in 1954 and the other in 1955; but not a shred of evidence to link them to me!

So, my records remain blank for all these details; after all, how far does conjecture stretch?