23 February 2009

Three Counties weddings

A quick blast, today, of wedded bliss across the years, which I thought I'd do in chronological order (just for neatness, you understand).

So, come back with me to 21st February 1774 in the village of Elton in Huntingdonshire for the marriage of Richard Culpin and Mary Hayes, my 5xgreat grandparents. Ten children in fifteen years and only one lost in infancy must mean that Mary was strong and healthy; indeed she lived until 1821 when she would have been about 60 years old - not bad for that era.

The next marriage is at the church of St Mary, in Tuddenham, Suffolk, in 1792, between James Freeman and Mary Haylock. This couple managed fifteen children within the next 20-odd years with no apparent loss in childhood. Some of these ag labs were made of strong stuff!!

On to the Cambridgeshire village of Stretham, same day, 1815, for the union of Alice Langford and Henry Porter. Their claim to fame within the family file is that their great-grandson married the lady who was to become my maths teacher at the High School in Ely - how scary is that?

Finally for today . . . let's stay in Cambridgeshire but go a bit west & south to the village of Willingham, for the nuptuals of Rebecca Bullard and Ephraim Thoday in 1847. This one brought forth three legitimate children before Rebecca's early death at the age of 36. She had a son before marriage who will appear in his own right later in the year but I have to mention the names of his children, born in the village in the 1870s; there was Moses Bullard, Nathan Bullard and, my personal favourite, Manoah Bullard. Sadly, the latter died at the age of ten but it is still a magnificent name!

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