19 February 2009

Wedding Bells . . .

Today we're going to start in Stretham where, on 16th Feb 1730, my g-g-g-g-g-grandparents were married. Richard Langford & Rebecca Waller then went on to begat ten children in the next twenty years . . . . and that's all I know about them.

Staying in that far-off 5-great grandparent generation but moving to the next county, James Bullard and Mary Hart married on 16th Feb 1756. Again, I have to admit to knowing very little about them other than the number of children they had - that's six.

Moving on one day and nearly 70 years, Elizabeth Webb and William Burden married in Landbeach in 1824 - and promptly disappeared (well, off all the records I've looked at!). Marginally more visible were Ellen Street and William Levitt who married in 1877 in Old Warden, Bedfordshire. She was a straw plaiter and he a brickie's labourer and, by 1891, they were in Kempston with their daughter Maud.

So far today no-one has moved out of the county of their birth and my next offering continues the pattern: Catherine Fordham and Thomas Ingle married on 18th Feb 1807 in Hemingford Grey. I haven't found any children for them yet (I need to get to the Parish Registers) but they don't seem to have left Hemingford Grey before their deaths.

And now . . . ancestors who buck today's trend! Susan Charlotte Staden, born in Herringswell in Suffolk, married James Waugh Read in Bury St Edmunds in 1858. James was a Station Master so their married life seemed to follow the railway tracks around the area:- first to Six Mile Bottom (Cambs), then Needham Market (Suffolk), then Mark's Tay (Essex) and Camberwell (London). Finally, to that mecca of railway towns, Swindon where they appeared to settle down. In the midst of all this moving about, they found time to have eleven children - can you imagine moving house with that lot? Nightmare!

Need to pause now to take stock and consider the eight birthdays for yesterday and tomorrow. More soon . . .

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