Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Thomas Cotton Smedley ~ More Tidbits


You should have seen this girl do the happy dance when I found this FreeBMD marriage record for Thomas Smedley and Elizabeth Joynes on Ancestry.com! I have been looking for proof of this marriage for a long, long time!

If you have read my previous post The 
Elusive Thomas Smedley, you will know that this has been one of the hardest ancestors to learn about. It seems the more I learn about him the more questions I have!

I now know why it has taken me this long to find this marriage record. The family genealogy that has been handed down has always assumed that they were married abt. 1837 because their only child was born 16 August 1837. News flash - they were married in 1841 when he was 2 months shy of being 4 years old!

Thanks to The British Newspaper Archive I was able to get the exact date of marriage from this marriage announcement published in the Sheffield Independent on Saturday June 19, 1841:


We have always known Thomas Cotton Smedley as a brick maker. It was kind of strange to see him listed as victualler in this announcement. But it does coincide with the 1842 banckruptcy notice where he calls himself a "Brick and Tile Maker and Beer Housekeeper".

Of all the questions I have about great-great-grandpa, the one that moves to the top of the list is 'why did they wait so long to get married?'

Yesterday I ordered the marriage certificate from GRO (General Register Office). I can't wait until it gets here!


Leslie Ann

No comments:

Post a Comment

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
The Breast Cancer Site