Mary Ann Underwood

[Phoenix]

It was more by luck than judgement that Mary Ann was given the surname Underwood as less than two weeks separated her parents marriage from her baptism.... and as she was baptised on Christmas Day, the gap between marriage and birth was probably even slimmer.

Mary Ann first appears on the 1841 census aged 15.
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/8978/images/NTHHO107_813_814-0285?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&queryId=86fe32be2757a405c28466d731991106&usePUB=true&_phsrc=lHX5516&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.195330348.1460423973.1640373533-1518776162.1531920438&pId=8851919
She is living in Yardley Hastings with John and Mary Underwood. There are two other families uder the same roof: George and Sarah, Charles and Lydia, and all their assorted children. George and Charles are brothers, their ages both given as 20, so it seemed not unreasonable to assume she was their sister - despite there being no relevant baptism.
In 1851, she is still in Yardley Hastings, with son George aged 3 and a clutch of brother and sisters in law: Sarah James and Caroline
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/8860/images/NTHHO107_1738_1739-0057?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&queryId=3b50ce3c58d4e6c8d43c1f7c7c40fc4b&usePUB=true&_phsrc=lHX5585&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&pId=4270455
By 1861 she and George have moved to Northampton and are living with William Vann, a boot blocker. She marries William. Probably to everyone's surprise she has a baby daughter in her forties and by 1871 George has left home to find his fortune (probably unnerved by a little sister young enough to be his daughter).
William and Mary Ann are together and in the same home for over twenty years. Their deaths are both registered in the same quarter: December 1887.


And that's as far as anyone's online tree seems to get...


tbc

[Merry]

I've read that several times, but I don't understand???

Mary Ann was baptised on Christmas Day in the year??

Her parents were only just married, so are George and Charles her half-brothers rather than full brothers?

But then you say "despite there being no relevant baptism." So, who wasn't baptised?

[Phoenix]

When Mary Ann married, 22 September 1867, she gave her father's name as John Underwood, a carrier: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/9199/images/42672_340643__0011-00064?pId=3687215


Records for Yardley Hastings are poor at according any special identity to the lumpen mass of labourers - many were not even necessarily ag labs. Certainly the John under whose roof Mary Ann dwelled in 1841 was never dignified by any occupation other than labourer. Was she just trying to impress the new in laws, secure in the knowledge that they would never actually meet her relations?


The old inlaws, however, intrigued me. Sarah, James and Caroline in 1841 were in the household of John and Lucy Underwood: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/8978/images/NTHHO107_813_814-0286?pId=8851914


This John is John [Saunders] Underwood, baptised 24 April 1807 in Gretton, son of John and Mary: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/9198/images/101382361_00014?pId=8945987
He married Lucy Whitney in 1830, but unfortunately the register does not state whether he was a widower: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/9199/images/004021574_01514?pId=2605343

But, this means that John [Saunders] Underwood must have been married, at least five years earlier, when he was a mere eighteen years old - and there was no baptism in Yardley Hastings c 1825 of a Mary Anne, daughter of John.


tbc

[Merry]

So, who was baptised on Christmas Day?

[Phoenix]

If you follow John [Saunders] Underwood through the censuses, in 1851 he is a road labourer, living in the Toll House, Bedford Street: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/8860/images/NTHHO107_1738_1739-0079?pId=4270681


In 1861, he is a carrier (Hooray!)https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/8767/images/NTHRG9_929_934-0251?pId=23508196


By 1871 he is an ag lab, using his middle initial: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/7619/images/NTHRG10_1475_1478-0300?pId=8294609


and in 1881, with a new wife, Fanny, he is a rag and bone dealer: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/7572/images/NTHRG11_1535_1540-0976?pId=16765110


The chances are that John [Saunders] Underwood had several other occupations over a long working life, but the clues from censuses do, to my mind, confirm that he was Mary Ann's father, but I still had to prove it.


tbc

[Merry]

So, you are just wondering if her parents are John and Mary or the younger John and X (prev wife/relationship to Lucy)?

I have looked at the Yardley baptisms for 1824-1826 and I couldn't see any Christmas Day baptisms in those three years, so I still don't know what that part is about!

[Merry]

Do you know the relationship between the two Johns?

[Phoenix]

So, who was baptised on Christmas Day?

I'm typing as fast as I can, Merry! (two fingered). :)

This is setting out to cast iron prove that I have got the correct John Underwoods in Best Mate's tree : http://www.genealogistsforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=26930&highlight=yardley but moving sideways and working out exactly who Mary Ann Underwood was.



I think that Yardley Hastings had most of the Underwoods in the country, and they all intermarried. It makes trees very challenging.

[kiterunner]

Merry, bear in mind that this is on the Family History Stories board. I am assuming it is a serial and we have to wait for the final part to understand it all.

[Phoenix]

This is the unlikely breakthrough when, for a miracle, Yardley Hastings burial registers actually provided relationships: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/9201/images/42672_340264__0001-00043?pId=755956


Ruth, wife of John Underwood, was buried 12 September 1828, aged 23. The burial of her infant son was recorded on the previous page.


Here is the marriage of Ruth Crackstone to John Underwood of Yardley Hastings https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/9199/images/42672_341104__0001-00038?pId=3703115


It takes place at nearby Bozeat 12 December 1825. John would have been 18.


And here *loud fanfare* is the baptism of Mary Ann Underwood, daughter of John and Ruth Underwood on 25 December 1825: https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/9200/images/007568647_00825?pId=2707616


I speculate that the birth took place under the roof of Ruth's parents, William and Mary Crackstone, in Bozeat.

[Phoenix]

To conclude...

John Underwood senior marries Mary Saunders in 1805.
Their eldest known child John [Saunders] Underwood is baptised at Gretton in 1807.
He gets Ruth Crackstone into trouble and is forced to marry her in 1825.
John [Saunders] Underwood takes his family back to Yardley Hastings (I wonder if there is a removal order somewhere!) but Ruth dies less than three years later.
His parents have a family consisting apparently entirely of sons, so Mary Ann probably found a home with her paternal grandparents at such an early age that she never knew she had been born at Bozeat.
When John married Lucy, it was probably easier to start the marriage without the encumbrance of a four year old. I can't tell what happened between censuses, but I imagine Mary Ann never lived with her father for long.
She, like her mother, got into trouble, but the man did not marry her.
I wonder what her attitude to her own children was? George moved out of the area, and Elizabeth Jane, her daughter, was cast adrift by the deaths of two parents occurring so close together (nothing in the papers to indicate accident, epidemic or broken heart) and married very quickly afterwards.

[Merry]

Merry, bear in mind that this is on the Family History Stories board. I am assuming it is a serial and we have to wait for the final part to understand it all.

Oh, OK. It's just the opening sentence of the first post I didn't understand, as it sounded as if it was about someone other than Mary Ann, but I see the answer is here now!

And I only type with two fingers too!

[Phoenix]

Lol! I've been reading too many detective stories, where the clue is on the first page, and the denoument on the last.

I've looked at the 1851 census so many times, assuming that Mary Ann was living with her father, not her grandfather.
In 1841, three housholds were living together. People in Yardley Hastings seem to have married the girl next door. Best Mate is descended from Mary Ann's uncles Charles AND George. In an eighteen month period first George's wife Sarah died in June 1844, then his parents Mary and finally John late in 1845.
Mary Ann had her first child in the Union Workhouse. The admission register does not survive for the period. I can't help wondering whether she named her son George out of affection for her uncle or for darker reasons.