This aunt couldn't have married her nephew, could she? UPDATE: Yes, she did.

+4 votes
829 views
This is doing my head in. I most likely have either the wrong Sarah Ann or the wrong Henry Gillard.

Ashington, Somerset is hamlet-sized but forms it's own parish and is near the town of Yeovil.

In 1891 Mary Ann Gillard nee Penny was living in Bradford on Avon. The head of the household was Henry Gillard, very similar in age to her son Henry and her relationship was recorded as mother.

Henry has a wife 20-24 years his senior, Sarah Ann. She is the right age to be Mary Ann' sister, and in both 1881 and 1891 her birthplace was recorded as Ashington. I cannot find a record of their marriage, nor can I find any other Sarah Ann's from Ashington of a similar age (and t's a small place).

In 1891 Henry's birth place was recorded as Ashington, which if true means he is Mary Ann's son. In 1881 however, his birthplace is recorded as Yeovil.

OMG and any other acronym you can think of! Your help is humbly requested.

Penny-1679 Gillard-648 Penny-1653

UPDATE: While it's never possible to be 100% sure, the marriage certificate shows that her husband's father's name was George Gillard. There are no Henry Gillards born in the 1850s to a father named George in or near Yeovil that I can locate, apart from her nephew.
WikiTree profile: Sarah Gillard
in Genealogy Help by Mark Dorney G2G6 Mach 6 (63.9k points)
edited by Mark Dorney

5 Answers

+7 votes

There's a 5-year-old niece, Mary Spackman, in that household. I checked GRO to see if I could find a birth record for her, and a clue as to the makeup of this family. There was a Mary Ann Spackman, born 1885 in Wiltshire, mother's maiden name GILLARD. This is surely our girl. So I checked FreeBMD for a Spackman-Gillard marriage.

Found one: Algernon Spackman to Caroline Gillard, 1879, Wiltshire. I see your Henry has a sister named Caroline, born 1858. 1881 census: Algernon, age 25, wife Carole, age 23 born in Yeovil, and a son, Robert Henry. Oh, my. I think we found Mary the niece's family.

Perhaps the census-taker was wrong? I'm out of ideas otherwise! All clues seem to point to Henry Gillard being Mary Ann Penny Gillard's son!

by Jessica Key G2G6 Pilot (310k points)
You've found Caroline Gillard's husband for me! Would you believe she's transcribed in the marriage index as Cristine Gillard? No wonder I couldn't find the record earlier.

That does support the Henry Gillard as son hypothesis. But then who is this Sarah Ann if she's not his aunt?

To make things harder, I'm reasonably certain baptisms for Ashington after 1816 are not available on-line. Marriages are, on Ancestry, - one double page of the register listing six marriages covered 14 years - it really is a small place.
+5 votes

There is a Henry William Gillard whose birth was registered in Yeovil (Ashington was in the Yeovil district) in 1856. His mother's maiden name was Bishop.

A William Gillard married Eliza Bishop in Yeovil district in 1852, so they are probably his parents.

GILLARD, HENRY  WILLIAM   Mother's maiden surname: BISHOP   GRO Reference: 1856  D Quarter in YEOVIL  Volume 05C  Page 514

FreeBMD Marriages Jun 1852   

Gillard William Yeovil Vol 5c Page 895  

Marriages Jun 1852   (>99%)

Bishop Eliza Yeovil Vol 5c Page 895  

Henry Gillard married Sarah Ann Penny in Bradford on Avon in 1879:

FreeBMD Marriages Mar 1879   

PENNY Sarah Ann Bradford upon Avon Vol 5a Page 155  

Marriages Mar 1879   

Gillard Henry Bradford,W. 5a 155  

by Joe Farler G2G6 Pilot (150k points)
edited by Joe Farler
Thank you!!

Couldn't tell you how many times I've trawled back and forth trying to find the marriage, nor could I tell you how I managed too miss the bleeding obvious.

Will have to order the marriage certificate, just to make sure this is not what it seems.
I think it works like this: suppose for the sake of working this out that George Gillard and William Gillard are brothers. When Mary Ann Penny marries George in 1852 she becomes William Gillard's sister-in -law. Four years later William has a son, Henry, who might have been thought of as Mary' s son-in-law..( sometimes the "in-law" description is used in odd ways ) ie the son of her brother-in-law.   I don't think that is the correct usage but maybe they were confused as well !

Of course when Henry marries Sarah he also became Mary's brother in law ! But for 20 years or so she may have thought of him as her "son-in-law".

PS we all miss things - maybe that marriage has only just been transcribed - there's new stuff popping up regularly.
Might be worthwhile ordering the birth certificate too. Might be the actual mother died and this is an adoption within the family. I've also seen a step daughter simply called daughter in the census.

Tim
I've seen a number of records where stepchildren are simply listed as children - and that's when they're the man's stepchildren.

Usually, if family relationships are listed, they start with the man as head, then a woman listed as wife, and then children listed as his son or daughter. I don't think I've ever seen any indication that "the head's" current wife was the stepmother of some of his children.
+4 votes

I guess this is Henry in London in 1871

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VBDB-W4C

One of the Henrys, anyway.

by Living Horace G2G6 Pilot (626k points)
In his cousins household. Thanks.
+4 votes

Just saw this update! AHHH! How hard up were they for marriage partners in Ashington? Henry couldn't have walked to the next hamlet over to meet a girl who wasn't his aunt? The mind boggles. I'm glad your detective work paid off, Mark.

by Jessica Key G2G6 Pilot (310k points)
Of course they did marry and live quite some distance away from Ashington. They never could have got away with it there.

What makes it super creepy is the Mum/sister was cool enough with it to live with them.
Presumably Henry's sister Caroline was all right with it to the point she sent her own daughter Mary to live in their household? Well, Sarah Ann and Henry weren't having children of their own... or did Caroline think Henry was just taking care of their mother and maiden aunt in Bradford upon Avon? If only we could ask them.
+3 votes
This case is similar to aunt/nephew marriage in my family.
According to you, why was this unusual knot formalized? And do you know legal proceedings to have an avunculate marriage in 19th century Britain?
by anonymous G2G Crew (690 points)
edited by anonymous
The couple in question married far from their home village, where no one would have known them apart from immediate family and so presumably avoided anyone bringing it to the attention of the authorities.

I really don't know why they married. It's possible the marriage was not consummated and they married in order to gain access to some right or benefit the other had, but they were just ordinary poor people, so this seems unlikely.

What's really kind of odd is that his mother/her sister was living with them at the time of the 1891 Census, so whatever was going on she was quite comfortable with it.
I don't know English law very well but maybe they had a dispensation like case in my italian family. What do you think about this possibility?
Hi Dave

I'm sorry, but I really don't know. I really think they did it on the sly.

I've looked into it a little and been unable to determine if dispensations for avunculate marriage were ever made under English law, let alone if they received one.

Legal History is a discipline, with both Oxford and Yale Universities (at least) hosting Legal History Forums but I haven't gone down that rabbit hole of research.

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