My Great Great Great Grandma Susannah Richards was born Susannah Harper on 23rd September 1827 in Old Swinford, Strourbridge, in what is now the West Midlands. Her parents, Thomas and Susannah Harper died when she was young and she was brought up, with her two elder brothers and younger sister, by her half brother John Harper and his family.
On 18th October 1847 Susannah married Thomas Richards at Clent Parish Church near Bromsgrove. This was a village church in the countryside and there was a long tradition of people from the industrial grime of the Black Country travelling to this church for their weddings, essentially to have a nice day out in the clean country air. Witnesses at the wedding were Susannah's half brother John Harper and his wife Eliza.
Thomas was an Iron Roller, making boiler plates, and as such he lived where heavy industry took place. Following their marriage Thomas and Susannah lived in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, where she gave birth to a daughter, their first child, in 1848. Around 1849 they moved to Sunderland where Susannah gave birth to her first son, my Great Great Grandad Joseph Thomas Richards, in 1850.
Around 1851 they moved from Sunderland to Middlesbrough, where they lived with Thomas's elder brother, William, and his family. They briefly moved back to the West Midlands, living in Kingswinford, where Susannah gave birth to her second son in 1855. Around 1856 Susannah, her husband and three children moved back to the North East living in Stockton. Here Susannah had four more children, three sons and a daughter in 1857, 1859, 1861 and 1864.
In 1865 the family, now consisting of Susannah, Thomas and their 7 children moved from Stockton to Gateshead. Susannah had three more children in Gateshead, all girls, in 1866, 1869 and her tenth child, Caroline, being born in 1871.
Some time between 1871 and 1879 Susannah and family moved from Gateshead to Jarrow where Thomas worked at the famous Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company. The 1881 Census records Susannah as having an 11th child, Walter Richards, being born in Jarrow in 1879. Susannah would have been 51 then and it therefore seems unfeasible for Walter to be her child. What is more realistic is that he was the illegitimate child of her daughter Isabella, who would have been 19 in 1879, and that Susannah claimed him as hers to protect the honor of her daughter. By 1891 it appears that Isabella was married and Walter was living with her as her son.
Susannah Richards was widowed when Thomas died in 1901, aged 71. Following his death she went to live with her youngest daughter, Caroline and her family and continued to live with them in Jarrow until she died in 1913, aged 84.
Susannah had a hard life. She was orphaned at an early age and diligently followed her husband up and down the country as he moved to find work. During a 23 year period she gave birth to 10 children and in the mid 19th Century it must have been very difficult looking after and moving them round the country, often whilst pregnant. After being married for 54 years, it must have also been difficult living the last 12 years of her life without her husband but equally nice that she, herself, was looked after by her youngest daughter.
I would have loved to have met Susannah Richards and hope that she would have been as proud of me as I am of her.
No comments:
Post a Comment