25 January 2009

Meteorology & Matrimony

It's been raining here for most of the day so I've actually given some thought to this entry. You probably won't notice any improvement but I felt I ought to let you know that not all of this rambling is just thrown together.

Having moved Robert Milton's birthday to yesterday, I can bring out two marriages for today; firstly Joseph Staden & Caroline King, in 1847, at the wonderfully-named St Botolph-without-Aldersgate in London. The previous view of Joseph was in 1841 with his mother Sarah (nee Dodd) and a young Charles, who may well have been his son - but I can't seem to prove it either way. Joseph & Caroline went on to have five children and stayed mostly in Westminster. Plainly life in London at the time wasn't all it was cracked up to be as Caroline was only 47 when she died in 1867; Joseph died a few months later at the age of 59, which strikes me as quite good for the time.

On a bumper day for marriages (well, two is fairly bumper), Millice Charles Culpin married Emily Armes at St James, Hemingford Grey, in Huntingdonshire. Millice, named after his father Millice Campbell Culpin, was known universally (although not all over the world as the word implies) as Charlie, was born in Bishops Stortford and was brought up mostly in St Ives; he & Emily spent most of their married life in the Cambridgeshire village of Swavesey where he was the blacksmith (wonder if there was a spreading chestnut tree?). According to the local paper at the time of his death in 1942, they moved to the village in 1905 (1942 minus 37 years) and he was "bluff in manner but with a kind heart and ever ready to help others". That's nice!

One good thing about doing this blog-thing is that I've managed to keep away from spending too much time and (let's be honest) money on the 1911 census. That's good news but I suspect it's more a question of slowing down the inevitable!!

Wonder if it will stop raining soon . . . ?

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