Finding Nancy Blissett
I was trying to identify Charlotte, the wife of John Harley, my 3G grandfather, when I came across a tree on ancestry.com which gave her last name as Middleton. Being a diligent researcher, unwilling to take this at face value, I wrote to the owner of the tree, one Judith Berry, to ask what her source was for this information, expecting a marriage certificate perhaps. Judith’s answer was totally unexpected.
The source of Charlotte Middleton’s identity was a series of letters between Charlotte’s brother John and members of his family written between 1830 and 1848. They had been preserved by descendants of John’s brother Joseph and his wife, Marianne Cresswell. Marianne was Judith’s great great grandmother.
John Middleton was an engineer, who built steam engines under commission from James Watt and the Boulton and Watt company. John travelled widely, installing steam engines, and he wrote home often. The family correspondence continued after his return to England.
Thanks to Judith’s generosity in sharing these letters I was able to read accounts of the Middleton siblings and their families, including Charlotte and her husband John Harley. The letters firmly established that Charlotte was the wife of John Harley, my 3G grandfather, and, it would seem, that Judith and I were related, if at some distance. The marriage of John and Charlotte is mentioned in a letter from Marianne’s mother, Mrs. Cresswell, who in March 1838 sent her love
to Miss C and Mr Harley; I sincerely wish them every happiness when ever it takes place.
There is much visiting back and forth between family members. On January 14th 1843 Marianne wrote to John that “sister Mary and I paid a visit to Mrs Slater of Westbromwich and John & Mr Harley fetched us home at night”. She was going “this morning to Birmm for a ride” with Charlotte Harley, who “is better than I expected to find her; she is getting pretty fat again” and concludes the letter “I have not time to say more as Mrs Harley is waiting”. It was like reading a Jane Austen novel about one’s own relatives. (More from the Middleton letters here.)
So I set about integrating the Middleton family into my tree. But there was a problem. Charlotte’s marriage to John Harley took place a year after Thomas was born. I might not have been deterred by this, as it was not altogether uncommon for couples to marry after they have had children together. But I had read the letters. The Harleys and Middletons were very devout, actively involved in the Wesleyan Church, sharing news of chapel activities, sermons, and conferences. It seemed unlikely in the extreme that they had conceived a child out of wedlock. Who then was Thomas’s mother? Had John been married before?
Sure enough he had. And there was a clue in those census records. Thomas, the oldest child, is referred to as “Thomas Blissett Harley”. Could Blissett be his mother’s name? Indeed, a search for an earlier John Harley marriage eventually led to the discovery that he and Nancy Blissett were married on 26 January 1835 in All Saints, West Bromwich, Staffordshire. Their only child, Thomas, was born January 12, 1836. And Nancy had died in 1837. John, left to raise a child alone, was in need of a second wife and found her in Charlotte Middleton.
So Judith and I are not relatives after all, since I am not descended from Charlotte. But we are friends. In 2010 Judith and Alan ferried Tom and I around Smethwick and Edgbaston to identify several Harley family residences (as well as the home of my paternal Carr grandmother). And a year later we hosted the two of them for an afternoon on a narrow boat we had hired on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. Subsequently Alan has helped out with information concerning my gamekeeper ancestor, including sending photos of his family’s canal-side walk from the village to the gamekeeper’s cottage in Wychnor, Staffordshire. Deep gratitude to both of them for their generosity.
I have used this story as the entry in Week 7 of Amy Johnston Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks challenge.