The Human Drama of Family History Work

Charles Watson was born in 1844 in the village of Old Brampton in the county of Derbyshire, England. He was the fourth of seven sons. Brampton was a small farming community two miles outside of Chesterfield, the second largest town in the county. His father was a farmer and Charles grew up on his father's farm.

A central teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ is performing vicarious religious ordinances or rituals for those who have died. We consider these ordinances, properly performed by those who have authority, to be essential for salvation and even those who may have been baptized in another church while they were alive needs to have a properly authorized baptism performed for them. While the choice to accept the ordinance still rests on each individual, we believe that a physical action must be done for each and every individual ever born.

Hannah Parsons was born in the village of Old Brampton in 1846, three weeks before her parents were married. Because her parents were not married at the time she was born, she did not officially have her father's last name, and had only the maiden name of her mother. But later in life everyone just assumed, including perhaps Hannah herself, that her name was Hannah Fretwell. But the "Parsons" part of her name was remembered and appeared in later records. She was the first of ten children.

In support of the endeavor to find each individual and perform religious rituals for them, members of the church do extensive family history work, or genealogy, to find the names of those who have died and have not had the opportunity to have the proper authorized ordinances performed while alive. In doing this work we tend to focus on the work of sifting through records, finding the names and dates, and making sure our sources are correct before we submit the names to the Temple so that the proper, authorized religious rituals are performed for them.

Hannah and Charles both lived in the small village of Brampton, and in 1870 they were married. At the time Charles was working as a coal miner. His father had passed away before Charles was married, and the family had sold the farm. All of Charles's brothers were working as coal miners to fuel the raging industrial revolution in England.

While most of genealogy work may be dry and boring, sifting through records and names, looking at images of records and trying to decipher the cryptic handwriting of some parish priest, every once in a while a story comes out of records. It is a story told not in verse or sweeping epics, but in names and dates. In the middle of the most boring historical records imaginable, emerges a tale of human drama, death, heartache, and uncertainty that would be fit for any dramatic tale.

Hannah and Charles had their first child in 1869, and they named her Sarah Parsons Watson. At that time and place it was unusual for people to have three names, but Hannah, who was born Hannah Parsons, kept that part of her name in the name of her first daughter. Over the next seven years they had three more daughters, Mary, Emma Parsons, and Charlotte.

As members of the Church we are encouraged to remember our ancestors. But there are some ancestors who tend to get more coverage than others, while there are those who quietly fade into the background. In these less commonly traversed branches of the family tree are found the quiet human dramas that make up the human experience.

In July 1878 tragedy struck the Watson family. Charles died. There is no record of how he died, only that he was buried in the church yard of St. Thomas in Brampton. Given his work as a coal miner it is possible his death was related to that. This left his wife a widow with four small daughters aged 8, 6, 4, and 2. As a widow living in a poor working class community it would have been very difficult.

There is a perception that history is made by well known, great individuals who through force of will or strength of character form the axis of history. But most of human history is made up of normal people, going about their lives, quietly living out the everyday dramas that make us human.

Within two years Hannah had remarried. Her new husband, William Gregory, was a widower with six children of his own. William was also a coal miner. The marriage produced no more children and it may have been a marriage of convenience. Hannah needed a way to support her daughters, and William needed someone to watch his small children while he worked in the coal mines. 

However the family did it, all 10 children lived in a modest house in poor working class conditions. That is, until 1887 when Hannah passed away. Again there is no record of how she died, or even where she was buried. We do not even know the exact date of her death since it is only recorded in a England death registry which only gives the year and quarter (range of three months). At the ages of 17, 15, 13, and 11 Hannah's four daughters were left orphans. At the time they were living with their stepfather and his six children. 

There is very little known about what happened to Hannah's four daughters in the intervening years, but I managed to find all four of them in the 1891 census.
Sarah Parsons married Isaac Burt in 1890. She would go on to have eight children, with the last two born in Illinois in the United States. Her husband Isaac was a coal miner, and near the end of the 1800's the coal in Derbyshire was running out. In 1905 they emigrated to the US so that Isaac and his sons could work as coal miners in Braceville, Illinois. 

In 1891 Mary Watson, Charles and Hannah's second daughter, was working in a cotton mill while living with her grandparents Francis and Fanny Fretwell. In 1893 she married Daniel Hughes and they had four children. They stayed in Chesterfield, Derbyshire their entire lives. 

By 1891 Emma Parsons Watson, the third daughter, was 16 years old and was living as a domestic servant to a well-to-do family in Chesterfield. After this she disappears from the record and I can not trace her life after that. I do not know if she got married, had a family or died alone. Her life, right now, is an unknown drama. 

Shortly after her mother died, Charlotte Watson went to live with another family. At the age of 11 she began working as a domestic servant. Shortly after moving in with her employers the family moved to somewhere near Sheffield, which is in Yorkshire, the county next to Derbyshire. She was still living with them four years later in 1891 when she appears in the census. Like her sister Emma, she disappears from the records after this and I can't trace her. 

Encapsulated in the family of Charles and Hannah is great portions of modern human history. There is the disruption of traditional farming communities by the industrial revolution, and the fuel of the revolution was coal. The families lived in poor conditions in a town that grew around industry and coal. Chesterfield expanded because of the industrial revolution, and while it ultimately helped lift people out of poverty, the process was difficult and painful. There were families who lost their fathers, and children who were left orphans. We only have to read a Charles Dickens novel to learn of harsher side of the industrial revolution.

After becoming an orphan, their eldest daughter, survived and started her own family. That family now lives in the US and they may not remember where they came from.

The second daughter stayed in England and navigated the changes that came after the industrial revolution. They were a working class family where the children dropped out of school by the age of 12 and started working.

Anyone who does enough family history work knows that sometimes people disappear from the written record. The other two daughters, Emma and Charlotte, and emblematic of those who quietly disappear in the milieu of history. Hopefully they can be found someday, because everyone should be remembered.