William and Margaret Brown (nee Graham) came to the Tamar from Ireland in the early 1800s. Their eldest children travelled with them, and then more were born on their arrival.
One of those children was Peter, who was the second husband of my 3x great grandmother, Lydia Stonehouse nee Freeman (I’m descended through her first husband). Peter entered into this marriage after previously having been married to Lydia’s sister Caroline. After Caroline’s death and the death of Lydia’s first husband, this marriage kept children supported and amongst family.
Peter had a number of siblings, and according to the book The West Tamar People by Lois Nyman, some of these siblings lead lives filled with drama that is still shocking by the moral standards of the 21st Century.
While I’m not blood-related to these people, these events would have been known to my ggg grandmother, who lived between 1848 and 1929, as these were her in-laws, in a small, interconnected community.
Rebecca Brown
What now?
Could that be true?
Records show that Peter’s older sister, Rebecca, did indeed marry a former convict (arrived Lady Franklin), on 9 July 1849, but his official name was Charles Glover, not William.
As he was a convict still under sentence, they had to apply to marry, which was approved in May 1849 (at this time convicts were members of the community, working in various jobs for those they had been assigned to, so Rebecca would have had multiple ways of meeting and getting to know men under sentence). Interestingly, she had previously applied to marry another convict, John West, the previous year and, although permission was granted, the marriage never occurred. However just 5 months after Charles and Rebecca received permission, and 3 months after their wedding, their first daughter was born. She was registered without a name, but according to a number of ancestry trees, appears to be Margaret Jane.
So… was Margaret Jane the one who ran off with her mother’s husband??
On 22 December 1863, Charles Glover died of cancer, leaving Rebecca with a number of young children, one of whom was born after their father’s death. Margaret was the eldest, at just 14.
Widowed with all those children Rebecca would have needed financial security of someone able to work (Charles was a farmer at his death). She found Michael Gallagher (also known as Michael Doyle), another former convict, but now free.
Michael and Rebecca married on 10 November 1864, less than a year after Charles’ death.
Just 3 years after his marriage in Rebecca’s own West Tamar house, Michael and Margaret nee Glover registered the birth of a child together in Falmouth, in April 1867. Margaret was using the surname Gallagher and most likely giving the impression to all who knew them that she and Michael were married.
This relationship between Michael and Margaret wasn’t just a fling. They registered numerous children together over more than 10 years, in various locations.
Gallagher and Doyle are both common names, so there are also a number of records that could relate to the couple where they are using the Doyle name, and/or that may relate to them but I’m not sure, ie a 12 May 1863 charge of “presenting firearms” at Fingal (prior to Michael’s marriage to Rebecca).
Back on the Tamar, Rebecca was still an impoverished widow (even with now one less mouth to feed…), and took Michael to court for abandonment after he left her in February 1866. He refused to pay up and was in court. A warrant for his arrest was first issued in 1866 when he was thought to have gone to Falmouth to work, then again in December 1868 when he was thought to be working in Nile. He was finally arrested in Launceston in 1869, which likely resulted in 6 months imprisonment with hard labour.
Margaret and Michael remained together and were so known as a couple that Margaret continued using the Gallagher name her whole life including on official documents.
While Michael was still well alive, Rebecca entered her third marriage, this time to Thomas Aikens/Askins.
All this doesn’t seem to have created a life long rift between mother and daughter. By 1871 both Rebecca, her third husband, Michael and Margaret were all living in Port Sorell!
At her death, Rebecca was buried at Supply River, with her parents and first husband, Charles Glover.
Margaret Glover and Michael Gallagher/Doyle, from Ancestry
Lydia Brown
Imagine knowing that all those years later that the story about you that had travelled through the generations was that your father threw a pie dish at you!
Lydia married ex-convict William Worthy in the church at Windermere on 9 August 1856. William was a shipwright, and no longer under servitude as he and Lydia didn’t need to apply for permission to marry. He was 32 to her 20 years. How her father felt about this match at the time is harder to find evidence for.
The two went on to have children together, but it wasn’t a happy marriage. William was known to be violent and to attack men and women, including his family. A member of the Brown family was known to have “taken her in” at times in order to protect her.
The violence came to a head in December 1861 when William raped, and then attempted to kill, his mother in law (Lydia’s mother, Margret Brown nee Graham).
On Monday December 23, William was brought before a court and charged with rape and attempted murder. One of the witnesses – the “lad” who had come across the attack and gone for help – was my nineteen year old ggg Grandfather Alfred Stonehouse, who’s mother, Lydia Freeman, would later marry Rebecca and Lydia’s brother, Peter Brown.
William was found guilty of the attack and sentenced to hang. He received a last-minute reprieve, and was instead sent to Port Arthur. Ancestry trees put him dying in the prison settlement in about 1872.
While Lydia remarried and attempted to go on with her life, having more children with her second husband, and becoming well known as the local midwife in the Rookery/Winkleigh area, until blindness caused her to move into Beaconsfield where she lived with various of her adult children.
However, the tragedy continued. In 1920 her eldest son, also named William Worthy, attacked and killed his second wife, Margaret Worthy nee Johns (he and his first wife had supposedly divorced).
William Worthy Jnr, then aged about 65, shot Margaret, killing her while she slept in their Blackwood Hills (Rowella) home. That day, a Sunday, they’d gone driving, and met various people who’d all thought everything seemed normal.
During the night Alma Levinia Lee, known as Doris or Dolly, Margaret’s ten year old granddaughter through her previous marriage, who was staying with the couple for the summer, heard a gun shot. Dolly got out of bed and saw her grandmother lying in the bed and thought that she had been shot. Later in the night, her grandfather called for her to come into bed with him. He later woke her to tell her the house was on fire.
During the next morning William and Dolly arrived in Beaconsfield where Dolly was admitted to hospital and William arrested.
As well as murder, William was charged with “carnally knowing” Dolly.
While in the Beaconsfield Police station awaiting his court appearance, William took his own life using a towel tied to a window bar, on Saturday 25 January.
For more on this incident, see the newspapers of the time.
William had previously been in trouble with law, including a stint in prison in 1897 for “false pretences.”
Lydia lived until she was 88 in 1924. On reflection, I wonder if it was her who kept the pie dish story alive? Perhaps, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it was a way of suggesting that listening to her father’s advice about William Worthy, might have been a good idea!
The book that sent me down this rabbit hole is The West Tamar People, Lois Nyman, Regal Publications Launceston, nd.
The First Ball I Took Your Mother To 