[list-cumbria] Bogus marriage: George GREATHEAD & Ada ELLWOOD

[Andrea Fitzgerald]

What a great pick-up.  It would have been much easier to commit identity
theft back then, when proof of identity was not often required.  I wonder
if this couple's deception was discovered, since they don't appear anywhere
else after the marriage entry.  They may not have needed to continue the
deception, or they may have been caught, further investigation may bring
the details to light.

One of my husband's 4 x great grandmothers, a Catherine Moore, committed
bigamy back in the mid 1800s in Perth, Western Australia.  Her first
marriage to William Welham, which took place in the Catholic Church there
in 1858, seems to have ended shortly after the birth of her first, and
only, child by that marriage.  She began another relationship and then
remarried to another man, Henry Fish.  This marriage also took place in
Perth, in 1868, but in the Congregational Church.  Despite there being a
small population in Perth, (there were 1000 people in 1838 and this had
increased to 5420 by 1898) Catherine's bigamy was never discovered.  (Her
first husband seems to have moved away from Perth shortly after the
break-up and was still living, in the remote north of Western Australia in
1885).
Catherine & Henry moved to South Australia shortly after their marriage and
lived there for a number of years before they moved to Melbourne, Victoria,
changing their surname to Cabe, apparently due to being pursued for
gambling debts.  Their descendants knew they had changed their name but
were unaware of what their former surname was.  It seems that their
pursuers never found them after the move.

As far as the family were aware Catherine & William's child was born in
South Australia so they assumed that Henry Cabe had previously been William
Welham.  It was only after I obtained Catherine's death certificate that I
was able to unravel what had happened, using the given names of the
children born in South Australia along with Catherine & Henry's given names
to do a search of the South Australian BD&M indexes.  Fortunately Catherine
was still using her maiden name too.  This led me back to the marriage in
Perth and to search for what happened to William.

Searching the newspaper archives in Perth filled in more of the story about
William and Catherine's lives, but I have found nothing about Henry Fish in
either the Western Australian or South Australian newspaper archives.
Catherine's only mention in the Victorian newspaper archives occured after
her death.

I hope that this has been of interest to some.  I only mentioned this to
illustrate that tracing can be done.  I had a convoluted search over about
30 years to track these people but, with help from the genealogy community
online and the increasing amount of information being made available online
it became possible.

Cheers,
Andrea Fitzgerald.

On Wed, 10 Jan 2024 at 03:03, Steve Hayes via list-cumbria <
list-cumbria at list.cumbriafhs.com> wrote:

> We have been greatly puzzles by what appears to be a bogus marriage.
>
> On the surface all appears to be in order.
>
> George GREATHEAD married Ada ELLWOOD on 24 Sep 1898 at St Matthew's Church
> in
> Habergam Eaves, Lancashire. Banns were called at St Martholmew's, Colne.
>
> The bride appears to be Ada ELLWOOD, who was born about August 1876 in
> Sawrey
> (now in Cumbria). Her father is given as Thomas ELLWOOD, postman in the
> marriage register, and this fits Ada ELLWOOD of Sawrey.
>
> The main problem is that Ada ELLWOOD of Sawrey was in the USA at the time,
> and on 27 Mar 1900 she Married John Barrney C RUSSELL at Knox, Illinois
> under
> her maiden name, and correctly gave her mother's maiden name as Agnes
> GARNETT, so she was without doubt the real Agnes ELLWOOD of Sawrey, whose
> father Thomas was a part-time postman.
>
> She appears as single in the 1881 and 1891 Censuses in England, and from
> 1900
> to 1940 in Whiteside County, Illinois.
>
> The couple who got married at Habergham Eaves, on the other hand, appear
> on
> no censuses before or after the marriage, and their antecedents seem
> pretty
> murky. From their ages given at marriage, George GREATHEAD would have been
> born 1871-1873, and Ada ELLWOOD about 1874-1876.
>
> Perhaps someone else can think of a source that might show that they
> actually
> existed under those names, and that will show who they really are.
>
>
> --
> Keep well,
>
> Steve & Val Hayes
> Blog:   http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com
> Web:    http://www.khanya.org.za/famhist1.htm
> E-mail: shayes at dunelm.org.uk or if you use Gmail, hayesstw at telkomsa.net
> Phone:  073-759-0353 (cell) 012-333-6727 (landline)
>
>
>
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