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

[Steve Hayes]

On 10 Jan 2024 at 13:22, Andrea Fitzgerald via list-cu wrote:

> 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.

We know what happened to Ada daughter of the Hawkeshead postman, though. 

She married John RUSSELL on 27 Mar 1900 in Knox, Illinois, and they had three 
children, Hazel born 1902, Gladys born 1903, and Nellie born 1906, all born 
in Illinois, and the family appear on subsequent censuses, as one would 
expect. 

It is George GREATHEAD who disappears entirely. If it was the same Ada who 
married him, then the most likely explanation, as Petra suggests, is that Ada 
returned from America, married George, decided it was a bad idea, so left him 
and returned to the US and married John RUSSELL (under her maiden name) and 
they lived happily until death did them part. 

But what happened to George in that scenario? The only thing I can think of 
is that Ada murdered him and hid the body so well that it was never found. Or 
perhaps he emigrated to New Zealand or somewhere else. 

> 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.

Such things seem to have been quite common in Australia in the 19th century. 
My wife's great grand aunt on her father's side (the ELLWOOD family are on 
her mother's side). Agnes GREEN, had a similar story -- if you are interested 
you can read about it here:

<https://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/agnes-green-education-pioneer/>

(I won't post the full story here, as it has no Cumbrian connections)

See also, for the story of one of her husbands, 

<https://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/alfred-francis-dawson-and-alfred
-dawson-francis/>

<snip>

> 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.

Such stories add to the interest of family history, and indeed make family 
history more than mere genealogy. 


-- 
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)