A short story for these two sisters (maybe half sisters) because we simply can’t figure it out; the Hamiltons are a mystery.
Thomas Hamilton was probably born in Leake, North Yorkshire, not far from Northallerton. We’re saying probably because we think we have him on the 1851 Census but after that can’t be certain anymore. Thomas was a currier, a leatherworker, and was doing well enough to have a business partnership with another Thomas (Harrison in his case). At some point he married and the first child we know of, Elizabeth, was born around 1811. Jane came later in 1816, and in 1818 Mary was born. Thomas rounded out the family in 1820.
Who were these children born to? Great question! We can’t trace a baptism for Elizabeth or Jane. But by 1818 Thomas had moved to Kirkham, outside Preston, and had a wife named Mary. Thomas’s partnership with Thomas Harrison had been dissolved at the end of 1815 so perhaps a new marriage had occurred before a move to Lancashire, or perhaps it came swiftly afterward. Perhaps his first wife died in Kirkham. Perhaps it was always only Mary.
Mary and Thomas Jr. were baptised in the Wesleyan Methodist church so it’s likely our lack of information is due to a loss of records in Northallerton. Ah well, you can’t win them all.
Between 1820 and 1836 the Hamiltons, or some of them at least, came to Todmorden. Jane stayed behind in Preston to work as a servant. Elizabeth died here in August 1836 from causes we can’t discover because her death precedes the GRO. No newspaper notices appeared to mark her death. In 1838 Jane married fellow servant John Eccles in Lostock but by 1841 was in Todmorden with her parents, sister Mary and brother Thomas, and her little son John Jr.
Interestingly only Mary out of the children has an occupation, straw bonnet maker. Her own death would come in 1847, still in Todmorden, from phthsis.
So what happened next? The Hamiltons disappear from Todmorden entirely, that’s what. Mother Mary died before 1851, possibly in 1847 as well although her death (if it is her) came in Preston and her body isn’t here at Christ Church. We definitely know that she and Thomas had already left Todmorden since neither was present at Mary’s death, and for another reason we’ll explain shortly. Jane went back to Bamber Bridge with John and another son, William (who may not have been John Sr.’s…) and married her lodger Thomas Murray once her husband, wherever he was, met his own end. Thomas Jr. disappears. And Thomas Sr.?
Well, in 1846 he was busy making his way back towards his homeland in North Yorkshire, and in Harrogate in April was arrested for indecent exposure after getting too drunk to behave himself properly. If his wife wasn’t already gone in a corporeal sense, she was definitely no longer accompanying him. When we get to 1851 however he must have changed his mind as – if it IS him – he was lodging with a farrier named Walmsley and his family at Penwortham, southwest of Preston. He’s described as a currier, still, and widowed. He really was alone. So alone that his death, like Mary’s, cannot be confirmed to have occurred in any one location.
Frustrating, right? We’ll see if any more information comes to light about this family, and particularly the two sisters here because it’s their story really.