Finding Mary Simpson Whitehead

Emigration to the United States of America interrupted my Open University studies, but not before I had successfully completed the Arts Foundation Course, a superb interdisciplinary engagement with Mid-Victorian Britain. Among the snippets I remember, were the "cults of respectability and family". But ideal and practice were different matters. I have since learned of a pastor in one London parish who discovered so many unmarried couples that he decided to offer marriage ceremonies for free to encourage matrimony. His experience implies that many children were born outside of marriage, a decidedly "unrespectable" state of affairs to the Victorian mind - certainly not something families would talk about.

Here is brief post to shed light on the date of birth and baptism of Mary Simpson Whitehead, and the names of her parents. She is my 3x great grandmother, and her parents would be my 4x great grandparents. There are, it turns out, contradictory birth years for her, 1809 or 1810; and the LDS ancestry files have two possible sets of parents. First, there is George Whitehead and Mary Simpson, married 1814. There is a marriage for a couple with those names (St George Hanover Square, 31 October 1814 - but not St George in the East as the file claims). Second, the LDS ancestry file notes alternative couple as of parents, John Simpson and Elizabeth Whitehead, but no details.

In his family Bible, Henry James Peterken recorded the date of birth for his wife, Mary Simpson, as 14 June 1810. Other documentary evidence for her age comes from census data and her BMD Death Index. We have:
     1841 Census: Age given as 30
     1851 Census: Age given as 40
     1861 Census: Age given as 50
     1871 Census: Age given as 60
     1881 Census: Age given as 72
     1891 Census: Age given as 80
     1895 BMD Death Index Mar1895 Poplar 1c 542 Age:84

Each census is taken toward the end of March or beginning of April, and her death is recorded in the first quarter of 1895. For the 1841 England Census, age was supposed to be given to the nearest 5 years, although, with a birth in June 1810, should would indeed have been 30 years old at census time. Other censuses asked for the age (in years) at census time. The remaining data, except for the 1881 England Census, are consistent with a birth year of 1810. We can only speculate what happened to the 1881 census return. Except for 1911, all other England Census data are from the Census Enumerator Books, which compiled the individual returns. It is possible that the clerk with the job of transcribing the data from the individual return misread 70 for 72. The preponderance of data suggests that Mary Simpson, or at least her husband, believed that to be the year of her birth.

Some ancestry trees have a birth year of 1809 instead of 1810. I was not originally sure where that came from. But collaboration with readers is among the benefits of a blog. Paul Peterken wrote me with the information that Denys Murphy (Peterken genealogist) recorded the baptism of Mary Simpson Whitehead at St George in the East on 21st February 1816. The London parish records are divided into two sets by the year 1812. I had in fact already browsed St George in the East baptismal records for an entry relating to Mary Simpson Whitehead and stopped at the end of 1812. Finding the image of the record from 1816 was straightforward; it turns out to be indexed as Mary Simpson Simpson for reasons that will become apparent.

The transcript reads:
14th      [1816 February]       Mary               John Simpson            Marman
   of         21st                        Simpson                  by                            Street     The
June                                         Dr               Elizabeth Whitehead                            Rector
1809                                         of                   (Illegitimate)

The "M" for Mary is inconsistent with the "M" for Marman, but does match Middlesex at the top of the page. On the off-chance they hadn't moved, I browsed Marman Street for the 1841 England Census, but found no Whiteheads or Simpsons (St George Middlesex, St Mary, District 9). I include a second entry to illustrate how a baptismal record for a legitimate child would generally read.

This baptismal record and the family Bible note are most certainly for the same person, given the name and birthday, even if the year is off by one. Given that, and looking at the baptismal record, presumably her parents never married each other. First, "Simpson" is a given name on the baptism, which would have been unnecessary if her father were in the picture. Second, there is no mention of an occupation for her father, so either he was dead by 1816, or his occupation was unknown to the participants at the baptism. By the time of her wedding she is Mary Simpson Whitehead, indicating that she was raised as a Whitehead. But note that Henry James writes "Peterken" for his own surname, and for each of his children, yet for his wife has Mary Simpson, suggesting he may have thought of "Simpson" as her surname.

To me it is clear that the parents of Mary Simpson Whitehead should be John Simpson and Elizabeth Whitehead. I suspect 1809 as the "true" year of birth for Mary Simpson Whitehead, although we have seen mistakes in parish registers before. In searching for any records produced much later than this, 1810 would make a better search tool, since she appeared to believe that was her birth year, and would have had it recorded thus in documents. For her parents, was this a youthful indiscretion or marital infidelity or something more sinister? We will probably never know. The nearly seven-year delay in baptism may reflect the sense of shame into which this child was received.

Where to go from here? Elizabeth Whitehead and John Simpson are common names, and we have so little else to go on.  Future lines of research include browsing the pre-1810 entries of the parish register for other Simpson or Whitehead children. And there is an intriguing ancestry public tree with John Whitehead and Martha Dickenson for Elizabeth's parents, but no sources are listed. I did, however, find a 1794 marriage at St Paul Shadwell for a couple with these names and several baptisms at St George in the East for children of John (he was a baker by trade) and Martha Whitehead, none of whom is Elizabeth, so I'm doubtful.

I am certainly not the first genealogist to find out that Mary Simpson Whitehead was a "natural child", as some contemporary baptisms record, but, now the stigma attached to illegitimacy is no longer prevalent, I hope it will be useful for future Peterken/Whitehead/Simpson genealogists to know of the parentage of Mary Simpson Whitehead.