When I put up a photo of Robert’s headstone on Monday, I mentioned that FamilySearch hadn’t yet married him to the widow CRAWFORD. Sarah née CAMMISH had lost her husband to the sea.

Sarah was left to raise four daughters, two of whom, Elizabeth and Mary Ann would be designated as Robert’s “daughters-in-law” in later censuses. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, was “an imbecile since birth” according to one enumerator, and it is she who is remembered on the headstone.

But who is Robert’s first wife, Ann? At least six women called Ann married a Robert Simpson in the Filey area in a ten-year time frame. But census records are consistent in showing that our Robert was born in Hutton Buscel (aka Bushell) around 1813.

Sarah Cammish, later Crawford, has now been married to Robert on the Shared Tree – but he is a fellow born six years earlier in Filey, and therefore certain to have married the wrong Ann and have all the wrong children. Here is a screenshot of the sources he has been given.

This looks worse than it may actually be because the two contesting Roberts both had sons called Matthew and Thomas and each had a daughter called Ann. “X” is not indicating a source is definitely misplaced – just that it should be carefully checked.

There is a clue in the 1851 census to the true identity of the Ann “our Robert” married. She has been dead for four years but on that census night, Robert is looking after his two-year-old nephew, John Procter. I can’t find the boy’s birth registration but there is a record for a Robert Simpson marrying Ann TILFORD – and there are several Tilford/Telford and Procter/Proctor unions in Filey Genealogy & Connections. This isn’t proof that the Ann remembered on the headstone began life as a Tilford – just a possibility.

I put a photo of Robert Temple’s headstone on the Shared Tree and created an ID for Sarah Ann WILSON but didn’t have time to research today’s other “grid people”.

Insect 49 · Ringlet

Update 7 July