Sarah ROSS was born in Hull but baptised at Filey St Oswald’s. Her father Thomas drowned while fishing when she was four years old. Neither of Sarah’s parents is represented on the Shared Tree but a husband, Martin APPLEYARD, is confidently offered. Martin, a bottle maker in the West Riding, is not at home on census night in 1851 and 1861but Sarah’s status continues to be “married”. I found a record in 1851 for “A M”, a Castleford-born glassblower, aged 30, and a patient in the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Stanley in Wrenthorpe. He is there in 1861, again as “A M” but ten years later, under his full name, he is a patient at Sharrow Lane Asylum in Ecclesall Bierlow. This was a temporary asylum at Mount Pleasant, replaced by the Middlewood Hospital at Wadsley in 1872.

In 1861, Sarah had three working sons in her Welbeck Street home. George William, 19, was a labourer in a glassworks, Henry, 17, a glass bottle maker, and John Ross, 15, a letterpress printer’s apprentice. The birth of a sister, Sarah, was registered in the final quarter of 1847, suggesting that Martin lost his mind sometime in the next couple of years. Sarah junior died in late June 1859.  

I was hobbled today, unable to access the GRO Births & Deaths. Find my Past was also uncooperative at times. I didn’t have much luck finding today’s Anniversary People on the Shared Tree. That doesn’t mean they are not there.

Beach 176 · Filey Sands