Mary Jane COLLING is a great-granddaughter of the elder Jane LUNDY (last Wednesday’s post) but today I discovered she has been abducted and married off to a West Riding boilermaker.

You may wonder how Mary Jane could be mistaken for a COLLEY and be presented as a child of Jane JENKINSON and not the granddaughter she was.

There are two prime culprits. The 1881 census enumerator had a lapse of attention, entering Mary Jane as ditto, for “Colley”. But the correct relationship to the head of household is given.

Fast forward to the computer age, and a similarly inattentive transcriber/digitizer of the CEBs.

The given names of the “daughters” should have been one “tell” and the 12-year gap between them another, and more of a concern than the age of Jane, perhaps. Here is Mary Jane in her birth family –

Sixteen was not a sweet age for Mary Jane. A verse on her headstone expresses sadness at leaving early.

‘I.H.S.’

In loving memory of MARY JANE, beloved daughter of JOHN AND MARGARET COLLING and grand-daughter of WILLIAM AND JANE COLLEY, who died Sep 25th 1890, aged 16 years.

‘It was in the blooming of my youth

That death to me was sent

All you that have a longer time

Be careful to repent

For in my health I little thought

My days were run so near

But now the time for me has come

No longer to be here’

Also, the above WILLIAM COLLEY, the beloved husband of JANE COLLEY,

who died in the Lord Jan 23rd 1900, aged 72 years.

‘Gone but not forgotten’

Also, JANE his wife, who died Sep 2nd 1905, aged 77 years.

‘Kind thoughts shall ever linger

Round the graves where they are laid’

Richard the Boilermaker married Mary, daughter of butcher William Colley and Susannah. In 1881 she is with her parents, two brothers and two sisters in Stanley with Wrenthorpe, Wakefield. Twenty years later she is a wife and mother of two-year-old “Lawrance” in Goole. Sharing the dwelling in Kingston Street is Richard’s father, widower Edward Langton.