Just a Little Bit Pregnant - The Bailey Family of Engine Brow, Pendlebury

Earlier this afternoon I posted about Annie Jones, my OH's 2x great grandmother, who was born somewhere in the vicinity of Pendlebury, Lancashire.  Since then, with a break for a sleep as I'm not feeling 100% at the moment I've been trying to find the rest of her mother's family in the new Ancestry Manchester records.  I had found the baptisms of some of her cousins in the Lancashire Parish Clerk pages for Pendlebury this time last year.  Checking back I see that the records for St Mary's, Eccles, the church in which her baptism appears have not been transcribed by the Online Parish Clerk people.  So the move by her parents to have her baptised out of their home parish, possibly to cover up the fact that she was born a scant 6 months after their marriage, is what had prevented me finding her earlier.

Annie's mother Martha's maiden name was Bailey, and the Baileys appear to be associated with Pendlebury from a point between the 1841 census, when John and Mary Ann, Martha Bailey's parents were still in Salford and 1848 when Mary Ann Bailey, the youngest of the family, was born in Pendlebury.  Martha sometimes gives her birthplace as Salford and sometimes Pendlebury. This vagueness seems a family trait! 

The cousins I spoke of above, the descendants of Martha's brother Daniel Bailey are still in Pendlebury in the 1911 census.  With these new records I may be able to place them in the area for even longer as the Ancestry records for Pendlebury run from 1859 to 1915 for baptisms, 1930 for marriages and 1985 for burials.  Engine Brow, the street in which the Bailey family is enumerated in 1851-1871 appears on the 1850s map on the Old Maps site and continues to the 1928 map, then on the 1936 map there is a cleared area.  I cannot find any pictures of the street although a pub, the Windmill Hotel which is across the road from Engine Brow on the 1894 map still exists.

Newtown, Pendlebury, showing Engine Brow and the Windmill Hotel (from Old Maps)

John Bailey, Martha's father disappears between the 1861 and 1871 census returns, I assume he dies.  However I can only find one burial for a John Bailey in the Christ Church Pendlebury, and it is not until December 1871, which is too late as Mary (Ann) his wife declares herself a widow in the census in April 1871.  Which is a shame as the burial is of a man the right age, 62 years old, who was living in Worsley.

1871 census for Engine Brow, Newtown, Pendlebury - edited (from Ancestry)

Studying the 1871 census snip I included on the last post more closely I noticed that in the household is a Mary Jane Bailey, aged 7.  Her relation to the head of household is daughter, but as Mary (Ann) is 63 by this point is seems unlikely.  I decided to look for her baptism in the new records.


1864 baptism of Mary Jane Bailey at Christ Church, Pendlebury, Lan (from Ancestry)

Ah, Mary Jane is Martha's daughter, thus a half sister (I assume not Edward Jones' child) of Annie Jones, my OH's 2 x great grandmother.  The declaration on the census return may be deliberately obtuse - listing her below Edward Jones and Martha - so that it could be interpreted that she is their daughter, it could be a cover up to make her appear to be the daughter of Mary (Ann) Bailey or it could just be sheer confusion by the census enumerator.  Edward and Martha can only sign their marriage register entry with crosses, it seems likely the whole family were illiterate, so their census entry would have been taken down verbatim by the enumerator. 

Martha had a younger sister, another Mary Ann Bailey, born around 1848 in Pendlebury, she appears on the 1851 census with the family, but not thereafter.  I tried unsuccessfully to find her baptism or burial in the new records, however I did hit on another interesting baptism. 

January 1860 baptism of Mary Ann Bailey at St Mary's, Eccles (from Ancestry)

Another cover up?  This appears to be the baptism of a child of Martha's brother Daniel also at the church in Eccles, just like Annie Jones.  In the 1861 census Daniel and his wife Mary are living in the same household as his parents and the 19 year old Martha.  There is no sign of this child on the census.

1861 census for Engine Brow, Newtown, Pendlebury - edited (from Ancestry)

The 1861 census shows Daniel and Mary Bailey lodging as a young married couple, in the household of Edward Rothwell.  (Co-incidently there's an Alice Rothwell lodging with Mary (Ann) Bailey in 1871, this will need more investigation.)  I couldn't find a marriage for Daniel Bailey that fitted but then I had an idea ...

1859 Marriage of Daniel Bayley (Bailey) and Mary Owen at St Mary's Eccles (from Ancestry)

Sure enough with a bit of lateral thinking and some wild cards in the search I found the marriage of Daniel Bayley, son of John Bayley a dyer of Swinton, to Mary Owen, in St Mary's Eccles in May 1859.  So Mary Ann, baptised in January 1860 at the same church, appears to be a seven month child.  So much for a cover up.  I can only assume that the local culture expected girls to be 'a little bit pregnant' when they got married.

Wondering what happened to the child?  With a few more wild cards I found a burial for a Mary Ann Bealey in April 1860 at St Peter's, Swinton.  She is listed as an infant of Worsley, it does seem to fit.

The illiteracy of the family has now opened a whole new range of searches, Bailey, Bayley, Bealey, what other variations can I find?  I would go and have another look for John Bailey who died between 1861 and 1871 and Mary Ann Bailey, vanished sometime after 1851 but the Manchester Burials page on Ancestry appears to have died (Ha!) and is just showing a message to try again later.  Maybe it's trying to tell me something - I do seem to have been at this a while this evening.  I'll be settling down for the night then.  See you tomorrow!