Case Study Three
For my third case study I will be exploring the story of my 2nd great grandmother, Rosannah Tatham, who believed that her father was a man called James Thomas Tatham but as it transpires was actually the daughter of a man called James Griffiths.
Rosannah Tatham
Rosannah Tatham was born around about 1847 in Worcestershire. Initially I was unable to find a birth certificate for Rosannah and the census for 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1881 census’ all gave a different birth place, the 1851 gave her birth place as Astley, the 1861 gave her birth place as Bewdley, the 1871 gave her birth place as London (not in Worcestershire… obviously) and the 1881 census gave her birth place as Stourport. This hampered my search, although the only one I could really give credence to was the 1851 census as the details in this year would have been supplied by Rosannah’s mother.
When Rosannah married her husband Henry Tippin (sometimes Tippins) in 1871 she gave her father as James Tatham, a Currier. The 1851 census had her living with her mother, Ellen Tatham, whose maiden surname was Turley. After some searching I was also able to find her baptism in 1849 in the parish of Ribbesford, which was the main parish for the town of Bewdley. Rosannah’s baptism record gave her parents as James Thomas and Helen Tatham.
My initial suspicions
Even though I had discovered evidence of James Thomas Tatham in the church records, I still felt a certain mistrust in the information. I initial thought that James Thomas did not exist and that Rosannah and her younger sister Louisa were the illegitimate children of Ellen Tatham, but this proved to be unfounded when I was able to discover the marriage of James Thomas Tatham and Ellen Turley at Claines in Worcestershire.
My wariness grew when I discovered that James Thomas Tatham was living in Kidderminster on the 1851 census with his and Ellen’s children, yet Ellen was living as a border in Bewdley at the same time with her two youngest children. When Ellen died in 1856 it was left up to a neighbour to register her death, and her two young children when put into the workhouse at Kidderminster, even though James Thomas was alive and well up in to 1873. But I had no evidence to suggest that James Thomas Tatham was not Rosannah’s father, so I carried on and spent time and money researching that Tatham family further. That was until I found the newspaper report.
Worcester Journal
The Worcester Journal reported on the 19th February 1852 that there had been a case brought up against the Petty Sessions of Bewdley against James Thomas Tatham for failing to support his wife Ellen and their two young children. There was nothing more than a Victorian audience enjoyed than scandal, and this newspaper report does not fail to disappoint.
The report details that in 1842 James Thomas left his wife in London to set up a new home in the United States. Not long after he left Ellen discovered that she was pregnant with their son and soon the money that James Thomas had left ran out. James Thomas returned from America in around 1848 and tried to find out what had become of his wife and family. He was able to track them down to the village of Stourport where he discovered that Ellen was living with a man called Mr Griffiths.
James Thomas also discovered that while he had been away Ellen had had a child with Mr Griffiths. There was no doubt about it, this little girl had to be Rosannah. When James Thomas returned Ellen returned to her husband, but after repeated threats against herself and her daughter she returned to Mr Griffiths. Ellen did return to James Thomas after Mr Griffiths lost his job, but this only last a couple of weeks before she left for the last time. It looks like after she left she found herself alone with her daughter. Nowhere in the newspaper article does it say anything about Rosannah’s younger sister, so I presume that Ellen discovered she was pregnant during her last stay with James Thomas and decided to leave him to live a life of destitution instead of staying and putting up with his threats.
Tracking down Mr Griffiths
The newspaper report showed that I had been right to mistrust the information I had and proved that I had been wasting my time researching the Tatham family. But now I head an even bigger problem, how was I going to prove who Mr Griffiths was?
In the end the problem proved easy to resolve. Knowing that Ellen had been living was Mr Griffiths at the time of Rosannah’s birth there was a possibility that Rosannah’s birth had been registered after all. Her name was recorded as Rosina Griffiths, born August 1837 in Astley, and her parents were James and Ellen Griffiths. Ellen was recorded as being late Tatham, formerly Turley, so there is no doubt that I am looking at the birth certificate of my second great grandmother.
After further research I was able to discover that James Griffiths was born in Martley (the same village as Ellen) in 1816. After Ellen left him he married a woman called Ann Sanders and had one child with her, a son called Thomas who died not long after his birth.
The most important thing to remember when researching your family tree is that the information you receive from records is only ever as good as the information the person provided at the time. This can be manipulated (as in Ellen naming James Thomas Tatham as Rosannah’s father when she baptised her daughters) or may not be know for certain (as in the case of Rosannah’s marriage certificate).
Record Gallery
The below record gallery features images of the records outlined within this case study. Each image below can be clicked to view a much larger, more readable, image. Images marked with an asterisk (*) have been sourced from findmypast.co.uk.
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| Rosina Griffiths' birth certificate |
Rosannah Tatham's marriage certificate |
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| *1851 census | *1861 census | *1871 census | *1881 census | |
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| *Newspaper Article Worcester Journal |