Thread: The culmination of a lot of research

Originally Posted by Theoman

I find these background stories you all gather amazing. Where to even begin to gather and find this info is daunting to me. Good on you man for working hard to bring deeper light to lost history.

I've been gathering the info on this one for the better part of six years.

Obviously, it's not a constant thing, but I keep looking semi-regularly, and as old records get scanned and added to searchable databases, I manage to turn up more stuff.

That said, the best lead I got on this one was actually from 782sirbrian who trekked out to Ecclesfield, found the Hives family monument and sent me pictures. Without that, I was guessing about many details of Jane's marriage to Joseph Hives.

Online records showed that they'd had three children, one of whom died at about six months old -- but the headstone shows they all died very young.

It's really hard to say what happened there other than "the 19th century". Maybe disease. Maybe a handful of recessive genes that got together and had a terrible party. Maybe murder. Maybe just lousy sanitation and too much silica dust from the damn grinding wheels. Whatever it was, Jane did not have any children when she married Robert Wade.

The one bit in what I've been able to uncover which I still don't feel like I have a good handle on is the fact that Jane and Robert Wade signed a marriage bann in the same month that Joseph Hives died. I don't have a date more precise for his death than July. The bann with Robert wade was signed July 24th, so within weeks or even days of Joseph's death.

A bann, for those who don't know, is an old timey tradition of effectively formalized engagement. Jane and Robert didn't actually marry until a year later, which if memory serves was the expected period of mourning at the time, but it I have been unable to come up with arguments that make their engagement not be a little weird.