Can you help me to track down Eliza Weaden?
QI’m searching for my late husband’s great great grandmother, Eliza Weaden, before her 1871 marriage to Abraham Ford. On Eliza’s marriage certificate, her father was Robert Weadon and she was a spinster, but had two sons: Henry Charles (b1865) and George (b1867). There’s an 1861 census entry for a Robert Waden, his wife Hannah, daughter Eliza (aged 32) and grandson one-month-old Henry C Waden. Could this be her?
Gill Weaden
AI was able to find Eliza’s marriage record on ancestry.co.uk. On this, her surname is written ‘Weadon’, but she signs ‘Weaden’. In 1865, her son Henry Charles is baptised as ‘Waden’, while his brother George’s surname is written ‘Weadon’ two years later. Both baptisms were carried out in the parish of Easton in Gordano, Somerset, and written in the parish register by the same hand.
The entry that you found in the 1861 census does, therefore, appear to refer to Eliza and her parents. The ‘Henry C Waden’ in this census is an earlier child of Eliza’s, who was baptised in Easton in Gordano in 1861 as ‘Henry Charles Waden’, but as ‘Henry Charles Weaden’ was sadly buried there in 1863.
On the record of his marriage to Hannah Cooling on 28 April 1823, Eliza’s father Robert’s name was written as ‘Weedon’ and both he and Hannah made their marks, rather than signing the register. Their children Hester (b1824), Elizabeth (b1826), Eliza (b1829), Alfred (b1831) and Charles (b1832) were all baptised as ‘Waden’, although the next child Elijah was baptised (b1834) and buried (b1836) under the surname ‘Weaden’.
The Elizabeth baptised in 1826 is listed in the 1851 census as a servant in Bristol under the name ‘Eliza Weedon’ (aged 25), while her sister Eliza is shown as a visitor under the name ‘Elizabeth Weedon’ (aged 20). ‘Elizabeth Whaden’ is shown as the mother of William, baptised in Easton in Gordano in 1846.
Alan Stewart