My 3xgreat grandmother was born around 1829 in Newington, South London. When she married Saddler Aaron Wales in Waterloo, London, in 1849, her father is named as William Moorhouse Stoney, ‘Gentleman’. Intriguing. Did she come from an aristocratic family? If so, they must have fallen on hard times, as their address, Waterloo Road, was not a wealthy area. What could I find out about her early life?

An early marriage

Catherine Alice Stoney was a ‘minor’ when she married Aaron Wales on 19 November 1849 at St John, Waterloo. This means she was under the age of 21 (her groom was ‘of full age’):

I ordered a copy of their marriage certificate from the General Record Office (GRO) in 2005; the above image is from the London Metropolitan Archives at Ancestry, a digitised copy of the parish register, which shows both bride and groom could sign their names in a fairly confident way. So they had had some education. If she was a minor, it’s likely she was born between 1829-1833. In the 1851 census, the first after their marriage, she is enumerated with her Norfolk-born Saddler husband at 13 Perseverance Street, Bermondsey, as a 22 year old Hat Trimmer, born in Newington. Her husband was two years older.

Southwark Heritage has a photograph of the street, taken in 1936, which suggests it wasn’t that prosperous. Her age is consistent in later censuses (32 in 1861; 42 in 1871; 52 in 1881; 62 in 1891 and 72 in 1901, the last census year before her death in 1907). Her husband’s age similarly increases from 24 to 74 (which you might expect, but my research into other family members shows that ages can vary quite considerably in these records). So, a birth in 1829 seems most likely.

An aristocratic birth?

The civil registration of births, marriages and deaths was only introduced in England and Wales in mid-1837, so there is no birth certificate for her. She appears in the 1841 census aged 12 with her 70 year old father Will^m Stoney, 50 year old mother Mary and brother William Stoney, aged 13. They are living at Sion Place, St Mary Newington. Her elderly father is described as ‘Agent’ while her mother is a dressmaker. Nothing terribly aristocratic about any of that.

I found a baptism record for her older brother, William Moorhouse Stoney, at St Mary Newington on 27 April 1828, his birth date recorded as 9 January:

The address is the same as the 1841 census, but the father’s occupation is very definitely not of the gentry, as here he is described as a Coal Merchant. Curiouser and curiouser. Unfortunately, I have not located a baptism record for Catherine Alice Stoney. The digitised record set at Ancestry (from London Metropolitan Archives’ collection) for baptisms at St Mary Newington seems to have a gap between the end of 1828 and the beginning of 1840, although LMA’s collection catalogue suggests they are there. They do not appear to be included on any of the other genealogy services.

From the evidence so far, and in particular the area they lived in, it seems unlikely that Catherine’s father was really an aristocrat – even a very minor one. Perhaps his occupation in the 1841 census is a clue: when the vicar asked Catherine for her father’s occupation as he filled in the parish marriage register, did she reply “Agent”, and he mistook that for “A Gent (Gentleman)”?!

I have extensively researched the long and somewhat shady life of my 4xgreat grandfather William Moorhouse Stoney, from what I believe to be his roots in 1770s Yorkshire, through various brushes with the law in London, to his death there, aged nearly 90. But that’s another story. For now, this is as much as I have been able to find out about Catherine’s birth and early life.