In the last two posts I’ve been exploring the life of Sarah Parker Holdsworth, the youngest daughter of my 4th great grandparents John Holdsworth and Mary Webb, who was born in Oxford in 1810. In my first post about Sarah, I speculated about the reason for her middle name, recalling that her father’s sister Sarah Holdsworth had married a William Parker in 1803, though the links between the Holdsworth and Parker families appear to go back even further.
Record of the burial of my 4th great grandmother Mary Holdsworth, née Webb, on 30th December 1810, in the parish register of St Ebbe’s church, Oxford (via ancestry.co.uk)
Reflecting further on Sarah Parker Holdsworth’s early life, it occurred to me that her name might be evidence of a particularly close relationship with her aunt, Sarah Parker née Holdsworth. Sarah Parker Holdsworth was christened at the parish church of St Ebbe’s, Oxford, on 22nd December 1810. The parish register doesn’t include actual birth dates, but it’s reasonable to speculate that Sarah was probably only a few days old at the time. Thanks to research shared with me by Wendy Christie, we also know that Sarah’s mother died shortly after giving birth to her: assuming that she is the Mary Holdsworth, aged 35, who was buried at St Ebbe’s on 30th December, just eight days after Sarah’s baptism.
What was forty-five year old carpenter and builder John Holdsworth to do with a newborn baby, not to mention four other children with ages ranging from one to twelve? My guess is that he called upon his only sister, Sarah Parker, then in her early forties and with no surviving children of her own (her only son, Edward, the product of her first marriage, had died in infancy eight years earlier), to come to the rescue. It’s possible that Sarah arrived before her sister-in-law’s death, assuming that Mary was taken ill shortly after her daughter was born. If so, then the name that John gave the child at her christening may have been an expression of his gratitude to his sister.
John Holdsworth’s name in the 1812 land tax records for William Street, in the parish of St George-in-the-East, London
As I noted in my earlier post, John’s relocation from Oxford to London, presumably accompanied by his young family, seems to have followed soon after his wife’s death: he was certainly living there by 1812. Once again, his need for help with caring for five children may have been a key motive for the move. Having settled in London, it’s likely that John would have been able to rely on support from other members of the extended Holdsworth family besides his sister Sarah. John moved into a house in William Street, in the parish of St George in the East, that had formerly been occupied by his brother Joseph and his family, who were now living a few streets away. And John’s other brothers, William and Godfrey, and their families, were not far away in Mile End Old Town.
The question remains as to how Sarah Parker Holdsworth, having arrived in London as an infant with her father and siblings, came to meet and marry Oxford bookbinder Thomas Morley, twenty-two years later. Is it possible that Sarah actually remained in Oxford, perhaps being looked after by her late mother’s family? Or that her father John retained connections in Oxford, and that Sarah went back there to work as a young woman, possibly as a domestic servant? After all, her older sister Eliza, and a number of her female Holdsworth cousins, were sent away into service, often some distance from their homes, at a young age. These are intriguing questions, but ones to which we shall probably never know the answers.