Person:Martha Winters (3)

Childhood

Martha Winters was baptised on 20th January 1793 at Caddington in Bedfordshire, daughter of an agricultural labourer named William Winters and his wife Elizabeth Emley. She was the second of five children - she had one older sister and three younger brothers. In 1803, when Martha was only ten years old, her mother Elizabeth died, aged only 33. It then would have fallen to her father William to raise the five children, who ranged from twelve years old down to two years old when their mother died.

Thomas Moss: marriage and absence

On 30th September 1808, when Martha was still only 15 years old, she married a man named Thomas Moss, who was 24. However, theirs was not to be a typical marriage. Thomas Moss has not been found in any records as living in Caddington between their marriage in 1808 and the baptism of their first (and only) child in 1828. He is, however, mentioned in the intervening period as being absent.

Early in 1815, Martha gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. Thomas Moss was not the father. He was described as "absent in the East Indies". How long he had been absent is not stated. The parish authorities at Caddington secured maintenance and bastardy orders against a butcher named John Bigg from the neighbouring village of Markyate, whom Martha swore was the baby's father. At the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions in July 1815 John Bigg was heard and "adjudged" to be the father and ordered to pay £3. 12s. 0d. for "the lying in and maintenance to this time" as well as 2 shillings a week maintenance thereafter. Martha was ordered to either nurse the child herself or pay the parish authorities six pence a week - suggesting possibly that the baby was being looked after at the parish's expense at the time of the quarter sessions.

Two years later, Martha had another child, this time a son named James. He was baptised at Caddington on 15th October 1817, with the parish records describing him as "son of Martha Moss of Woodside, her husband a soldier in the East Indies". Martha appears to have also had another daughter, Mary, whilst Thomas was absent. Mary gave an age for herself in the 1841 census which implied that she'd been born between 1816 and 1821. No clue has yet been found as to the father of either James or Mary.

Return of Thomas Moss

What arrangement Martha had made with Thomas Moss is unknown - was she expecting him to ever return? Whatever she was expecting, return he did, somewhere around the mid to late 1820s. What did Thomas make of returning to find Martha as mother of three young children? Was Martha pleased to see him given how long he'd been gone? Thomas and Martha appear to have settled down again as husband and wife, with Thomas working as an agricultural labourer - they had a daughter Harriet in 1828, but she died as a baby. Harriet appears to have been the only child Thomas and Martha actually had together.

In 1831 Martha's daughters Elizabeth and Mary were both baptised on the same day, not having been baptised as infants. The baptism registers describe them both simply as daughters of Thomas & Martha Moss, with no clue to the fact that Thomas was well-known to have been absent when they were born.

Marriages of Martha's children

On Christmas Day 1833, Martha's daughter Elizabeth was married at Caddington to a man named George Lines - they would go on to have eleven children together. Three years later, her other two surviving children, James and Mary, also married. James married at the end of September 1836 to a Susannah Puddephatt, with his sister Mary Moss and a man named William Lines (George's brother) acting as witnesses to that marriage. Less than a fortnight later, William Lines and Mary Moss married each other in the same church.

Mary Moss and William Lines had one son in 1837 who died as a baby. Later that year, William Lines fell foul of the law - he was found guilty of pig stealing and transported to Australia. Mary stayed in Caddington, appearing there in the 1841 census, but it is not clear what happened to her after that.

Death

Martha died on 27th December 1840 of water on the brain. She was about 48 years old. She was buried at Caddington on 30th December. At the time of her death she was grandmother to four surviving grandchildren, all of whom were living in Caddington. She had also seen another two grandchildren die as infants and seen one of her sons-in-law transported to Australia. She had been living with her husband Thomas and her son James and his family at Cross in Caddington, the parish she had lived her whole life in. Her father William Winters also outlived her.

The following year's census finds Thomas Moss living with Martha's son James and his family at Cross. Martha's father William Winters was in the Luton Union Workhouse, described as a pauper agricultural labourer - he died there in 1842. Martha's son James only outlived her by a few months: he died in June 1841, aged 23, and his daughter Elizabeth died aged one later that year. Thomas Moss, like his father-in-law, ended up in the Luton Union Workhouse and died there in 1843, having survived Martha by just over two years.

1. ↑ Bedfordshire Family History Society. Caddington Parish Register Transcript 1538-1812. (Bedford).

   ch. 20 Jan 1793: Martha d Wm & Eliz WINTERS

   Whilst no named connection has been found, this baptism has been linked to the Martha Winters who married Thomas Moss on the basis that it is in the same parish in which the adult Martha married, had her children and died and is at about the time implied by the ages quoted on her death and burial records. No evidence has been found to suggest that the Martha baptised in 1793 died young or married anyone else.

2. ↑ Death certificate, in General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration. (London: General Register Office).

   Registration District Luton
   1841 DEATH in the Sub-district of Luton in theCounties of Beds and Herts
   No.	When and where died	Name and surname	Sex	Age	Occupation	Cause of death	Signature, description and residence of informant	When registered	Signature of registrar
   378	Twenty-seventh of December 1840 at Caddington Herts	Martha Moss	Female	49 years	Wife of Thomas Moss Labourer	Water on the Brain	The Mark X of Jane Kuppard Present at the Death Caddington	Nineteenth of January 1841	W. Meed, Registrar

   
3. ↑ Burials register, in Church of England. Caddington Parish Registers. (Bedford: Bedfordshire Record Office).

   BURIALS in the Parish of Caddington in the County of Bedford in the Year 1840
   No.	Name	Abode	When buried	Age	By whom the Ceremony was performed
   889	Martha Moss	Cross	Dec[embe]r 30	48 y[ea]rs	W. Mellard, Vicar