Person:Samuel Rason (1)

Samuel Rason was born April 6, 1832 in Boston, Lincolnshire, England.

On May 26, 1855 he married Mary Creak Smith and at the time of the birth of their first child, Elizabeth, on February 27, 1856, he was a mariner with the British Merchant Service.

At the time of the 1871 census in Boston, Samuel was listed as the master on a fishing smack called Magic. Samuel was listed as aboard the ship while his wife Mary was listed ashore in Boston.

It is a mystery why a master of a fishing boat would leave Boston and move north to Great Grimsby and become a fruiterer or green grocer but that is what Samuel did some time between 1871 and 1876.

His wife, Mary Creak Smith, died of complications of child birth at age 42 on March 17, 1876 after giving birth to a stillborn male child. On the death certificate Samuel's occupation was given as "Green Grocer" but he was not the one to sign the death registration, Hannah Lee, a neighbour signed and was present at her death.

It was common practice for a single woman to live with her older sister and her husband and help with the household duties including minding her nieces and nephews. When the older sister died, it was convenient for the sister to stay on and look after the children. I have not succeeded in finding a marriage for Samuel to Mary's younger sister, Sarah Ann Smith, but a child was born to them less than seventeen months after the death of Mary.

     Charles Henry Smith Rason was born August 4, 1877 in Great Grimsby. 

On Charles Henry Smith Rason's birth certificate the name of the mother is given as: "Sarah Ann Rason formerly Smith". On the marriage of Samuel's oldest daughter, Elizabeth, to John Henry Bellamy in 1880, she signed as a witness "Sarah Ann Rason". The following could explain the lack of a marriage record"

Deceased Wife's Sister Act, 1835 - 1907

The Deceased Wife’s Sister Act was introduced in 1835 to clarify a murky area of British marriage law. The Act ruled that all marriages with one’s deceased wife’s sister which had taken place before 31 August 1835 could not be retracted, but that all subsequent unions of this type were rendered invalid.

Beginning in the 1860s, bills were introduced in Parliament annually to allow marriage with a deceased wife's sister, but it wasn't until 1907 that the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act finally made it legal. And not until 1921 (!) did the Deceased Brother's Widow's Marriage Act make marriage to a brother-in-law legal.

Samuel emigrated to Canada in 1883 and Sarah Ann and the children followed in 1884. There was a birth registered in the Caistor registration district (Great Grimsby is in the Caistor district) for a Ellen Lucilla Rason between January and March of 1883 and the baby's death was registered in Caistor between October and December 1883. This could explain why Samuel went to the new world in advance of the rest of the family.

Samuel died on 4 Jul 1912 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; the cause of death was given as Haemorging from stomach.