The first record of Joseph that I have found is his marriage on March 28, 1841 to Janet Dougall.  In the 1841 census he is living with his wife and 9-day-old son John.  As the census was taken the night of June 6, we can assume John was born on May 28, 1841.  John died the day before Joseph and Janet’s first anniversary on March 27, 1842 in Glasgow.  His age is given as 10 months and he died of smallpox.

One point to mention here is that in the Old Parish Records (OPR) for burials, often no parents’ names are given – just the name of the child, his or her age at death, and his or her father’s occupation.  Sometimes you get lucky and a parent is listed by name, or a husband in the case of a woman’s death, but usually you need to know of the existence of a child before you can determine which parent a child’s death affects, working backwards by age at death.  This was the case for John’s death – because he was in the 1841 census as being 9 days old, and the death of John gave his age as 10 months and his father’s occupation as weaver, I knew this was the death record of Joseph and Janet’s son.  There are many infant deaths for Wellwood children in the Glasgow area in the OPR whose father was a weaver that I have not been able to determine the parentage of, however, as most of the Wellwood men were weavers.  At some point, I will make a list of them in a spreadsheet – you just never know when it might come in handy to have.

As this will be a short chapter, it’s as good a time as any to write a bit about why so many births, marriages, and deaths do not appear in the records.  I wrote in the chapter on John Wellwood, Jr about the many fractures in the Church of Scotland (CoS) and the most common reason for it, so will not repeat that here.  One of the tactics used by the Established Church (CoS) to attempt to prevent these fractures was to control the registration of vital records – births, marriages, and deaths.  There are some non-conformist registers available, but they were not as well documented and preserved as were the registers of the Church of Scotland.  As a result, depending on the stubbornness of many Dissenters, records might not be registered with the CoS.  Another factor was the cost – the CoS charged a small fee to register the event in the Parish Records and many people were so poor they simply couldn’t afford to pay it, even when they WERE members of the Established Church.  Finally, there was the issue of time.  If a birth was not registered within a specified amount of time after the event, it was NEVER allowed to be registered, and so many weren’t.   The most reliable of the records, then, are the burial records – as most cemeteries were associated with the Church of Scotland and people had to be buried!  But these records give a bare minimum of information.  It often takes a good bit of work and research to piece together what death goes with what household.  You should be aware of these challenges when you do your own research, and remember that genealogy can’t be done in a vacuum – you have to understand the history of the times in which people were living if you hope to break down those brick walls.

In the 1851 census, Joseph is married to Isabella, who at 7 years his junior is 29.  There are no children living with them.  In the 1861 census, Joseph and Isabella have a 3-yr-old daughter Jane.  Searching backwards, I found that Jane had been born on Nov. 14, 1857 and that Isabella’s maiden name was Sinclair.  I was not able to find any record of marriage for Joseph and Isabella, or a death record for Janet, Joseph’s first wife.  Joseph and Isabella applied for poor relief on Dec. 17, 1861.  The poor relief records are usually very detailed, but for some reason, this application seems to omit the date of their wedding and also omits their daughter Jane.  The reason for the Poor Relief application was Joseph’s ill health, and in fact he died just over a week later, on Christmas day.  The application gives Joseph’s place of birth as Belfast, and Isabella’s as Roseneath, which is in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, just across Loch Gare from Rhu – a very pretty area.  Two months after Joseph’s death, Isabella is taken off the Roll as they consider her able-bodied, and so capable of working to support herself.  I found it interesting that they granted her 2 months in which to mourn the death of her husband, to the day, before refusing to keep her on the Poor Relief Roll.  On the 10^th of April, she was put back on the Roll, presumably due to ill health, and 2 months later to the day, On June 10, 1862, she was removed to the Poor House.  It appears from the record as if she died in the poorhouse on March 5, 1864, though I can find no record of her death.

As for little Jane, she seems to have been sent to live with relatives of her mother Isabella – the 1871 census transcription shows a Jane Wellwood living with Campbell Mcalister and his wife Isabella in Row, Dumbartonshire.  This Jane is listed as a cousin, but her age is transcribed as 10 instead of 13, so I did some more digging.  Searching out the original record, instead of the transcript, it is obvious that Jane’s age is actually given as 12(!), the head of household’s name is Campbell McAlister, and they live in the ecclesiastical parish of Helensburgh on the coast just south of Rhu across the water from Roseneath.  So I looked further and found that Isabella McAlister’s maiden name turned out to be Martin, as I discovered on her marriage record of June 8, 1866, but her mother’s maiden name was Sinclair.  So it is very possible at this point that this Jane Wellwood was in fact Joseph and Isabella’s daughter.   Looking further, I discovered that Isabella Martin was living in the home of Isabella (Sinclair) Wellwood’s parents John and Janet Sinclair in Roseneath in the 1851 census – she is their grandchild, so Christian Sinclair, Isabella Martin’s mother, must have been a sister to Isabella (Sinclair) Wellwood.  This would make little Jane Wellwood Isabella (Martin) McAlister’s first cousin.  This is definitive proof that the Jane Wellwood living with the McAlister’s in 1871 was in fact Joseph and Isabella’s daughter, and I believe she must have been living with them from the time her father applied for Relief, as she is not listed on that record, and that she grew up in Campbell McAlister’s household.  His family, however, emigrated to New Zealand prior to the 1881 census, in which I can find no record of Jane.  Nor can I find a record of her marriage or death.  It is possible, then, that Jane went with the McAlister’s to New Zealand!  It’s also possible Jane married in Scotland prior to the 1881 census and I just have not been able to locate the record.  Maybe one of our readers from New Zealand or Rhu, Scotland can help shed some light on this – you just never know.

© Deborah Ray and archivecookie.com, 2011.