Thursday 24 July 2008

A big more digging on Start / Wetherell

I don't know why I've got so interested in Sarah Wetherell and Simeon Start, they're not related to me as I am descended from Sydney's 2nd wife Alice Millington. I am convinced that Sarah did marry a man many years younger than her, but I'd had to get my hands on the marraige certificate to prove it! I believe that Simeon Start and Sarah Wetherell married in 1885 in Beaminster, Dorset.

I've found a Simeon Start living in Axmouth, Devon in the 1861 census, 1871 census and 1881 census. I'm not a 100% that they are all the same Simeon as I don't know how common the Start name was in Axmouth, and his father's name is John which is very common. However all of them seem seem to tie in with him being born about 1861 - which would link him in with Simeon Start aged 41 living with his wife Sarah and lodger Sydney Spurdle in 1901. How do I account for him being 59 in the 1891 census? Simple, I think it should read 29!

If it was the Simeon Start born approx 1861 that married Sarah in 1885 then he would have been about 24 and Sarah would have been 48. Of course this wouldn't be a first, sometimes younger men do marry older women - on my mother's side her grandmother married a man 20 years or more younger than her. But of couse this is a lot of guesswork, so I could be getting it all wrong! I can't find out when Simeon Start died but Sarah Start died in Wrexham aged approx 77 in June 1913. Sarah would have been a grandmother to Sydney Spurdle's children Herbert and Sarah, but I wonder whether she had any kind of relationship with Sydney's later children with his second wife?

Until relatively recently two of Sydney and Alice Spurdle's children were still living in the Gwersyllt area and I was able to quiz them about their memories. They knew that Sydney Spurdle has been married before but they didn't know her name and they believed that she had died before Sydney moved to to North Wales. They didn't know of any family connections with anyone with the name Wetherell - I didn't know that Sarah Wetherell had married Simeon Start so I didn't get a chance to ask them if they knew of any Starts. It could be that when Sarah Start died in 1913 all connections with the Wetherell family were lost.

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