Can anyone help with a brick wall, Jane Parker/Green of Hobart, died 1885

Question

Hi Wikitreers,

I've been researching Jane (Parker) Green, and now I think that's not her last name at birth!

Can anyone help me with this brickwall?

• She was born in England around 1821/1822, died in Hobart
• Chronology of her children's births (1853, 1855, 1859) and her marriage (1862) are "around the wrong way" for the day - particularly considering her husband was a City Councillor (and later Mayor), casting judgement on the drunks and misfits of the city.
• She died on 12 December 1885 in Hobart at the age of 63 and place of birth as England, but her death record gives no clue as to her parentage or even last name at birth.
• Her remains went to the Cornelian Bay Cemetery and Crematorium.
• I have found some news reports from 1855 that indicate a woman named Jane Parker was in a spat with her husband's lover. It seems possible (but perhaps not probable?) that Jane Parker married William Patrick Green is the same woman. 

Does anyone have any further ideas for this brick wall? All help/insights appreciated.

Answer 1

I think your speculation that she is actually Jane Logan has got legs.

Last known (?) sighting of her husband was 1855, marriage in 1862 as “widow”.  Clearly could have been having children without her husband in 1853 as the marriage was obviously troubled.

I don’t actually know what the law was, but I’ve seen a number of seven year gaps like this where a husband drops off the radar and his wife remarries seven years later, often with children before then with the second husband. And it certainly happens with middle class people. My experience is in a WA context.

Comments

The Old Wharf location is certainly interesting, and the "late" marriage does raise the possibility of one or other of them being married to someone else.  But the 1855 court case states that Mr Parker was back living with his wife at that point, and the first two Green daughters were born in 1853 and 1855, which means the chronology doesn't fit.

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Good point. Due to being on a phone I hadn’t read through the article.

I’ve come across some pretty weird and complicated relationships, but agree this does make it highly unlikely they are the same person.

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The 7 year rule was from England.  If a spouse hasn't been heard of for 7 years by those who should have heard from him/her, the person was free to remarry, and could not be prosecuted for bigamy.  Often, the absent spouse then turned up.  The first spouse could not be prosecuted, but the second marriage became a nullity.  For convicts , there was a variant of this rule.  If a couple had been "separated by water" for 7 years, both were then free to remarry.  That explains why the early relationships could not be "made legal."

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Thanks for the clarification Doug.

I’ve seen a number of cases of prisoners who arrived in WA in the early 1850s, leaving a wife and family behind, and yet who married within a couple of years in WA. I haven’t been paying attention to when they were sentenced, but they wouldn’t have been separated by water for seven years. I suspect they were legal because they were still “Ticket of Leave” and not actually free. Would you know anything about this situation?

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No, Mark, I can't help you there.  Did W.A. take convicts? Back then, there was no BDM Record to check.  Each party made a declaration that they were free to marry.  If they were not, they risked prosecution for bigamy, and perhaps, perjury.  There was an example in my wife's tree. The ancestor of her Bernie line, [[Bernie-22|John Thomas Bernie (1824-1894)]] was charged in Young, NSW with a sexual offence, left his family and town, returned to Adelaide and remarried, declaring that he was a widower. A descendant of the second marriage was in contact when I worked this out, and was MOST upset.  I tried to tell her that the wife may not have been dead, but the marriage certainly was, but that wasn't good enough.  In that case, the risk of prosecution was almost negligible.

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Doug - Thanks from me too.  I hadn't realised it was enshrined in English law, which is actually relevant to my English ancestors.  It had been 20 years, and a common-law marriage in between, since my 2g-grandfather had been with his first wife, and I sometimes wonder whether I have more chance, 150 years later, of knowing whether she was still alive than he did when he married my 2g-grandmother. 

Answer 2

I found a Mrs Parker listed on Elizabeth Street in the 1853 Hobart Valuation rolls.  Given the time-lag between preparing and publishing them, is it possible this could be Jane?

Comments

Mark's comment and Doug's clarification support your theory that Jane had been married before, and perhaps abandoned by her husband.  To my mind, the seven year law also provides a good fit with the details of the marriage ceremony, particularly if they were respectable people - on the quiet(?), in their own home, by a minister who was an old friend of William's. In which case, the witnesses may also have been people they felt they could particularly trust.  Do you know anything about them and might they shed any light on who Jane was?

Answer 3

There is also a Jane Parker, widow with a 5 year old son James, arriving as a convict in 1842 on the ship Garland Grove. Her son was put in the orphan school and died in 1843 from dropsy.  

This Jane Parker got her conditional pardon in 1848. According to her indent she was 23 in 1842 so born about 1819. Maybe this Jane made herself younger if she was the one who married William Patrick Green in 1862.

In Cornelian Bay cemetery records there is a Jane and William Patrick Green buried in the N section. It is a private grave and was reopened for William's burial.

Comments

This sounds like a good/potentially promising lead! The orphan school sounds like such a nightmare, such high mortality rates

I will see what else I can find on this, with many thanks, Sue!