Who Was Hannah Genders?

  Photo by  Paul Marlow  on  Unsplash When you don’t know where to look  —  you look everywhere.  My Hannah could be from anywhere. While there’s a good chance she was from Warwickshire or its neighbour counties, it’s not certain. With no concrete evidence which branch of the Genders tree she belongs to, I have decided to explore them all. I have registered the name ‘Genders’ and its variants as a study with the Guild of One Name Studies . What this means is I am documenting all instances of the name Genders in all possible records: vital records, censuses, immigration records, occupation, military, criminal etc etc. Basically a surname study that tracks and reconstructs all families that ever used the name Genders. This may seem like overkill, after all, my ancestors are only a tiny percentage of everyone in the Genders tree. Well yes, but… Searching for Hannah can feel highly unproductive at times. It’s like picking a river at random and casting a ro...

  Photo by  AbsolutVision  on  Unsplash So far my research headaches have mostly stemmed from my inability to find records for Hannah based on searches for her surname and its variants. There is another possibility of course. What if she used the name Hannah, but was baptised something else? There are all sorts of instances where people use names other than the one they were registered with. I know several people who always go by their middle name. Others simply do not like the name their parents chose and go by something different. Or maybe a nickname just sticks, and everyone is surprised to learn years down the line that Ethel was really Martha. Some names just have really common nicknames associated with them. In Scotland, many Margarets are known as Peggy. One of my ancestors from Wolverhampton, whose name was Mary, preferred to be known as Pollie, and that’s the name on her marriage certificate.  Now, if someone is using a name other than the one they were...

 Lately this blog has been focusing on William Wheelock and his world. In a total absence of clues to the identity of Hannah Genders, William seems a natural focus given he is the only person besides her son that knew Hannah personally (though I have no confirmation that John had any contact with her beyond infancy). As long as my searches for Hannah turn up nothing, I can at least explore the streets she walked on and learn about the man she had two children with.  Until I find confirmation of when Hannah died, I will assume she was alive for roughly the same timespan as William. I will also assume that for some reason or other–marriage or simply hiding from William–she was using a different name. I haven’t stopped searching for the name Genders and its variants, but I’ve turned up nothing so far. There are other possibilities of course. What if she was in the workhouse? What if she was a patient, like William, in some institution or another? Her presence may have been record...

 In my recent searches for William I happened upon the following newspaper article: Birmingham Daily Post, 21st May 1874 In 1874 William was hawking newspapers with his wife Ann, with whom he was living in the Gullet, Stafford Street. Nevertheless he is clearly still haunting his old home turf on Weaman Street as we learn he still frequents the Leopard Inn . Clearly he was aggressive towards the landlord, Mr Lummis, and, for whatever reason, wanted to break his mirror. We learn that Mr Lummis was frightened of William, and that William had made some serious threats to the man while wielding a carving knife. The word “madman” is used to describe William repeatedly in this article, even by William himself. He even demonstrates this by imitating a cuckoo. This piqued my interest as it reminded me of another of William’s arrests, way back in 1849, when funnily enough, he assaulted the landlord of the Old Still  on Weaman Street, threatening to kill him and also damaging his proper...

  Image Source:  Birmingham Gaol, Warwickshire: Habitual Criminals Register, Ancestry.com How dearly I’d love to say “here she is! That’s Hannah!” Alas, that is not so, but the image above is no less remarkable as it does show the face of a woman who was intimately acquainted with William Wheelock. The picture shows Mary Ann Webb (who always went by the name Ann), who married William on 18th July 1869. I found her by trying out some alternative spellings of Wheelock in my online searches. An “Ann Waylock” came up in the results; I clicked on her and there she was, looking at me. Now as Ann wasn’t a relative of mine I hadn’t explored her story in depth, but I’m so thrilled to put a face to her name I thought now was the time to find out more about this lady. She stood in the Church of Bishop Ryder that day in July, and whether she knew it or not, she married a very volatile man. This is her story. Ann’s early years are a complete unknown to me, bar the fact that she was born in...