Was there a dodgy background to family trusts and bonds?

Open countryside at Wickhampton, Norfolk. The picture is from Norfolk Tales, Myths and More, where the story of how brothers fought to the death over an inheritance, as the villagers looked on, is told. The story also tells us how Wickhampton and nearby Halvergate got their names.

Perhaps the most potent myth in family history, is the idea there was some kind of wealth or land, which is still within reach of descendants if they could only prove ownership. This concept is also corrosive and destructive, as illustrated by Charles Dickens in his novel Bleak House. I am still mystified as to why the will of 2nd great grandfather, James Pollard Skinner, should have caused so much fuss. A small lump sum for his widow, Jane Betsy's annuity top up, was officially restored by Alfred Neave and her surviving son Harry in 1888. According to great great grandfather's instructions, everything else had been sold. All his bequests had been fulfilled and distributed.

   My ancestors and their relatives, the Skinners, were not the only people expected to maintain the female Bately descendants who had no husband to support them. Samuel Crow of Southtown, Great Yarmouth was the other partner in the bond. As my co-researchers have pointed out, there would have been no problem for them at the time the bond was made (1840). They would naturally expect the Bately estates and properties, in Tunstall and Cantley, would be adequate to supply enough for all of them.

   By the 1890s, Jane Betsy and her surviving sisters, widowed Eliza Charlotte Skinner and (officially single) Louisa Crow Bately were dependent on the income from the Bately estates. After James Thomas Skinner and his sisters Alice and Eleanor left Tunstall, it could have been difficult to let in its remote location, with the silted up link to the River Bure. The inadequacy of the income from the estate would have to be made up by the descendants of the parties to the bond, James Skinner senior and Samuel Crow. I am not sure what relationship Samuel Crow was to them or to me, but, as far as my researches have revealed, he had emigrated to the United States by the 1890s.

   I have had great difficulty establishing which John Crow, my 4th grandfather was. The most suitable recruit for the position was a young teenager when 3rd great grandmother Harriet and her older sisters Clementina, Maria, Virtue, Eliza and brothers William Barnard and James were born. I have found a J.Crow and a John Crow, who, with different signatures, sign marriage bonds (for licences) and are witnesses for Clementina and Harriet's weddings at Wickhampton. 3rd great grandfather Stephen Bately threatened his marriage licence with Harriet Crow (1814) could be called into question, and her future comfort could be jeopardised, if she did not obey his will and make sure all his daughters were treated generously and equally.

    The Crows were non-conformists. The birth of John Crow, his brothers and sister were registered by parents, William and Dorothy, on the non-conformist and non-parochial registers at St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, long after they were born. They are William 1775, John 1777, Henry 1783, Edward Davis 1786, Harriet, 1888 and George 1890. 3rd great grandmother, Harriet, daughter of John Crow and Virtue his wife (late Barnell) was born on 8th February 1794, privately baptised on February 23rd 1794 and received by the church March 12th 1794. If I have the correct John Crow, he would have been sixteen or seventeen when my 3rd great grandmother was born, plus, she had older sisters. I sent Ancestry into a tizz when I had the idea William must have been Harriet's father rather than John, so I am still on the case.

   That Samuel Crow was some kind of relative is fairly certain, because he was at Harriet's brother William Barnard Crow's second marriage in 1849. He ducked out of any responsibility for Stephen and Harriet's daughters when he emigrated to the United States, leaving the Skinner family to fulfil any outstanding obligations to the bond, deemed necessary by the trustees.

   So what was dodgy about 3rd great grandmother Harriet's marriage licence or background? I can find one thing which is possibly something she and her family would wish to suppress.

   It is likely, one of her uncles (listed above), was held in Newgate prison in 1819. He was convicted of felony at the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey and sentenced to seven years transportation on the Leviathon to New South Wales, Australia. After seven years he was free. I looked up a newspaper report about New South Wales for 1819. I found one in the Chester Courant under the heading "New South Wales."

   "This land of convicts and kangaroos is beginning to rise into a very fine and flourishing settlement. And indeed, it must be the natural resources and endowments of this land that has been able to survive the system of neglect and oppression experienced from the mother country and the series of ignorant and abusive governors that have been selected for the administration of its affairs.

   The colony has a bank with its capital of £20,000 and a capital (the town of Sydney) containing about 7,000 persons. There is also (a newspaper) the Van Diemen's Land Gazette."

   Whether I have this right or not, I think Harriet passed a carefully kept secret to her daughter Louisa Crow Page. More than a dozen of Harriet's grandchildren and great grandchildren emigrated to New South Wales Australia from the 1880s to the 1920s. 

Vintage print of Van Diemen's Land (Now Tasmania) below.