“Atticus: Double first cousin. Scout: How can that be? Atticus: Two sisters married two brothers.” (From To Kill a Mockingbird).
It’s the stuff of fairy (or scary) tales – pairs of siblings marrying either together in a double wedding or perhaps with the second relationship arising as a result of the first union.
Whilst we have at least one example of this classic tale in our tree – the marriage of Elizabeth Furniss & George Downs (3 x great grandparents) in 1866 followed on from that of their siblings Mary Downs & John Furniss in 1859 – I’ve just this week come across a third example of a different double relationship – two sisters marrying an uncle & a nephew.
It’s not as strange as it seems. Mothers frequently bore children for up to twenty years meaning uncle and nephew could be much closer in age than the uncle was to his own sibling. In larger families, children would often go to work as farm servants on their relatives’ farms. And in remote villages there wasn’t always a great deal of choice of partner….. Add to the mix a deceased or otherwise missing father and which requires elder siblings to look after their younger ones and I am only surprised I haven’t found more cases of these dual relationships where one man is both uncle and brother-in-law to another.
Here are the stories of those three double relationships.
Elizabeth Hornby & Robert Walker
I am currently researching our 3x great grandparents Elizabeth & Robert’s story. They are Grandpy‘s mother’s mother’s parents. In short, Robert’s father died when he was just twelve. By 1841 he was living at West Side House, Malham Moor with his maternal grandfather, uncles and his Uncle William Pratt’s new wife, Margery. In this instance, Robert was over twenty years younger than his Uncle, but then so was William’s new wife – generationally Margery & Robert were very similar.
Malham Moor is a bleak remote place but fortunately Margery had only moved a mile up the road from her family home and she likely saw a lot of her younger sister Elizabeth which means Robert probably saw a lot of her too. They married in 1844.
The Bentley girls and the Greenwood boys
A slightly more complex set of relationships underpins not just two, but three linked marriages between the Bentleys & the Greenwoods.
The Bentley side is straightforward: Abigail (b. 1882), Ada (b. 1883) and Florence (b. 1886) Bentley were all sisters of my great great grandmother (Nana‘s mother’s mother), Annie. Abigail was the first of the three sisters to marry a Greenwood (Richard, b. 1879) in 1908. Florence was next in 1909 marrying Richard’s brother, John (b. 1881) at which point Florence and Abigail became both sisters and sisters-in-law.
It was the third Bentley – Greenwood marriage in 1910, between Ada and Hanson (b. 1883), which left me stumped. The Bentley family and the two Greenwood brothers all lived in the same parish, Sitlington so their marriages made sense. Hanson, however, came from Wadsworth some thirty miles away and past the major urban centre of Halifax. There had to be some sort of family connection.
The 1891 census furnished a vital clue as Hanson was living with his grandfather, Charles Greenwood and Charles’s son, John, who’s vital statistics matched those of Florence’s Greenwood husband. After a lengthy bit of research I discovered that Alice, mother of John & Richard, was Charles’s second wife. They had a much half sibling, Mary Ann (b. 1862) who had an illegitimate child named Hanson! Whilst I haven’t been able to discover much about Mary Ann, Hanson appears to have grown up with his uncles and this no doubt led to him meeting Ada. This makes Abigail & Florence both sister & aunt to Ada as well as sister & sister-in-law to each other!
Hilda Mary Scott & Jesse Houseman
Hilda & Jesse are my Grandma‘s parents and as such I know a lot more about them and their relationships including that Hilda’s sister Laura married Jesse’s nephew, Jack.
Hilda (b. 1891) had a particularly close relationship with her younger sister Laura (b. 1895) as these two photos clearly demonstrate.
What intrigued me more was Jesse’s relationship with his nephew John Taylor “Jack” Houseman (b. 1894), son of Jesse’s oldest brother, Robert. Three of Jesse & Robert’s middle siblings had died from scarlatina in 1882 and I believe this had almost created two generations within the one family: Robert (b. 1867), Thomas Bradbury (b. 1869), Betsy Jane (b. 1871) and John Charles (b. 1873) being the first and then Alice (b. 1882), Jesse (b. 1885), Beatrice Maud (b. 1888) and Emma (b. 1892) being the second. This would have been more pronounced after the death of Robert & Jesse’s father, Michael, in 1892 when Jesse was just seven. It would have been natural for Robert, as eldest brother and with three children of his own of similar age to the younger group, to have stepped in.
These WW1 postcards from “Jack” to his Uncle Jesse give a glimpse of the warm relationship between the two.
Hilda & Jesse were the first to marry on 28 September 1915. Five years later Laura married Jack. I wonder if Hilda & Jesse were responsible for setting the pair up?
This was not only the marriage of two sisters to an uncle & nephew but the marriage between two sets of close friends which is perhaps why the relationship between the two couples and then their children stayed strong. Aunty Laura became Grandma’s godmother for example. However, the final, sweetest tribute to this double relationship was to come at the end. Both Hilda & Laura died relatively young, Hilda aged 62 in 1954 and Laura aged 61 in 1956. On can only assume that Jesse & Jack took comfort from each other as they chose to bury their wives in next door plots. Both Jesse & Jack outlived their wives by almost 30 years with Jesse dying aged 91 in 1977 and Jack was the last to die aged 87 in 1982 bringing to an end this incredible dual relationship.
