Edward Green (1824-1876) and Mary Ann Gedge (1817-1858).
My 3rd great-grand uncle.
Edward was born in 1824 to parents William Green and Willoughby Staff and baptised at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, on 29 October that year.
He grew up with his parents and siblings in the town and then married on 25 October 1845 at St Nicholas’s. His bride was Mary Ann Gage (sometimes Gedge), who was baptised in Yarmouth on 10 March 1817 to parents Horace and Mary Gage.
Edward was Mary’s third husband. She’d previously wed Robert Soanes Eves in Great Yarmouth on 14 March 1836 and had children with him. What happened to Robert is unclear but she was with her children and working as a beatster at the 1841 census. She then wed John Rivett on 1 August 1841 in Yarmouth. He was buried there in April 1844.
Census records list Edward Green as a fish curer and he appears, like others in his extended family, to have travelled around the country with his job. His son William, for example, was born in Manchester in 1849 and two years later the 1851 census recorded him and his family in the City of London at 12 Paternoster Row. Mary Ann’s son by her first husband, Charles Eves, was also living with them. Mary Ann died in 1858 and was buried on 14 July at the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery.
Edward went on to marry for a second time, his bride being Wapping-born mariner’s daughter Margaret Cassidy. The ceremony was held at St George’s in the East, Wapping. The 1861 census showed Edward and his family living in Corbetts Court, Spitalfields, but his occupation was now given as ‘porter’. Continuing the tale of doomed lives, Margaret died in 1863 and was buried on 18 May at the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery aged just 29.
In 1871 fish porter Edward was living with an Annie Green as his wife, but I’ve yet to find any evidence of their marriage. Living with them at Grey Eagle Street in Shoreditch were Annie’s children and Edward Green (born in 1864) and John Green (born 1866). Living next-door to them was Edward’s oldest son William Edward Green and his family. Edward Snr died in April 1876 and was buried on 1 May at the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery. Annie was recorded in the 1891 census in Mile End, in the east end of London. I suspect she was buried there in the 1890s.
Edward’s child with his first wife Mary Ann:
- William Edward Green (1849-1933). William was born and baptised in the Lancashire city of Manchester but grew up mostly in Spitalfields, East London, where his father worked. He married Sarah Ann Gilligan in Spitalfields 1869 and raised a family. He was listed as a fish porter and later a fish salesman in the census returns, which showed them living in various parts of the Essex part of what’s now Greater London. Their son Albert Victor Green of the 4th Btn Essex Regiment was killed in the First World War on 27 March 1917. Sarah Ann died in 1923, William in 1933, their deaths registered in West Ham, Essex.
Edward’s children with Annie:
- Edward Green (1864-????). Edward’s birth was registered in Whitechapel. By 1891 he was working as a printer’s porter. I’ve not pinned him down after this.
- John Green (?1864-????). I’ve not found a record for John’s birth yet but rby 1891 he was working as a market porter. I’ve not pinned him down after this.
Sources. Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society. Commonwealth War Graves Commission.