LiveTheirStory

Ann Shanks was born in 1832 in Pidley, Huntingdonshire, to William, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Sarah/Betsy. She had a brother, John, the same age (possibly a twin) and a younger sister, Sarah, about whom we’ll hear in a later post. Both girls went into domestic service, Ann as a cook to the local Registrar in Bluntisham, William Marshall. In Bluntisham she met her husband, Reuben, and they married in 1857 in Nottingham. Their son Reuben was born there in the same year.

I wondered if they had had to marry outside her home parish through parental disapproval (local Banns allowed objections to be voiced to the marriage, but no one would have known them elsewhere) and/ or because she was already pregnant? Either way, their second son George was also born in the Midlands. Ann went on to have at least 8 more children, the last born when she was 44 years of age. She lost George at the age of 4, and her daughter Sarah Ann (born in 1861) at 6. By 1861 she and Reuben had moved to Somersham with 3 children, and Ann’s widowed mother Sarah (subject of another post) was living with them, described as a ‘Nurse’ and possibly caring for her daughter and newborn granddaughter.

Ten years later, living in Station Road, Chatteris, the family comprised Reuben, Ann, five children and Reuben’s widowed mother Phoebe. Here they stayed until Ann’s death in 1905. She had outlived three of her children (her daughter Clara died at the age of 36). Reuben and Ann had been married 48 years: their story is one of progression from modest beginnings to relative comfort, but with personal pain along the way.