Marriages of Robert Halstead b. 1839 Briercliffe d.1912 Briercliffe

Just before Easter I took the opportunity of ordering a large number of birth and marriage certificates to help try and resolve some of the anomalies in the Halstead study. The first of these certificates finally arrived yesterday after 3 weeks.

I have all of the birth, marriage and deaths from the GRO indexes as well as all the details from the Lancashire BMD project but even with these it is often difficult to work out who married who. This becomes especially difficult with some of the common pairings like Robert and Mary.

This update relates to the marriages of Robert Halstead, the son of Robert Halstead (1798-1846) and Tabitha Taylor (1799-1871).

Robert married Ellen Proctor on 30 October 1858 in St James, Briercliffe, Lancashire and they had two children

1. John Robert Halstead (1870-1932)
2. Tabitha Halstead (1871-)

Ellen died on 17 Aug 1874 at the age of 38.

The census records then had Robert married to a second Ellen, Ellen Clough (1848-1905) this time, on 16 April 1878 at Haggate Chapel. They had four children according to the census returns

1. James Halstead (1879-)
2. Mary Jane Halstead (1879-1915)
3. Lawrence Halstead (1882-)
4. Edwin Halstead (1883-)

There was a marriage in 1874 in the indexes that I couldn't place and this is the certificate that arrived.

This showed that in fact Robert had married for a third time! He married Mary Whitehead, a 32 year old spinster, on 8 October 1874 at the Registry Office in Burnley. He was a 36 year old widower.

Mary died in the third quarter of 1877 at the age of 35 apparently without issue. It is always possible that she died in childbirth.

This information will appear in the next website update