Shaking the shorter branches of our family tree – and why it is important.
In genealogy, we often focus our research on the ancestors who paved the way for our own existence, or other long, unbroken lines of descent, but there is a rare kind of beauty found when we stop to look at the lives that left no descendants at all. I find myself drawn to the “shorter branches” – those who died young or remained childless. These individuals often become mere dates on a page, yet their lives offer some of the most compelling stories we can find.
One such story is that of Elizabeth Weaver (mn.Snailham) and a little girl from Preston called May Walker Rudd. Born to an unmarried domestic servant and raised by a family who had already tasted the bitterness of loss, May’s life provides a rare window into the world of private arrangements and maternal grit.
The Weavers
Elizabeth and Miles Weaver had a bumpy start to their marriage.
Living at Swansey Fold, Miles spent much of his time between his pigeon cote and the local public houses. His penchant for ale eventually drove Elizabeth to apply for a separation order just three years into their marriage. The court granted the order and Miles was ordered to pay two shillings a week toward her maintenance.
Mile’s reputation as a ‘lovable rogue’ was forged early. At just eleven years old, he was sentenced to five years at Bleasdale Reformatory for stealing boots – a harsh consequence for a second offense that even his own mother felt compelled to report.
Perhaps it was Elizabeth’s refusal to tolerate neglect that finally grounded Miles. Whatever the catalyst, the couple reconciled, moving to Bridge Street, Whittle-le-Woods.
Bridge Street was in the old hamlet of Rip Row known locally as t’Rip. Rip Row had a reputation for “lively goings on” and “unruly neighbourhood behaviour”. Many of the houses in the hamlet were built specifically to accommodate the canal workers. Bridge Street is no longer, but the location can be identified today as just off the junction with Chorley Old Road, situated close to the former canal bridge and the Royal Oak. The house the Weavers lived in was a typical small cottage-style home of the era, consisting of just three rooms.
By the time May arrived, the Weavers were in their thirties and childless. Miles has traded the erratic life of a canal worker for the steady pulse of the local calico printers.
May Walker Rudd
Born on the 25th of April 1908 at 5 Roman Road, Preston, May’s entry into the world was marked by the quiet complications of the era. Her mother, an unmarried domestic servant, faced a society that offered little room for a single woman with a child.
The duality of May’s identity began at her birth; while the surname on her birth certificate was recorded as ‘Walker’, she was baptised and known thereafter as ‘Rudd’ – her mother’s maiden name. Whether ‘Walker’ was a silent nod to a father, we may never know.
By the time May was two years old, the six miles between the bustling streets of Preston and the cottage in Whittle-le-Woods had been crossed. She was no longer just a statistic of an “illegitimate” birth; she had become an adopted daughter in the home of Miles and Elizabeth Weaver. In this small three-roomed house, May also found a companion in Elizabeth’s younger brother, John Snailham. Having lost his own parents aged nine, John was a living testament to Elizabeth’s innate maternal grit – a woman who didn’t just keep a home, but opened it to those who might have otherwise faced the bleak reality of the parish system.
It isn’t certain why May was adopted by the Weavers, but it was undoubtedly the result of a complicated mix of circumstances as most adoptions at this time were. One clue we can rely on was May’s birth mothers’ occupation.
Domestic Service
At the time of May’s birth, her mother worked as a domestic servant. In records after Mays birth, she was employed as a live-in house maid for a family in Preston. For a woman in her position, the average wage was a mere £14-£20 a year. While this covered her own board and lodging, it left almost nothing to support a child in an era before government benefits.
In 1908, falling pregnant while in service was more than a personal crisis; it was grounds for immediate dismissal without a character reference, effectively ending a woman’s ability to find future work.
In the eyes of Edwardian society, an unmarried domestic servant ‘with child’ wasn’t just an employee who had made a mistake; she was often labelled a ‘fallen woman’. Domestic service relied upon the ‘character’ of the servant; an unmarried mother therefore would be seen to contaminate the morality of the home, and most households would have refused to have this under their roof.
The physical toll of her work cannot be overstated either. Before the technological shifts of the 1920’s, a housemaids day began around 6:00AM, raking out heavy iron fireplaces and scrubbing hearthstones by hand. To navigate this gruelling labour while potentially hiding a pregnancy requires a level of resilience that is hard to fathom today.
Informal Adoption
Despite an increase in charitable organisations by the early twentieth-century, no records have been found that confirm or dismiss whether May’s adoption was arranged in this way. Likewise, it is not clear whether her birth mother had links with the Weaver family and the two parties came up with a private arrangement between them. Unlike the formal system we know today, informal adoptions of the past were often undocumented and so there is no paper trail that could help to reveal more about the circumstances of Mays adoption.
The history of informal adoption is complex and varied. During the 19th century and into the early 20th century, some instances of informal adoption resulted in positive outcomes, whilst others were fraught with abuse, exploitation, and heartbreak; the history of the baby farmers is one such example.
For May’s mother, it was likely that the crushing combination of economic necessity and social “humiliation” lead to the private arrangement with the Weavers. It was perhaps the only way to ensure May had a home, while she herself kept a job.
One thing that is certain is May was with her birth mother for at least the first four weeks of her life, confirmed by baptism and registration records. Besides that, May’s early life remains a mystery. We can only speculate on whether the arrangement was intended to be temporary or permanent, or whether her birth mother ever visited, or paid any money to the Weavers towards her upkeep.
Paying Attention to Small Details
When the paper trail runs cold, we are forced to look between the lines of the census for the life lived in between. It is in these small, often overlooked details that the character of a family is revealed. Elizabeth Snailham and her brother John are the primary branches of my own connection to this story, but by exploring the shadow of little May’s adoption, I begin to see Elizabeth not just as a name on a census, but as a woman defined by a profound, quiet strength.
To understand the caregiver Elizabeth became for May, I had to look back to the events that preceded her arrival. It was during this research that I discovered the devastating loss of Elizabeth’s own child.
Annie Weaver
Miles and Elizabeth had had one child of their own before May came to live with them – a daughter named Annie. Annie died just two days old. Her cause of death was recorded as malnutrition.
In an age before modern neonatal care, ‘malnutrition’ was often a clinical label for a heartbreak no mother could prevent – the struggle of a premature infant or a mother herself weakened by the realities of working class life. Annie was born and died at ‘Clayton Tops’ close to Brindle where her parents had married just two months earlier.
Elizabeth didn’t have any more biological children of her own. The next census after Annie’s death show’s her taking care of little brother John, then aged ten. Elizabeth continued to remain a solid maternal character in John’s life well into his twenties. This devotion to her brother was the first sign of what I’ve come to recognise as her defining trait.
Everything I have unearthed about Elizabeth points to a woman who was innately maternal – a natural caregiver whose life was defined by looking after others. Her commitment to raising a child who was no relation at all, in an era where life was a constant struggle for subsistence, speaks volumes about her character. I believe that after the loss of her daughter, accepting the responsibility of May was a way for Elizabeth’s maternal spirit to rest and grow.
Sadly, this narrative doesn’t have the happy ending hoped for. May became ill with croup and septic tonsillitis in the spring of 1912. She didn’t recover and died at home in Whittle-le-Woods aged just four years old.
Not all informal adoptions were rosy. Many children were taken into homes where they were seen as little more than domestic help, or were forever shadowed by the stigma of their birth. But we can hope that May’s short life was sheltered from that cold reality. In the safety of the Weavers home, she may have been entirely unaware of the circumstances of her birth. Perhaps Elizabeth was the only mother she ever knew, or perhaps she lived the best of both worlds, knowing the woman who gave her life and the woman who raised her.
This makes the eventual tragedy of Mays death from croup in 1912 exceedingly sad and I feel pity and sympathy for Elizabeth, who would almost certainly have nursed May in the lead up to her death. For Elizabeth after the death of Annie, this must have been agonising.
From Private Loss to Public Duty
For a time, the family’s world narrowed to the rythms of the village and the daily work at the calico printers. But the peace of the Lancashire countryside was soon to be shattered, and the resilience the Weavers has forged in their private grief was about to be tested on a global scale.
Just two years after May’s death, the world went to war. In 1914, both Miles Weaver and John Snailham followed the call to enlist.
Miles wasn’t away for long, however. Enlisting in 1914, he was discharged five months later as no longer physically fit for service and returned home to Elizabeth.
John Snailham survived the war and is commemorated on the Clayton-le-Woods Roll of Honour.
After the war, Elizabeth and Miles relocated to Smith Street, Bamber Bridge. Miles was considered incapacitated by the census enumerator in 1939, whilst Elizabeth attended to her husband and unpaid domestic duties and found a special friend in her neighbour Mrs Florence Worden. The couple were devoted members of the Wesleyan Church in Bamber Bridge. It is a building I know well, having attended there myself. Remembering the same space where Elizabeth once sought community and perhaps a moment of peace, the distance between our lives felt remarkably small.
Perhaps the most heart-wrenching evidence of Elizabeth’s life is found not in a civil record, but in a letter she penned to the War Office on the 3rd of January, 1915. There, in her own handwriting she wrote the stark, simple words:
“We have no children”
To the war office, it was a cold administrative fact used to determine a soldiers allowance. But to me, knowing the history of the families life in Whittle-le-Woods, those four words felt poignant. They are a testament to the ‘shorter branches’ I have been tracing; a final, quiet acknowledgment of the daughters she lost, and the maternal life she had lived entirely off the official record.
At Rest
Elizabeth’s suffered from multiple health problems in later life and died on 12th October 1947 aged seventy-two with Miles by her side.
The woman who had navigated the ‘lively’ days of Rip Row and the heartaches of Whittle-le-Woods was gone, leaving an eighty-one-year-old Miles to navigate the world without her.
A few years later, Miles appeared in the Lancashire Evening Post one final time. It wasn’t for the ‘unruly’ behaviour of his youth, but for a moment of quiet vulnerability. Under the headline ‘Hoodwinked a man of 81,’ the newspaper detailed how Miles – struggling with failing eyesight – had been cheated by a hawker selling linoleum.
After gaining the confidence of an old man who has failing eye sight and difficulty in moving about, a hawker sold him a roll of linoleum for £3.
But when the man measured it with the assistance of a neighbour, he found it contained only five yards of material and not 14 as the hawker had told him.
At Bamber Bridge today Augustus Shepherdson (35) of Denvale-avenue, Bolton admitted obtaining £3 by false pretences from Mr. Miles Weaver aged 81 of Smith Street, Bamber Bridge. He was fined £30.
Miles passed away just three months after that incident, aged eighty-two.
Final Thoughts
Taking the time to explore the life of Elizabeth Snailham exposed a self-determining woman and an untraditional family; whose lives were hapless, deeply sad at times but full of care and perseverance. Despite a shortage of records relating to Mays adoption restricting that part of the narrative’s emotive aspect, it was still possible to do the events justice with other clues and various titbits of information. It was interesting to unearth stories of two women who had fallen pregnant before marriage, and to discover how their fate as mothers differed due to their circumstances.
Looking back at Elizabeth’s life, it would be easy to see only the losses: the daughter who lived two days, the adopted child who lived four years, and the ‘childless’ status on a war record. But by shaking these shorter branches, we find something much sturdier than a name on a civil record. We find a story of endurance and a woman’s maternal heart. She may have left this world with no descendants to carry her name, but by reclaiming her story, we ensure that her grit, her love, and the children she cared for are not lost to the silences of history.
Sources & recommended further reading:
- Ancestry
- Lancs Online Parish
- LancsBMD
- British Newspaper Archive
- Whittle & Clayton le Woods – A Pictorial Record of Bygone Days – By Kenneth Hodkinson
- A History of Adoption in England & Wales 1850-1961 – By Gill Rossini