Over on my family history blog, Clogs and Clippers, I’ve just posted some new information about the trial of John Mason, Susan Mason’s father. In the book about Susan Mason, I said that he’d been sentenced to being transported for stealing cotton, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. After the British Newspaper Archives made the 1833 editions of the Limerick Chronicle available recently, I’ve discovered that it was 29 yards of muslin that he stole. Was he planning to make dresses out of it? Probably not. Here’s the link to the article: Muslin by the yard
My place in the story
After reading my book Susan, several people have asked me “So which of Susan’s children are you descended from?” It’s intriguing to hear their guesses, although I didn’t intend to make it a guessing game. The relevant information was included in the first draft of the book, but later I edited it out of the main text and then forgot to add it to the postscript.
The answer is that my great grandmother was Eliza, Susan and David’s second child, who went to England with them as an infant. Eliza married Bill Beales, a staunch Salvation Army man from the Colchester area, in 1891. You can read their story on my blog Clogs and Clippers. Their daughter Rosina, whose wedding I mention briefly in the last chapter, was my grandmother.
The photo shows Eliza in what appears to be a homemade Salvation Army uniform, probably around the time of her marriage. I’ll let you decide if there’s any family resemblance between us.