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  • Writer's pictureJessica Feinstein

Hannah Allsop: charwoman, huckster, and farmer

One of Ari's 6x great-grandmothers was Hannah Allsop, daughter of Charles and Sarah. She was baptised on 17 January 1796 at the church in Bradley, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire.


Derbyshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-–1812, Ancestry.co.uk


The next record we have for Hannah is her marriage to John Murfin. This took place at All Saints, Brailsford, on 16 October 1820.


Neither John nor Hannah signed their names, but made a mark instead.


We know that they lived in Mugginton, Belper, which is where their children were baptised. The 1841 census shows them living at Lane End with Emma (11), Johanna (9), Charles (5), Jonathan (3) and Gervase (1). (The two oldest children, Thomas and Eliza, had left home and were working as servants.)


Hannah's husband John died just two years later, and the 1851 census shows that Hannah had remarried. Her second husband was a widowed labourer, Thomas Hutchinson, and the marriage had taken place in Derby on 31 December 1845.


Derbyshire, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754–1932, Ancestry.co.uk. Crown copyright.


This is the record for the new family in 1851 at Lane End, Mugginton, showing that Thomas was farming two acres of land, and Hannah was working as a charwoman:


1851 census, Ancestry.co.uk


(Note that Hannah's children are listed as daughter-in-law and sons-in-law, rather than stepchildren, of Thomas.)


Thomas died in May 1858, and Hannah is living with her son Jonathan in the 1861 census. Her occupation is listed as a huckster, so she was making a living selling small items of some kind.

Jonathan died suddenly on 10 June 1870:


Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 17 June 1870. Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.


By the time of the 1871 census, Hannah had become a farmer of 20 acres, still at Lane End. A niece, Hannah Collins (15) was living with her.


Hannah died in 1878. I have not found her burial, although there is a listing in Mugginton for Hannah Murfin, of the right age. We did find the grave of her son Jonathan, though:


Ari, this is how you are related to Hannah:





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