Work in progress October 2022
My great-grandfather, (my father's paternal grandfather), was born George Daniel Leggett (GDL), in Corton, in the north east corner of Suffolk, near Lowestoft in 1837. He died aged 84 in Hartlepool, Durham in 1921. Just about everything else about him is a bit of a mystery.
He was the son of Daniel Leggett, an agricultural labourer, like many of the local people in the area. Somehow he managed to shake off his rural roots and got into the fishing industry. He was Indentured to a seaman, William balls in 1852. Early in his life there are records that he spent two visits at the Dreadnought seamen's hospital with some sort of fever. 1861 saw him in Hull, at an address also shared by a lady of about the same age, called Mary Boynton. They were married the following year, and had soon moved to Scarborough. In that 10 years Mary gave George Daniel Leggett four children, of whom, sadly, only one survived beyond infancy, Mary Leggett, who lived until 1940. While Mary appears on all available censuses during her lifetime, George Leggett seems to have done equally well at avoiding the censuses! As a fisherman it is possible that he was always at sea on the day that the counting took place. For the rest of her life Mary gave her status as married, although we have no record of George Daniel Leggett ever being at the same address. There are shipping records for his vessel, the Dandy, in Scarborough, into the early 1880s, showing that he gave his address as Sandside Scarborough, very close to the veritable hovels where Mary and her daughter lived. In the autumn of 2022 I visited Scarborough and walked along the alleyways and lanes in the area where they had lived. Most of the town has been redeveloped, but the Harbourside and the area along Quay Street are still very identifiable with their past.
In the early 1890s George Daniel Leggett seems to have somehow met my paternal grandmother, Jane Adamson. Jane had been briefly married at the age of 29 to a 71 year old man, Henry Thompson, who gave her a son, Henry Adamson. There does not seem to be any question that Jane was not pregnant at the time of her marriage. There was a clear 9 months and 2 weeks between the marriage on 13th March 1889 and the 17th December 1889 birth, registered on 25th January 1890. Henry Sr. died soon after, in January 1891. It could possibly be argued that the date of the birth was modified, but there is no evidence for this. (Slightly interesting is that the registrar, James Sedcole, was the brother in law of one of my 2G Grandfathers!)
Between GDL meeting Jane, and November 1900 they had 6 children together, ending up with the birth of Thomas William Leggett, my father's father. You can read more about the discrepancy between my father's name and his name in the article about the big conspiracy here. Their first child, christened Lavinia Adamson Leggett, was born on the 30th April, 1892, suggesting that Jane knew GDL as early as July 1891, 18 months after the death of her first husband. We have no record of how Jane and GDL met, but it is easy to believe that if GDL was still fishing, he might have unloaded his cargo in South Shields, and met Jane in the area.