Here's a question: my great grandfather, Joseph Williams Burton, was living in Monkton Farleigh, Somerset, with his parents, Thomas and Martha Burton, for the census in 1861 and 1871. In 1874, he married Eliza Jane Jefferies (adopted name, Peacock) in Newport, across the Severn River in Wales, some 45 miles away. That strikes me as odd. Why not get married in the area where they were living and where all their relatives were living?
Here's one possible explanation: keeping in mind that Eliza was probably still working as a domestic when she met young Joseph, what if Thomas and Martha Burton didn't approve of their future daughter-in-law? The Burtons had long been landowners and tradesmen. Maybe they refused to give Joseph their consent to marry a girl from a lower rung on the economic ladder. Perhaps Joseph and Eliza had to elope and get married where no one knew them. Some place like Wales.
This scenario is believable since soon after their wedding, Joseph and Eliza packed up and moved 270+ miles away to the east coast of England where, in the second quarter of 1877, they had a baby girl, Beatrice, in the village of West Riding, Yorkshire.
Maybe the Burtons thought that things had cooled off, for they soon moved back to western England. We know because in 1879 they had had son named Thomas in the town of Bristol, very near their one-time homes.
But perhaps things still weren't okay, for shortly thereafter they show up in the census records for Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania where history records one more puzzling fact: Joseph and Eliza told the census worker in 1880 that their names were -- "William" and "Jane," which were actually their middle names. Now that is pretty darn intriguing. Wouldn't it be fun to know just what really went on with Joseph and Eliza in that brief period from the early 1870s to 1880?
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