1940 Census Thomas Roberts Riley

Here is the Census Record from 1940 for Thomas Roberts Riley, Elizabeth Maybury Riley, and Sue Alexandria Riley.  They were living on St Ledger Ave in Akron.  Tom was 81 and had recently retired from Goodyear.  Sue (age 32) was listed as a Merchant in a Retail Grocery Store.  There is nothing listed for her income, which is a little odd.  The house is valued at $5000.

Questions on Elizabeth Ann Maybury's Birth

I realized recently that I don't have Lizzie's birthday recorded any where.  I have birth year's reported by census takers but they are all over the place:
1930              1865
1920              1866
1910              1863
1901              1861
1881              1859
1871              1859
1861              1859


Dad remembers there being a question of whether she was older than Tom.  I do have his birth certificate and he was born in November of 1858.  So it is clear that she was not older than he was.  I imagine the 1859 date is a good one.  The census usually only lists an age so the date of birth is calculated from that.  Depending when the census was taken, it may have been before or after their birthday.


I cannot find in the indexes her birth record.  I did find her older sisters record during the second quarter of 1856, registered in Wolverhampton.  In the 1861 census, the family was living in Wolverhampton.  I did find an Elizabeth Maybury who was born in the 4th quarter of 1860 but she was born in West Bromwich.  This wouldn't work out for her to be the age of 2 in 1861.  Mary Jane Riley Lacke hired a professional genealogist in England in 1990 (in the days before the internet resources).  She wrote Mary Jane to say:
  "I wrote first of all to the Registrar that covers the Willenhall district requesting a birth certificate of Elizabeth Anne Maybury.  She rang me to say that she could find no such birth in spite of checking from 1860-1865.  In addition to checking her own area she had rung the Registrars of the adjacent areas of West Bromwich and Walsall and they could find no record either....It is always possible that the birth was never registered as it was not illegal to not register a birth until 1875."


Since her older sister's birth was registered, I would imagine that Lizzie's birth would have been too.  Does anybody have her birthday (Month and Day)?

On this day in 1888....

On this day in 1888, Thomas Roberts Riley married Elizabeth Ann Maybury.  I am sure they met in Birmingham, England but not sure how they met.  He came to the US in May of 1887 to work in the steel industry in Pennsylvania. I haven't found her immigration record yet.

They were married in Pittsburgh.  They were both 29 years old.  

It appears that this must have been a Justice of the Peace.  The address was in a residential neighborhood and not a church.

 

The Maybury Sisters after their Parents Died

I have discussed the Maybury Sisters, Carrie and Lizzie (Lizzie married Thomas Roberts Riley). and how they had to support their younger siblings after their parents died.    On the 1881 English Census, both of their occupations were listed as Pencil Makers.  Lizzie was 22 and Carrie was 25.


Birmingham was a very industrial city.  It was center of Pen and Pencil Making in England.


 We don't know what their jobs were exactly.  I have researched and found that women held one of two jobs in the pencil factories.


This picture is where the women would put the two halves of the wood around the lead.  This was a job done by women.

The other job they might have done, was to box the finished product, as pictured below.

The pencil making occupation was not a cottage industry, it was a factory job.

The Maybury Sisters

As we learned last week, the Maybury family lost both of their parents within a year of each other.  I have often thought of how hard life would have been for Carrie and Lizzie trying to keep a roof over their heads with three younger siblings to care for. They were such young women to have such responsibilities.  They both are listed on the 1881 census as pencil makers. 


Their maternal grandmother came to live with them as well.  Sarah Blakemore Maybury Coleman's husband died in 1874. At the time of her son's death in 1878, Sarah would have been 76 years old.  I wonder if the girls were supporting her as well.


Excerpt from a Letter from Sue Riley to her niece,  Mary Jane Lacke in 1982:


              I never had the pleasure of seeing any grandparents.  My Mother's Mother
             and   Father both died when she was very young.  Her grandmother took 
             care of the kids.  They were very poor, but very proud.


I have a feeling that the grandmother may have cared for the younger children while Carrie and Lizzie worked.

Sarah Caroline Maybury

Elizabeth Ann Maybury