Catherine McParlan 1837 to 1913

I remember that I mentioned in a previous post, that my great great grandmother was named Catherine McPartland and she married Peter McConville in England.  While doing this recent research, I was looking for census records for Catherine McPartland in Manchester, Lancashire, England and I could not find any - even though the 1861 census says that both Peter and Catherine were born in Lancashire.

See?  It says that they were both born Hulme, Lancashire.  So the next thing I did was to search for a marriage record for them.  I located an index of marriages from 1857:

Yeah, I know, it's hard to read, but she is listed towards the bottom of the page as Catherine McParlan, registration district is Manchester, then it lists the index volume and page as Volume 8d, page 561 and it is for the fourth quarter of 1857.  This means that it lists marriages for Oct, Nov, and Dec 1857.  There is a separate entry for Peter McConville with the same volume and page listed, but I did not show it here.  So I know they were married in Manchester in October 1857.  But the best part is that I now know that her last name is spelled McParlan, not the McPartland that I had been searching under.  Just so you know, I got the McPartland spelling from a family tree my mom's cousin did, quite awhile ago.  (Probably back before I cared).  But the point is that she gave me  a starting point - and a real close one - for my great great grandmother's maiden name.  If not for her effort, I wouldn't have had a "McClue".

So with the proper spelling of her last name, I now found a census listing in 1851 - before they were married.  The 1851 census lists the McParlan family living in Manchester:

The family consists of Edward McParlan, age 58, born in Ireland, and I think his occupation is "confectioner", which I think is a candy maker. His wife, Mary Ann is 40 years, born in Ireland, and is at home, then we have the children:  Ann is 14 and is employed in Waterproofing - she was born in Manchester, as were the rest of the children, Catherine is 11 and works as a bread maker, it looks like Catherine has a twin sister Mary, who is also a bread maker, Margaret is 5, and Emma is 9 months old.  So Edward is the only male in the household - he has a wife and 5 daughters.  So this looks like the second set of twins that I have found - one on Peter's side and one on Catherine's side.  Now that I think about it, my mom always said that twins ran in the family and she always wanted to have a set of twins in our bunch.  Now I know where the twins came in.  But in all my research, these two sets of twins are the only ones, so I guess twins did not run very far - just in that generation.  Interesting.

The other thing I find interesting is the occupations - a confectioner? Really? and his daughter at age 14 is in waterproofing.  Somehow that just sounds backwards - he should be in waterproofing and she should be the candy maker.  But the twin daughters are both bread makers (or bakers I guess).  Even on the McConville side  of this marriage you had weavers,  dyers, and packers of cotton.  I guess the area where the McConvilles llived may have been more rural and the confectioners, waterproofers, and bread makers may have lived in a more urban area.  This, of course, is all speculation on my part but I am thinking that employment opportunities depended on the area that you lived. in.  

The other thing that I noticed is that Peter's parents - Edward and Alice - were both born in England, but Catherine's parents - Edward and Mary Ann - were both born in Ireland.  So the McParlans are can be traced back to the old sod easier than the McConvilles.  I think I have some more research to do, but I'm not doin' bad so far.