Bluestone Genealogy

Amy Johnson Crow challenges us this week with the theme 'Lucky' in #52ancestors. What does it mean to be lucky? Dictionary.com defines it as having or being marked by good luck or fortune. For some this means only knowing success and prosperity, and for others it means a once in a lifetime opportunity. For my 3x Great Grandfather, Goymer Shorten who was a career criminal in Suffolk, England; being lucky meant he didn't hang for his crimes of horse theft! It may seem ridiculous by modern standards, but the theft of domestic animals including sheep, cattle, horses, pigs and fowl, was quite common in the nineteenth century. Horse theft was judged to be the most serious of these offences, considering prior to the industrial revolution, horses were  the primary source of power for agriculture, trade, and transport. Given their importance for the successful continuation of industry and livelihood, it comes as no surprise that the penalty for horse theft was death. ...

One of my previous posts discussed my British ancestors and their presence in the UK census. I wanted to write about another family who  only shared a few short years together , compared to the Duce's many years (give or take) which was reflected in 30 years of census records. The sad story of Samuel and Charlotte Shorten is told between the 1841 and 1851 census. Samuel Shorten was the son of John Shorten and his second wife Christiana, born in Washbrook, Suffolk, England in 1815. He was the half-brother of my 3x great grandfather, Goymer Shorten (which makes him my half-3rd great granduncle). Samuel married Charlotte Parsons in Swaffham, a civil parish and market town in Norfolk, England in June 1839 when he was 24 years old and she was 18. By October that year, Samuel was working with his father who was selling pigs at the local Ipswich market in Suffolk [source: Bury and Norwich Post, 16 October 1839]. By the time of the 1841 census, Samuel and his wife Charlotte...