Hi Mrs.Lizzy lovely to see you again.
What an amazing story. Though story is the wrong term to use.. experience is better.
Somebody very much wanted their story told, and you were chosen to tell it.
How very sad for young Ada to feel driven to suicide in that terrible way. You may never really get to the truth of the matter, so don't blame Ann out of hand. Half truths and whispers lead to malicious gossip that can get out of hand leading to slander and untold misery for the recipient, in this case to beyond the grave. Give her the benefit of the doubt. I should think it would take more than a harridan's words to cause a young girl to commit suicide. That's my opinion anyway.
I am wondering whether it was Ada or Ann who stood at your shoulder. Perhaps Ann wants you to try to find out the real reason why Ada committed suicide...worth a thought.
Love
Su
Well my view is that Ada never meant to commit suicide at all - I think it was a dramatic gesture that went too far and somehow she thought they would make her sick, that she would recover, perhaps be a bit pale and wan for a while and make them all ashamed of the way they'd treated her. There is a tangled mystery in there - you see Ada had been brought up by Ann, ostensibly as her adopted grandchild, but in fact Ada was the illegitimate daughter of Ann's eldest son Josiah (can't prove that by the way!) I suspect Ada thought as the granddaughter of a woman of property, niece of a couple (Martha and William Giesen) who were "professional people" and had at least at some stage, owned a ship, maybe Ada viewed herself as like them and thought she would marry a professional man, have a couple of servants etc. There was apparently a visit from a female relative a day or two before, who had "remonstrated" with Ada. I suspect they told her that she wasn't in fact like them, that she was the illegitimate daughter of a maidservant - and if so that would have come as a dreadful shock to a young Victorian woman who was a staunch member of her parish church and up till then had expected a respectable future. Unfortunately all this is guesswork. Maybe I will scan and post a copy of the newspaper report on her inquest - it is really gripping stuff.
I also have had a strong impression for many years, that Ada's brother Charles Giesen, who was my great-great grandfather, was not a particularly comfortable sort of man to be around. I just have this feeling he was and still is very angry, although he could be a bit narked with me for posting the fact of his illegitimacy on the internet. I do wonder if he knew the facts surrounding his birth as he always told the family he was "of German extraction" and gave every appearance of believing that William Henry Giesen was his father - in fact William and Martha were his adoptive parents and as we know, there was no formal adoption process until 1927 and these events were taking place from about 1862 until 1881 when Ada died.
