I am a little perplexed by an apparent inconsistency, or rather anomaly, found while researching my Smith ancestors in Harewood and Leeds in the 18th-early 19th centuries.
My ancestor Hannah Smith - daughter of George Smith, banker, from Leeds - married Thomas Fawell in 1807 in St. Peters Church, Leeds (please see attached). I have a series of contemporary 'letters' with dates of births and deaths for this family, two leafs of which I have attached as '
Fawell letter 1' and '
Fawell letter 2' below.
In this letter, George Smith '
banker from Leeds' is listed as the grandfather of Hannah Smith's children with Thomas and therefore her father.
From a memoir written by George Smith's son William (born 1785), I learned that George's wife was Hannah Craven of Harewood:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433082272893;view=1up;seq=27"My mother was Hannah Craven. daughter of a farmer who resided at Harewood..."I subsequently found her marriage to George Smith in 1778 in Harewood on familysearch. There is another memoir written by Hannah Craven's sister in 1812 (Sarah Baiston) who likewise refers to her as "Mrs. Smith".
I then came across a newspaper account published in Salt Lake City in 1897 by Hannah Craven's great-granddaughter, Eve A Cooke and based upon her mother Sarah Anne Cooke's memories, in which she wrote the following:
"Hannah Craven married George Smith, a most estimable young man, a devout Methodist and a cashier in the Bank of Leeds, of which he afterwards became President.
They had a family of three fine sons, William and George, who succeeded their father in the bank, and Samuel, a surgeon, generally spoken of as the handsome and skillful Doctor, and two beautiful daughters, Mary (May?), afterwards Mrs. Towe, and Sarah, their youngest (Mrs. Sutton) my own mother's mother, whose early death was the great sorrow of the family"
(Written by Eve Anna Dykes, Salt Lake City, August 15th 1897. "My mother, if living, would be 89 years old today." (Written Sarah Ann Cooke Born 1808 7-15-1808))
I found it odd that my ancestor Hannah Smith, a daughter of George Smith (banker), was absent from the above list of family members.
Hannah and George's youngest daughter Sarah Sutton (the grandmother of Eve A Cooke, the author of the above piece) is mentioned in my Fawell family letter 2 as "
Mrs. (Hannah) Fawell's sister", where it is noted that Hannah Smith and Thomas Fawell buried their one year old son Thomas Hindmarsh Fawell in a grave alongside his aunt Sarah Sutton
and "
Mrs Fawell's father George Smith, the banker" and her brother George Smith Jr.
I also found an entry about Samuel Smith - the "handsome" doctor referred to above - in Parr's Life of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons, where it is noted:
https://livesonline.rcseng.ac.uk/client/en_GB/lives/search/detailnonmodal/ent:$002f$002fSD_ASSET$002f0$002f372722/one?qu=%22rcs%3A+E000538%22&rt=false%7C%7C%7CIDENTIFIER%7C%7C%7CResource+Identifier
"[Samuel Smith was] born in Briggate, Leeds, the son of George Smith, banker; was apprenticed to his brother-in-law, Fawell, a general practitioner in Leeds."
Thus Hannah Smith was
definitely the daughter of George Smith, banker, and sister of Sarah Sutton, William Smith, George Smith Jr. and Samuel Smith.
But on her marriage certificate to Thomas Fawell in 1807 (please see attached), Hannah Craven is nowhere mentioned. Her father George Smith 'banker' is again there but instead of Hannah Craven, I find '
Hannah Muschamp'.
This Hannah Muschamp is the daughter of Hannah Craven's sister Mary Craven, wife of William Muschamp of Harewood.
Could someone help shed some light upon: (a) the reason why Hannah Smith is not listed in the article above as one of the daughters of Hannah Craven and George Smith, banker & (b) the reason why Hannah Craven doesn't appear alongside her husband George on the 1807 marriage certificate.
I would be most grateful for any assistance.
