Margaret Newson and her descendants

When the double cottage now known as Akela and Tas Cottage was sold in 1791 the deeds record that one of them was occupied by a lady called Margaret Newson but ten years later there was a Mary Newson in occupation and it isn't clear whether they were the same people or perhaps mother and then daughter.

Forty years after that at the time of the first census in 1841 one of the properties was occupied by Margaret Welch, a 45 year old widowed charwoman and her 18 year old son William who was an agricultural labourer. She had been born in Tasburgh and a check of the church register of marriages for 1823 shows that her maiden name had been Newson so we certainly have two if not three generation of the family living in the same property. The register shows that neither she nor her husband Robert could write as they had signed with a cross rather than their names, but the register also records his death in 1830 aged 50, so he would have been at least fifteen years older than Margaret.

By 1851 Margaret had moved to part of Old Post Office Cottage and was described as a nurse, while her son William had married and was living just over the bridge in Mill Lane Flordon still doing farm work. However by 1861 William and his wife had moved back to Akela where they were running a grocer's shop and his mother had also returned and was living next door. She died in 1870 and around then William and Isabella moved to Lime Tree Farm, now the Limes, where in addition to farming its 30 acres, he had a second business as a coal merchant, and she had opened her own shop. They didn't have any children and when she died in 1877 he wasted no time in remarrying and starting a family with his new wife, 24 year old Catherine. Within four years they had three children and a fourth child John was born in 1884 but died at one month old and then just a month later William himself died aged 61.

That meant that not only had Catherine lost her baby and her husband but she also lost her home because William had only been a tenant of Lime Tree Farm. However it seems that her mother came to the rescue because the next census in 1891 shows them all living together in Shearings Yard opposite The Mill. Catherine was earning a living as a seamstress, the children were all at the village school and her mother was described as a lady of independent means.Enter your text here...