Rebecca STEPHENS? 1818 -1901 Stonehouse (General)

by Jim Thomas, Monday, March 13, 2017, 18:06 (2821 days ago) @ slowhands

it is possible that this could be Rebecca nee Fennell but does not explain why she left her daughter in the care of her mother Sarah.

I have seen some old pictures of her daughter Fanny in which she looks almost negroid. I know that within the family my gggrandfather who was Fanny's uncle married Caroline James and in the 1851 census had a visitor from the West Indies. A tenuous link I know. I've lost contact with the lady who posted her pictures and the pictures themselves after my computer crashed. On the parish record of her birth she appears as the daughter of Rebecca Fennell only.

Also the fact that a William appears on her marriage certificate may be that she only knew the name of her grandfather as her father although no sign of him is found after the birth of his penultimate child Mary in 1831. To confuse matters, on Sarah's death certificate she is described as the widow of Charles, so there were definitely a few faulty memories at work. I doubt if this problem can be resolved with any certainty.