It appears that my great, great, great, great grandmother, Hannah, was (to say the least) a bit of a girl, a black sheep of the family and floozy of the locality, as the following extract reveals:
She was comitted for trial by warrant dated December 29 1810 and convicted to one year's gaol on the oath of the Overseer of the parish of being a lewd woman, she having five bastard children chargeable to the said parish. As to whether all of Hannah's children had the same father is not known.
Upon discovering this tale, my initial reaction was to be thrilled at finding myself descended from a woman whom i romantically envisioned as a kind of wild and passionate Moll Flanders character, swashbuckling her merry way across rural, Georgian Wiltshire with a smile on her face and a saucy glint in her eye.
She appeared to me precisely the sort of untamed heroine that i'd always dreamt of, adored and secretly longed for.
However, upon reflection, i began to imagine just how bleak her life may have been; times could be hard enough in those days but must have been tougher still for a single mother of five children who encountered only scournful disapproval of her situation wherever she went.
I began to wonder, did her family lovingly support her throughout all her misadventures or did they collectively turn their backs on poor Hannah, along with the rest of the local community?
The more i dwelt upon the matter, the more i came to like and admire her.
Indeed, if it lay within my power to send just a little love and support over the two-hundred years between her life and my own, i would gladly do so without a moments hesitation, trusting that it may have warmed her soul to know that at least one member of the family held her in high regard and was proud to call her kin.
