Does anyone else have an ancestry line that leads to, or passes through the Manx couple of Isabella Christian and Thomas Cowin whose Braddan-parish registry entry indicates a September 11 marriage in 1825?
Tracing their subsequent census entries combined with the parish registry-confirmed children’s ages leads me to an 1841 entry, an 1861,’71, and ‘81 entry and then to an Isabella Cowin Will of 1885 (no burial listed), the particulars of which are consistent with its being for the correct Isabella Cowin.
There is an intervening census (1851) census of a Thomas and wife Margaret Cowin at the address Isabella and Tom later consistently occupy in which all but one of the younger children listed in the 1841 census of Isabella and Tom appear and nowhere in the 1851 census (Manx or English) can I find a Thomas and Isabella Cowin (en, or an) entry that would fit! Ancestry Public Trees is of little help though possibly accounts for a missing son who went to Australia.
If anyone is researching this line, I have marriages on most of the children and many of their census entries and would be interested in cracking the 1851 census discrepancy. The only spinster daughter, Ann Cowin, later Annie, seems to have been a lady’s maid in the household of William Fine Moore at Cronkbourne for many years and was sent out to service in London, if I am correct, at the age of 12. That seems a stretch but circumstantially possible. Any help in dispelling the myth of the interloping 1851 “wife” Margaret would be greatly appreciated.