Margaret Robson was the second – but the only surviving – child of William and Ann (nee Codling). Baptised in the parish of Morpeth, Northumberland on 9 August 1829, her brother – William – died aged 1 in two years earlier in 1827.
Margaret’s father died in 1841 from cancer, leaving Ann and Margaret at Bridge Street, Morpeth in the 1841 census, aged 35 and 12 respectively. In our family papers is a letter from my g-g-grandmother to my g-grandmother, who had clearly asked questions about her ancestors (in 1924!):
Although the facts relating to Ann Robson’s second marriage and the link to the proprietors of the Morpeth Herald have not been confirmed, there is no doubt that Margaret – referred to as Mrs Gosling due to her later marriage to James Foulds Gosling – did ‘come south when she was 20 and married your father’s father at Guildford’.
She was in her early 20s at the time of her ‘move south’. In 1851 – aged 21 – she still lived in Morpeth with William and Jane Hunter at The Earl Grey Inn, referred to as their ‘niece’. In the ensuing three years, she has travelled nearly 300 miles to London, met James Foulds Gosling – a carpenter of Guildford – and married him in Marylebone on 13 May 1854:
As mentioned in the blog about her husband, Margaret was widowed in 1869 and in 1871, was working as a mangling worker with six of her seven living children (Louisa having died in 1859) at home in Stoke Fields, Guildford. The family tree which was passed down by my maternal grandfather stated that one of James’ brothers was ‘friendly to Robson on death of brother‘. More than friendly, I would say:
George Douglas Gosling was born in 1820, the first child of John Thomas and Ann (nee Foulds) Gosling who married in Guildford in 1819. James Foulds Gosling was the fifth of their six children, born in 1833. Unfortunately, George died two years later in 1877 in Chertsey, Surrey and Margaret outlived both of the Gosling brothers. She died in Westminster in 1911, just before the census.
