The 1801 Inkson - Harborow Marriage
Thomas Inkson, bachelor, married Ann Harborow, spinster, both 'of this parish', on March 19 1801 in St Nicholas' Chapel in the parish of St Margaret, Kings Lynn :
The witness Elizabeth Harborow cannot have been Ann's mother Elizabeth because she died 1794. It was probably Elizabeth, wife of Ann's much older brother Thomas [b. ABT 1756] who seems to have been the patriarch of the family after his father died in ABT 1785.
To some extent, it is assumption at the moment that those listed in the following pages are the children of this marriage [supported in some cases by the use of Harborow as a given name in later generations]. Each was identified from viewing parish records based on being a child of 'Thomas and Ann Inkson'. The other known Thomas In(k)son of this era [if, indeed, he was an Inkson] married an Amy so it is relatively certain that the assumptions are correct. Other researchers report more children than shown in this section but it is uncertain where that information came from : records unsupported with an image of the original entry have not been accepted.
We now know that Thomas and Ann's early attempts at starting a family were not successful : they had two sons called Thomas that died in infancy. The first Thomas was baptised in St Nicholas' on 29 May 1801 [it was a 'just in time' marriage, a pattern that repeats down the generations ...]. That Thomas was buried at St Nicholas' on 28 Apr 1802, aged 11 months. By that time Ann must have been pregnant again because a second son was also baptised as Thomas in St Nicholas' on 2 Sep 1802. The second Thomas was buried at St Nicholas' on 28 Dec 1802, aged 4 months.
For the record, as stated above, all the information comes from parish records which have been viewed and which note that the children are sons 'of Thomas and Ann Inkson'. There was another Thomas Inkson buried at St Nicholas' on 19 May 1801 but he was described as the son of William and Elizabeth, a couple that appear in the 18th century records.
Most of the other children seem to have survived into adulthood although another son, the first John, also died in infancy. He was baptised in 1807 and was buried in 1809. The fate of the Jane [b. 1819] , the last known child, is uncertain.
From the census records we know that William [ABT 1804], Frances [ABT 1812] and John [1814] were siblings. The case for Margaret [ABT 1806], also found in the census records, being a child of this marriage is stronger as we know from the 1851 census that her mother was Ann born in about 1774 which suits the 1801 date of marriage and agrees with other information that we have for Ann Harborow. However, as can be seen by following the tree, Margaret then married a Harborow so did she marry a cousin or is the assumption wrong?
What is not certain is what happened to Ann [ABT 1808]. There was an Ann Inkson who married a David Chamberlain in 1856 but she is said to be a 42 year old spinster at the time of marriage which implies being born in 1814 so not a good fit. On the other hand, in the 1851 census presumably it was this Ann Inkson who was living with the family of George and Sarah Harborow née Inkson [see below] because she is described as 'sister'. At that time she was said to be unmarried and aged 39 [i.e. born in ABT 1811 or 12] so maybe she just didn't know how old she really was?
A baptism record for Elizabeth, the next child, has now been found : she was baptised on 27 June 1810 in St Nicholas' but she died in 1834 when 23 years old, still unmarried.
Sarah was probably the penultimate child of the marriage [by that time her mother, Ann, would have been about 43]. Her baptism record states that she was born on January 15 1817 and that Thomas, her father, was a butcher. She married a George Harborow at the church of St Martin in the Fields, London, in 1841 so we have another Inkson - Harborow marriage. On the marriage certificate her father, Thomas, is again described as a butcher.