Samuel St Leger's Irish marriage

They say everything comes to the one who waits, and that's certainly true in family history research. Back in 2014, when I last wrote about my mother's great grandfather, Samuel St Ledger (sometimes spelled St Leger) and his defacto wife Alice Dodd, there were all sorts of loose ends and unexplained aspects to the story.

To recap, Samuel was born in Manchester, in the early 1800s, and worked all his life as a fustian cutter. He and Alice Dodd had nine children between 1841 and 1868 (eight if the first of Alice's children, Ralph Dodd, had a different father, as he claimed on his marriage registration). But as far as I or my cousin David could discover, Samuel and Alice never married. We wondered why.

Then David discovered another previously unknown child belonging to Samuel, named Elizabeth St Ledger. She was born in Manchester in 1843, but according to the records, her mother's name was not Alice Dodds, but Bridget Dobbs.

We guessed that if Samuel had been married to Bridget, that would explain why he didn't marry Alice. But we couldn't discover anything about Bridget. Neither she nor the child Elizabeth appeared on any English census records, nor did there seem to be any marriage or death records for either of them.

A while later, while looking for information about Samuel's birth, I came across this announcement in an Irish newspaper, the Dublin Weekly Herald:

"On the 12th inst. in St.Catherine's Church by the Rev. Thos. Gregg, Mr Samuel St Ledger to Bridget, eldest dau. of Mr John Dobbs late Sec. to the Christian Fellowship Soc." 

It was dated 21 March 1840. Several other Irish papers carried the same snippet of news. David and I  couldn't be sure that it was "our" Samuel St Ledger, since St Ledger/St Leger is quite a common name in Ireland. But it would explain not only why Samuel didn't, or couldn't, marry Alice Dodd, but also perhaps why he didn't appear in the 1841 English census. He was probably in Dublin at the time, married to Bridget.

St Catherines, Thomas Street, Dublin

That was as far as it went until this week, when I decided to write about Samuel and Alice for my series about unexplained mysteries. While I was checking to see if any new information was available, I found a possible baptism for Samuel on the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk site:

Baptism: 7 Oct 1816 St Chad, Cheetham, Lancashire, England
Samuel St Legear - Son of Samuel St Leager [sic] & Ann (formerly Mooney)
Born: 2 Nov
Parents' Marital Status: conj.

And a possible sister to Samuel too, previously unknown:

Baptism: 21 Aug 1818 St Chad, Cheetham, Lancashire, England
Elizabeth Sinleger - Daughter of Sam. Sinleger & Ann (formerly Mooney)
Born: 20 Aug
Godparents: John McNally; Ellen Flinn
Parents' Marital Status: conj.

If nothing else, these entries demonstrate why searching for the name "St Leger" proves so difficult!

On the Irish Genealogy.ie site I found a record for Samuel St Leger and Bridget Dobb's marriage in 1840, confirming the newspaper report, although her name was recorded as Dodds rather than Dobbs.

The same site also produced this marriage record (click to enlarge):

It shows Elizabeth St Leger marrying a widower, John McNeill, in Dublin on 24 December 1871. Her father is recorded as Samuel St Leger, fustian cutter. So it looks as though Elizabeth, and probably her mother Bridget, returned to Ireland, leaving Samuel to continue his affair with Alice in Manchester.

Samuel and Bridget had a child born in Dublin, before Elizabeth was born in England. Sarah St Leger was born on 13 December 1840, at 28 Thomas Court, Dublin, and was baptised at St Catherine's on 28 March 1841. I haven't been able to discover what happened to her. Perhaps she died in infancy.

So now I know quite a bit more about Samuel's family than I did last time I wrote about him. But there's a new mystery to solve - what was the relationship, if any, between Alice Dodd and Bridget Dodd/Dobbs? Alice claimed to have been born in Manchester, and Bridget was apparently born in Dublin, so perhaps it's just co-incidence that they have the same, or very similar, surname. Or perhaps not.