Mary Ann Underwood

[Phoenix]

It was more by luck than judgement that Mary Ann was given the surname Underwood as less than two weeks separated her parents marriage from her baptism.... and as she was baptised on Christmas Day, the gap between marriage and birth was probably even slimmer.

Mary Ann first appears on the 1841 census aged 15.
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...38&pId=8851919
She is living in Yardley Hastings with John and Mary Underwood. There are two other families uder the same roof: George and Sarah, Charles and Lydia, and all their assorted children. George and Charles are brothers, their ages both given as 20, so it seemed not unreasonable to assume she was their sister - despite there being no relevant baptism.
In 1851, she is still in Yardley Hastings, with son George aged 3 and a clutch of brother and sisters in law: Sarah James and Caroline
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...ue&pId=4270455
By 1861 she and George have moved to Northampton and are living with William Vann, a boot blocker. She marries William. Probably to everyone's surprise she has a baby daughter in her forties and by 1871 George has left home to find his fortune (probably unnerved by a little sister young enough to be his daughter).
William and Mary Ann are together and in the same home for over twenty years. Their deaths are both registered in the same quarter: December 1887.


And that's as far as anyone's online tree seems to get...


tbc