| Notes |
- Rose Ann Angus was born in 1863 in Castle Ward, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Her parents were residing on Bridge Lane at the time.
In 1871, at age 8, Rose Ann Angus was residing at 5 Bath Mill Cottage in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, with her uncle and aunt, John Rigg and Mary Ann Lowther. It is unclear why she was residing with them instead of her parents.
In 1881, at age 18, Rose Ann and her sister Mary Jane were residing in Lancaster, Lancashire, England with their uncle and aunt John Rigg and Mary Ann Lowther. Sometime around June of that year, while she was residing in the home of her uncle and aunt, Rose Ann became pregnant by an unknown man.
On 7 Mar 1882, just a month after her 19th birthday, Rose Ann Angus gave birth to an illegitimate child whom she named John Rigg Angus. The father was not named in the baptism record or birth registration. It is noteworthy that she named her illegitimate son after the uncle she was living with.
In Dec 1888, at age 25, Rose Ann Angus died, unmarried, leaving her 6-year-old son orphaned. Her son died 6 years later in 1894 at the age of 12.
Meanwhile, in 1891, there is no sign of young John Rigg Angus in the census. However, Rose Ann Angus' uncle and aunt, John Rigg and Mary Ann Lowther, who were in their sixties by this point, show a 9-year-old son named John Rigg (Jr). There is no birth registration for John Rigg (Jr). He is not found in 1901 or later census records. In fact, there is no record of his existence other than the 1891 census.
So, we have an illegitimate child, John Rigg Angus, born in 1882, named after his uncle, whose birth is recorded with only his teenage mother listed. The son does not appear in the 1891 census, yet he was still alive until 1894. Meanwhile, the mother's uncle and aunt, in their sixties, suddenly have a son, born in 1882, exactly the same age, named John Rigg, who appears only in the 1891 census, and has no birth registration, and there is no record of him after 1894 when John Rigg Angus dies. It seems clear that John Rigg (Jr) and John Rigg Angus are the same person.
Either Rose Ann named her illegitimate child after her uncle, John Rigg, in honour of the fact that he raised her and cared for her and her child. And then, after she died, he adopted her illegitimate child as his own (in which case we would expect to see the child listed in 1891 as John Rigg Angus, stepson or adopted and we should expect to see his death registered as John Rigg, not John Rigg Angus), or, what seems tragically more likely is that uncle John Rigg is actually the father of his teenage niece's illegitimate son. If so, then I shudder to contemplate the causes of the premature deaths of Rose Ann Angus and her illegitimate son John Rigg Angus.
One could write this situation off as an unfairly negative interpretation of coincidences, except for the fact that earlier, in 1856, John Rigg adopted and raised the illegitimate daughter of a young unwed mother, Mary Wignall, who also subsequently died. And, in 1859, 21-year-old, Mary Lucas became pregnant while residing with John Rigg, and went on to have three more children, whose births are not recorded, all while single and living with John Rigg and his wife. John Rigg and his wife never had any children of their own, but somehow three young women (including his own niece!) had a total of six illegitimate children all while residing with him. Census records also show that he had at least three other teen or young adult women living with him over the years who did not get pregnant while living with him.
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1863 - 1888 (25 years)
