Mary Susanna RANDELL 1861
The birth of Mary ‘Susannah’ Randell was registered in the Erpingham District of Norfolk in the July quarter of 1861. She was the eldest of two daughters born to James Randell and Esther Susannah Olley. James Randell was the Blacksmith in Trimingham and his daughter Mary Susannah was undoubtedly born there, but a parish register of her birth remains elusive.
Like many of the females of her time Mary Susanna Randell was short changed by the census, consequently information about her is rather scant. Only once on the census data was she connected to an occupation, which was dressmaker in 1881. At the time she was nineteen. By 1901 she was simply recorded as age 39, unmarried and “living at home” in the Trimingham Post Office. The 1911 census bestows her some credibility by recording her as Sub Postmistress of Trimingham Post Office. The household comprises of Mary aged 49 and her widowed mother Esther aged 71 and Post Office Assistant Miss Jessie Elizabeth Bell aged 27 years.
The 1912 issue of Kelly's Directory records Miss Mary S Randell, as the Sub Postmistress of Trimingham. This was a position previously held by her father but it seems logical to assume that Mary was involved for a much greater period than the official record suggests.
For a long time I was unable to unearth any further record of her, but having exhaustively combed the death index, I adopted a different approach and discovered blushing bride Mary Susanna Randell. To my surprise, eternally optimistic spinster and post mistress, Mary Susanna Randell walked down the aisle of The Wesleyan Methodist Church in Cromer, Wednesday 19 May 1915.
The groom, 70 year old Samuel Cubitt recorded his occupation as a 'Gentleman'. The marriage certificate also provides the insight, that Samuel was a widower, and the son of deceased farmer Samuel Cubitt, also of Trimingham.
Coincidentally, Samuel Pye Cubitt married Mary Susanna's cousin, Ellen Marion Randell in 1897 and Samuel Pye's father is the best fit in age and place of birth to be Mary Susanna's groom.
The marriage certificate notes, Mary Susanna Randell, 'Post Mistress - Trimingham', aged 60. This figure doesn't quite match her actual age, which according to me, was five years younger. I suspect she was being generous to her more mature husband, as he appears to have done in the case of his previous wife.
Another oddity on the certificate is that she personally signed her middle name with no reference to the 'h' which consistently appears on every other record of her name.
Accordingly Kelly’s Directory of 1922 contains the following entry, “Post Office - Mrs Samuel Cubitt, sub post mistress. Letters through North Walsham. Wall Letter Box, opposite church”.
As yet I am unable to identify when she died.
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Samuel CUBITT 1841
I struggled to fit a person to the grooms profile as outlined on the wedding certificate. I can report that on his wedding day, 19 May 1915, Samuel Cubitt listed himself as a Gentleman, age 70 and a widower. The ultimately significant clue to his identity, proved to be that his father was recorded as Samuel Cubitt, Farmer of Trimingham.
The absolute only person that this could be, was Samuel Cubitt born 1814 in Gimingham. Farmer, Samuel Cubitt ran a 28 acre property in Trimingham and married Frances Pye, 7 November 1832. Frances Pye was born in Trimingham around 1808, having married Samuel Cubitt she produced nine children. Despite the stress of this, she lived to be 98 years of age and finally died in 1907, out living her younger husband by four years. Samuel Cubitt, Trimingham Farmer died in 1903 aged 90.
Their son, also called Samuel, born around 1841 was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Trimingham. Given the period and the size of Trimingham, this was most likely, Mary Susanna’s father, James Randell.
Blacksmith, Samuel Cubitt 1841, married Sarah Ann Armitage around 1867 in Castleford, Yorkshire. It appears Sarah Ann died in 1906 but significantly in the Erpingham district of Norfolk. This places Samuel Cubitt on the scene to marry Mary Susanna Randell in 1915.
Sarah Ann Armitage was considerably older than Samuel Cubitt and as the years progressed his age, as recorded in the census, moves progressively closer to his wife's. Once she died, it veered the opposite way. I believe he was actually born in the December quarter of 1841.
In one last convoluted twist, Samuel Cubitt and Sarah Ann Armitage had a son called Samuel Pye Cubitt. He married Ellen Marion Randell, daughter of Nathaniel Randell in Ixworth and by default, cousin of Mary Susanna Randell. In short it appears, Samuel Cubitt married his daughter in-laws cousin. It also emerges that his son Samuel Pye Cubitt and wife Ellen Randell emigrated to Canada around two years before his second marriage.
It all tends to create an image of a family who were in contact with each other despite the primitive nature of the postal system and the distances.
I think it's fair to assume that they didn't have children but...
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