Who Benefits?

As we near to a conclusion on the drama surrounding the Marsden sisters of Holmesfield, their identities swirl in the typical drizzle of the area.

Knowledge is coming to us: galloping on the hooves of DNA knights from the future. We start to think who benefits? Which particular piece of the tapestry will be stitched together more tightly? Where will the results of this torchbeam into the 1700s end up sitting [landing]. I know that one or two names or dates will change of our far-flung forebears, but I am asking what impact will this have on known key characters [and family groups]?

We will know that Ann Shaw, the dainty handwriting of 1792 the young bride will have firm origins now. This removes the suspicion that she was from 'somewhere in Sheffield or Rotherham', that she could still have been the tragic figure from Wirksworth but still assigns her plenty of mystery [obscurity] as befits a woman with no traditional birth or baptismal record.

Although Ann's origin story is obscured, she still has a role introducing her entire clan to the canalmaker. I hadn't thought of that and will need to unpack that further in a moment.

We will know that this tight sibling group of Millicent and Ann Marsden endured, and that at the death of one the family of the other muscled in to help. I use the word advisedly. And that they will be part of my tree and story, and that Ann's vast Damms family and her valley of Unthank will be mine too. Maybe they will feel even more connected with the arrival of the DNA, not yet with us.

There's Nathaniel Gee the bold signator of 1792 revealed as the maritor of two cousins one after the other, though what yet was the connection between him and them? It wouldn't matter as he would be long gone by the estate administration document of 1815. And history belongs to the survivors.

Millicent Damms 'Milly' revealed no longer as an usurper from outside the family but a much softer story emerges. The family brier left the widower and baby no longer alone after the tragic death of Ann, but at sixteen was Milly truly the dame galloping in to the rescue or is some other theme at play here. In her own difficult life would she have envied her cousin's fate, gone at eighteen...

Hannah the centrepiece of our picture, only daughter and mother of nine children, who single-handedly took the family down into poverty (via marriage) but also dragged it back out (via hard work). Born in 1792 I mused as a child on her death at 68 'not very old' but now see that is very old indeed, and something of a record in this family. Does her story change given that she:

* had a stepmother (age 16) who was her own mother's cousin

* seemingly did have a living grandmother who presumably brought her up

* was thus not so dramatically orphaned at 13 (1805)

* who thus should have felt much less pressure to marry age 15 in 1807

* and given all that were she and her husband really blocked from inheriting from said grandparents in 1815?

It would be easy to cast the torchlight on her husband William Bagshaw a widower twenty years her senior, and a lowly lead miner amidst these more confident fellows. Was he an alcoholic? Surely he had no need to be. His will in his dotage suggests not, nor the consistent baptisms of his children, none particularly late. He may have had debts. And the poverty may explain why so many of his family had children out of wedlock: four out of the nine.

If anything I feel I know slightly less about Hannah with these discoveries. Except that her being sent to marry the childless widower sounds exactly like a Marsden family stunt. But I am not sure whether one must needs understand the moral habits of an entire village in order to explore the motivations of one woman. She is much more in technicolor when she is running the bakery in her 60s, dealing with probates in far-away America and providing for illegitimate grandchildren.

Her early years as the unexpected 'girl from Chesterfield' landing on the good folk of Eyam remain a source of puzzle and perhaps the kernel of this DNA puzzle.