Further to my previous post, Diana has replied off-list, and asks: "How can you tell Rose MARDON's migration was an assisted passage? What was the criteria for this? And how much of the fare would she have had to pay?" That relates back to some earlier replies but it depends on what we mean by assisted passage. The heading on the Ohio's passenger list, refers to an "Act for the relief and employment of the poor of the city of Philadelphia" for which Google finds several hits in various online books about Pennsylvania legislation. This 1828 Act had nothing to do with assisted emigration. It established a Poor Law system of welfare and required all incoming vessels to provide a passenger list, such as that of the Ohio in 1884. The first image in that Ohio list (542 of 894) is a declaration that none of the 491 listed passengers was sick, pregnant, lunatic, crippled, newborn, dead, destitute or a convict. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SdROAAAAYAAJ -- see page 169 and Section XVII on page 178 A newspaper search found several advertisements for American Line sailings from Liverpool to Philadelphia, including the Ohio departing Wednesday 30 April 1884, consistent with Rose MARDON's arrival on 13 May. Sailings were every Wednesday, calling at Queenstown (Cobh) every Thursday so, as others have suggested, Rose might have boarded at either Liverpool or among the large Irish contingent at Queenstown. Cabin Passengers paid between 12 and 21 guineas and intermediate passengers 8 guineas, while steerage passage was "as low as by any other fast line including an ample supply of provisions". All passengers on the Ohio list were steerage. Passengers disembarked directly into the Pennsylvania Railroad "which has the shortest and most direct route to all places in the Western states". Those adverts are about selling tickets and do not mention assisted passages but that does not preclude use of the Ohio and onward rail by such schemes. A similar advert for Liverpool to Halifax offers steerage at 5 guineas but "assisted passages" at £4 for mechanics and general labourers, and £3 for Ag Labs and female domestics. So in this context, "assisted passage" means a discounted fare for eligible categories of passenger and not the kind of emigration package such as those offered by Australian states. So we might surmise that Rose MARDON paid about £3 for her travel on the Ohio, disembarked in Philadelphia, and immediately boarded the train to join her fiancé in Chicago. Returning to Diana's original question, the Ohio's stopover in Queenstown does facilitate the possibility that Rose may have travelled from Devon to Ireland some time before emigrating. Finally, without knowing all the facts one has to keep an open mind as to whether Rose MARDON was apparently of poor character or simply the victim of circumstances. Martin Beavis -----Original Message----- From: Martin Beavis via Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2016 12:44 AM To: smith26bd ; [email protected] Subject: Re: [DEV] Help with travel records Hello Diana Sorry for the delay in responding to your recent posting but other things got in the way. That was obviously a follow-up to your previous thread (http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/DEVON/2015-08/1440414065) about the adoption of your grandmother Rose Nellie MARDON who was the illegitimate daughter of Rose MARDON, both of whom were born in Devon. As Paul Hockie has suggested, the implication of the "Ohio" passenger list is that Rose MARDON was an Irish woman, as "confirmed" on her US immigration card, who first travelled to the Liverpool Emigration Depot from where she took an assisted passage directly to Philadelphia. But the alphabetical sequence of the "Ohio" passenger list implies that it is at best a secondary source so her Irish attribution may be an error by the ship's purser. Or she may have lied about her circumstances to get the assisted passage. There is, however, compelling evidence in US archives that this emigrant Rose MARDON is indeed your English great grandmother from Devon, but there is no evidence that she ever went to or returned from Ireland, so her emigration route may well have been from Devon to Liverpool to Philadelphia -- because she evidently emigrated to marry a fiancé from Newton Abbot. You do not mention that significant fact so perhaps it is not in your anecdotal storyline. This is what might have happened: Rose MARDON's birth was registered in Exeter in Q4 1858, the daughter of William and Susan with whom she was living in the 1861 census, and with her widowed father in 1871. You have told us that in 1878 she was a domestic servant and had an illegitimate daughter Rose Nellie MARDON by her (undisclosed) employer; born Q4 1878 in Mrs Barnes' boarding house in Exmouth (which may not have been her normal parish of residence); that there was some sort of financial arrangement(s); and that the child was "adopted" by Mrs Emma CABE, widow of an Exmouth sailor (who apparently died at sea in 1872) and who was paid for that fostering service. In the 1881 census Rose Nellie is listed as Nellie CABE, "adopted child, parents unknown" (though Mrs CABE probably knew a lot more than she told the enumerator). In 1881 Rose MARDON, age 22, no occupation given, was a visitor in the WORTH household in Highweek, Newton Abbot, and emigrated to the USA three years later in 1884. Meanwhile, William CORBETT Jr was born in Birmingham in 1861 , where he was living in the 1871 census with his widowed father William Sr, leather dresser. In 1881 both father and son were employed as leather dressers and living in Highweek, Newton Abbot. That puts William Jr and Rose in the same place at the same time. According to US census records William Jr immigrated into the US in 1881, though I find no record of his travel, and found employment as a tanner in Chicago, while his father William Sr remained in Newton Abbot. William CORBETT Jr and Rose MARDON married by licence in Chicago, Illinois on 1 June 1884, very soon after Rose had arrived in Philadelphia on 13 May. Rose knocked at least two years off her age at marriage (23 compared with 26 on the passenger list) and in US censuses of 1900 and 1910, while her gravestone has a birth date of 23 September 1860 (consistent with registration early in Q4, albeit two years adrift). William and Rose had five children. Rose died on 9 September 1917, aged 59, and William on 21 March 1949, aged 87. Illinois records confirm Rose's father as Wm MARDON/MORDON and William's birthplace as Birmingham. The US censuses and some Illinois records are free on FamilySearch/United States/Illinois, as is William's probable naturalization in 1896, BMDs for Cook County, Illinois, are on Ancestry, and William and Rose are together on FindAGrave. Like I said, compelling, but not conclusive -- you need to pick it apart and test my assumptions, especially that all those Rose MARDONs were one and the same. Rose MARDON had a sister Susan who married a BAKER. In the 1881 census William CORBETT Sr had a (euphemistic?) housekeeper Ellen BAKER whom he promptly married in Q2 1881. I'm wondering if those two BAKERs were related such that William Jr and Rose met and became engaged. Between 1881 and 1884 Rose may have remained in Devon, without her by-now adopted daughter, perhaps living in Newton Abbot with William Sr and Ellen. Did your MARDON/CABE grandmother know about her mother's marriage? Did Rose take the money, abandon the baby and run? Or did she arrange the "adoption" and make financial provision for the child? Did the CORBETT family know of Rose's illegitimate child? Do you have American second cousins who know nothing of their great grandmother's dark secret? Too many questions, too much speculation. Finally, was your grandmother's birth certificate useful and were the two solicitors helpful? Regards -- Martin Beavis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Some of those US records are at: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N7WQ-QBM https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XKLV-51T https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:N3HF-8Z9 https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2M4-5BPM https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MMVK-YZX https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MKZN-X8Z http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=134877482&ref=acom http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Corbett&GSiman=1&GScid=106944&GRid=134877450& You may be able to obtain a copies of the marriage licence, the marriage and death certificates from http://cyberdriveillinois.com/departments/archives/databases/home.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: smith26bd via Sent: Sunday, June 19, 2016 4:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [DEV] Help with travel records Hi, I am looking for help to find if there are passenger lists or other records of travel from England to Ireland between 1879 and 1884. I am wanting to find out when Rose MARDON my great grandmother left England to go to USA. She must have gone to Ireland first - sometime between 1879 and 1884, as she is on the passenger list of the ship “Ohio" arriving in Philadelphia USA on 13 May 1884 from Ireland. We think she might have left England earlier than 1884. Her details are: Rose MARDON - born in 1858, in Exeter, parents William and Susan MARDON Living at 3 Waterloo Place, St David in 1861, and Easton Buildings, St Lawrence in 1871 censuses. She had a baby Rose Nelly MARDON on 27 October 1878 in Exmouth. After that I think she was a visitor at Farm Terrace, Highweek with the Worth family on the 1881 census (without the baby). (There was another Rose Mardon in Exeter, a piano tuner, but she was in Exeter for the 1881 census). I would appreciate any help with information. Thank you, Diana Smith Melbourne Australia ------------------------------------------

Lots of SPAM everywhere from Rootsweb by the look of it. I belong to a few other mailing lists and its only the Rootsweb ones that seem to be affected. Ray Lewis in Western Australia