I have an evidently wayward woman too, but I kind of doubt that she was free thinking. She first had two sons by an unknown father. The only birth cert I can find for the first lists a man with the same surname, in fact, her father's full name, as the father of the child. The second son was born three years later in the workhouse. No father listed. After that she took up with a new man and had two daughters with him by 1851. The census lists her as a lodger with him. The younger son is with them, but the older is with his grandparents. Next they move to a small village and declare themselves married and everyone has the new man's last name. The second son is gone. He was my great grandfather. Then when the couple got into their 60's they moved to Burton on Trent (from Leicestershire) and got married. Their second son was living there at the time, although they did not live with him or get married in the church he attended. The second son was married and had children when his mother married the man who didn't want her first sons around. (They were not to visit as she had established a new life with the new man.) When her husband died he was buried in the village they had lived in. She was sent to a workhouse to end her days. When she died no one came to pick up her body, although four or five children were available. She was buried at the workhouse. I wanted to go reclaim her, but the graves are multiple and unmarked. It has been pointed out to me that if her children did not want to retrieve her body she may have been resented by them. The second son, my great grandfather, applied for a new birth certificate when he was 18. He made himself 20, and gave the stepfather's name as his father so he would be legitimate. He then joined the Staffordshire regiment and served 10 years, followed by 25 years as a Staffordshire constable. I understand neither would have been a possible career at the time if it had been known that he was illegitimate and born in the workhouse. After a retirement job of nightwatchman at Guest, Nettlefords & Keen he took off with all but one of his family to homestead in Oklahoma territory when he was 62. His older brother served in the U.S. Civil War for the Union, went back to England and married. He then took his wife and their child to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts where he worked as a hosiery weaver. After that the now larger family moved to Australia, where I recently found the descendants.