My grandfather William George Barratt (1838–1901) married Mary Morley in Newark on 31 August 1871, at the age of 33.
Mary Morley was born on 3 January 1841 at Newark, and died October 1909 at Smethwick, Birmingham. She was buried at Newark on 15 October 1909.
She was the daughter of Francis Morley (c.1815–1875), who seems to have lived in Newark all his life. He was a tailor. His wife was Mary Ann née Smith, who was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1807, and died in Newark in 1907. By all accounts Mary Ann Morley was a formidable woman, often mentioned by my father as Grandma Morley.
I have a very old framed photograph. It is a daguerreotype, which means that it was taken before 1875 before modern photographic processes were available. As far as we know, it is of Grandma Morley. My cousin Hilda Stokes née Davis recalled Grandma Morley as 'short and plump... high colour, hair severely bushed down from the middle into a knot. She had small sharp eyes of ice blue, a stern mouth, a good nose".
And here she is much later in her life.
A New Zealand cousin in the Morley line has done a great deal of research into our joint ancestry. Some of his findings are included in the chart on the next page.