Charles Abraham Lefever (1855-1916)

Charles ancestor tree
Charles Lefever and spouses ancestor tree

In my research today I came across an interesting family as shown above. Charles Abraham Lefever is, unusually for this study, a distant ancestor of mine as we share his grandfather Charles Lefever as a common ancestor so that makes us 1st cousins 3 times removed.

On 25th December 1874 Charles married Charlotte Rigby in Hackney, they both lied when getting married as they are shown as over 21 years of age on marriage but Charles was 19 years old and Charlotte was 17 years old. They then went on to have 5 or 6 children, there is a 6th child in one record but I suspect this is just a common usage name rather than her registered name. I have, as yet, been unable to confirm a date of death for Charlotte as there are several who died between 1884 and 1910.

In 1910 (quarter 2) Charles married Charlotte Haydon, he was then 55 years old and she was a 33 year old widow. Charlotte Haydon had 2 children by her first marriage and she had a further 5 children between 1902 and 1916 with Charles. In the 1911 census, completed by Charlotte, she states that she has been married to Charles for 7 years instead of the 1 year that was the case.

Now I come to the interesting bit about this family the parents of Charlotte Rigby are John Rigby and Sarah Morter. The parents of Charlotte Haydon were James Haydon and Sarah Rigby. I presume that here must be some relationship between John Rigby and Sarah Rigby my reasoning is that Rigby is a relatively rare surname in the East End of London in the 1800’s the majority are in and around Manchester at this time. There are only a total of 60 birth, death or marriages with the Rigby surname in Bethnal Green between 1837 and 1880. As a result it looks like I will be doing a partial surname study on the Rigby’s of London to find this relationship, this is of course, if there is one.