Logo for Alice Singleton
Alice Singleton lived a short life but left a lasting legacy. When she died at just 36-years-old she had a family of nine children.
Her Singleton ancestors had been living in Lancashire (where she lived her life) for centuries. The surname is locational and Anglo-Saxon in origin, deriving from the Olde English words scingel (meaning shingle) and tun (meaning town or settlement). The original Singleton was a settlement on shingly soil. The first record of a person with this surname was made around 1190 in relation to Ughtred de Sinleton, who was a landholder in Amounderness (Lancashire). This is the same district where Alice Singleton lived 600 years later.
My research suggests that it is likely that Alice was one of the two people of that name who were born at Chipping (Lancashire) in 1814 and 1815 respectively. Chipping was also the birthplace of Ann Leeming, who was to become Alice's mother-in-law.
The first definitive record of Alice relates to her marriage to Robert Clarkson in St John's Church (Preston, Lancashire) on 18 July 1831. She would have been 17-years-old (or younger) and he was 21. The young couple soon had a large family, with three daughters coming in the first three years of marriage. The family lived in the tiny hamlet of Fulwood Row where Robert was a cotton handloom weaver who supplemented his income with seasonal work on nearby farms.
After nineteen years of marriage, Alice gave birth to their ninth and last child in July 1850. The full list of their children is: Ellen 1832; Ann 1833; Elizabeth 1834; Thomas 1837; Mary 1839; Jane 1842; Thomas 1845-1845; Alice 1848-1849; and Robert 1850.
Alice died on 9 July 1850 at Fulwood, aged 36 years, and was buried the next day. Her death certificate attributed her death to disease of the heart, surprising for a young woman. Perhaps her heart had been weakened by a childhood illness like rheumatic heart disease. It is notable also that her youngest son (Robert) was recorded as 8 months old when the census was recorded in March 1851. Alice must have died within days of giving birth to him.
Her husband Robert was now a widower with several small children, including a baby. Eleven months after her death he married the 32-year-old spinster who had long lived next door, Ann Poulton. Four years later, Alice's daughter Elizabeth Clarkson married Ann Poulton's younger brother, John.