Who was Diana Alway’s Gypsy (1812-1907)? 

 

(Diana and her Gypsy can be found in the fourth generation of the Descendents of Robert Alway and Ann Rodway.)

 

When I was a young child, I used to love to hear my grandmother (Vyceniae Alway) tell me stories about her life as a girl back in Bristol, England. She often talked about visiting her grandmother who lived a few miles away in Yate. As she talked about these visits, I became aware that she had loved and respected her grandmother very much. One day she told me this story:

 

When her grandmother was a young woman, she fell in love with a Gypsy but her father refused to allow them to marry as he had his eye on another young man as a potential husband for his oldest daughter. However her grandmother was a headstrong young woman and stood up to her father saying “If I can’t marry the man I love, I’ll have my children by him anyway.” And she did. She never married and she remained in the same village her whole life. She stood “six feet tall in her stocking feet” and was so respected in her community that she was known as “the grand old lady of the village”.  She died in Yate at the age of 95.

 

I have learned from my research that her grandmother was Diana Alway, the daughter of Robert and Sarah Alway and, although she did live for a short time in the neighbouring villages of Iron Acton to the east and Chipping Sodbury to the west, she spent almost her entire life in Yate. I have tried very hard to locate some information about the Gypsy, to at least find out his name but I have not had any success.

 

I know that between 1835 and 1855, Diana had at least four children:

  • Henry was baptised in the parish church at Yate in 1836 (parish records)
  • Edwin was born in Iron Acton in 1843 (civil registration of birth)
  • Mary Ann, born in Yate in 1850 (civil registration of birth)
  • Sarah Jane, born in Chipping Sodbury in 1855 (civil registration of birth)

None of these records give the name of the child’s father.

 

I know that the ‘parish chest’ will sometimes contain documents related to the birth of a child to an unmarried woman but these records for Yate do not seem to have survived.

 

In spite of the fact that Diana was a very religious woman, I have been unable to find the baptismal records of the three younger children. Furthermore, her two daughters died as children and I have not found their deaths recorded in any parish records. I know the family left the established church at some time and joined a non-conformist religion so I am assuming that these baptisms and buriels took place in the non-conformist church. I have not been able to locate the relevant records.

 

It appears that Henry became a carpenter and I know that Edwin became a journeyman mason. I thought I might find some clue to the identity of the Gypsy in the apprenticeship records but my search for these records has been unsuccessful.

 

I have found Diana in each census taken during her lifetime and none of them give any indication of a man in her life.

 

The Gypsy would be my 3rd great grandfather and I would really like to know his name. Can anyone help?

 

Email me at durlene@mts.net

 

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