Joseph Marlow and Anna Belle Bosomworth, Part One

Having written about all of my other great grandparents, I decided to write about Joseph and Anna Belle, not because I know a great deal about them, but because I don't. I have done quite a bit of research on them, and have broken down some "brick walls" on their lines, but I never knew anything about them until I read about them in the Lougheed, Alberta local histories, Verdant Valleys In and Around Lougheed, and Cambridge School District Memories. I hope to get to know them better over time. You can read the section about them from Verdant Valleys on line at the following link: http://www.ourroots.ca/e/page.aspx?id=3517328. There are biographies of other Marlows in the same book, but no photos of Joseph and Anna Belle. There are photos of both in Cambridge School District Memories, which is not yet on line, but I cannot reproduce them here due to copyright restrictions. It is notable in that both Joseph and Annabelle are descended entirely from Yorkshire families—Joseph having been born there himself, and both of Anna Belle's parents. In fact, they are all from the same general vicinity in North Yorkshire, which makes me wonder if there was some connection between them in the home country. This recent English, and more specifically, North Yorkshire, connection was surprising to me, as I always thought of my paternal grandmother's parents as Americans with longer roots in the U.S. It is also interesting to note that Joseph seems to have come to North America by himself, whereas Anna Belle's parents immigrated with a large extended family. All of them came to Illinois in the nineteenth century.

Joseph H. Marlow was born in Hawsker Cum Stainsacre, near Whitby, Yorkshire on August 16, 1853, (or 1854), the son of William Marlow, an agricultural labourer, and Elizabeth Johnson Marlow. He appears to have been the eldest of five children, the others being Mary Jane, Elizabeth, Benjamin, and Maria. It appears that all of his immediate family stayed in England. He arrived in the United States in 1875 or 1885, more likely the latter, and married Anna Belle Bosomworth in Modesto, Macoupin, Illinois on November 30, 1887. Anna Belle was born on May 5, 1867 in Woodson, Illinois, and was the daughter of Charles Bosomworth, who was a blacksmith, and Ann Dickenson, both born in North Yorkshire. Her parents had come to America with their own parents. She was the second youngest of a family of seven children, the others being Albertus Hartas, Alice, Mary J., Irene B., Joana, and Jessie E. (female). Joseph and Anna Belle were living in Polk, Macoupin, Illinois in 1900 and 1910 with their nine children, Lena Sarah, (who was my grandmother), Winnifred Anne, Maud Elizabeth, Joseph Robert, Dolly Belle, William Benjamin, George Johnson, Charles Frederick, and Zella Melba. (They later adopted their grandchildren, Arnold and Ruby, who were the children of their daughter Dolly, after her death giving birth to Arnold). Joseph was a "farmer" and Anna Belle was a "laundress" in 1910, with their two eldest daughters working outside the home as "housekeepers". Polk is in the same county as Carlinville, Illinois, where some of the children were born.

In 1912, Joseph and Anna Belle moved to Lougheed, Alberta, Canada, with all of their children, except for the eldest, Lena Sarah, who had married George Arthur Smith since 1910. (The Smiths came in 1913, and went back to Illinois, only to settle permanently in Lougheed in 1919). The Marlows purchased one of the ready-made farms from the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which came with a house, a barn, and planted fields. I strongly recommend that you click on the link above for the Joseph H. Marlow Story told in Verdant Valleys In and Around Lougheed by Sadie Gordon Marlow, his daughter-in-law and one of the teachers in the area, for a full account of how the Marlows came to the Lougheed area, and for an account of the lives of his children. It is brief, but full of details, and definitely worth reading. What I will add, and it is of note, is that the Marlow farm, located at Township 42, Range 11, Meridian 4, was right next to George and Melvin Hart's. I could not find the Marlow family on the 1916 Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. I happened to be looking at the original census data for my grandfather, George Hart, and lo and behold there were the names of the Marlow family listed above. I did some searching, and I discovered that Ancestry had mistranscribed their last name as "Cardow", which I drew to Ancestry's attention. It is significant to our family history that the two families were next door to each other, as they would have known each other from 1912 onward as neighbours. It is also significant that after the death of Joseph, the death of her husband George Arthur Smith, and the burning down of her own home, my grandmother, Lena Sarah Marlow Smith, purchased her father's farm. She was thus in proximity to my future grandfather, George Hart, whom she married in 1930.

Joseph died on June 7, 1927 in Lougheed at the age of seventy-three, and Anna Belle twenty-six years later at the age of eight-six on September 4, 1953. It is likely that they are buried in the Lougheed Cemetery. (I would appreciate it if anyone reading this could verify this for me). Joseph and Anna Belle's story is still a work in progress for me, as are the stories of all my ancestors, and I hope to add updates as I go along.