NameHannah Whitby
Birth1826, County Kent, England
Baptism22 Jun 1828, Yoxford, Saxmundham, Suffolk, England
LivedSouth Melville, Prince Edward Island
Death1918, Prince Edward Island, Canada
Miscellany“Descendants of Noah Whitby” put Hannah Whitby’s birth as 1828.
Flags!MarySide, #Andrews, Immigrant, Linked, Thumbnail, [FamLabel], [Gen13], [GenYes]
FatherNoah Whitby (1792-1877)
Spouses
Birth1824, Scotland
LivedSouth Melville, Prince Edward Island
Death2 Jan 1891, Prince Edward Island, Canada
BurialArgyle Shore Cemetery, Prince Edward Island
Miscellany“Descendants of Noah Whitby” put John Bell’s birth as 1821.
FatherMalcolm Bell (1787-1862)
MotherMary (1780-1874)
Marriage30 Oct 1847, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
ChildrenElizabeth (1848-1887)
 Annie (1850-)
 Mary Isabella (1852-)
 Jessie (1855-)
 Hannah (1858-)
 Malcolm (1860-1922)
 Margaret L. (1863-)
 Jane Stewart (1863-)
 John Alexander (1864-1885)
 George Hamilton (1873-1928)
 Selina (1874-1893)
Notes for Hannah Whitby
The 1891 Canadian census reports that Hannah Whitby Bell, newly widowed at age 64, was living with her son Malcolm Bell (age 30, occupation: farmer) on Lot 29 (Family 83) on Prince Edward Island together with several children of John and Hannah Bell [Hannah (age 31), Ellen (age 23), George (age 18), Selina (age 17), and Frank (age 16)]; niece Margaret Andrews (age 3), and nephew Neil Matheson (age 2).

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In 1996, when I was in Charlottetown, PEI (with Mom, Kathy and Glen), and then again with Chad in 1998, I did some research on our Andrew/Bell/Whitby ancestry. While looking up our great great great grandmother, Hannah Whitby, I came across a note about a trial in which a young (19 or 20 years old) woman named Louisa Whitby was charged with the murder of an infant male child. Hannah would have been 12 - 14 at the time, 1840, and I wondered if Louisa might have been related to her. 

This past weekend, I made contact with the person who did the family tree about the Whitby family (I sent you that link a few days ago). She has done a lot of research on this family and she sent me some transcripts of the trial as well as a family tree which suggests that Hannah was indeed Louisa's younger sister (there was a sister named Eliza and there is evidence to suggest that Louisa and Eliza are the same person).

The transcripts are so immediate, they are hard to read. The people who were in the house where Louisa was a servant describe the situation in very judgmental language--these aren't exact quotes, but things like: "I charged her with being pregnant,  but she would not confess"  "Louisa Whitby, Singlewoman," "a Bastard male child" -- it sounds like her mother gave her some medicine to "cause what had been long suppressed" (to make her period come, I assume), and she insisted that was what was happening as the child was being born (it's pretty graphic); she wouldn't let anyone come in and help her with the birth.  There is some tenderness, people bringing her tea and gruel, and her mother and sister trying to see her, but for the most part, it sounds like she was very much alone. It's hard to know if she was naive, or terrified, or (likely, I feel) both. 

Apparently she was convicted and then released on a legal technicality.  All of the jurors were men.

I think of Hannah, 60 years later, when her grandchild (Annie) was expecting a child (Grandma Viney) out of wedlock, and she would have had that memory of her sister as a backdrop. Who  knows, maybe that helped the family know how to support Annie through that experience, and then take care of Viney. (A younger sister in the Whitby family, Clara, also got pregnant at a young age, unmarried. Both Clara and Louisa later married.)

After reading the transcripts of her trial, I dreamed of women lovingly surrounding the young Louisa--myself and my sisters, Grandma Viney and Auntie, and others. I feel at the same time an awareness of all the people who have not lived because of the death of the infant boy, and complete forgiveness of the terrible crime this long ago relation (our great-great-great aunt, if I'm counting generations correctly) apparently committed. I know some of you will feel we should not dig into the past like this, but I don't want to try to decide who will want to know and who will not, so I'm writing this to all of you.

On a happier note, I also discovered that Hannah Whitby's mother was named Sarah and was born on my birthday in 1794.  And that Sarah's mother's name was Dorothy Kemp. So, Dorothy, you share a name with a maternal ancestor. 

Here is ten generations of our (sibs) maternal lineage: our grand-daughters, our daughters/nieces, us, mom, Grandma Viney, Aunt Annie, Elizabeth Bell Andrew, Hannah Whitby Bell, Sarah Spore Whitby, Dorothy Kemp Spore.

If anyone wants to read the 15-page document which includes the trial transcripts (some of them, there are more that she hasn't transcribed yet, which I may receive later), I can send them. This is not anything we want to mention to Mom. She is not clear about these generations, etc, at the best of times, and this is both disturbing and confusing. But interesting too, in so many ways.

-- Helen Frost, 6 Nov. 2006, letter to her siblings
Last Modified 28 Jun 2011Created 6 Sep 2014 using Reunion for Macintosh