Benjamin Bean, a Farmer of Hensall, Yorkshire, married Elizabeth Senior of Darrington, Yorkshire, at St Botolph Church, Knottingley, on the 8th March 1849. Elizabeth was the daughter of John and Sarah Senior.
The 1861 census records Benjamin and Elizabeth Bean residing at Hensall along with their 15 year-old niece Sarah Ann Steel, and later, at St Giles Church, Pontefract, on 26 November 1874, after the death of his wife Elizabeth, Benjamin takes his second wife, Sarah Ann Steel, daughter of Samuel.
It’s clear that Benjamin and Elizabeth’s niece Sarah Ann Steel who was recorded with them in 1861 became the bride of Benjamin Bean in 1874 but the relationship chart on our family tree didn’t identify any link between either Benjamin or Elizabeth and Sarah Ann Steel to substantiate the ‘niece’ description. The only possible explanation was that Sarah Ann Steel’s mother, Christiana, was the sister of Benjamin’s first wife Elizabeth Senior, but although it seemed a pretty obvious assumption, I hadn’t yet located the necessary proof. Until, that was, I managed to find Christiana’s baptism record by searching the IGI database on just the given name. Finally, there it was – Christiana SENIOER, along with an additional brother and sister.
Now all that remains is to identify the parents of Alice Bean born abt 1866.
Alice is first recorded as a 15 year-old daughter on the 1881 census with her ‘parents’, the above Benjamin and Sarah Ann Bean, along with two other children that are most certainly from that marriage. The date of Alice’s birth suggests that she is the daughter of Benjamin’s first wife Elizabeth but the 1871 census doesn’t record her and there is no record of baptism. It is likely that Alice was the illegitimate daughter of Sarah Ann Steel but if that is so then who was the father?
