Jane Howe

Jane Dufficy in the 1851 England Census Name: Jane Dufficy Age: 15 Estimated birth year: abt 1836 Relation: Servant Gender: Female Where born: Ireland Civil Parish: Manchester Ecclesiastical parish: St Bartholomews Phillimore Ecclesiastical Parish Maps: View related Ecclesiastical Parish County/Island: Lancashire Country: England Street address: Occupation: Condition as to marriage: Disability: View image Registration district: Salford Sub-registration district: Regent Road ED, institution, or vessel: 01u Neighbors: View others on page Household schedule number: 69 Piece: 2224 Folio: 373 Page Number: 18 Household Members: Name Age Samuel Oddy 31 Mary Oddy 31 Edward Oddy 10 Samuel Oddy 8 Margaret Oddy 6 Alfred Oddy 5 Mary Emma Oddy 3 Jane Dufficy 15 Harriet Oddy 1

Marriage https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NJTD-6P5

Name: Jane Dufficy Birth Year: abt 1835 Marriage Date: 13 Nov 1854 Parish: Manchester, St Mary, St Denys and St George Father's name: Patrick Dufficy Spouse's name: John Howe Spouse's Father's Name: John Howe Archive Roll: 723

DN and probate https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS7L-P927-9?cc=257...

Death Info https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C91Q-69SP-P?cc=272...

Death and Burial https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GTWT-Y1D?i=14&cc=1...

The family home in Stanger was called CROFTON LODGE. There is a Crofton Lodge in Roscommon, so perhaps this is the area in which Jane was born and grew up. Also where she went to give birth to daughter Mary Jane in 1862 See photo 2 in the attached for the name of the home http://www.southafricawargraves.org/search/details.php?id=12233

The inspiration for the name of the Howe family's Stanger home perhaps? http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/big-hou...

Family knowledge has John and Jane having 15 children (see letter from Connie where she shared that "the old lady used to say that she was one short of a span")

John and Jane married November 13, 1854, Manchester Cathedral. We have found records for 13 children with John Joseph being born in 1860 in India, the last in 1878, and a baby on average every 2nd year...

1. 1 (Jack) John Joseph Howe b. December 16, 1860, Karachi, India
2. 2 Mary Jane Downes (Howe) b. 1862, Roscommon, Ireland
3. 3 Eliza Hawkins (Howe) b. August 1864, Natal, exact location unknown but assumed Umhlali
4. 4 Ellen Williams (Howe) b. May 1, 1866, Umhlali
5. 5 Annie Maria King (Howe) b. August 18, 1867, Umhlali
6. 6 Captain Charles Edward Howe b. November 1869, Umhlali
7. 7 James Henry Howe b. 1871, Stanger
8. 8 Frances Agnes Olsen (Howe) b. March 21, 1872, Stanger
9. 9 Alice Maud Read b. March 21, 1872, Stanger
10. 10 Baby Howe b. May 27, 1873, Stanger
11. 11 Percival William Howe b. 1874, Stanger (no doc proof of this PoB)
12. 12 Alfred Earnest Howe b. December 8, 1875, Stanger
13. 13 Leonard Aloysius Howe b. December 16, 1878, Stanger

As the couple married in England at the end of 1954, my assumption is that there were 2 babies born between 1855 and 1860, either in England and/or India or even possibly in Ireland, who died as infants or were perhaps stillborn. No proof of this has been found yet.

EXTRACT from our HOWE family book "Our family Reunited... The Irish - Southern African family of John Howe and Jane Dufficy"
(formatting has obviously not been applied in this extract)

Jane Dufficy… a name with which many of us were unfamiliar just a few years ago. But she, together with her husband, John Howe, is one of the reasons we are. They are our common ancestors… second great grandparents to me, great grandparents to others, and for some of you, third or even fourth great grandparents.
Sadly, information about Irish ancestors, especially documentation from the first part of the nineteenth century, is very difficult to come by… many records were destroyed during the Irish troubles, and in some cases they do exist but in parish basements still to be explored.
Despite this I think we have a fair understanding of the woman who connects us all. I imagine her as a beautiful dark haired young Irish lass, a little bit sassy, with a whole lot of courage and spirit, looking for adventure and fun… and love too, I’m sure. She was hardworking, she was tolerant. She was intelligent and educated, at least to a degree. She missed her Irish family I think, but was kept busy with her own. She must have been strong, at least in will. I think in stature she, like her husband were slight… most of their children for whom we have photos or descriptions, seem to be small in build. If I try hard enough, I can imagine her soft Irish lilting voice… I bet she had a beautiful singing voice too.

We have one photograph of Jane and John, from the collection of their oldest son Jack, handed down to his son Ketch and then his son Reg… and hence to us. This photo was likely taken in the 1880’s when she would have been about 50 years old… it shows her to have smooth skin and I think, a kind face. In the early days of photography, when the subjects had to remain still for at least a minute while the photograph was taken, resulting in mostly severe-looking, unsmiling portraits, Jane seems to have managed a slight smile… an indication of her personality perhaps, or just fanciful thinking 

The first document in which I have found reference to Jane is an English census document from 1851. In this census, Jane is recorded as being 15 years old, born in Ireland, and working as a servant in the home of 31 year old Samuel (a machine maker) and Mary Oddy at 22 Chadwick Street, Salford, Manchester.
This was the time of the Famine in Ireland, and one can easily imagine that Jane left her home in Roscommon both to find work, and to stay alive. Whether she left alone, or in the company of other family members is uncertain.
“The population of Manchester began to rise dramatically …… Among these new workers were Irish immigrants, who had begun arriving since the dawn of the industrial revolution. However the flow of migrants was exacerbated by the Irish Famine (1845-49) which caused at least a million deaths and another million people to leave Ireland. In the decade of the 1840’s, Manchester had the third highest population of Irish-born residents (behind London and Liverpool). In 1851, 15% of the population of Manchester was Irish-born.”
“In 1845, County Roscommon was one of the first counties to record the appearance of the blight in the locality. The return of the disease the following year – earlier in the season and more lethal – resulted in an immediate increase in distress. On 12 October 1846, the local constabulary stated that 7,500 people were existing on boiled cabbage leaves only once in 48 hours. The second failure of the potato crop in 1846….
The suffering of the local poor was captured in the Dublin-based newspaper, the Nation in March 1847: In Roscommon deaths by famine are so prevalent that whole families who retire at night are corpses in the morning.
The impact on the county was devastating, with Roscommon losing 31 per cent of its population in the decade after 1845. This makes it one of the highest losses in the whole of the country.”
People fled Roscommon, with most likely, some of the Dufficy’s in their midst.

A couple of miles from the house in which she was working was the Salford Infantry Barracks. And the 51st Regiment of Foot was back in town from service in Burma in 1854… later being deployed to assist with the Indian Mutiny in 1857. And somewhere during that year, I imagine Jane met and fell in love with a corporal in the British Army, an Irish lad named John Howe… in November that year the couple married at Manchester Cathedral.
In an article I found, the writer described marriages at the cathedral… “Your ancestors certainly didn't have to be rich or important to tie the knot at Manchester Cathedral”, says Alan Crosby …
“Yesterday I was talking to the archivist of Manchester Cathedral about plans for a project that I may be involved with…. It’s a lovely building dating from the second half of the 15th century, which miraculously survived the transformation of Manchester from a country market town to a world city. It wasn’t too badly restored by the Victorians, was seriously damaged by a landmine explosion in 1940 (but carefully reconstructed), was not spared by the brutal planners of the ‘60s and ‘70s and now flourishes. Between 1753 and 1837, when Manchester was already a great metropolis, this was the only place in the whole city where it was legal to marry, and as the main church in a densely populated area it had massive numbers of baptisms and burials. The churchyard was notoriously overcrowded with putrefying corpses, hastily moved before being fully decomposed in order to make way for yet more burials. I remember how, when I first did family history many years ago, I discovered quite quickly that my very young Irish-born great great grandmother was married there, and I was very impressed. Then I found out about the mass weddings which were conducted every day at what was then called the collegiate church. A dozen or more couples would line up at the altar with the minister hurriedly gabbling the marriage service over them, before then hastily signing the register (or being illiterate working class couples, putting a cross) and being ushered away. Superior visitors came to watch the spectacle. I imagine my great great grandparents being observed with supercilious amusement as he, an illiterate lamplighter from Salford, and she, Dublin-born and 15 years old (and probably pregnant) went through the undignified proceedings. Nothing grand about any of that – but a fine setting nonetheless.”
And that I guess, is how and why our John and Jane were married at Manchester Cathedral.
They married on 13th November 1854. Jane was living at 2 Edith Street in Salford, and was described as a 19 year old spinster, her father Patrick Dufficy, a Labourer. John’s age is given as 25, he was a bachelor, and Corporal in 51st Foot, living at Barracks in Salford. His father is named as John Howe, occupation Distiller.
Both John and Jane signed their marriage document – quite impressive at a time when many made their mark with an X.

Following John’s military career, we know that they spent some time living in India. Their son John Joseph was baptised the day before Christmas, at Kurrachee Lower Sindh in the Archdeaconry of Bombay in December 1860 – this was an Anglican Diocese. John’s occupation is given as “Private in Her Majesty’s 64th Regiment”.
We know that Jane was brought up as a Roman Catholic, whereas John was Protestant. She had been born in Roscommon, Ireland in 1834... a small county town, although the largest town in County Roscommon, roughly in the centre of Ireland.

I think it is without question that our great grandmother Jane Dufficy Howe was a strong and brave woman. Travelling with the army, venturing into exotic and distant continents and countries… countries like India and South Africa… must have taken a special kind of spirit, a special kind of courage…
Researching the life of army wives in the mid-1800’s, I found these accounts:
“Wives who did manage to get permission to accompany their husbands were subject to army discipline and its many regulations, and had to do backbreaking work—usually laundry—for very low pay in exchange for the food and shelter provided by the army…. In spite of the treatment, which to modern sensibilities seems heartless, soldiers’ wives were not passive victims.
Most of them were shrewd, independent, and often willing to fight for better treatment from the immensely more powerful army and government authorities. By the 1870s, the army and the government did begin to initiate reforms that by the 20th century would result in decent housing, education, and financial support for military families,…”
“Soldiers married on the strength of the regiment lived with their wives and children in an area of the barracks set aside for families. Quarters were sometimes only a portion of a large room screened off with blankets, perhaps a hut of about forty feet by twenty feet that might be shared by up to six families. Where separate married quarters existed, these often consisted of only one room, which served the dual purpose of living and sleeping. The army might provide some meager furnishings and household goods such as a table, a stool, a bed and bedding, fire irons and two or three brooms and brushes but the couple would be expected to purchase pots and pans, crockery and other household goods themselves.
The married soldier would continue to receive his daily ration of bread and meat but his wife and children would not be allotted any food, although their rations would be available to purchase at reduced costs through the regimental stores. Wives were expected to do washing and mending for the single men of the regiment, and this was considered a privilege because the few shillings that they earned allowed them to supplement their husband’s wages. Washing facilities were often miserable and there was no allowance for soap, bluing, soda or coal and women were expected to find and purchase these necessary laundry supplies on their own. Those wives with the necessary skills would also clean, sew, nurse and teach.”
“When the regiment moved, the wives, boys under fourteen and girls under sixteen were given travel expenses to accompany the soldiers. If the regiment was sent outside of England, however, only a small percentage of the soldiers were permitted to bring their families and there was much competition to be allowed on the troop ship.”

When John’s regiment left India, Jane presumably left too… it would have been a long sea voyage back to England or Ireland with a small child. It is worth adding here that she may have had other children with her, older than John Joseph. She told her family “ that she was one short of a span”. We know of 13 children born between 1860 and 1878, and given that they married in 1854, it is very possible that the other two were born before John Joseph... which gives pause for thought - imagine the grief of the mother who lost four of her young babies, and her strength to carry on regardless.
From a book entitled Passage East by Ian Marshall, he shares that “…In the days of sail… The voyage from England to India via the Cape of Good Hope took six months at least,…” and as the Suez Canal only opened in 1869, we presume this is what must have happened, Jane with a child or children in tow, on a troop ship with the British Army returning home.

Records show that the couple’s “second” child was born in Roscommon, Ireland sometime in 1862 – it is logical then to think that having left India, Jane returned to England with the army and then finding herself pregnant and John with the army at barracks in England or preparing to leave for Malta, she took her son and went home to her family for the birth of her daughter. Or perhaps she and the little ones accompanied him to Malta as well after the birth of Mary Jane?
In October 1863 John found himself in South Africa with his regiment of the moment… In September 1864, the month after the birth of daughter Eliza, he submitted his request to discharge, declaring his desire to remain in this country so far from his home in Ireland. As John had only been in Natal for 10 months when he requested to take his pension, Jane and the children had probably travelled with him to South Africa, arriving at Fort Napier in October 1863.
After taking his discharge from the army at the end of 1864, the family moved to the Lower Tugela, to a very small “town” called Umhlali, on the north coast of the Natal Colony, where John had been employed as the jailer. In 1874/5 the jail was moved to the nearby newly founded town, Stanger, and the Howe family moved too… Jane and John built a home in Stanger which they named “Crofton Lodge”. We have no proof, but it is logical to think that Jane found a measure of comfort in naming her humble little home in darkest Africa the same as the grand manor house in her home town of Roscommon.
From later documents we know that Jane was born in April 1834. Her children were produced approximately every two years, until 1878 when she was 44. Can you imagine life in their home, in Umhlali and later Crofton Lodge… which, by the way, must have been of reasonable size as it was at one stage considered an option for an incoming Resident Magistrate’s home… two babies died young, but there were still so many children… one of the youngest told his children a story of being left behind after a family picnic… there were so many kids that no-one had noticed he was missing until they got home, and had to go back to find him.
As well as caring for the family – imagine all the cleaning, washing and food preparation! – Jane was also, in 1875, appointed as the Matron of the Jail at Stanger.
Umhlali and Stanger in the 1860’s-80’s did not boast a school – the first school in Stanger was only built in 1893…. We know that all of the Howe children could read and write, and some of them seem to be extremely talented and well educated. I believe that Jane must have been responsible, at least in their early days, for teaching them.
In the early 1880’s her husband left his job as jailer, intemperance possibly the reason, meaning that Jane likely had to put up with a husband who really enjoyed his alcohol a little too much  He found a position as the constable in Ladysmith, in the interior of the colony, so she would have had to endure long months with him away, leaving her to look after the family and all their needs.
That job did not last terribly long, and he soon took his pension in 1881. In 1886 he died, leaving her alone with their children ranging in age from 26 to 10… she also already had 6 grandchildren living close by in Stanger.
Speaking of grandchildren, her oldest son Jack’s boy, Ketch, described his gran… “she was very upright in posture” … there was a suggestion that she must have kept a stick of some kind in the front of her clothing, to stop her from slouching (that sounds terribly uncomfortable)! He also recounted an experience with her… On one occasion he had his elbows on the table at mealtime. She silently got up and brought a small cushion which she placed under his elbow with a “There, there laddie!”… He never repeated that misdemeanor!!
Jane continued living in Stanger although not in Crofton Lodge – daughter Annie was living there during the WW1 years though, so it had remained in the family… all her surviving daughters except Alice, were living near her in Stanger. Her sons had all left the colony, young Jimmy in 1884, and others at various times after that. In Jane’s estate documents her home address is given as 9 Hulett Street, Stanger.
Her sons Charlie and Alf did not marry during her lifetime, but all the rest of her children did – mostly at the family home, Crofton Lodge. Imagine the parties and celebrations, the Irish carousing and singing and drinking!
When Jane died at the age of 77, she had given birth to 15 children, and had 29 grandchildren and 1 great grandchild (Dorothea Violet Taylor).
Jane died from ovarian cancer on 9th May 1911. She was buried in Stanger cemetery in the same grave as her husband, and no doubt some or all of her children and grandchildren who had predeceased her.
The executor of her will was her son James Henry, and her sole beneficiaries her daughter Annie Maria King (who had been left destitute by her husband) and granddaughter, unmarried teacher, Kate Jane Downes.
I wonder whether she longed for home? Or whether she had embraced life in Africa and it was her home. Either way, together with her Irish man, the British Army corporal she had fallen in love with all those years ago, she had produced and raised a generation of Irish-Africans, all so different in nature, in behaviour and the directions they took in life, who themselves went on to raise families… their children and grandchildren losing touch in most cases, over the years. I am referring to us… her progeny, who now, after so many years, have reconnected.
I wonder, if she knew about this, what she would think? I can almost hear that soft lilting Irish voice, saying “There, there, laddies and lassies, you have found your way home!”