Ellen Aldous was my great-great-grandmother. She was (the 8th?) child of James and Mary Ann Aldous. They lived in Stradbroke, Suffolk and her father James worked as an agricultural labourer. The family may have been baptists as when Ellen married in 1879, it was in a Baptist chapel. They married on All Saints Day (1st Nov).

Ellen married Seymour Hall, another agricultural labourer from nearby Laxfield (about 5 miles west of Stradbroke). She had been working as a domestic servant at the time. Their daughter Florence was born nearly a year later on 31 Oct 1880 and by the time of the 1881 census, the family of 3 are living in a cottage in Laxfield. At least 6 more children followed in the next 20 years, including Ellen in 1892 (my great-grandmother).

The family seem to have left Laxfield by 1896 as daughter Bessie was born in Walberswick on the Suffolk coast. It was also around this time that Ellen's father James died. By 1901, they are living in Darsham on the High Street and Seymour is working as a horseman on a farm (he was 45).

I don't yet know the date of Seymour or Ellen's deaths. Seymour was still around in 1915 to give away his daughter Ellen to James Charles Beard on Boxing Day in Kingston-upon-Thames.

Registered Dec 1859, Hoxne (4a 487) 

& FreeBMD

The 1881 Census has another Ellen Aldous from Stradbroke (1857), daughter of William Aldous and an Ellen Aldous from Stradbroke (1861) as a visitor and servant (out of place) at the house of John Sheen in Laxfield.