DEARMAN & MOLLETT

A plain name, and most probably a plain life - a hard life anyway.  Eleven children, the first five, (all boys) one every year.  The portrait above is of the artist’s sister - the artist being Vilhelm Hammershøi.  He is Danish and it was painted in 1887, so therefore not really an accurate representation of time and place - Jane would have been in her 60s by then, but it is sufficiently plain to be timeless and placeless I feel.

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Jane was born in Wick - a small village outside Bridgend.  Of her early life I know little, and I must confess that what I have put here is largely imagined from the barest of facts.  Then she married and had lots of children, whilst following her husband around southern Wales.  She died in her late 60s, though I have yet to confirm the actual date.  She is the kind of ancestor we all ignore - nothing remarkable in her life at all - but it was the kind of life lived by the majority of poor women of the time, and should be recognised for that, and for the quite remarkable achievement of bringing up so many children with so little.