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Previous: Part 1 of the Blake story
There are multiple references to Emma, the wife of William Blake (c.1833-1914). They are full of inconsistencies and there are lots of gaps - records that 'should' be there but are not. Getting the facts to fit a consistent narrative is difficult and involves lots of assumptions.
My suggestion is that Emma Blake, formerly Platt, and Emma Blake, formerly Trump, are one and the same person. That William and Emma were living as man and wife from around 1850 until 1855 when they legitimised their relationship. This is a proposition; no more than that.
This chapter sets out the evidence I can find in favour of this proposition (going deeper than the fact that their christian names are the same!):
There is no birth record for Emma Platt that links clearly to the locations we have for William or the birthplace of Leicester stated for her in the 1851 census. There are plenty of Emma Platt births but most are in Lancashire.
The one that does deserve some consideration is Emma Platts, age 8 (thus born 1832/3), living in Rearsby Leicestershire at the 1841 census. But she seems to have married, age 23, Edward (or Edmund) Marshall in 1856 at Aston and appears as his wife in 1861 and 1871 censuses. I cannot however find her in the 1851 census. At age 18 she is no longer with her parents. We can only make her fit as William's Emma by her leaving William and her two sons after the 1853 birth of William, moving from Chesham to Aston and describing herself as a spinster on her marriage to Edward. The 1861 and 1871 censuses ages make her birth year as 1833/4. Emma Blake's age in the 1851 census is given as 19 making her year of birth 1831/32.
There is no marriage record for William Blake and Emma Platt, even though state registration of marriages began in 1837.
There is no death record (in Buckinghamshire or Hertfordshire) for an Emma Blake in the period from 1853 (the birth of William "the third") to 1855 (when William marries Emma Trump). This was 15 years into the era of compulsory registration. Is there any entry for Emma Platt?
Emma Blake's year of birth according to her marriage record and the 1861, 1871 and 1881 was 1832/33. According to the 1891 census it was 1833/34. According to the 1911 census it was 1835/36. Vanity as she got older, or forgetfulness? Or her son completing the documents?
The 1851 census gives Emma (Platt's) birthplace as Leicester.
The 1861 census omits Emma (Trump's)'s birthplace.
The 1871 census gives Emma's birthplace as London
The 1881 census gives Emma's birthplace as Bedminster, Dorset; which is probably meant to refer to Beominster, Dorset (rather than Bedminster, Bristol).
The 1891 census gives Emma's birthplace as Dorsetshire.
The 1901 census gives Emma's birthplace as Aylesbury.
The 1911 census gives Emma's birthplace as Tring, Bucks. (Tring is actually in Hertfordshire rather than Buckinghamshire)
An Emma Trump was baptised in Beominster Dorset in 1834, the daughter of Thomas (a mason) and Jane and was living with them in Beominster in 1841 - age 7 (=YOB 1833/4). Multiple trees in Ancestry identify this Emma as the Emma who married William Blake in 1855. There are two serious problems with this.
The first is that at her marriage Emma identifies her father as William, a confectioner, rather than Thomas, a mason. There is no record of an Emma baptised by a William Trump, although a William Blake was baptising children at Beominster around that time. But he was not a confectioner, he was a sawyer.
The second is that at the 1851 census Thomas, Jane, Daniel, and two other children were in Guernsey. Emma was not living with her parents but was in the household of Joanna Davey (a seaman's wife) as a servant. Her age is given as 15 (which is not quite what we expect to see) and her birthplace simply as England. Thomas, Jane and some of their children then move to Canada. But it is uncertain if their daughter Emma went with them. There is evidence suggesting that she did, but like every step in this story there are anomalies. In 1858 Daniel Bell of Montreal, age 23, marries Emma Trump "England, Toronto" the daughter of Thomas and Jane with the marriage witnessed by Daniel Trump. Which looks conclusive. Except that Emma's age is given as 42. A transcription error? Should it have been 22 or 24? 24 would match an 1833/4 birth date. But in the 1881 census Daniel and Emma's ages are given as 44 and 42 ( i.e. born 1836/7 and 1838/9) and in the 1891 census their ages are said to be 52 and 50. Emma's birthplace is recorded as England.
Despite the inconsistent ages I believe the balance of probability is that Emma Trump born 1833/4 in Beominster ended up in Canada rather than marrying William Blake.
If Emma was not the daughter of Thomas (contrary to what so many people assert) and if the two Emmas in William's life were, as I speculate, the same woman, why might the two names Platt and Trump both be used? The answer may be the marriage of Diana Trump to Frederick Platt in London in 1826. Could Emma be their daughter, who for some reason chose to change from using her father's name to using her mother's? The marriage was on 4 May 1826 at St Martin in the Fields, Westminster.
On July 31st 1842 George Frederick Platt (the son of Frederic and Diana Platt) was baptised at St Peter's, Mile End in East London. The baptism register records that George Frederick had been born nearly three years earlier on 25 August 1839. The fact that George was not baptised within a short time after his birth leaves open the possibility that an earlier child (i.e. Emma) might also not have been baptised. Relying on unrecorded events is certainly speculative but the whole family seems to be elusive. I can find no record of Frederick, Diana or George in the 1841 or 1851 censuses. George Frederick does appear in the 1861 census and no record in 1861 of Frederick or Diana. (In the hope that it might clarify things I am attempting some study of the Flatt families in London around that time-.
This suggestion still leaves open the question of why Emma should in 1855 have identified her father as William, a confectioner.
Two other pieces of evidence pointing to the two Emmas being the same person come from the 1911 census. This records that Emma Blake the (wife/widow) of William had had 19 children of whom 10 were still alive. This is more than we can account for (13) but we get closer to it by including the two children born before 1855 to Emma 'Platt'. The 1911 census also shows her marriage as having lasted 59 years which puts it as 1851/2 - well before the 1855 marriage at Aylesbury but close to the 1851 baptism/census. These seem quite compelling but we do need to be a bit cautious. The form also gives her age as 75 (giving a birth date of 1835/6) and her place of birth as Tring, Bucks. Tring is actually in Hertfordshire rather than Buckinghamshire and we have no record of her having lived there, though it is very close to Chesham. This is the fifth different place of birth given for her in census records, plus one blank. The census form was apparently completed by son Arthur, which may explain an inaccuracy.