Betsey (Betsy or Elizabeth) didn’t have such a good start in life. Her father Jos (Joseph) doesn’t seem to have stayed around long and certainly she used her mother’s surname of Gibson when she married.
However, she seems to have had a busy and prosperous life, bearing ten children of whom nine survived. She had seven sons who were all coal miners. Imagine the baths and the washing of clothes that would entail!
The family moved around quite a lot: in 1841 they were still in Dearham, but by 1851 they had moved from Cumberland to County Durham. In 1861 they are still in Durham but at some distance from their previous address.
Betsey’s boys didn’t seem to want to leave home: she had four unmarried sons ranging in age from 19 to 27 still with her in 1861. One of them was our ancestor Robert: he left home to get married and move to Chesterfield in 1863. We don’t know if she lived to meet his bride Esther or to see her Derbyshire grandchildren.
Mother of Robert and daughter of Jane Gibson and Jos Ferguson
Baptised Betsey Gibson or Ferguson (sic) on 28 July 1808 in Dearham, Cumberland
Married Joseph Cammeron on 15 November 1828 (using her mother’s name Gibson)
No record of death found but Joseph is widowed in the 1871 census