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The Nineteenth-Century ‘Wedding Tour’
A wood fire, a heap of congratulatory letters, and the smiles of her who every day ncreases [sic] my dependence on her love, made our breakfast table delightful – Charles Sneyd Edgeworth, 5 Sept 1813 The post-wedding holiday that we now call a ‘honeymoon’ emerged in the late eighteenth century, when couples from the European…
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A Rupert’s Land Nativity, 1807
With Christmas just days away, my mind has turned to seasonal tales I have come across in my research. One that stands out is the story of Isabel Gunn. Isabel, alias John Fubbister, alias Mary Fubbister, was born in Orkney in 1780. In 1805–6, she met John Scarth, a Hudson’s Bay Company fur-trader who was…
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Grief and Hardships on the Family Tour
Between 1827 and 1854, Dorothea and John Ladeveze Adlercron of Moyglare, Co. Meath, and their children made a series of tours of France, Switzerland and Italy. Dorothea (1800–79) was daughter of Abraham George Rothe (1768–1846) of Kilkenny and Anne Salisbury (d. 1842). Detailed records of these tours survive in Dorothea’s diaries and the passports issued to the family in various…