Great x3 Grandmother Jane Boobier (nee Mutter)

My Great x3 Grandmother Jane (1837 - 1891) was a housewife, step-mother of six, and mother of four.

Jane Mutter was born on 4th September 1837 in Sampford Peverell, Devon, to William Mutter (about 32), a lime burner and labourer, and Thomasin Mutter (nee Kerslake) (about 26). Jane was born before her parent's marriage.

Jane was baptised on 16th October 1837 in Sampford Peverell as Jane Mutter Kerslake.

Sometime around 1840, young Jane and her parents moved from Sampford Peverell about five miles west to Tiverton. There her parents married on 9th April 1841, when Jane was three years old.

Jane was the eldest of two children (one daughter and one son):

• Jane  1837 -
• Robert  1843 -

In Tiverton, Jane and her family lived at the unusually named Hit or Miss Court.

1841 Census:

1851 Census:

In Jan/Feb/Mar 1857, when Jane was nineteen, her father William passed away, aged about fifty-two, in Tiverton. Sometime after William's death, Jane's widowed mother Thomasin and younger brother Robert moved to the Higher Town in Tiverton, where they can be found in the 1861 Census. Young Robert supported his mother, working as a farm labourer.

Where was Jane, who would have been about twenty-three? Alas, I cannot find her on the 1861 Census, meaning we know little about her life as a young woman. She likely worked and lived away from home, yet still in her home county of Devon, as a domestic servant of some form, as that was the path of most young women of her rural working class at the time, before they married, and became housewife and mother to many children.

In May or June 1868, Jane (30) married widower William Boobier (about 41), a stone mason and father of six (five surviving) children in Tiverton, having had the previous months their banns read in both their native Tiverton and William's adoptive Exeter.

So Jane entered her thirties, suddenly as wife and step mother to six (five surviving) children: William (who had passed away, aged 14 months, many years before), Thomas (about 16), Emma (about 13), Edwin (about 10), William (about 7) and George (about 4).

Jane and William had four more sons:

• Robert  1869 -
• Walter  1871 -
• Alfred  1873 -
• Frederick  1874 -

Did Jane name her first son Robert after her only brother? Robert was also the name of her paternal grandfather, so it was a family name.

Jane's widowed mother Thomasin stayed with Jane and her new and growing family, at their home at Portland Place, Exeter, as shown on the 1871 Census:

Sometime in the 1870's, Jane and her family moved from Portland Place to Jubilee Street, also in Exeter, where they can be found on the 1881 Census:

In March or April 1886, when Jane was forty-eight, her husband William passed away, aged about fifty-nine, in Exeter. He was buried on 4th April 1886 in Exeter.

Only five years later, in Jan/Feb/Mar 1891, Jane herself passed away, aged fifty-three, in Exeter. Her children, teenagers, were orphaned. Thankfully it seems they managed to support each other and found work in labouring trades.