Marrying clergy

I won’t begin to clutter up this Blog with too much family history, but all four grandparents of the siblings whose grave I posted about yesterday are buried in two graves near each other in St Sepulchre’s Cemetery in Oxford and it was a place to which I recently said I’d return.

The children’s father Henry was the son of George and Susannah Mullins whose grave pictured twice above has been featured before.

The children’s mother Jessie was the daughter of Thomas and Martha Mallam whose grave is pictured three times above; Jessie’s middle name was Martha. 

Thomas Mallam was involved in the building of St Philip & James' Church in Oxford near his home on the Woodstock Road.  Newly ordained Henry Mullins was the first Curate at that church.  So this provides a simple setting for their meeting.

Yesterday’s post identified the Revd J E Stocks and E J Mallam as godparents of Henry and Jessie Mullins’ son Cecil in 1871 - Emily Mallam was Jessie’s sister and Stocks was Curate at St Philip & James and they were married later in the year so the pattern repeated itself.

And the following year one of Jessie and Emily’s sisters (twenty-two year old Adelaide) married the first Vicar of the church (the Revd J B Gray, seventeen years her senior).

So three of Thomas and Martha Mallam’s daughters in turn married clergy from the church – I’m not clear whether their home provided a safe marriage bureau for the single clergy of the church or whether the church provided one for the daughters.