Eliza Congdon
Eliza Congdon was born in England before February 1839. Her father was Richard Congdon, a cabinet maker. Her mother and her birthplace are not known. Congdon is a West Country surname, commonest in Devon and Cornwall.
On 20 February 1860 she married Frederick Hardy, a private of the Royal Marines, at the parish church of East Stonehouse in Plymouth, the parish of the Marines' barracks. She was living at 12 George Street, Stonehouse. Both of them were entered as of full age, which meant twenty-one or over. Frederick's address was his ship, H.M.S. Conqueror, and his father was James Hardy, a labourer. They married after banns. Eliza signed her name in the register, and Frederick made his mark. Their first child, Frederick James, was born at Plymouth on 20 February 1863.
Late in 1863 her husband's detachment of Marines sailed for the Falkland Islands. Six wives and eight children went with the twenty men aboard the freight ship Velocidade, which left the Thames on 29 October and reached Stanley on 8 January 1864. Her second child, Louisa Ann, was born at Stanley that October, so Eliza was in the islands by the start of 1864 and most likely made that voyage. The detachment's families lived in wooden cottages, and from 1868 in a new row of stone ones.
The children came steadily. William Richard was born in December 1865, Mary Margaret in March 1867 and Albertina on Christmas Eve 1868. About 1870 the family went home to Plymouth, and Arthur was born there on 21 October 1870. On the voyage back, Louisa Ann died at sea on 25 January 1871, aged six. She was buried at Stanley eleven days later.
Six more children were born at Stanley: Frank in 1872, George in 1874, Walter in 1875, Louisa Malvina on 7 May 1877, Albert Percy in 1879 and Herbert Ambrose in 1882. That made twelve in nineteen years. By then Frederick was working as a bricklayer and mason.
Eliza died at Stanley on 19 September 1889. Her age was given as forty-seven, though she was of full age at her wedding and so at least fifty. The cause was given as hemiplegia, a paralysis of one side of the body, usually from a stroke. She was buried in grave E441 of Stanley Cemetery. She is not in the Holy Trinity burial register for that year. The family married their daughter in the Baptist Tabernacle five years later, so she was probably buried by the Baptist minister.
Her daughter Louisa Malvina died in Ohio in 1948, and the death certificate gives the mother's name as Louisa Congdon. Every record made in her lifetime calls her Eliza. Her surname lasted longer than her given name: her grandson Olav Congdon Aslaksen carried it all his life.
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If Eliza Congdon is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Eliza Congdon (d. 1889)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/eliza-congdon-1889-61b263.