An Elizabeth Roberts was ‘said to be born’ on 14 June 1787, according to her baptism at Stoke Damerel, Devon on 23 January 1839, when she would have been fifty-two. The record gives her parents as Abraham and Ann Roberts and Abraham’s occupation as ropemaker. Her abode is given as Torpoint (Quarry Park, perhaps?)

If this is the daughter of our Abraham and Ann, as it surely is, she was apparently born three months before her parents’ marriage in September 1787. The annotation on the baptism record, ‘said to be born’, suggests the rector was going by what Elizabeth or someone close to her told him. Or Elizabeth herself may even have been unsure of her precise birth date. This would be understandable, given the loss of her parents early in her life. 

But an illegitimate birth is not impossible of course, and could explain why Abraham and Ann were married by licence, as the wedding might need to have been arranged quickly with no time for the calling of banns. I have not found an earlier baptism for Elizabeth, as Roberts or Dunrich, at either Torpoint/Antony or Stoke Damerel. If she was indeed illegitimate, maybe she was not baptised at all in 1787, hence the adult baptism. 

In January 1839 she may have been terminally ill and so wanted to be baptised before she died. There are no deaths listed of anyone of this name in Stoke Damerel in 1839, but an Elizabeth Roberts is listed as an inmate of the Plympton Union Workhouse from 1834 and was buried at Plympton St Mary on 14 February 1839, a few days after the Stoke Damerel baptism. There is no indication of her marital status. Her age on the burial record is given as fifty-five, thus born 1784 and this is corroborated by the workhouse records. So is this our Elizabeth? 

Interestingly, Plympton is where Pascho Pollard (who was also an overseer of the poor) died six years earlier, in 1833. Those admitted to the workhouse could be returned to the last parish they had resided in for a year or more, to be cared for there: maybe our Elizabeth had lived with Pascho at Old Newnham but fell on hard times after his death? That may not explain why she was baptised six miles away at Stoke Damerel in January 1839 though.