John Cawood and Mary Hall had both been widowed; in 1841 they were living as man and wife with children from their previous marriages and with two children they shared, Eliza and Charles. Both had been entered in the parish baptismal register as illegitimate, in 1836 and 1838, respectively.
Mary Hall (nee Cole) had been widowed when her husband Henry Hall died in June 1826, buried in Farnham. She was then aged 30 with four children, Henry, George, William and Stephen, the eldest born in 1820 and the youngest baptised in June 1826; Henry Hall was listed as a labourer.
John Cawood’s first wife was also called Hall; his marriage to Maria Hall taking place in 1823, recorded as with the consent of her parents. Maria was the child of a William and Mary Hall; she was baptised in 1809 which implies that she married aged about 14.
It is not known whether Maria’s father William Hall was related to Mary’s first husband Henry Hall. They would have been of similar age.
It is unclear what happened to John Cawood’s first wife Maria but her death would have made John a widow left to raise an infant daughter, baptised as Caroline Cawood in January 1826. This was the same year that Mary Hall was widowed.
John Cawood was from a local family, baptised at St Michael’s Church in September 1798, the son of Charles and Christian Cawood and the younger brother to Jane Cawood, the widow of the potter William Fadgent. His cottage was called “Cawood’s” although now rented from Joseph Miles.
The children, Eliza and her brother Charles, born to John Cawood and Mary Hall were listed in the 1841 Census with the surname Cawood, as was Caroline, John’s daughter from the earlier marriage, recorded as aged 15. Mary’s four older children were also present, listed with the name Hall.
Eliza’s mother Mary Hall died, in 1847 at the age of 52. Caroline had earlier died in 1845, when aged 19, in Guildford, perhaps having entered domestic service there.
Eliza was listed with the surname Hall in the 1851 Census, as also was her brother Charles. She was described as a lodger and house servant, although still in her father’s household. Two of her half-siblings, on her widowed mother’s side, were also in John Cawood’s household, listed as agricultural labourers. The eldest half-brother, William Hall, also an agricultural labourer, was living in a separate household nearby, having married another called Eliza, from Frensham.