As such, “cad” was the perfect word for that scoundrel John Winslow. A teenage pregnancy was not at all what Isaac Smith and his wife Mary had hoped for their daughter when they immigrated from Durham, England, back in 1882.Nevertheless, in 1894, at 16 and a half years-old, Isaac’s daughter Lizzie gave birth to a boy who would bear his mother’s maiden name.
Yet it was not the end of the world. Isaac and Mary helped Lizzie raise the boy, Fred, in their house. And when Lizzie married Henry Mansell in 1901, her new husband took Fred in as well. However, I’m not sure how Henry felt about his step-son.
On one hand, Henry was familiar with step-family-members. He was a step-son to his father’s second wife, and she still had three children at home when she married his father.
On the other hand, having a son of his own seems to have been REALLY, REALLY important to Henry. He and Lizzie would *eventually* have one – in time -- though Mary, Margaret, Gertrude, Rosella, Sarah, and Grace (six consecutive daughters) would come first. After a full twenty years of marriage, William Mansell was born in 1921.
By that point, though, Fred had long been out of the picture. There is no record of him after the 1910 census, save for a brief mention in his mother’s 1951 obituary. I can’t even tell what year he died.
His story, while not a tragedy, is still sobering. There are never enough good fathers as it is; good step-fathers are even fewer.
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