George Stephenson fell in love with Elizabeth Hindmarsh, known as Betty, in the late 1790s, when he was under 20 years old. They met in secret in her family’s orchard. When George asked permission from her father for her hand in marriage, he refused because George was not of sufficient means or standing. Betty declared she’d never love another.
George on the other hand re-entered the market with determination. He started with his housekeeper Anne Henderson. She rejected him. So he transferred his attentions to her sister Francis, known as Fanny. She was 32; nine years older than George and by the standards of the day, may have been considered late to marriage. George and Francis were married in 1802. She gave birth to Robert Stephenson in 1803. Then she gave birth to a daughter, Francis, in 1805, but the baby died at 3 weeks old. Francis (Fanny) Henderson, died of consumption a year later, so George hired a housekeeper to look after Robert, then just four.
George left to work in Scotland (Montrose) and came back a year later. He seems to have taken a more active role in Robert’s upbringing as he got older and sent him to college in Edinburgh so that Robert had a far superior education than George ever had. He also got him to assist in the survey of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1821. In 1823 he, along with other key players from the S&DR set up a locomotive manufactory for Robert in Newcastle called Robert Stephenson & Co.
Robert had no relationship with his birth mother; he was too young when she died. His step mother is interesting though – enter stage left Elizabeth Hindmarsh – Betty. She had never loved another.
Many years later, when his engineering skills were renowned (and his accent moderated), George proposed to Betty again and this time her father agreed. They were married on the 29th March 1820 in Newburn Parish Church in Northumberland, where she came from. George was 39 and she was 43. There were no children from this marriage and although George worked for the S&DR, they never moved there permanently.
Elizabeth appears to have had a good relationship with Robert; he was 16-17 when George and Elizabeth married. He often wrote to Elizabeth from South America where he had gone in search of a more exotic job. Elizabeth died, aged 68, in 1846 after 25 years of marriage.
So what did our George do? He took a third wife three years later in January 1848, Ellen Gregory (he called her Glen). She had been his housekeeper, but also from a reasonably well to do family. However George was to die of pleurisy within a few months in August 1848, aged 68.
George was buried with Betty, his first true love, at Holy Trinity Church, Chesterfield.
