faye72 on Family Tree Circles

This story about MARGARET SMITH is based on circumstances and of course cannot be proven however it may be of interest.
In the 1841 St. Mary Magdalen Oxford census it records a 'MARIA HARDMAN' as living with or staying with HENRY SMITH [born Oxfordshire and age 50] and his family in George's Lane. In this record MARIA HARDMAN states her age as 15 and says 'yes' to Oxfordshire being her county of birth. This agrees with what I know of MARIA HARDMAN in the HARDMAN family tree.
Maria of course was the daughter of ROBERT HARDMAN and MARGARET SMITH and if she is the correct MARIA HARDMAN living with HENRY SMITH he could be her uncle and of therefore Margaret's brother. The Hardman children were made orphans in 1835 and it is possible that the Smith family cared for some of them.
A search by Oxfordshire Family History Group showed all 'Henry' and 'Margaret' Smith's born between 1770 and 1810 in Oxfordshire. The search could verify that one of the many Henry Smith's born in Oxfordshire was baptised in Waterperry on 21.1.1787, that he was one of five children born to HENRY MOLLINEUX SMITH and MARY HAWES and that he did have a sister Margaret. However she was born 16.9.1793 which does not really tally with Oxford Burial Index that says she was 36 at burial. However death indexes are not always reliable and she could have been 39 not 36 when she died.
What was interesting about HENRY MOLLINEUX and MARY HAWES was that while they were married in the parish church in Waterperry and their first son Henry was baptised in the parish church in 1787 Margaret and the other siblings were baptised in the Roman Catholic Church.[LDS site] It has been suggested that there may have been a dispute with the local church vicar and the family embraced catholicism in 1788 after Henry's birth.
Margaret Smith married Robert Hardman in Hillingdon in 1817 and went on to have seven children in Oxford. She died I suspect from consumption or cholera while living in Penson's Gardens and was buried in St. Ebbes.