However recent developments showed that Roger's email had only started me off on the correct trail, as an email from James Phillips-Evans, who was researching a Herefordshire couple called James & Mary GWILLIAM showed me that I needed to prune this tree and part of the Humber branch above it from ROWBERRY Tree Three and place it on another tree. His research showed that the Mary ROWBURY who married James GWILLIAM at Wacton in 1806 was, according to the 1851 census born about 1784 in Humber, leading to the deduction that she was the Mary ROWBURY baptised there in 1785. As I was able to find Mary GWILLYM's death in 1858 aged 74, I agreed with this and so I have grafted it onto ROWBERRY Tree One.
Taking the Mary baptised at Ocle Pitchard in 1774 as this Mary does make sense as at the time that she was having children baptised in the neighbouring parish of Much Cowarne, so was her elder brother Richard. So this graft has taken.
But returning to the two boys, they both appear with their parents as RUSSELLs in the 1881 census, living at Pattingham, Staffordshire, part of the Seisdon Union. By 1891 both parents were dead. Thanks to the 1891 census index when it first appeared online at Ancestry.co.uk I was able to find the two boys as RUBERYs. They were inmates of the South East Shropshire District School. The 1844 Poor Law Amendment Act made provision for Poor Law Unions within a fifteen mile radius to set up a School District and to erect a joint school for the accommodation and education of pauper children away from the workhouses. The South-East Shropshire School District was one of the few such bodies set up under this Act. It operated a school at Quatt which dated back to around 1700. This information and the photograph is taken from the The Workhouse website of Peter Higginbotham, to whom I am very grateful for granting me permission to use them.The 1863 PO Directory entry for Quatt says: "Here is the south-eastern Shrorpshire district school, for the reception of children belonging to the several unions of Bridgnorth, Cleobury Mortimer, Madeley, and Seisdon, capable of accommodating 220 children."
A description of the School which appeared in Bagshaw's Gazetteer of Shropshire 1851 describes "the benefits derived by the children, who are here removed from scenes of inferiority and degradation and brought up in habits of industry ... the boys are employed in the cultivation of the land, in the management of cows, pigs, and a pony".
It seems to have worked in this case as both boys are employed on farms in the 1901 census, one as a Cowman and the other as a Yardman (ie looking after cattle).
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