Trans-Atlantic Rescue

This was a better day.  In no time flat I found what I was looking for, once I had the facts straight.  A.R. had called U.A., who then consulted the Family Bible in his possession with written records in it that are believed to have been started by Isabella Pearce/Adams, and with an email back to me with the birth date of George's first son, Thomas, it was possible to cherchez la femme.  At last.

Let me introduce you to Elizabeth Adams, mother of Thomas Dennis Adams, born 29th May, 1875.

Now, here's a development: in the Cranborne baptism records, Thomas was Christened the same day as his brother William Pitt Adams.  Family **  In my records from Grandma W., I have a William Pitt Adams with a birth date of 24th October 1884.  I will be finding out from A.R. later, as she now has the rest of the birth dates that were in the bible for G&I's children.

Family lore has it that George had Thomas before marrying Isabella, but it looks as though a William was in there too.  Or, were they twins/brothers and William died, then a later child between George and Isabella was named in his memory?
Swiftly returning to the mysterious again though,  I cannot see any record of George and Elizabeth getting married.  The census of 1871 still has George living at home, 25 years old and unmarried, and that's all I could find.

And I could not unearth any record of an Elizabeth Adams in Dorset or Hampshire (that would fit the age group) dying around this time.  I expanded the search to the whole of Britain and only found two possible candidates: one who died in Newton Abbott (Devon), aged 24, and another who died in Abergavenny (Wales), aged 22.  Strangely enough, considering we generally believe that women were still dying by the dozen every week from complications of childbirth in the 1870s, there were very, very few people in that age group in the death records.  Causes of death were not recorded in the records from those years that I viewed.

So now it's back to Cherchez-ing la femme again.  Had she been sent away for health reasons to some distant dismal asylum or sanatorium?  Did she abandon the family?  Was there a clerical error or loss of the record of her death?  I must leave this trail again until I have something to go on, or I will be found next week by the police, buried under a pile of red herrings.

**  [Added later.]  Yes, Thomas and William were twins: the 1881 census lists Thomas as age 6.  William died, age 3, in 1878.  And there was another son William later.

*photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13026542