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| There are more like this. This may be in Butleigh or Glastonbury. |
20 Dec 2014
Split lines: finding half-kin in the family tree
My grandfather having three male half-cousins complicated the tree. Where did they sit? Their grandchildren were somewhere between 3rd cousins and 4th cousins. Though as is always the way with these special relationships, they were reasonably close: closer than my grandmother was to most of her cousins, that's for sure.
The presence of half-kin in the tree turned out to be exceptionally rare.
Padfield: the love match of Joseph and Mary, 1794, produced all the Padfield family that we knew about, and even more besides once we'd learnt beloved Joe had a posthumous son with plentiful offspring. Both the couple brought shady daughters to the marriage, from previous spouses, who were never mentioned, and whose innumerable descendants were either miners or impoverished printers. Half-kin to be ignored.
Rapson: Margaret Trewhella had such an incredible name that her mother's, Miss Thomas, disappointed. That was until we learnt the young widow had had nine further children with a second husband. Somehow these seemed even more exotic and cohesive than Margaret's own full brother. One was associated with a poisoned Cornish pasty and with a male wizard; another had a boy Jack Rapson whose distinctive likeness reminded us strongly of Grandpa. Another may have been the wool sempstress whose mill provided the workings of Eliza's tapestry, 1820s. And a branch of these came to settled in my rural mid-Devon where I spent a few seasons 'on the land', away from the tedious seaside. Half-kin to be explored.
Dinah: this time round a previous marriage netted us only one half-sibling, Dinah. Listed as a grandchild of seventeenth-century farmer Ed: Murrow, it took some skilful weaving of documents to establish she was Elizabeth's eldest child, and thus half-sister to all four Speed children. She had only one child, too, and having succeeded her aunt in her husband's affections was liable to be cast out of the family unit. History atones for put-upon Dinah, numbering among her descendants, a canon in Leicestershire, a gloving hero, the late châtelaine of du Maurier's Menabilly and the wife of Thatcher's Ambassador in Washington. Half-kin to be fêted.
Mary Lane: I spent a holiday wrapping up the last of Thomas Creed's nine children, two of whom married in London. We always knew he'd had an illegitimate daughter born just after marriage. He had wisely not married the mother, who went on to have another child by his cousin, a few years later. The baby girl was pinned down, despite having the wrong name listed on her marriage, by the modern-day parish clerk of Butleigh, Somerset at butleigh.org. Predictably we are immediately in a realm of farm labourers, shoe workers, painters and sometime publicans. Half-kin by whom to be bored.
Gorran Churchtown: like roses in winter, a new branch was made known to us on the Lowry side. Our Henry Lowry died in 1861 leaving no siblings, just a stepmother. His father had recently died, leaving the widow and also two half-sisters. These half-sisters were the children of Henry's grandfather, also lately deceased, by his wife a woman from Gorran. With the birth and death of Henry's half-sister when he was 35, these Gorran-women were the only other family from our branch of the Lowrys. The elder girl was sent to her mother's people at Gorran where she married her uncle's heir, William Williams Richards, no direct relation, blacksmith, also, in Gorran churchtown. Only one child continues the line, a third Henry. His children went to Barry in Wales, to Liverpool and there is still a remnant in Cornwall. We never knew them, and they don't know their Lowry lineage. Half-kin to be educated.
Jennet: gift from rural Wales. My Welsh side is dominated by towns; and the danger of leaving these nineteenth-century monoliths is you are then plunged into a pre-surname obscurity with no leads or clues at all. Jennet saves us from this fate, and provides us with the liminal limberland of rural Wales waking up to its potential. A single will knives through the impassable chronology: Elizabeth Morgan (Pengilly) in 1825. A devout Methodist and family lady she reveals the presence of half-kin eventually proven to be children of her mother, Jennet. It was while basking in Bat'umi on the Black Sea coast that I finally found a descendant of his kinnagery, who told me she was the fourteenth Jennet. A line from half-sister Gwenllian dies out in the 1990s. And half-brother Rees loses his exciting granddaughter another Jennet to disease in the 1840s, leaving no heirs. Half-kin needing to be located.
Eleanor: another great half-sister. Her vibrant genes kept her going long after her brothers had all died. She was listed as matriarch in the 1861 census with a Gibson grandson, a Gibson nephew and apparently a Gibson stepfather. It was all most puzzling. It seems the son took the name Gibson so he could inherit property from his half-uncle, who had a smallholding nearby. The mists above the Tyne cleared and we learnt that Ellen was the child of Ann Charlton before her marriage to Lancelot Gibson. Thus Ellen, through her census entries, was revealing the place of origin of her mother, who had died long before the censuses came out. So we are glad of the extra characters, the south Northumberland ancestral line and the help she provided. Half-kin to be venerated.
Bohemia: this fantastic name is surely connected to Behenna, and unlikely to be any connection at all to the ancient province in Germany. We decided our ancestor Jane Bohemia would be a hardy perennial if she were planted in a family allotment. Little did we know that she too hid a split-line family of descendants. Way back in the 1990s I corresponded with a Colonel Morley in the US, and suggested from the naming pattern that Jane might have remarried to a second Hambly and produced a number of offspring including Morley's forebear. This was strongly refuted and a marriage in far-off Duloe posited as the correct one for the pair. It is sometimes nice to outlive wrong-headedness. For two years ago I became aware of the will of Jane Hambly junior which would shed light on this story from 250 years earlier. Indeed Jane Bohemia must have married secondly to William Hambly, brother of relative of her first, Hugh, and gone on to have children with him, including a Hugh and Jane. When Jane died she referred to her Hunter niece, a relationship which fits only with this explanation. So Jane Bohemia's place and story in the garden is now ready to be told. Half-kin belatedly.
Barton: unexpected fruit of my sudden determining of James Carline's parents was the will of his grandfather, available dead easily at Kew. This grandfather's estate duty abstract was sufficiently detailed to list my forebear Mary and her half-kin John Barton of Stapleford and Sarah Henderson? of Matlock. I am not quite sure how I stumbled on tumble-down James and Mary Carline (sr)'s relationship and inferred they'd not baptised a second son, James. Naming patterns fitted as did the later discovery that James had married his first cousin, whose siblings twice performed the same feat. The half-kin like the curate's egg had family who were digestible in small doses. One line found in England dies out leaving its money to a cousin's son, Arthur Greasley whose connection goes back to pre-1837. This Arthur is found on his bicycle in an online photographic archive, and his son's cruel treatment of a housekeeper also survives on the pages of the web. There are doubtless other tales to be told. We end where we began. Half-kin: unexpectedly.
Moses: to borrow from a spiritual, way up in Cumberland, let my Moseses go! One of this family became Duchess of St Albans. The old patriarch Joseph Moses of Morland Hall Farm eclipsed his wives and it would be unapparent to an observer which one was the mother of his children. In fact my line is from the Scottish Margaret, while two half-sisters were produced from a union with his cousin, Mary Moses. Hannah the elder daughter was known to plant pear trees. Mary the younger daughter was finally proven to have married a Dickinson after a number of circumstantial clues were collected together. She married very wisely and slowly, unlike the sister who rushed into servitude. From this line come rather slowly, the Thompsons, like tortoises peeking out of their shell, of whom E P is best known. With the death of old Moses, my people were free to escape to western Northumberland, to the exact centre of Britain's landmass, to begin a new chapter in their lives. There remain half-kin, to be counted.
In the catalogue of forebears of mine who had issue by more than one person, I should acknowledge the fact the following male menfolk had had first wives who either died childless or had infant children which died, or who came along for a pivotal role later on: William Bond, William Bagshaw, William Francis, John Airey, James Lowry, Lancelot Gibson. And best stepfather award goes to John Johnson of Old Town. Henry Smith and Samuel Flowers provided stepmothers of greater or lesser degree. I ought to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of my own half-kin in compiling this research.
The presence of half-kin in the tree turned out to be exceptionally rare.
Padfield: the love match of Joseph and Mary, 1794, produced all the Padfield family that we knew about, and even more besides once we'd learnt beloved Joe had a posthumous son with plentiful offspring. Both the couple brought shady daughters to the marriage, from previous spouses, who were never mentioned, and whose innumerable descendants were either miners or impoverished printers. Half-kin to be ignored.
Rapson: Margaret Trewhella had such an incredible name that her mother's, Miss Thomas, disappointed. That was until we learnt the young widow had had nine further children with a second husband. Somehow these seemed even more exotic and cohesive than Margaret's own full brother. One was associated with a poisoned Cornish pasty and with a male wizard; another had a boy Jack Rapson whose distinctive likeness reminded us strongly of Grandpa. Another may have been the wool sempstress whose mill provided the workings of Eliza's tapestry, 1820s. And a branch of these came to settled in my rural mid-Devon where I spent a few seasons 'on the land', away from the tedious seaside. Half-kin to be explored.
Dinah: this time round a previous marriage netted us only one half-sibling, Dinah. Listed as a grandchild of seventeenth-century farmer Ed: Murrow, it took some skilful weaving of documents to establish she was Elizabeth's eldest child, and thus half-sister to all four Speed children. She had only one child, too, and having succeeded her aunt in her husband's affections was liable to be cast out of the family unit. History atones for put-upon Dinah, numbering among her descendants, a canon in Leicestershire, a gloving hero, the late châtelaine of du Maurier's Menabilly and the wife of Thatcher's Ambassador in Washington. Half-kin to be fêted.
Mary Lane: I spent a holiday wrapping up the last of Thomas Creed's nine children, two of whom married in London. We always knew he'd had an illegitimate daughter born just after marriage. He had wisely not married the mother, who went on to have another child by his cousin, a few years later. The baby girl was pinned down, despite having the wrong name listed on her marriage, by the modern-day parish clerk of Butleigh, Somerset at butleigh.org. Predictably we are immediately in a realm of farm labourers, shoe workers, painters and sometime publicans. Half-kin by whom to be bored.
Gorran Churchtown: like roses in winter, a new branch was made known to us on the Lowry side. Our Henry Lowry died in 1861 leaving no siblings, just a stepmother. His father had recently died, leaving the widow and also two half-sisters. These half-sisters were the children of Henry's grandfather, also lately deceased, by his wife a woman from Gorran. With the birth and death of Henry's half-sister when he was 35, these Gorran-women were the only other family from our branch of the Lowrys. The elder girl was sent to her mother's people at Gorran where she married her uncle's heir, William Williams Richards, no direct relation, blacksmith, also, in Gorran churchtown. Only one child continues the line, a third Henry. His children went to Barry in Wales, to Liverpool and there is still a remnant in Cornwall. We never knew them, and they don't know their Lowry lineage. Half-kin to be educated.
Jennet: gift from rural Wales. My Welsh side is dominated by towns; and the danger of leaving these nineteenth-century monoliths is you are then plunged into a pre-surname obscurity with no leads or clues at all. Jennet saves us from this fate, and provides us with the liminal limberland of rural Wales waking up to its potential. A single will knives through the impassable chronology: Elizabeth Morgan (Pengilly) in 1825. A devout Methodist and family lady she reveals the presence of half-kin eventually proven to be children of her mother, Jennet. It was while basking in Bat'umi on the Black Sea coast that I finally found a descendant of his kinnagery, who told me she was the fourteenth Jennet. A line from half-sister Gwenllian dies out in the 1990s. And half-brother Rees loses his exciting granddaughter another Jennet to disease in the 1840s, leaving no heirs. Half-kin needing to be located.
Eleanor: another great half-sister. Her vibrant genes kept her going long after her brothers had all died. She was listed as matriarch in the 1861 census with a Gibson grandson, a Gibson nephew and apparently a Gibson stepfather. It was all most puzzling. It seems the son took the name Gibson so he could inherit property from his half-uncle, who had a smallholding nearby. The mists above the Tyne cleared and we learnt that Ellen was the child of Ann Charlton before her marriage to Lancelot Gibson. Thus Ellen, through her census entries, was revealing the place of origin of her mother, who had died long before the censuses came out. So we are glad of the extra characters, the south Northumberland ancestral line and the help she provided. Half-kin to be venerated.
Bohemia: this fantastic name is surely connected to Behenna, and unlikely to be any connection at all to the ancient province in Germany. We decided our ancestor Jane Bohemia would be a hardy perennial if she were planted in a family allotment. Little did we know that she too hid a split-line family of descendants. Way back in the 1990s I corresponded with a Colonel Morley in the US, and suggested from the naming pattern that Jane might have remarried to a second Hambly and produced a number of offspring including Morley's forebear. This was strongly refuted and a marriage in far-off Duloe posited as the correct one for the pair. It is sometimes nice to outlive wrong-headedness. For two years ago I became aware of the will of Jane Hambly junior which would shed light on this story from 250 years earlier. Indeed Jane Bohemia must have married secondly to William Hambly, brother of relative of her first, Hugh, and gone on to have children with him, including a Hugh and Jane. When Jane died she referred to her Hunter niece, a relationship which fits only with this explanation. So Jane Bohemia's place and story in the garden is now ready to be told. Half-kin belatedly.
Barton: unexpected fruit of my sudden determining of James Carline's parents was the will of his grandfather, available dead easily at Kew. This grandfather's estate duty abstract was sufficiently detailed to list my forebear Mary and her half-kin John Barton of Stapleford and Sarah Henderson? of Matlock. I am not quite sure how I stumbled on tumble-down James and Mary Carline (sr)'s relationship and inferred they'd not baptised a second son, James. Naming patterns fitted as did the later discovery that James had married his first cousin, whose siblings twice performed the same feat. The half-kin like the curate's egg had family who were digestible in small doses. One line found in England dies out leaving its money to a cousin's son, Arthur Greasley whose connection goes back to pre-1837. This Arthur is found on his bicycle in an online photographic archive, and his son's cruel treatment of a housekeeper also survives on the pages of the web. There are doubtless other tales to be told. We end where we began. Half-kin: unexpectedly.
Moses: to borrow from a spiritual, way up in Cumberland, let my Moseses go! One of this family became Duchess of St Albans. The old patriarch Joseph Moses of Morland Hall Farm eclipsed his wives and it would be unapparent to an observer which one was the mother of his children. In fact my line is from the Scottish Margaret, while two half-sisters were produced from a union with his cousin, Mary Moses. Hannah the elder daughter was known to plant pear trees. Mary the younger daughter was finally proven to have married a Dickinson after a number of circumstantial clues were collected together. She married very wisely and slowly, unlike the sister who rushed into servitude. From this line come rather slowly, the Thompsons, like tortoises peeking out of their shell, of whom E P is best known. With the death of old Moses, my people were free to escape to western Northumberland, to the exact centre of Britain's landmass, to begin a new chapter in their lives. There remain half-kin, to be counted.
In the catalogue of forebears of mine who had issue by more than one person, I should acknowledge the fact the following male menfolk had had first wives who either died childless or had infant children which died, or who came along for a pivotal role later on: William Bond, William Bagshaw, William Francis, John Airey, James Lowry, Lancelot Gibson. And best stepfather award goes to John Johnson of Old Town. Henry Smith and Samuel Flowers provided stepmothers of greater or lesser degree. I ought to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of my own half-kin in compiling this research.
15 Nov 2014
South Sea Island cousins
I vaguely knew the 3 Beck boys, or some of them, had left England and gone to Australia, but hadn't followed up, and brief searches in Ancestry.com's database hadn't been productive.
I had been reading about a German family settling in the Galapagos islands, and badly wanted some island connection myself!
I turned over the metaphorical page in Google and there was the entry about Charles Percy Beck, from Burton on Trent, below. It told of his evacuation from the Japanese offensive and arrival in Brisbane Australia, 1942. Intriguingly, the article reveals he had left a brother back in the South Sea Islands, specifically the Solomon Islands.
A clue emerges, this time in the British newspapers of 1931, where details are given of Burton boy Harold Beck, revealed as a copra plantation farmer in an island within the Solomons. The paper gives the place as Ganouga, and it takes some gazetteering to reveal the correct name as Ranongga, indeed pronounced with an initial 'g'.
We can now find there were two Beck boys in the late thirties, Bobby and Pete, on this island, at school with Gideon Zoleveke, whose account of wartime Solomons is well worth reading. Peter did well, and one wonders if he is the father of Collin Beck, the islands' ambassador to the US, these last ten years.
Burton Museum may have been split between the brewing experience venue and the county museum at Shugborough. Staffordshire archives confirm that one deposit from Harold survives. Not his 1931 mementoes, whose fate is unknown, but a tortoiseshell comb, apparently made for a lady back home.when he was the only white man on 'his' island.
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31 Oct 2014
Would woods yield wood connection?
The Kentish Weald is heavily wooded, with coppiced hazel, wild cherry, ash and oak formed in a series of 'shaws' no matter the approach you are at once shielded and navigating around one of Britain's superior natural resources.
It was wonderful passing through in a taxi, as I headed, but little did I know, closer and closer to the man in the family who knew more about wood than any other. My great-great-great-uncle William Smith (1851-1921). Long dead, his likeness was preserved at the rendezvous in Kent where I was to learn more about the family archive.
To reprise William's story, earlier given, he took his £180 (minus tax) on the nose at 21 and was getting married a matter of days later. His only remaining relative, his father, was not in a position to refuse him. He took the money from Mr Riches who ironically had booted the family out of their birthplace, Mulbarton Hall, just ten years earlier. His trade was carpentry and the village of Jamestown, USA, population 5,336, and not yet a city was eventually to become 'furniture capital of the world' with one in six people working at its furniture factories. His wife's uncle Jonathan Crick had arrived forty years earlier and was living in the tiny village of Gerry, NY, just nine miles away.
What a delight to find his smiling countenance on good quality black card with the name of the photographer 'Black', likely taken around 1900. He looks very similar to his nephew Frank Lowry, himself about to emigrate - to farm in South Africa. These gentlemen, together with Smith's great-uncle and benefactor, John Lain, all share my mitochondrial DNA.
If anyone has a high-speed internet, perhaps they could check if the Black photographic studio is listed in this 1903 Jamestown directory. Found the reference: T. Henry Black, studio over 12 E 3rd, house over 20 Derby.
There was a William Smith who was a plasterer in Jamestown and returned to England 1886 with a woman named Sarah, to Barnsley Yorkshire. Coming back to Jamestown their ship the SS Oregon sunk off the coast of Fire Island. I am not yet convinced this was our William. The 1880s directories should provide an answer.
William's obituary of 1921 correctly recalls he had one brother and three sisters, an unusual combination. But it is the survival in our family of his photograph that proves it all. I had independently figured out the Jamestown connection some while ago, and as we earlier saw, it is pretty water-tight. It remains to be seen if his family in Florida and upstate NY will want to know more about his origins in England.
Best photographer in town:
Joyce, Pauline Lopus tells the story in Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie, and in her autobiography Lucy (Lucille Ball 1911-89) herself writes, "...DeDe [her mother] sent me to the best photographer in Jamestown, T. Henry Black. It was Mr. Black who was quoted as saying, 'It's very difficult to get a satisfactory picture of Miss Ball because the lady is just not photogenic!'" (p. 30) The pictures Lucy references are from when she was in the Miss Celoron bathing beauty contest as a teenager.
It was wonderful passing through in a taxi, as I headed, but little did I know, closer and closer to the man in the family who knew more about wood than any other. My great-great-great-uncle William Smith (1851-1921). Long dead, his likeness was preserved at the rendezvous in Kent where I was to learn more about the family archive.
To reprise William's story, earlier given, he took his £180 (minus tax) on the nose at 21 and was getting married a matter of days later. His only remaining relative, his father, was not in a position to refuse him. He took the money from Mr Riches who ironically had booted the family out of their birthplace, Mulbarton Hall, just ten years earlier. His trade was carpentry and the village of Jamestown, USA, population 5,336, and not yet a city was eventually to become 'furniture capital of the world' with one in six people working at its furniture factories. His wife's uncle Jonathan Crick had arrived forty years earlier and was living in the tiny village of Gerry, NY, just nine miles away.
What a delight to find his smiling countenance on good quality black card with the name of the photographer 'Black', likely taken around 1900. He looks very similar to his nephew Frank Lowry, himself about to emigrate - to farm in South Africa. These gentlemen, together with Smith's great-uncle and benefactor, John Lain, all share my mitochondrial DNA.
If anyone has a high-speed internet, perhaps they could check if the Black photographic studio is listed in this 1903 Jamestown directory. Found the reference: T. Henry Black, studio over 12 E 3rd, house over 20 Derby.
There was a William Smith who was a plasterer in Jamestown and returned to England 1886 with a woman named Sarah, to Barnsley Yorkshire. Coming back to Jamestown their ship the SS Oregon sunk off the coast of Fire Island. I am not yet convinced this was our William. The 1880s directories should provide an answer.
William's obituary of 1921 correctly recalls he had one brother and three sisters, an unusual combination. But it is the survival in our family of his photograph that proves it all. I had independently figured out the Jamestown connection some while ago, and as we earlier saw, it is pretty water-tight. It remains to be seen if his family in Florida and upstate NY will want to know more about his origins in England.
Best photographer in town:
Joyce, Pauline Lopus tells the story in Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie, and in her autobiography Lucy (Lucille Ball 1911-89) herself writes, "...DeDe [her mother] sent me to the best photographer in Jamestown, T. Henry Black. It was Mr. Black who was quoted as saying, 'It's very difficult to get a satisfactory picture of Miss Ball because the lady is just not photogenic!'" (p. 30) The pictures Lucy references are from when she was in the Miss Celoron bathing beauty contest as a teenager.
A Lain less Wandered. Diss-Connection
It never rains, but it pours. Sheets and sheets of it. How the buckets poured down, and the wearer became the sluice-gates. They say there's no such thing as bad weather: only poor clothing.
My genealogical clothing was meagre: I wrapped the thin scarf of conceit around me further, my belt of certainty slipped away, and my hat of pride was knocked off in the deluge.
The archival discovery in question was that of Miss Daisy, who had died in 1972 aged 96. As well as outliving any member of the family past or present, and surviving all but one of her younger sister's family into the bargain - she had known a generous selection of the women who cascaded down from her castrator great-grandfather Samuel Flowers.
Flowers had had eight daughters, none of them needing castration, but unfortunately, only two of them produced daughters. These were just the kind of family members that interested Miss Daisy.
~~
The staggering finding was the photograph of John Lain 1787-1867, brother-in-law of the castrator. Interesting as he is both genealogically remote (my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's brother), and sharing my mitochondrial DNA, and also that the family he called his own, I would barely recognise. He listed as nephews and nieces people who I would consider pretty peripheral to my tree. We have no idea who his grandparents were and can readily classify him as pre-Victorian, as he was 50 when the future empress ascended the throne and had wrapped up his life and affairs long before Disraeli had Victoria's realm declared an empire.
His large photograph is taken in Diss, a town I'd never really heard of. So tiny, it easily became a member of Cittaslow. Rather amusingly, May, Lain's great-nephew's granddaughter came to Diss a few years ago from Bethnal Green, believing it to be the birthplace of her father - in fact born at Deopham. Diss was the nearby market town where Lain's land was sold in 1867, and checking a map, it really was the logical place for the folk of South Lopham to come for their weekly shop, market, catch-up and to catch the train if needed for Norwich or Ipswich.
It was thanks to Lain that my Smiths ended up being born at Mulbarton Hall, and he effectively provided a home for Smith's pregnant bride and luckless partner around the time of their marriage, Christmas 1850. So it was that one pregnant sister dodged disgrace and became chatelaine of an old country manorhouse in Norfolk, while her older sister (who survived her 20 years), had to wait until her mid-forties to shake off her first husband and cash in her hard-won property in Macclesfield Street, Soho, for the protection of a businessman in nearby Horse and Dolphin Yard. Quite a difference in pattern.
Lopham Fen: last remaining fen river valley in England
So, we thank the mapping folk for making it apparent that Diss is the connection, and Miss Daisy for hanging onto a photo her mother (married at 18) must nearly have lost.
And Mr Lain for emerging from the centuries, not too battered at all, clearly a force to be reckoned with, and a reminder of life a very long time ago.
1787 - year of his birth. Events in this year: the US constitutuion was signed and three states joined the union. Doomed Captain Bligh sets sail on a two-year voyage from Spithead on the HMS Bounty with his motley mutinous crew. Mozart opened one of his first symphonies in Vienna.
My genealogical clothing was meagre: I wrapped the thin scarf of conceit around me further, my belt of certainty slipped away, and my hat of pride was knocked off in the deluge.
The archival discovery in question was that of Miss Daisy, who had died in 1972 aged 96. As well as outliving any member of the family past or present, and surviving all but one of her younger sister's family into the bargain - she had known a generous selection of the women who cascaded down from her castrator great-grandfather Samuel Flowers.
Flowers had had eight daughters, none of them needing castration, but unfortunately, only two of them produced daughters. These were just the kind of family members that interested Miss Daisy.
~~
The staggering finding was the photograph of John Lain 1787-1867, brother-in-law of the castrator. Interesting as he is both genealogically remote (my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's brother), and sharing my mitochondrial DNA, and also that the family he called his own, I would barely recognise. He listed as nephews and nieces people who I would consider pretty peripheral to my tree. We have no idea who his grandparents were and can readily classify him as pre-Victorian, as he was 50 when the future empress ascended the throne and had wrapped up his life and affairs long before Disraeli had Victoria's realm declared an empire.
His large photograph is taken in Diss, a town I'd never really heard of. So tiny, it easily became a member of Cittaslow. Rather amusingly, May, Lain's great-nephew's granddaughter came to Diss a few years ago from Bethnal Green, believing it to be the birthplace of her father - in fact born at Deopham. Diss was the nearby market town where Lain's land was sold in 1867, and checking a map, it really was the logical place for the folk of South Lopham to come for their weekly shop, market, catch-up and to catch the train if needed for Norwich or Ipswich.
It was thanks to Lain that my Smiths ended up being born at Mulbarton Hall, and he effectively provided a home for Smith's pregnant bride and luckless partner around the time of their marriage, Christmas 1850. So it was that one pregnant sister dodged disgrace and became chatelaine of an old country manorhouse in Norfolk, while her older sister (who survived her 20 years), had to wait until her mid-forties to shake off her first husband and cash in her hard-won property in Macclesfield Street, Soho, for the protection of a businessman in nearby Horse and Dolphin Yard. Quite a difference in pattern.
Lopham Fen: last remaining fen river valley in England
So, we thank the mapping folk for making it apparent that Diss is the connection, and Miss Daisy for hanging onto a photo her mother (married at 18) must nearly have lost.
And Mr Lain for emerging from the centuries, not too battered at all, clearly a force to be reckoned with, and a reminder of life a very long time ago.
1787 - year of his birth. Events in this year: the US constitutuion was signed and three states joined the union. Doomed Captain Bligh sets sail on a two-year voyage from Spithead on the HMS Bounty with his motley mutinous crew. Mozart opened one of his first symphonies in Vienna.
18 Oct 2014
A sense of place
There is a restaurant in Covent Garden ' a sense of place'. What more apt phrase for our time could there be. Half our troubles are from not knowing where we fit in, holding out for treats and surprises that aren't coming, and wondering where the money'll come from and the friends are going.
Harvest Day might be a time for reflecting that all our food and everything we need is coming from the ground, and let's include the sea in that.
I've been reading a detailed photographic tour of Ironbridge, one of those terrific small-town, countryside-nestling gems of a place. Pork pies in the market, a smattering of Victorian industrial remnants, an old-time pharmacy and chance of a walk along the river or open-skied hill-land.
Today I'm checking out the Midlands. I've been impressed for years with my Ellen Bagshaw's aunt, the first Ellen Bagshaw that went to Birmingham in her twenties and two (Irish) husbands later, started all over again in Stoke on Trent, running a lodging house. Her children got stuck into life here and the youngest girl especially had a hard life. Second husband was a coal miner in Werrington village, but she it was that died. It's her descendants, the Cookes, I'd be keen to call in on while I'm in Stoke.
Place and geography are important. My grandmother's family collected an assortment of unusual birthplaces as they moved around the country; moving every three years, being Methodist ministers. My uncle was born 1909 in Kidsgrove and his sister a few years later in Burslem. Their mother came into the world at Retford, some other Midlands town. The canal network, the yellowed tufty grass, warm glow from the redbrick buildings, the suddenly rising light industrial blocks; all giving a flavour of the landscape and place where people live.
Harvest Day might be a time for reflecting that all our food and everything we need is coming from the ground, and let's include the sea in that.
I've been reading a detailed photographic tour of Ironbridge, one of those terrific small-town, countryside-nestling gems of a place. Pork pies in the market, a smattering of Victorian industrial remnants, an old-time pharmacy and chance of a walk along the river or open-skied hill-land.
Today I'm checking out the Midlands. I've been impressed for years with my Ellen Bagshaw's aunt, the first Ellen Bagshaw that went to Birmingham in her twenties and two (Irish) husbands later, started all over again in Stoke on Trent, running a lodging house. Her children got stuck into life here and the youngest girl especially had a hard life. Second husband was a coal miner in Werrington village, but she it was that died. It's her descendants, the Cookes, I'd be keen to call in on while I'm in Stoke.
Place and geography are important. My grandmother's family collected an assortment of unusual birthplaces as they moved around the country; moving every three years, being Methodist ministers. My uncle was born 1909 in Kidsgrove and his sister a few years later in Burslem. Their mother came into the world at Retford, some other Midlands town. The canal network, the yellowed tufty grass, warm glow from the redbrick buildings, the suddenly rising light industrial blocks; all giving a flavour of the landscape and place where people live.
The Changing Net
I really enjoy putting my feet up and having a good google. Almost as much as I enjoy typing blog entries in bare feet sitting on the train. What's happened? The formerly to-be-found text-heavy informative pages have disappeared! I used to love stumbling on someone's nice long chatty account of the specialist interest the compiler had researched.
These old pages were, unquestionably, ugly, but what joy as a fellow enthusiast to stumble-upon them. I found an ancient page pulled together in the nineties by an Australian professor now himself in his nineties. He proved just as erudite and informative when contacted by email. This in sharp contrast to those innumerable snippety web accounts on show these days where you are fortunate if you spy a whole sentence pieced together.
We've for years seen, possibly at a distance, MSN offering a load of cobblers about celebrities, usually a photo with a paragraph of made-up (readable) nonsense. How I crave those heights of journalism today!
Alighting on the tourist information and Lonely Planet (!) pages for Stoke on Trent, I couldn't find a single sentence in among the drop-down menus, clickable images to sub sub sub pages.
I have still found a number of websites by googling. There's a search engine that will actually ignore the top hundred websites leaving you in peace to find some decent content. The Geocities and Angelfire sites of old were chockfull of wording, with a couple of boxy rectangular 2d pictures to wash it down with.
The data on Ancestry is terrific, but needs a writtem narrative to make sense of it all. In the meantime, if you find a site with journalistic-length content, give them a thumbs up.
These old pages were, unquestionably, ugly, but what joy as a fellow enthusiast to stumble-upon them. I found an ancient page pulled together in the nineties by an Australian professor now himself in his nineties. He proved just as erudite and informative when contacted by email. This in sharp contrast to those innumerable snippety web accounts on show these days where you are fortunate if you spy a whole sentence pieced together.
We've for years seen, possibly at a distance, MSN offering a load of cobblers about celebrities, usually a photo with a paragraph of made-up (readable) nonsense. How I crave those heights of journalism today!
Alighting on the tourist information and Lonely Planet (!) pages for Stoke on Trent, I couldn't find a single sentence in among the drop-down menus, clickable images to sub sub sub pages.
I have still found a number of websites by googling. There's a search engine that will actually ignore the top hundred websites leaving you in peace to find some decent content. The Geocities and Angelfire sites of old were chockfull of wording, with a couple of boxy rectangular 2d pictures to wash it down with.
The data on Ancestry is terrific, but needs a writtem narrative to make sense of it all. In the meantime, if you find a site with journalistic-length content, give them a thumbs up.
14 Sept 2014
Viewing blogspot, blogger posts on Windows Phone devices
As I, apart from the members of the Honourable Society of Spammers, am the only person alighting on these pages, this is largely a note to self.
The trick to accessing blogspot posts on a Windows Phone is refreshingly simple.
Take the web address which appears in your browser, for example:
http://family-history-exploration.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/what-difference-decade-makes.html?m=1
... and change that last digit of 1 to a 0. Hit return, and that's it! Google's under-investment in Blogger technology successfully papered over.
The trick to accessing blogspot posts on a Windows Phone is refreshingly simple.
Take the web address which appears in your browser, for example:
http://family-history-exploration.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/what-difference-decade-makes.html?m=1
... and change that last digit of 1 to a 0. Hit return, and that's it! Google's under-investment in Blogger technology successfully papered over.
13 Sept 2014
In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire missing records might just happen
For those following the saga of my wonderful 3 Dibben sisters from Tarrant Gunville, Dorset, Eliza Doolittle's rhyme now has new meaning:
Their first marriages, of course, haven't yet turned up. However, Hertford records gave us a clue about Jane's husband. And believe it or not, Hereford is the repository that can tell us about Rebecca's husband. The two counties are sufficiently far apart culturally and economically that they are rarely mentioned in the same breath; hence the perceived peculiarity of the My Fair Lady rhyme.
Hertfordshire, a built-on brownscape; roundabouts taking the place of market gardens, lonely hairdressers and dentists filling in for the warm noisesome jostle of 19th century coaching hostelries. This county's proximity to Europe's premier city never more than a blink away.
Ah, Hereford, golden valley in motorway-less terrain, not en route to Wales, the Cotswolds with cow byres, cider presses and SAS dorms the only infrastructure for miles. Driving it is a forgivable pleasure. Small wonder the two counties are rarely conflated.
There is a rumour, baselessness or not an irrelevancy, of an excited family come to research their Welsh border ancestors, and taking the train from Stansted Airport to the royal town of Hertford believing it would hold Hereford's records. Disappointed, they went on their way.
At Hertford, Ellen Williams's marriage age 38 is recorded at pretty St Mary Cheshunt. Her father revealed as John Williams, 'gentleman', 1864.
At Hereford, Rebecca Cox's marriage age 37 will reveal her father Mr Cox in the wedding registers of Little Hereford, near Tenbury Wells, 1852.
The two men having allegedly married Jane and Rebecca Dibben respectively.
And Hampshire? Well, Rebecca's third husband lived with her at Ringwood in that county, and left a will in 1837 - unlikely to add much to the sum of knowledge but nonetheless worth having, in the effort to make sense of these sisters and their peregrinations.
Their first marriages, of course, haven't yet turned up. However, Hertford records gave us a clue about Jane's husband. And believe it or not, Hereford is the repository that can tell us about Rebecca's husband. The two counties are sufficiently far apart culturally and economically that they are rarely mentioned in the same breath; hence the perceived peculiarity of the My Fair Lady rhyme.
Hertfordshire, a built-on brownscape; roundabouts taking the place of market gardens, lonely hairdressers and dentists filling in for the warm noisesome jostle of 19th century coaching hostelries. This county's proximity to Europe's premier city never more than a blink away.
Ah, Hereford, golden valley in motorway-less terrain, not en route to Wales, the Cotswolds with cow byres, cider presses and SAS dorms the only infrastructure for miles. Driving it is a forgivable pleasure. Small wonder the two counties are rarely conflated.
There is a rumour, baselessness or not an irrelevancy, of an excited family come to research their Welsh border ancestors, and taking the train from Stansted Airport to the royal town of Hertford believing it would hold Hereford's records. Disappointed, they went on their way.
At Hertford, Ellen Williams's marriage age 38 is recorded at pretty St Mary Cheshunt. Her father revealed as John Williams, 'gentleman', 1864.
At Hereford, Rebecca Cox's marriage age 37 will reveal her father Mr Cox in the wedding registers of Little Hereford, near Tenbury Wells, 1852.
The two men having allegedly married Jane and Rebecca Dibben respectively.
And Hampshire? Well, Rebecca's third husband lived with her at Ringwood in that county, and left a will in 1837 - unlikely to add much to the sum of knowledge but nonetheless worth having, in the effort to make sense of these sisters and their peregrinations.
27 Aug 2014
Dibben my toes in Guernsey; fresh fish sustains marathon record hunt
The 3 Dibben sisters are daughters of Mary Speed born 1770 in Ansford, Somerset. I'd assumed they'd all died young, and even found some possible atrocious marriages in the Dorset parish registers or a death which seemed to fit of one of the girls in Shaftesbury, possibly in service. I had a nice tidy date of death for the father, too, at a modest 35. Wrong on all counts!
The Dibben girls were mostly born and all were brought up at, Tarrant Gunville, shortened to Gunville in the censuses I found out (eventually) somewhere in the area known as the Cranborne Chase. Much prettier than the Blackmore Vale, and somewhere my grandfather used to like taking us. There's a pretty airfield at Compton Abbas which we visited.
There was actually a fourth sister but she wasn't as interesting - for starters, her marriage is actually right there in the registers at Sturminster Newton, in plain sight. Ha - that was *not* the case for her three sisters, none of whom stayed in Dorset.
~~~~
To begin at the beginning....
Does combing an entire island's records for Joneses sound completely bonkers? That is what I found myself doing after popping into Kew for 'an hour' to read two wills. Seven hours later I staggered into Kew Fish and Kebab Bar (somehow managing its two separate identities) for deep refuelling after a marathon hunt. It all started with: 'I give £50 to my niece Mary Jones of Guernsey'...
I quickly pinned down Mary, and her mother (born 1791 in Henstridge) to the island, and found aunt Elizabeth (missing from the 1851 census elsewhere) living with some of the family. I was annoyed, having searched for Elizabeth and the Henstridge lady on Ancestry, but neither entry showed up as they were in the Channel Islands. Ancestry doesn't always give you the answers first time round... I still feel the Guernsey leap is beyond most researchers, so feel proud of cementing the link.
(To put the hunt into perspective Guernsey has a similar population to Guernsey County, Ohio, a county which I must confess I'd never heard of!)
So, I had fun discovering that my Mary Dibben, who'd sat on my tree ignored by me for decades, had married a Mr Jones (no record found) and gone to live in Guernsey. All thanks to that will snippet.
I feared the whole island would be a black hole, as the census grabbed by Ancestry seems to be the only window on its world, and even that 'stops talking' after 1911. But incredibly, the whole island's civil registration records are on 3 tidy, titchy, microfilms in the LDS corner at Kew. I paid attention for a bit to the indexes then decided to fly solo. That's when I combed 13 years of deaths from 1891-1904 for any Jones mentions whatsoever. And boy did that pay off!
Jane Janes (widow) is listed in the English probate indexes with her heir as Salvator Leone. Oooh! Did she, I wonder, step out to Naples as a young woman, and rear a family in Italy? Are there still cousins swinging on the vines who own a nice bit of the south? Of course not: it was an autumnal marriage, perhaps in the US. Salvator was a charming and much-loved stepson, and a leading member of a crime gang in the (fictional) Grand Theft Auto series.
Neither Jane nor her mother, or 2 Dibben sisters of her mother, have marriages which turn up anywhere.
Aunt Jane Dibben said she was a spinster when she snared a Barrister of Chancery aged 38, so either she never married her first husband (a soldier) or she was 'keeping things simple' when she remarried. Aunt Rebecca Dibben was with her second husband for 3 weeks in total, but out of her 4 marriages, it was the only one that produced offspring. Possibly the long trip to the groom's home town of Cockermouth finished him off, while the tough bride gave birth and returned to Dorset simultaneously. Her son Abraham was later cuckolded by the Marquis of Bath's young cousin; the Baths cranked into action pretty swiftly. They talked young Thynne out of marrying the upstart Exeter girl; having the lady and her infant chaperoned out to sunny sweaty Australia for a nice life and at least a thousand pounds in the kitty. She would keep her mouth shut and just please to notify the solicitors when she was dead. Thynne bounced back though from his troubles, marrying the playwright Sheridan's twiglet and producing a bunch more Carteret Thynnes. Poor Abraham, whose birth was confusing enough, is found at the same hotel as his mother, in Brighton, stated as 'unmarried' and finally marries his housekeeper after news reaches England that he is at last a widower.
(There is just a chance that the father was Thynne's younger brother, who was spookily despatched to India six months later, on the very same boat that took care of the mother-and-baby! He was described as 'very good-looking' which sounds dangerous. He was dead within the year, and for good measure so was the boat, catching fire in Liverpool docks.)
Poshly-named Sophia Henrietta Carteret Thynne, born in London and technically the legitimate grandchild of Rebecca Dibben, became Sophia Henrietta Cartwright Goodfellow, a labourer's wife in colonial Australia. (No other births fit: I'll need the certificate to prove it.)
Contrastingly, Jane Dibben's illegitimate daughter Ellen Williams from the sticks became a very wealthy woman, still a catch age 40, with a £2000 marriage settlement, a lovely wedding in Cheshunt's flint-faced church, a cook, governess and housemaid and a husband working right on Covent Garden piazza. Life's not fair, is it?
(Her household gets an unexpected mention in a website about Gorran in Cornwall where her cook E Liddicoat hailed from. Very interesting diaries there by Mr Sanders, including by coincidence details of a fight where my Blacksmith Richards at Gorran twists someone's 'harm'.)
As to the Guernsey mob from Mary Dibben, I've set my sights on her daughter Mrs Tau-de-vin, a lovely Channel Islands name. I wrote to the Greffler of Guernsey who is passing me on to the Ecclesiastical Court, who like a bit of French in their work. I am hoping for a will to explain where the Taudevins disappeared to: they maybe became Toadvins. One son died in Queensland the same year as Jane Dibben's boy (who was actually a victim of foul play). I suspect coincidence, but all is not yet revealed.
I realise now why I failed to find Mary Dibben's death: it would have been indexed under her maiden name. Very confusing this island business of women keeping their maiden name: the Scots have a similar custom.
The elder Jones boy, another cabinet maker (like his cousin Robert Dowding), sailed for Tasmania in 1857 with his growing tribe and wife Emma Mary Ann Dale. Two junior Jones girls went out to Australia: Rebecca responded to extensive advertising and emigration agency work in the island to sail in 1854 on the government ship as a servant-maid knocking a few years off her age. Families with a preponderance of girls like the Joneses had priority. The clear motive from the Bishop of Adelaide was to curb crime and immorality resulting from large numbers of single men and unsuitable women! Rebecca arrived in October on an alcohol-free vessel which only saw one death. There would be poor harvest that summer, and it took her 6 years to find the promised husband - a shoemaker from Devon. Her younger sister went out later and married the widower of the Mount Barker Inn in the Adelaide Hills, age 36. The whole family were fertile fairly late, so this was not an obstacle.
The two lucky Guernsey girls attained very good ages in Adelaide and in Surrey Hills.
Here endeth the saga!
But not quite - Rebecca, who was first out the gate to Adelaide, chose to give her first boy the middle name of Welford...
The Dibben girls were mostly born and all were brought up at, Tarrant Gunville, shortened to Gunville in the censuses I found out (eventually) somewhere in the area known as the Cranborne Chase. Much prettier than the Blackmore Vale, and somewhere my grandfather used to like taking us. There's a pretty airfield at Compton Abbas which we visited.
There was actually a fourth sister but she wasn't as interesting - for starters, her marriage is actually right there in the registers at Sturminster Newton, in plain sight. Ha - that was *not* the case for her three sisters, none of whom stayed in Dorset.
~~~~
To begin at the beginning....
Does combing an entire island's records for Joneses sound completely bonkers? That is what I found myself doing after popping into Kew for 'an hour' to read two wills. Seven hours later I staggered into Kew Fish and Kebab Bar (somehow managing its two separate identities) for deep refuelling after a marathon hunt. It all started with: 'I give £50 to my niece Mary Jones of Guernsey'...
I quickly pinned down Mary, and her mother (born 1791 in Henstridge) to the island, and found aunt Elizabeth (missing from the 1851 census elsewhere) living with some of the family. I was annoyed, having searched for Elizabeth and the Henstridge lady on Ancestry, but neither entry showed up as they were in the Channel Islands. Ancestry doesn't always give you the answers first time round... I still feel the Guernsey leap is beyond most researchers, so feel proud of cementing the link.
(To put the hunt into perspective Guernsey has a similar population to Guernsey County, Ohio, a county which I must confess I'd never heard of!)
So, I had fun discovering that my Mary Dibben, who'd sat on my tree ignored by me for decades, had married a Mr Jones (no record found) and gone to live in Guernsey. All thanks to that will snippet.
I feared the whole island would be a black hole, as the census grabbed by Ancestry seems to be the only window on its world, and even that 'stops talking' after 1911. But incredibly, the whole island's civil registration records are on 3 tidy, titchy, microfilms in the LDS corner at Kew. I paid attention for a bit to the indexes then decided to fly solo. That's when I combed 13 years of deaths from 1891-1904 for any Jones mentions whatsoever. And boy did that pay off!
Jane Janes (widow) is listed in the English probate indexes with her heir as Salvator Leone. Oooh! Did she, I wonder, step out to Naples as a young woman, and rear a family in Italy? Are there still cousins swinging on the vines who own a nice bit of the south? Of course not: it was an autumnal marriage, perhaps in the US. Salvator was a charming and much-loved stepson, and a leading member of a crime gang in the (fictional) Grand Theft Auto series.
Neither Jane nor her mother, or 2 Dibben sisters of her mother, have marriages which turn up anywhere.
Aunt Jane Dibben said she was a spinster when she snared a Barrister of Chancery aged 38, so either she never married her first husband (a soldier) or she was 'keeping things simple' when she remarried. Aunt Rebecca Dibben was with her second husband for 3 weeks in total, but out of her 4 marriages, it was the only one that produced offspring. Possibly the long trip to the groom's home town of Cockermouth finished him off, while the tough bride gave birth and returned to Dorset simultaneously. Her son Abraham was later cuckolded by the Marquis of Bath's young cousin; the Baths cranked into action pretty swiftly. They talked young Thynne out of marrying the upstart Exeter girl; having the lady and her infant chaperoned out to sunny sweaty Australia for a nice life and at least a thousand pounds in the kitty. She would keep her mouth shut and just please to notify the solicitors when she was dead. Thynne bounced back though from his troubles, marrying the playwright Sheridan's twiglet and producing a bunch more Carteret Thynnes. Poor Abraham, whose birth was confusing enough, is found at the same hotel as his mother, in Brighton, stated as 'unmarried' and finally marries his housekeeper after news reaches England that he is at last a widower.
(There is just a chance that the father was Thynne's younger brother, who was spookily despatched to India six months later, on the very same boat that took care of the mother-and-baby! He was described as 'very good-looking' which sounds dangerous. He was dead within the year, and for good measure so was the boat, catching fire in Liverpool docks.)
Poshly-named Sophia Henrietta Carteret Thynne, born in London and technically the legitimate grandchild of Rebecca Dibben, became Sophia Henrietta Cartwright Goodfellow, a labourer's wife in colonial Australia. (No other births fit: I'll need the certificate to prove it.)
Contrastingly, Jane Dibben's illegitimate daughter Ellen Williams from the sticks became a very wealthy woman, still a catch age 40, with a £2000 marriage settlement, a lovely wedding in Cheshunt's flint-faced church, a cook, governess and housemaid and a husband working right on Covent Garden piazza. Life's not fair, is it?
(Her household gets an unexpected mention in a website about Gorran in Cornwall where her cook E Liddicoat hailed from. Very interesting diaries there by Mr Sanders, including by coincidence details of a fight where my Blacksmith Richards at Gorran twists someone's 'harm'.)
As to the Guernsey mob from Mary Dibben, I've set my sights on her daughter Mrs Tau-de-vin, a lovely Channel Islands name. I wrote to the Greffler of Guernsey who is passing me on to the Ecclesiastical Court, who like a bit of French in their work. I am hoping for a will to explain where the Taudevins disappeared to: they maybe became Toadvins. One son died in Queensland the same year as Jane Dibben's boy (who was actually a victim of foul play). I suspect coincidence, but all is not yet revealed.
I realise now why I failed to find Mary Dibben's death: it would have been indexed under her maiden name. Very confusing this island business of women keeping their maiden name: the Scots have a similar custom.
The elder Jones boy, another cabinet maker (like his cousin Robert Dowding), sailed for Tasmania in 1857 with his growing tribe and wife Emma Mary Ann Dale. Two junior Jones girls went out to Australia: Rebecca responded to extensive advertising and emigration agency work in the island to sail in 1854 on the government ship as a servant-maid knocking a few years off her age. Families with a preponderance of girls like the Joneses had priority. The clear motive from the Bishop of Adelaide was to curb crime and immorality resulting from large numbers of single men and unsuitable women! Rebecca arrived in October on an alcohol-free vessel which only saw one death. There would be poor harvest that summer, and it took her 6 years to find the promised husband - a shoemaker from Devon. Her younger sister went out later and married the widower of the Mount Barker Inn in the Adelaide Hills, age 36. The whole family were fertile fairly late, so this was not an obstacle.
The two lucky Guernsey girls attained very good ages in Adelaide and in Surrey Hills.
Here endeth the saga!
But not quite - Rebecca, who was first out the gate to Adelaide, chose to give her first boy the middle name of Welford...
24 Aug 2014
The X chromosome and its family history surprises
I learn recently that the X chromosome contains no material from a man’s father and none from your father’s father if you are a woman. This leads to the curiously imbalanced chart below, which you will spot contains a Fibonacci pattern.
Table 1. This table shows the contribution ancestors make to the total (pair) of X sex-chromosomes for a female: I have italicised the female’s father’s contribution.
In my family, the female (my mother)’s F-M-F-M-F-M (father’s mother’s father’s mother’s father’s mother)and F-M-M-M-F-M, are by complete coincidence, the same person, Elizabeth Cock born 1770 in Gwithian Sands, Cornwall. Elizabeth accounts for three-eighths of the material on one of my mother’s X chromosomes, and thus three-sixteenths of my X chromosome. This is either 12 or 24 times what she ‘ought’ to contribute being only 1 out of my 128 5xgreat-grandparents.
My X-chromosome is made up of my mother’s two X-chromosomes combined. My Y-chromosome has been passed down from father to son, down to myself, so my father did not pass on to me an X chromosome.
My sisters have a second X-chromosome, from their father, which is made up of their paternal grandmother’s two X-chromosomes combined. A stonking quarter of this comes from one lady, Ann Charlton, born 1785 in Whittonstall, south Northumberland, our 4xgreat-grandmother. She is their F-M-F-M-F-M. As there are 64 people in this generation, Ann is oversubscribed by a factor of 16, or of 8 – if you treat this X-chromosome as being strictly on the paternal side. Were Ann to have other son’s daughter’s son’s daughter’s son’s daughters (which she does, the Embletons), we could in theory identify genes on the chromosome for which she was responsible.
As the pair of sex chromosomes are only 2 out of 46, the fact that some grandparents did or didn’t contribute makes very little difference overall.
Table 1. This table shows the contribution ancestors make to the total (pair) of X sex-chromosomes for a female: I have italicised the female’s father’s contribution.
In my family, the female (my mother)’s F-M-F-M-F-M (father’s mother’s father’s mother’s father’s mother)and F-M-M-M-F-M, are by complete coincidence, the same person, Elizabeth Cock born 1770 in Gwithian Sands, Cornwall. Elizabeth accounts for three-eighths of the material on one of my mother’s X chromosomes, and thus three-sixteenths of my X chromosome. This is either 12 or 24 times what she ‘ought’ to contribute being only 1 out of my 128 5xgreat-grandparents.
My X-chromosome is made up of my mother’s two X-chromosomes combined. My Y-chromosome has been passed down from father to son, down to myself, so my father did not pass on to me an X chromosome.
My sisters have a second X-chromosome, from their father, which is made up of their paternal grandmother’s two X-chromosomes combined. A stonking quarter of this comes from one lady, Ann Charlton, born 1785 in Whittonstall, south Northumberland, our 4xgreat-grandmother. She is their F-M-F-M-F-M. As there are 64 people in this generation, Ann is oversubscribed by a factor of 16, or of 8 – if you treat this X-chromosome as being strictly on the paternal side. Were Ann to have other son’s daughter’s son’s daughter’s son’s daughters (which she does, the Embletons), we could in theory identify genes on the chromosome for which she was responsible.
As the pair of sex chromosomes are only 2 out of 46, the fact that some grandparents did or didn’t contribute makes very little difference overall.
I, Miss Dinah Widdows
As told to...
I, Miss Dinah Widdows do note the pitiful number of descendants which I have left. You can find many in family from my husband’s daughter Grace. Her poor mother died at 27 but she still has more in family than I. I have lately been spending a month or more getting acquainted with them, and golly me, it took me by surprise to meet them all. I did not think they expected to see me, a lady born in 1712, one hundred years before Waterloo. I also took a moment to look at my sister Sarah's family but I didn’t keep up with them. No sooner I contacted them then had another infant been born. They do say as one of her descendants is born every single week that passes. I don’t know. I can’t imagine looking at the girl why nature works so. Now you will probably all be thinking that I am own sister to Martha Widdows, and you may know all about how she died, done in by her rotten husband. Ha! Well you would be wrong and mighty awkward it is navigating around the tree, I must say. Why I could barely find a record my even having been alive. Which I surely was, an I brought up that ungrateful Sarah and the silly brothers the Lord cursed me with. You would have to be a magician to know that I married George Dyke but even guesswork won’t tell you my father’s name. Oh no that is one secret which is very well kept. And if you find out where I was born well I wish you’d tell me. But no, I must grudgingly admit I am not of any genealogical consequence whatsoever. I had 2 or 3 very good grandchildren, I let them disappear from the records without trace. I tried asking the earth but I’m not getting any answers, even my other sister who never fussed about getting married, even she managed to produce grandchildren who stayed in the records. Oh well tut tut. You see there are matriarchs or fat old queen bees as I call ’em! Even among Sarah’s offspring. But what’s this I see. A GenesReunited message saying my grandson George got off his hindquarters and sired a massive breed? And now here’s FindMyPast trying to tell me granddaughter Martha went off and kept an inn in Emeld Empsty. And Google shouting that the US Ambassador’s wife was a Miss Dyke, one of George’s lot. That’s something little Miss Sarah can’t boast about. Well now I can sleep in peace.
~~
Dinah and Sarah named in the will of Edward Murrow, Almesforde, Somerset 1732. Lots of information about Sarah, but nothing on Dinah.
I, Miss Dinah Widdows do note the pitiful number of descendants which I have left. You can find many in family from my husband’s daughter Grace. Her poor mother died at 27 but she still has more in family than I. I have lately been spending a month or more getting acquainted with them, and golly me, it took me by surprise to meet them all. I did not think they expected to see me, a lady born in 1712, one hundred years before Waterloo. I also took a moment to look at my sister Sarah's family but I didn’t keep up with them. No sooner I contacted them then had another infant been born. They do say as one of her descendants is born every single week that passes. I don’t know. I can’t imagine looking at the girl why nature works so. Now you will probably all be thinking that I am own sister to Martha Widdows, and you may know all about how she died, done in by her rotten husband. Ha! Well you would be wrong and mighty awkward it is navigating around the tree, I must say. Why I could barely find a record my even having been alive. Which I surely was, an I brought up that ungrateful Sarah and the silly brothers the Lord cursed me with. You would have to be a magician to know that I married George Dyke but even guesswork won’t tell you my father’s name. Oh no that is one secret which is very well kept. And if you find out where I was born well I wish you’d tell me. But no, I must grudgingly admit I am not of any genealogical consequence whatsoever. I had 2 or 3 very good grandchildren, I let them disappear from the records without trace. I tried asking the earth but I’m not getting any answers, even my other sister who never fussed about getting married, even she managed to produce grandchildren who stayed in the records. Oh well tut tut. You see there are matriarchs or fat old queen bees as I call ’em! Even among Sarah’s offspring. But what’s this I see. A GenesReunited message saying my grandson George got off his hindquarters and sired a massive breed? And now here’s FindMyPast trying to tell me granddaughter Martha went off and kept an inn in Emeld Empsty. And Google shouting that the US Ambassador’s wife was a Miss Dyke, one of George’s lot. That’s something little Miss Sarah can’t boast about. Well now I can sleep in peace.
~~
Dinah and Sarah named in the will of Edward Murrow, Almesforde, Somerset 1732. Lots of information about Sarah, but nothing on Dinah.
17 Aug 2014
What a difference a decade makes
Censuses can baffle. A happy family all living together in 1871 in Kyo, Durham were topsy-turvy in-between times and all squeezed up together with barely any shared constituents in 1881. The surviving thread was Sarah Ann Southern.
1871 Kyo, Durham
William Southern, wife Ann, child Sarah Ann
1881 County Durham
Ann Southern (widow), daughters Sarah Ann, Elizabeth Ann
It appears the two Anns were the same, but no! The ages nor the birthplace, neither match. Ann was the *second* wife of William. So in the space of ten years - a child had been born, the first wife died, a second wife arrived and the father died. Whew - good going Southerns!
~~
In Norfolk, Maria Haythorpe's long-awaited death fails to appear, she marries John Brown moments before her death and he remarries, it seems even as the clock chimes the census enumerator's visit. Not a clue left of that brief relationship.
~~
In Cornwall, Elizabeth Davies of Hayle helpfully lived with her aunt Sally the entire time, who had a rare name and made pinning them down pretty easy. One of her daughters married in Dorset, and we're still hunting the other one (Mary). Elizabeth herself doesn't reveal her death easily - till we find that she too made a deathbed marriage, and is buried under this name - without passing a census year on the way through.
~~
Picture my surprise at learning our respected uncle Joseph Carline was at the centre of a bitter custody battle over a deceased infant when he was very definitely a grandfather and a widower - or so I thought! Kindly Joseph was a widower in 1861 and on 1871, but not in-between. He'd raced up the aisle of crooked spire Chesterfield church knowing that any child he produced would inherit the sickly bride's lands, even apparently if it later died. He got to work and by 1871 the whole episode had gone, wife, son, land, Chancery case. Until I hauled the surprising paperwork out from the Cheshire mine some time last year. Curiously, his actual grandson a Ford worker at Dagenham was given the infant heir's name and died fairly recently.
~~
In Somerset, widow Ann Brown was happily living with her children Frecia and Effie and others in 1871. Ring - bong - all change. In 1881 the family have apparently reconstituted as:
1881 Ditcheat: William Stride, wife Rachel, stepchildren Annie and Ellen Brown!
What exactly has happened in between! Only three events have happened this time 'tween the enumerators' call, though we have apparent name changes to deal with. Can you tell what's gone on?
1871 Kyo, Durham
William Southern, wife Ann, child Sarah Ann
1881 County Durham
Ann Southern (widow), daughters Sarah Ann, Elizabeth Ann
It appears the two Anns were the same, but no! The ages nor the birthplace, neither match. Ann was the *second* wife of William. So in the space of ten years - a child had been born, the first wife died, a second wife arrived and the father died. Whew - good going Southerns!
~~
In Norfolk, Maria Haythorpe's long-awaited death fails to appear, she marries John Brown moments before her death and he remarries, it seems even as the clock chimes the census enumerator's visit. Not a clue left of that brief relationship.
~~
In Cornwall, Elizabeth Davies of Hayle helpfully lived with her aunt Sally the entire time, who had a rare name and made pinning them down pretty easy. One of her daughters married in Dorset, and we're still hunting the other one (Mary). Elizabeth herself doesn't reveal her death easily - till we find that she too made a deathbed marriage, and is buried under this name - without passing a census year on the way through.
~~
Picture my surprise at learning our respected uncle Joseph Carline was at the centre of a bitter custody battle over a deceased infant when he was very definitely a grandfather and a widower - or so I thought! Kindly Joseph was a widower in 1861 and on 1871, but not in-between. He'd raced up the aisle of crooked spire Chesterfield church knowing that any child he produced would inherit the sickly bride's lands, even apparently if it later died. He got to work and by 1871 the whole episode had gone, wife, son, land, Chancery case. Until I hauled the surprising paperwork out from the Cheshire mine some time last year. Curiously, his actual grandson a Ford worker at Dagenham was given the infant heir's name and died fairly recently.
~~
In Somerset, widow Ann Brown was happily living with her children Frecia and Effie and others in 1871. Ring - bong - all change. In 1881 the family have apparently reconstituted as:
1881 Ditcheat: William Stride, wife Rachel, stepchildren Annie and Ellen Brown!
What exactly has happened in between! Only three events have happened this time 'tween the enumerators' call, though we have apparent name changes to deal with. Can you tell what's gone on?
11 Aug 2014
Diocese of Durham wills go online at FamilySearch
I was able to go back one or two generations with my Gibsons of Colwell Farm, Chollerton, up north of the wall in Northumberland. The diocesan wills covering the period from late mediaeval times up until 1857 were indexed some years ago at North East Inheritance, a University of Durham project, and for years there was no news at all, as the original publication date of 2010 receded deeper into the distance.
The will of my ancestor Lancelot Gibson the first, dated 1789, proven 1794, show show brutal the choices were for people. His eldest son having died, the widow was given the choice of arguing that the farm should go to her son, or taking the money with a large number of conditions - children were to be well behaved with a keen eye watching them from age of 14 upwards; Ann was not to remarry; she was to conduct herself and not to ever challenge the ownership of the family farms. Then, and only then, when the boys reached 21 they would get £50 between them and the girl would get a fiver. In addition though, Gibson would provide for their education (if warranted) and give them somewhere to live.
This useful document ties together a number of the family, and finally explains who Lancelot Gibson Dobinson was. I'd noticed him in the GRO indexes, but a cursory investigation, which must have been extremely cursory, ruled him out as being of interest. How wrong was that! He is a great-great-grandson of Lance the first.
Another useful dataset well worth waiting for.
The will of my ancestor Lancelot Gibson the first, dated 1789, proven 1794, show show brutal the choices were for people. His eldest son having died, the widow was given the choice of arguing that the farm should go to her son, or taking the money with a large number of conditions - children were to be well behaved with a keen eye watching them from age of 14 upwards; Ann was not to remarry; she was to conduct herself and not to ever challenge the ownership of the family farms. Then, and only then, when the boys reached 21 they would get £50 between them and the girl would get a fiver. In addition though, Gibson would provide for their education (if warranted) and give them somewhere to live.
This useful document ties together a number of the family, and finally explains who Lancelot Gibson Dobinson was. I'd noticed him in the GRO indexes, but a cursory investigation, which must have been extremely cursory, ruled him out as being of interest. How wrong was that! He is a great-great-grandson of Lance the first.
Another useful dataset well worth waiting for.
Dates of birth from 1900 to 1916
Unless you're very likely and have inherited the family's birthday book with all the birthdates of everyone who ever popped in to say hello, birthdates can be hard to find.
Birthdates are helpfully given in the indexes of deaths taking place here since 1969.
Why are they useful? Well, take my relative Jessie Smith. By finding her birthdate (from the London parish registers at Ancestry), I was able to pick out her death entry very easily, even though she had got married and changed her name in the meantime.
I've used a birthdate to help prove people are related, including Caroline Jones who lived to be over 100 - I was initially rather suspicious of this, but the family bible confirmed the birthdate given at her death.
Another source of birthdates was published last month, the names of minor children given when soldier's registered to fight (Enlisted) in World War One.
Among those was William Chappell of Penzance, whose daughters' birthdates are both given. Also Charles Chipperfield of London Docklands - in this case the daughters' birthdates helped me bypass the fact they married under subtly different names.
Birthdates are helpfully given in the indexes of deaths taking place here since 1969.
Why are they useful? Well, take my relative Jessie Smith. By finding her birthdate (from the London parish registers at Ancestry), I was able to pick out her death entry very easily, even though she had got married and changed her name in the meantime.
I've used a birthdate to help prove people are related, including Caroline Jones who lived to be over 100 - I was initially rather suspicious of this, but the family bible confirmed the birthdate given at her death.
Another source of birthdates was published last month, the names of minor children given when soldier's registered to fight (Enlisted) in World War One.
Among those was William Chappell of Penzance, whose daughters' birthdates are both given. Also Charles Chipperfield of London Docklands - in this case the daughters' birthdates helped me bypass the fact they married under subtly different names.
Grandmother's special connection with her son's daughter
There's a few articles explaining why a grandmother is specially close to her son's daughter. The granddaughter has 1 pair of sex chromosomes (so 1/12 of the total) and of that pair, one of those (1/24 of the total) is an exact copy of her grandmother's. An X chromosome has been passed down intact through the two generations.
It's calculated in total the granddaughter has 26% of her DNA from her paternal grandmother, not much extra, but a little extra closeness built in. A quick look seems to suggest that the little girls only get 24% of their DNA from their father's father, but I've not verified the numbers. However they often get his surname, so hopefully that balances it all out a bit.
image from: http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask435
Nice animation on unrelated genetic topic about flies: http://www.dnaftb.org/11/animation.html
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