The family of Jonathan Gee, the canal-builder

Jonathan Gee was baptised in 8 May 1743 in the parish of Hyde, Cheshire, the son of Nathaniel Gee. An older boy named Jonathan had been baptised there on 11 May 1737 to the same couple, but he had died. (This boy by pure fluke is literally within touching distance of his brother on the same page of closely written baptisms.)

The parish registers do not give the mother's name.

There are several possible marriages for Nathaniel Gee:

Nathaniel Gee married 30 Dec 1734 to Mary Brundrett (widow), both of Manchester

Nathaniel Gee married 17 Jan 1721 at Stockport to Sarah Benison

Helping with our decisions is the following list of baptisms in the area:

George Gee baptised 1 Jun 1722 Stockport to Nathaniel and Sarah

Sarah Gee baptised 15 Nov 1723 Stockport to Nathaniel and Sarah

Mary Gee baptised 29 Apr 1726 Stockport to Nathaniel

Hannah Gee baptised 27 Aug 1733 Hyde Presbyterian Chapel to Nathaniel and Sarah of Werneth

Jonathan Gee baptised 11 May 1737 Hyde Presbyterian Chapel son of Nathaniel, weaver at Werneth

Jonathan Gee baptised 8 May 1743 Hyde Presbyterian Chapel son of Nathaniel of Werneth

In the 1700s and 1800s it was not unusual for a brood of children to be born over a period of twenty years. When I first started family history I thought that was impossible. It is certainly a bit odd that the best candidate for Jonathan's parents married 22 years prior to his birth. But we can see that the move from Stockport to Hyde does rather account for a break in the family (1726-33), and the youngest Jonathan is a typical 'late child', perhaps occasioned by the onset of the menopause, forgive the modern biological intrusion.

There may be further children baptised at some place or chapel unknown in the years 1726-33, where perhaps records have not survived.

The name Gee is staggeringly common in the area, with the settlement of Gee's Cross sending all our compasses, spinning just around the corner. Nathaniel Gee the preacher and school-teacher of Dukinfield is not thought to be the same man. A couple named Nathaniel and Martha Gee are having children in Gorton, Manchester in the 1740s, and a dreadfully stubborn set of online trees are now 'recommended' by Ancestry as being Jonathan's parents. Ours is not to reason why.

Nathaniel Gee features in a tax assessment of Werneth 1785, but this was a hatter of Romiley, our Nathaniel had perhaps already died in 1780. We ran aground somewhat on the sheer popularity of the name in the area. He is certainly named in the will of his brother-in-law Jonathan Bennison, innkeeper at Werneth, 1749 which is available here: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBPRS%2FCHS%2F748053455

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We can assume that Jonathan had some technical aptitude, learnt at his father's knee. (There is a Scottish engineer whose name escapes me presently, that combined the efforts in his workshop with babysitting his orphan son, by having the son on one knee.)

A quick search suggests that Stockport, Macclesfield, Bollington and Congleton were silk-weaving towns, aided in time by the presence of the rivers Dane, Bollin, Dean and Goyt to provide a moist environment and power to drive a mill's waterwheel. It appears that cotton was not imported to Britain until the 1750s.

My guess is Jonathan (1742) might have had a lucky break working on one of the early canals in the Manchester area, perhaps the Bridgewater Canal, 1759 (act of parliament) -1761 (grand opening of at least part of the route).

The first documented canal on which Jonathan worked as a contractor was the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal 1766-1771, a full 75 miles south of his home town. It really doesn't appear that Jonathan will be heading back to Cheshire. He was to forge great friendships and partnerships with Midlands men, particularly Thomas Dadford Sr and Jr, a Catholic family from Wolverhampton.

Further reading about Jonathan, and the work of the canal contractor (part gang-master, part engineer-in-waiting) compiled by Peter Cross-Rudkin, is available here - I also append a link to Thomas Dadford's entry, featuring Jonathan, in the Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland (2002):

https://www.rchs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/J207_27-Canal-Contractors.pdf
https://booksc.eu/book/53010505/bd477f
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jeOMfpYMOtYC&pg=PA166

"The Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal runs through softly undulating West Midlands countryside. It skirts around the edges of Birmingham without ever becoming truly urban."

What a beautiful description.

It was here, at lock 17-19, Marsh to Hinksford, that Jonathan met his bride, Sarah Brasier of the village of Swindon, in the parish of Wombourne. Swindon today sits right on the canal, and the Green Man public house is waiting for your custom. I have a photograph of my muddy feet in the pub (February 2018) after a cold walk from Kinver, six miles south. The public house was associated with the Brasier family.

Sarah Brasier had been baptised at Kinver on 19 September 1751, and popped onto my screen in October 2017. She then bore the distinction of being the youngest known of my 256 6xgreat-grandparents, though that crown has since slipped in favour of her son's mother-in-law (one Millicent Marsden, q.v. infra). It was appealing to note that bus number 256 will take one from Stourbridge to the parish church of Wombourne in 2018, and that was very approximately 256 years since Sarah had walked as a young girl the dusty route north from Kinver to the new home at Swindon, in the parish of Wombourne.

As befits Sarah being one of my youngest forebears, she was only 16 when she married at St Thomas "Top Church" in Dudley on Christmas Day, 1767. Her brother and sister had both fled the nest earlier the same year, marrying on the Same Day as each other - at St Thomas, and at Halesowen.

The Gee children were baptised at a healthy variety of places around the country, a sustained stint near Killamarsh being the construction of the Norwood Tunnel, now permanently out-of-commission, on the Chesterfield Canal. This list is not complete and several of the children seem to have had rather unsavoury offspring. The two eldest feature in a mini-treatise on DNA, below.

* Nathaniel Gee 1768 West Bromwich (m 1791 Chesterfield and 1794 Sheffield)
* Sarah Gee 1770 Wombourne (mother's name given as Elizabeth which has confused seemingly everybody) (m 1789 Wolverhampton)
* William Gee c 1772 Hartshorne Yorkshire
* Jonathan Gee 1776 Eckington Derbyshire: helpfully names a son Nathaniel in ~1808 (after his late uncle)
* John Gee 1778 Eckington Derbyshire
* Thomas Gee 1780 Eckington Derbyshire (buried 1787 Killamarsh?)
* Sarah Gee 1783 Killamarsh Derbyshire (had an illegitimate child locally)
* James Gee 1787 Killamarsh Derbyshire
* James Gee 1792 Cadoxton-juxta-Neath, Glamorganshire
* John Gee 1795 Cadoxton-juxta-Neath, Glamorganshire

Several of the sons were sometimes listed as 'boatmen', Nathaniel (1768) certainly owned a boat on the Chesterfield Canal in the 1790s per the Chesterfield Canal Archive compiled by Christine Richardson: https://www.chesterfieldcanalarchive.co.uk/

Jonathan worked in later life on the Neath Canal in Wales, and I will append a photograph of myself walking its path in summer 2018. There had been a lull in canal-building in the years post-American Independence (1776), so in the 1780s Jonathan may have been kicking his heels amid the foundries of the Derbyshire, which later provided work (and opportunity for murder) for his sons and grandsons.

The 1790s saw the younger family members head to Wales: we don't know if the Neath Canal was built on the back of grief of the loss of his wife Sarah, as her end is not known. The records shine brightly sometimes and then withdraw quickly into historical darkness once more.

Jonathan is buried 18 Jun 1817 as from the Riddings, at Alfreton, and we have not the faintest idea what happened to his wife Sarah. Perhaps she survived him and repaired to the home of their eldest daughter at Raddle Hall, Broseley, or was she lost somewhere in Wales many years earlier, in a burial ground with no surviving (non-comformist) records? More probably.

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DNA. A surprise all these years later is that we have documented DNA from the Gee family, and quite possibly from the Brasiers too.

Line 1 HENRY: Thomas Brasier 1742 - Sarah 1776- Henry Newton 1800 Cradley Heath

Line 2 HANNAH: Sarah Brasier 1751- Nathaniel Gee 1768- Hannah Gee 1792 Chesterfield

Line 3 THOMAS: Sarah Brasier 1751- Nathaniel Gee 1768- Thomas Gee c 1802 Chesterfield

Line 4 JOHN: Sarah Brasier 1751- Hannah Gee 1770- John Turton c 1795 Broseley Shropshire

I descend from Hannah Gee (1792), and there is a single segment of DNA on chromosome seven, which is shared by several Brasier descendants from the four lines identified above. So far we are aware of one or two representatives from each line, but it would naturally be wonderful to learn more about our Brasier origins.

Rather charmingly, John Brasier (father of Thomas and Sarah and their sister Mary), leaves his rabbit warren at Checkhill Common to a family member, as well as a number of implements of nail-making.

We are very fortunate to have such well documented ancestry in South Staffordshire, an area well worth a visit, though I would recommend warmer weather than my visit of February (2018).

Second cousins of my grandparents: a window on times past and right now the present

No question I have fond thoughts of my grandparents. They (mostly) lived in my era, and they also lived in the previous, fascinating, era of the early-mid twentieth century. They knew older people. All four grew up in towns. But even towns weren't that industrial back in the previous generation. Before long you are back in the countryside, which feels a healthier place to research, and definitely easier, even if the lives they lived back then are more illusory. My own history on farms and rural landscapes around Britain in 1990s informs my view, as does the many diaries I've read, some published, some not. The January Man (2018) and Village School (1955) and others just about get us back to this epoch.

Grandparents' second cousins  - they give me a full tour. So let's hop on.

Maternal grandfather (born 1925); these are the second cousins of his I met: Doris Prosser-Evans (first contact 1991 near Swansea), Tom Davies (at his caravan on the Exe estuary 1992), Annie Powell (as I came off the hills 1995 Morriston), Richard Lamont Shugg (missed him 1990s), Barbara Vanstone (c. 1998 Plymouth she's genetically closer than the third cousin that she really is), Jean Hewitt (c. 1998 Weston-super-Mare). I corresponded with several more. And then the final surprise of Hazel by post in about 2004, the final link, granddaughter of the mysterious 'Mrs Hubbard' on our family tree, 15 years before DNA finally confirmed that connection. Her death in 2019 brings down the lights on this generation.

Tom had worked for many years as a pharmacist, with his first day of work age 20 being when war broke out (1939). He and his wife were the first generation to have this thing called retirement, and were contented to be travelling down to the Exe estuary in their caravan.

Maternal grandmother (born 1921); these are the second cousins of hers that I met on the maternal side: Joan Waldron (by post and phone only 1992); Anita Hardenburg (1999 Leatherhead); Mary Lintott (1999 St Albans); Florence Headworth (via son 2006); May Smith (2014 Romford). I didn't meet Florence Headworth but she passed useful messages to me. Then on the paternal side: Dick Padfield (by post and phone only 1992); Hilda Hunt (ditto); Kingsley Padfield (2000 Ashford Kent), and a few others by post, grandchildren of the highly mustached William Haine Padfield (born 1849). The list of the 'missing' on this line is as compelling: Philip Bell, who closed the extraordinary Bell saga in USA, 1977 Oregon, leaving my grandmother as his closest living relative. Also featuring in my blog 'end of the line' is Treasure Peach (third cousin twice over) who had the horrific duty of burning his history, as his line would close no heirs. Muriel House (1895-1993) another third cousin twice over, was '98 and living in Toowoomba' and probably met my grandmother's great-great-uncle Haine in another century and another lifetime. We think there is just one second cousin remaining - sole representative of more than fifty grandchildren - living in Northamptonshire.

May Smith grew up in a close-knit community of streets in Bethnal Green - all now gone, her own mother of Huguenot descent being born in the same property. She was a 'Cockney'. She recounted many of the people that lived in her street in the 1939 register, as well as details of the caravanning they had around Northamptonshire with the extended family. The closest she came to our shared Norfolk ancestry was going to visit Diss in Norfolk where her hard-working father had been born, but on getting home they realised it wasn't Diss, it was Deopham!

Paternal grandfather (born 1902); second cousins were a distant dream for this Irish grandfather, with the earliest mutual forebear being born about 1790. (One such cousin was a potato farmer's wife in northern Maine, long since deceased.) However, an old notebook revealed in 2004 that Loretta Brodie, ancient retired telegraphist, in South Boston USA, from the 1790 line, was likely still alive in 1970. In fact she was not-dead-yet in 2004, but this fact only emerged later. I have now seen the beautiful gravestone she prepared for herself and her family. In 2015, I found a former neighbour, up a ladder, of another second cousin, Peggy (South Boston too), but she had died some time prior. Against the odds though, with a helping hand from Irish late motherhood, a second cousin named Geraldine was living in Massachusetts, little did I know, but this connection was only revealed some years later through DNA after she had died. Old father time has snatched further connections from me, but that's ok, we are going back a lot of years, and have grabbed a few things from him too. We're even.

Maternal grandmother (born 1905); considering her cousins pre-dated Mussolini and Maynard Keynes, I expected nothing on this line: her second cousins in Liverpool, the Draycotts, were long gone. Due to a rejuvenated great-uncle (born 1836), my research led to a surprise second cousin John Ingledow (1921) who I believe I did hear from by email in about the year 2005. I learnt too late that others from this line had recently passed away in Manchester, at an advanced age. Grandma's remaining three grandparents had no siblings, or so I had thought. Then in about 2006 it emerged great-aunt Mary Ann had a young son Walter Gregory living with her, but oh blow! he was eventually identified as a step-grandson. So Grandma's mother Henrietta had NO first cousins, and that was that!

Except in 2021, when the identity of Henrietta's birth grandfather was identified through DNA. Astonishingly, Dorothy and Irene Potts (born 1920s), his legitimate great-grandchildren, appear to be still alive in Canada (2022), in their twilight years. They are grandma's half-second cousins, and a great place to conclude. There will be no more chapters.

Collectively these folk are the vessels by which our 3rd great-grandparents and their history have poured down to us.