Little clues, big stories

Although eight people witnessed the marriage of Mary Moses (bapt. 1 Jan 1782) at Morland in 1808, NINE  witnessed the marriage of another Mary Moses at Morland in 1805, including people who look a lot like the first Mary's parents!  Both marriages took place 'by licence', but the second-listed couple were poor as church mice, while my Mary and her husband were both members of the Westmorland yeomanry.
I am only now sure of this identification, because of this chunky roll of microfilm at Kew.

Despite its old-school technology it delivered fairly well on facts.  In fact when I later got the will, thanks to the kind offices of Cumbria Archives, it added little to this concise yet sprawling record.  I knew that Mary Dickinson had died in 1850 by combing freebmd, and I had checked findmypast's death duty index to find that there was a will.  I was now examining the indexes themselves on microfilm, part of the tortuous IR26 series.  The first thing which leapt off the page was not the name Dickinson, which I was expecting, but that of Watson.  The Watsons I quickly recalled where family of Mary's full sister Hannah, in fact it turns out Joseph was the eldest of that brood, and oldest male of the next generation.  I needed to see his address - could that be Scale Houses, circled in orange?  It surely was, and although the will disappoints by not stating him as nephew, in fact it would have been odd had she done so.  It is enough that she chooses him as executor.

Further proof came in the transcriptions by Rev. Joseph Bellasis MA, in the 1880s, including those for the parish of Clifton, Westmorland.  Mary is recorded as having died in April 1850 aged 68, which of course fits so beautifully with the 1782 baptism that we can forgive her not surviving another year till the next census.  It is harder to forgive her stepmother, who would not die until July at 90, for not lasting another winter.  Had she done so we would be told in which part of Scotland she'd been born!

Found in Bradford

Sarah Ann Shields is living happily in Westmorland in 1871, but then pulls off a very good disappearing act.  Her father's will does fill in the gaps, as he names John Barnie as an executor, and I believe son-in-law.  There is no mention of John Barnie marrying a Shields, except on familysearch (image1), and then we can piece together that Sarah must have married the schoolmaster in Bradford of all places before going up to Edinburgh.  The Scottish census gives her birthplace as England.  Although she dies in her mid thirties, she does have family in the Rutherglen area of Glasgow.

Update 2014: I arrive at the home of their great granddaughter clutching a pack of frozen peas, having been nearly sliced in two by a crazed woman from Luton. The Barnie family had tried to find Sarah's origins but were hampered by not knowing her birthplace. They might have located the Atkinson first marriage, but as Sarah's birth record apparently occurs in London (actually she was registered correctly in Westmorland but as Shield), they had no idea of the Northcountry origins.

Celtic connections

I have the following connections with Scotland:
1. Stephen and Ann Read, a soldier who worked at Stirling Castle and retired to Glasgow.  Their son-in-law was Postmaster General of Straits Settlements about 1910 and then at Glasgow.
2. John Wood of Hamilton, who married in Surrey to Theodora and whose children were born in Hamilton.  Only one decided to come back and live there.
3. Dr William Lyall of Edinburgh who married in Bromyard Worcs to Marion and had several children.
4. Robert Park of Edinburgh who married in Dorset to Augusta and whose children all married in Scotland though two moved on, one to Cheltenham, one to Nyborg Denmark having married a corn merchant.

I have the following connections with Ireland:

1. Rev'd William Lea, born in England, married Burton-on-Trent to Elizabeth and who came to Ireland to be the clergyman of Foxhall, Co Longford. Source: googlesearch, Irish census
2. My grandfather, born in Stockwell, descends from Walsh, Dawson, Cleary, Carroll of Co Limerick, Co Cork, Co Tipperary in no real known order.
3. Edwin Brown of Poole, engineer for the Belfast tramway, married in Bath - still there in 1926, but hard to get more information as Northern Ireland has own records from 1922. Source: familysearch
4. Thomas Richards, jeweller, Wexford Town, married in Dublin to Annie, from Somerset, his second wife.  They had an only child Sylvia. Source: 1890 Wells Journal
5. Sarah Urch, printer's daughter from Wells, who married in Galway 1857 to Michael Harding.  Her younger brother must have followed her to Ireland.  He had arrived in Dublin and found a wife, by 1870.  Robert Urch became supervisor of the Inland Revenue in Dublin and is buried at Mount Jerome. Source: will of Lucas Urch, familysearch
6. Moira Kelly, daughter of an Irishman, returns to Ireland in the 1950s living happily in County Meath.  Her father was a clerk in Crouch End in 1911, and from his birthplace I found him living in 1901 in Meath.  His grandchildren are still living at the same place today, their stint in England being over. Source: cousin

Two-thirds of these connections are from my Somerset line: they had names sufficiently rare for me to track them around very easily.