Faith, Hope and Ancestry

I'm just so glad to have solved this puzzle, and found a title for the post which really does fit the facts, as you'll see.

I don't care if it seems I'm singing the praises of Ancestry.com. Because perhaps I am! Much as I'm annoyed with the cynical moneymakers at an extraordinary url in itself,
The proprietors of mf.com (that's Ancestry) have run a pretty effective dragnet over the 19th century. Your ancestor was living in a cave with no roads nearby to escape any entry in their database.

My three Welch sisters ran the water mill at Alhampton maybe 15miles south-west of Bath after their widowed father's death (1880), then they drop right off the radar in 1884. It was all change. Eldest girl gets married and kind of retires, dying with no clues. One girl marries (age 31) and my guess is emigrates somewhere although with the other sister.

I was beginning to wonder which uninhabited island they'd colonised when the answer came from searching All Names on Ancestry . . . New Zealand!

Middle girl Jane (thank goodness) pops up on the newly released electoral rolls down there, as, on closer inspection does her married sister Louisa Ann Smith. Yeh - I'd not have spotted her so easy.

But Louisa was my real target. Just 31 when she married there was a real hope that she might have family. Considering her backstory, I really needed her to have family.

(Her own mother, a lifelong family servant was never supposed to get married but at pushing 40 'stepped in' to help her sister's widowed husband out and ended up married, but also ostracised. Louisa the youngest was taught her letters and helped run a school in Stroud before taking on the watermill.  Atta girl.  But where were they?  Was this the end of the road)

Meanwhile in New Zealand,...
Hope arrived. What an apposite name for the Smiths's eldest child. We now see that Jane, Louisa and Mr Smith sailed almost immediately the minister closed the wedding service. Paperspast tells us they arrived in Christchurch 1884 only to jump on board another vessel going along the coast to Lyttleton. Mr Smith was I believe a grocer.

The NZ birth indexes to my joy listed Hope and Faith as the names of the first two Smith babies. Then followed Ruby and a fourth daughter - with a somewhat less exciting name, sadly.

The trail limped on (I'm not sure how) to Sydney, where I finally arrived at the door (via Facebook) of a descendant.... Huzzah.

Update: I'm meeting one in England in six weeks [August 2015], who was held as a baby by her great grandfather, the very Mr Smith who emigrated with Louisa in 1884.

Note: Ann Feltham (1810-1862) is a Cinderella story. Whilst her daughter Louisa must have had it tough losing mother age 8, going on to school in distant Stroud, and then running a watermill with her sisters, now orphans, in her 20s, she was a true Victorian - setting out for New Zealand in 1884. The story nearly never began. Ann Feltham (her mother) witnessed almost every single marriage going - cousins, aunt, younger sister. She's shown in old letters as caring for her aged uncle. But when her sister dies, suddenly in 1844 marriage comes a-knocking. She settles at Broadfield Down as a farmer's wife, where Louisa arrives in 1853. But Ann was almost certainly banned from returning to Ditcheat, where she had buried a child, and where her own mother had wobbled up the aisle just 8 days before her own birth. Visiting another big farmhouse, this time in Kent, as a guest, not as a servant, she likely had too much cream and died. Ironically it was a 15 year-old domestic servant girl who found her, the rest of the family being out.

Crimes and Rimes

Mary Creed was born in a village near Glastonbury in 1810. She was the last of her siblings to fall to the power of a findmypast search. I found a possible marriage at Pylle, Street on the Fosse, a parish which does not hand across data readily. I ran some possible names through findmypast, and Rimes came up with a matching entry. Mary had married Daniel Rimes, likely while in service in the village. They'd had a large family and bounced around the villages seemingly getting poorer with each passing census. I realised that Julia Amelia one of their several girls was known to me, being housekeeper for many years to Rufus Maidment in fact we now know they were cousins. In the fuss of the 1901 census release I never looked at the original document scans and so missed Julia here, where she's clearly listed as cousin. In fact her middle name was Creed which would have been a big giveaway, had she used it. Grandson Ernest Rhymes was on the board of a Seventh Day Adventist sanitorium in Napa Valley California living in the idyllic surrounds of St Helena later running a small business I think selling smoothies. The grandsons in Australia did the name proud played cricket entered themselves clearly on Trove the newspaper archive, and have lately held reunions between the Sydney and Adelaide branches of the family. In short it is a series of research crimes which kept me from knowing this family sooner!

Mines of Solomon

for years clues have been waiting for me to run and catch up. Rev'd Thomas Martin my ancestor left no trace of his family but did write a fat load of poetry. In his 1833 book, the Stranger at Home he writes about his brother Edward now passed away - at sea - and Mr Solomon Martin is one of the subscribers who promised to buy a volume. I fretted over these details for a decade or two but the answers have just broken through the cloud of poor deduction. Solomon lived in Devonport near Thomas and gave his two daughters exactly the same fanciful names as Thomas's: Maria Thanetta Martin, Caroline Matilda Martin.  He also confessed to being born in Penryn which is just a splash from the mouth of the Fal and Thomas's declared natal place. This data is being mined further. As a fan of Ned Kelly, the Australian Irish outlaw and scourge of law enforcers, or at least the Carey version, I was appalled to learn that Solomon's grandson Edward Castidine Martin of the Age newspaper had elbowed his way to Kelly's execution and thus an exclusive for his paper. He witnesses the death as do a lot of happy lawmen and compounds the ghoulishness by putting on a sellout play. But I'm glad this long pending mystery is now resolved thanks to the mines of data about Solomon.

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.

The Maternal Line of Mary Murrow, Almesforde, Somerset - some offshoots

SOME PERSONS OF INTEREST	MOTHER
Ned Dike haulier Ansford b 1735	Dinah (#2)
William Speed overseer Ansford b 1728	#2
Abraham Slade wheelwright later accountant coal mine Midsomer Norton b 1784	Agnes (Betty(#2))
Francis Ireson Morrish farmer NSW b 1819	Elizabeth (#44)
William Hutton churchwarden Bourton b 1791	#44
Henry Hutton Plaister hairdresser Cambridge b 1835	#45
Richard Henry Plaister cycledealer Totnes b 1905	Bessie (#46)
Robert (Bob) King teadealer Spalding Lincs b 1870	#67
Charles Barlow b 1865 of Shades Hotel Spilsby	#68
William Symes Hockey b 1829 farmer Charlton Adam	#57
Frederick Symes Crocker b 1835 baker Somerton	#59
Mary Gear Crocker b 1842 baker’s wife Somerton (sister of #52)	Jane (#50)
Louisa Ann Smith schoolmistress Alhampton b 1853 (#52)
Eustace Welch grocer Midsomer Norton b 1872	Jane (#59)
Herbert Leaver tanner Yeovil b 1872	#60
William Exton Treasure fmr Brewham b 1857	#75
Edward Bond fmr Brewhamfields b 1744	#40
Vera Green fmr Ibberton b 1917	Amy (#76)
Edgar Exton Jackson fmr Saskatchewan. b 1884	Annie (#75)
John Haine fmr Stone E Pennard b 1847	Jane (#73)
William Haine fmr Westholme Pilton b 1806	#73
Elizabeth Edney died Port Antonio Jamaica 1828 b 1801	#73
Jim Bryant fmr Stratton b 1877	#80
John Lockyer cattle dealer Motcombe b 1908	Susan (#80)
Victor Duffett farmer Dorset b 1905	Elizabeth (#83)
Egbert Creed fmr Evercreech b 1871	#83
Geoffrey Green fmr South Somerset b 1920	#84
Joseph Padfield fmr Birtsmorton Court Worcestershire b 1842	#79
James Scott Boyce meat salesman Islington b 1806	#87
Thomas Creed carpenter Woolwich b 1811	#89
Frederick Maidment fmr West Bradley b 1857	Sarah (#89)
Julia Rhymes housekeeper to Rufus Maidment Henstridge b 1841	#90
Sidney Martin fmr Suddon Grange Wincanton b 1849	Miriam (#89)
Patty Tucker b 1722 murdered wife of Reginald who hung at Wells #17
Michael Collins linen draper Bridport b 1770	#18
Frances Miller landlord’s wife Wells Tavern Hampstead b 1844 #37
Dora Lewis and sisters died in likely fire Catford 1920 b 1854	#30
Richard Phipps draper Bracknell b 1846	#20
Edwin Eades blacksmith Charlton Adam b 1827	#7
Benjamin Kingston b 1792 fmr East Pennard	#6

The Maternal Line of Mary Murrow, Almesforde, Somerset

I've been on the trail of the descendants in the female line of Mary Murrow, farmer's wife of Almesforde, now Ansford, Somerset.  She it seems died in 1756 well on in her eighties having survived all of her three daughters, Elizabeth, Frances and Mary.  In red are the only ones we think might be left to continue the line, despite the hive of activity in the 19th century.  Edith Barlow of Shades Hotel Spilsby produced a daughter when she was forty, and may have family living.  Sophia #92 was in Australia, died aged 31, but is the best chance of having family in this line.  The large red box is doing very nicely, and only found out about them in December.  I think Anna #50 may yet surprise us: I have found one of her daughters in Springfield Illinois, and she may lead us on to the others.  Emily, daughter of #55 could be in South Africa.

The strength of weak paper

My inbox has become awash with messages from new cousins, in a way not familiar since the early days of GR (not George I but Genes Reunited, then known as Genes Connected or, now, Genes Untied).

I have just been browsing the guru James Caan's book about careers in the Puzzles section at Foyle's, St Pancras International. How are these two facts connected?

Well the magic medium is PAPER. Not only was Caan's book printed on the stuff, but in addition he recommends the fusty tree product as the best way to get something to him.

So it is with the Royal Mail, which should be knighted for services to family history. I messaged cousin Julie through Ancestry and then through the ghastliness that is Mrs AOL-Time Warner (divorced) but my little dweebie message just got lost along the way. Presumably as I wasn't a trusted sender, not being, say, Mr PayPal.

Sir Royal however just picked up my letter to Julie, delivered it, and on the morning of its arrival, bang came an instant reply to my email inbox.

There are huge benefits of sharing information. I despaired at lacklustre late-night lowbrow e-mails from GR, Ancestry, often where the owner was struggling with basic family structure and should have stuck with darts. Yet, the paper correspondents are trumping me in leaps and bounds, have private houses in exciting locations, offspring in Switzerland, family Bibles and FamilyTreeMaker in the guest room and a sense of there being no rush: I suspect these were the winners of the second marshmallow in the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. Our shared interest is building into good conversations about a variety of issues.

Today:
Julie - here is proof that our Davieses were indeed from Atherton
Debra - look forward to meeting up when we're back from Switzerland
Tim - will be chatting with my Mum (90) about the Cornish village where we came from, shortly
Tracey - your letter has made my year, mate!
Paul - my mother and I were both very interested in your letter...

And all these contacts came about by my writing letters. The last word to cousin Mike in Dorset - 'thanks for writing. We sold the rights to the china clay to English China Clay in the 1950s', and ECC do what with that clay, that's right, make paper!

Pearced resolve

I reckon I'm edging up to 40% of my letters returning to me with news or good wishes. I'm close to nailing most of the family of Joseph Padfield who fell down the old mineshaft in 1835. He left no family at all at his death, but a few weeks later his son junior was born and that boy's 8 children made all Wessex their home. I've almost pinned down all the Pearce children, thanks to some having their babies in Chew Magna; one marrying in Bristol: registers nicely transcribed onto familysearch. And also a bit of database crunching to find Mabel Pearce's issue. I'll need to get a marriage certificate to prove one of the men's marriages but this floating tribe of relatives is soon to be boxed in.