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!

On a roll

I have got a trip to Kew booked, and also six delightful electoral registers zooming their way down the motorway from Boston Spa.  I used these last week to successfully find my John B Jones, and am now hooked!  The electoral rolls for the address I had in the Midlands showed that John's wife was Ann E.  He was the only John B in the entire country to have a wife named Ann E.  This made it very easy to find them in North Wales, and to drill down and by sheer determination get their address - only to discover they had moved to Cheshire!  But we are now in touch, and I have discovered that his sister actually had an unusual first name which she didn't use - another barrier to me finding the family, apart from the well known name of Jones!  I can't take a picture I'm afraid: they are very strict about electoral rolls at the British Library.  I am just slightly further ahead in finding my Tom Jones of Queensferry.  I found his son in the 1950 electoral roll for Sealand, lately married, and Tom appears to be living next door with his wife... but this turns out to be wrong. Tom was not this man but was living at Garden City.

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.

mysterious Roskilly twins

why do these apparent twins have different places of birth? or are they ‘Irish’ twins?

A wellspring of descendants - all thanks to the right church

After Christmas 2011, I returned home. When I sat in my rooftop eyrie, back in the warmth, it was to my father's Tyneside ancestor I turned my bow.

I knew that Joseph Gibson married at St John the Baptist, Newcastle 1862, but I had no idea what had happened to his sister Annie born around 1840 in Westoe, South Shields, a taverner's daughter. Her dad kept the Waggoners Arms in Westoe.

It took me two years until today to guess that his older sister Ann had probably married at the same church two years earlier. I searched through all the marriages at the Newcastle register office website which were for Newcastle itself, with this thought in mind, and I found several entries where the all-important page number had been misindexed at freebmd. Ah-ha, Gibson to Edwards.

(Tidying up this article 6 years down the track, I can't remember how the Newcastle register office site actually helped. I think it might have listed spouses, or at least given the church? It certainly doesn't do that any more!)

Sure enough the certificate confirmed the marriage at St John the Baptist of Ann Gibson, innkeeper's daughter.

But that very evening, having fixed the mis-indexed page, I already knew Ann's marriage (to carpenter Edwards) was right. The censuses and childrens' names all stacked. I even found their great-grandson was a Newcastle cartoonist (Doug Smith). Then a photo online of Doug's daughter (below). I eventually got a letter back from her, only to find she was living about half a mile along an old railway line from my rooftop eyrie, over the blue barking night skies of London.

using the Death Duty records at Kew

Harvey's will is disappointing, a very old dog.  It doesn't mention his accident caused by powder explosion, causing him blindness.  Nor does it give any clue to any of his nine children, including three and later a fourth, who would make their home in Australia.  The IR26 record, which I thought to get at least ten years later, is like a capricious Capuchin monkey in comparison.  Harvey's legal heir is named as Martin Harvey of Woolwanga, Fountain Head, Port Darwin.  At this time, land at Trevorgan, St Buryan, not mentioned in the will! is sold and his sister Mrs W Halpin, wrongly recorded as Wm, appears to have acted as attorney, i.e. next of kin.  The first step in finding these records, which run from 1796-1903, is to search the Death Duty index at findmypast.  You will need to know the year of death.

double-proof for the Attenboroughs of Brigstock

This census entry confirmed the Attenborough of Brigstock connections to my Huttons.

three countries and a Surrey phone book

Although this database proved very easy to search, it was not my first choice. Perhaps this and certain other good datasets, such as NSW deaths, should be a first port of call for missing 20th century relatives. However, I prefer to follow the line of enquiry as it comes. The first mention of Reg was in the Ancestry Immigration records showing him visiting the UK from India with his father, a goldminer. Second I found Reg's death in Surrey many years later. Third I checked for a will and drew a blank. Fourth I checked the BT phone books for 1984 and found an address which seemed to fit. Fifth I checked the current and also historical electoral rolls (the latter at the British Library), which gave me his widow and daughter's names. All three initials match the passenger list record below.  No wonder I couldn't find them in England!