Goodies from FindMyPast probate index 1858-1959

These snippets were all gathered from the useful FindMyPast probate index 1858-1959 released Friday 21 August 2015, which as I have commented is excellent for ‘search’ for not yet for ‘browse’.  Several surprises were had.  (Ones in red are doubtful).  Each page in turn:

Summary pages

The two above gentlemen are brothers of my direct line.  I am sad but perhaps relieved to see they do not appear elsewhere in the index.  The surprise rogue entry 1930 was what inspired me to index grantees in the first place... as did the sighting of Airey in 1892 administering his grandmother’s estate.  We had taken a very circuitous route to discover this line ourselves.

Wales

John Hughes – I had searched for a will for him under his full name (David John), but the index showing Incline Terrace confirms he’s a relative.  The widow's details lead to a previously unknown marriage for John.

Northcountry

Typing in Northumberland villages yielded results for this Gibson family.  Interesting to see 14 years elapsing before Joseph's will was proved, very unusual!  Again, Ancestry's index could allow me to have missed this, coupled with uncertainty about exactly when Joseph died.

 
Cornwall

Marshall - a big surprise to find a relative still living at the old family hamlet of Nanstallon.  Coincidentally its gravestone transcriptions have recently been indexed on Cornwall-opc.  (I must confess this one entry came from browsing Tom's Wills, not from FindMyPast's index!)

A really big surprise to see Harriet Blowers once again meddling in others' affairs, having taken in my 3xgreat-grandfather, she is now given administration for a destitute labourer (for reason unknown).

 

A massive shock to see my forebear Mary Ann listed in the index.  I had no idea her estate had been settled.  We see that barely 12 weeks after she died, the widower had already moved to Suffolk.  Being 3 years after her death, I wouldn't have picked this up through Ancestry.

Lost a Tombstone, gained Death in a Lake: Harris family of Crowan

We have
Francis Harris baptised 1818 at Crowan, son of Francis and Ann
 - living 1841 at home in Wheal Clowance, Crowan with parents age 20
Francis Harris baptised 1818 at Camborne, son of Francis and Honor
- living 1841 at home in Camborne with widowed mother and siblings age 20

One of these is living at Stokeclimsland in 1851 and marries as a blacksmith in Plymouth 1852, producing children at Calstock.

For a long time I thought this was my Crowan man as his brother had married at Stokeclimsland in 1840 and also had Calstock connections.

But the discovery that there were two men named Francis, both sons of Francis, cast severe doubt on this.

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Francis Harris, baptised 1818 at Camborne, married in Plymouth 1852 to Jane Trathen, lived for a time at Calstock and returned to Camborne to finish his days as a miner.  This makes sense really. However, this means we lose Francis and Jane's daughter Fanny from the tree whose exploits as Mrs Bowden of Tombstone, Arizona, are worth viewing.

The clinching evidence is that this Francis, who was living with the Pearce family, likely his mother's relations, in 1861, had a daughter Eliza Pearce Harris in 1868. This does suggest he was the Camborne man.

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So, what happened to my Francis Harris? Well, he drowned in Lake Nicaragua in about 1852*, victim of greedypants Cornelius Vanderbilt's money-making scheme to save two days' travel-time across central America, for gold miners and others who wished to reach California by sea. (Vanderbilt was great-grandfather of Churchill's unhappy, wealthy, friend Consuela.) An image of the route is available, below.

This certainly explains why none of our chatty, friendly, Harrises in Wales could tell us owt about Da John's brothers and sisters. Francis and John had six siblings that died at birth, and just two others survived (Mrs Scandling, a childless lady across the state border from Wisconsin's Hazel Green, and James Harris husband of Annie Hodge so far untraced.) There is a small chance James remarried in Nova Scotia and came later to Wisconsin.

My rationale for linking Francis to the watery end is that the Francis Harris age 31 in the 1850 census of Grant county, Wisconsin, was almost certainly Cornish. We know this chap's bride, Philippi Rowe, was from Crowan and this ties in very nicely. It is possible but unlikely, that the marriage record of 'Philip Rowe to Frances Harris', 1847, will tell us more. The couple's grandson relates the Nicaragua tale at the end of his own life, in 1957.

*Francis's estate was probated at Grant county, Wisconsin 1854 (images available at Ancestry.com), with his address given as Hazel Green (formerly Hard Scrabble!)

Crowing over new Jen: untangling 1780s baptisms in mine-boom Cornwall

My hapless forebear Francis Harris made the genealogical error of witnessing the wrong wedding. He was invited along to the wedding of his wife Anne's sister Elizabeth Jennings and also, in the same year to the ceremony of another Elizabeth Jennings, doubtless related, though quite how is so far unfathomable. This was in the year 1809, at Crowan Parish Church, Cornwall.

The problem is compounded by the fact both Elizabeths have parents called John and Anne, and for good measure both had sisters called Anne as well.  They were born in consecutive years (1785 and 1786), marry as stated, in the same year and place, with very similar witnesses and have children with no distinguishing names. Harrumph!

By thoroughly shaking the tree, and running both Elizabeths to ground - in Stithians a central mining village and Tywardreath, a settlement a good way along the coast, I capture their ages at burial. This will be crucial.  Although it turns out both ladies were the right age to be buried at Stithians, the younger lady would have nearly three full years on the clock too few to be underground at 69 at Tywardreath. Tywardreath lady was assumed to be from the younger set of parents as this made her sister to Mary and the younger Jennings children... Because the younger Jennings children were born after one Mother Anne had died, and it had to be the elder Mother Anne as the younger Mother Anne was the one with known siblings' names that matched some of these younger children... And Mary's granddaughter later (eighty years later) is a visitor with Tywardreath lady's son John... And we can be certain of that relationship because John's will names as a sister a widow-woman whose children Tywardreath lady is guarding in 1851 as her 'grandchildren'. This is backed up by the parish registers which record the baptism of the likely future Tywardreath lady as child of the 'junior' parents.

So, by elimination, Stithians lady is from the elder (my) set of parents. And the parentage of John Jennings baptised 1792 can now be resolved. He marries at Stithians in 1821 (coincidential location? I don't think so). Then a dozen years later, after having been forcibly removed from his eventual home of Mabe, he names a daughter Elizabeth Oppy Jennings [destined for Donkey Hill Mine], this being derived from the married name of Stithians lady. If he was as I suspect, orphaned age three, and was living at Stithians in maybe his teens and certainly his twenties, then this sounds likely to be his homage to Stithians lady, who is a much better fit to be his sister than Tywardreath.

So, after all this new Jen on the Jennings, and much impenetrable Crowing from the Crowan registers, we un-tease the puzzle. And present Anne, wife of the embattled Francis Harris, with two bright shiny (and productive) siblings: John Jennings granite worker of Mabe, and Elizabeth Oppy of Carnmenellis Wendron and later Crellow in Stithians town.

This proved a harder challenge than untangling the 1800s Roddas with the three couples of the same firstnames, being a generation earlier. Fortunately some elementary errors by Entropy and her cohort meant that firm clues were left lodged in the soil, so that the trail could be followed 215 years later, without prejudice.

(The picture had been further muddied by the presence of multiple James/Elizabeth Oppy and James/Elizabeth Holman couples in and around the right area. Fortunately the listing of whole families in the 1841 census, the giving of fathers' names in marriage records and the fact only a few events happened at Crowan, helped home-in on the correct couples in this next generation.)