Time machine back to 1770

As the Royal Colony of North Carolina draws to a close, this is what's going on in Outlander.

"By late 1770, the Ridge had more than thirty families inhabiting the land under Jamie's sponsorship."

But what's going on in my family back in Britain?

1771/2: J. Gee and his wife leave Wolverhampton for the far north of Derbyshire to commence work on the Norwood Tunnel.

1770. Broad Joe Padfield in Somerset is still four years away from throwing his chair in the air: 'I believe!' 

1770. Margaret Rea turns ten somewhere in Scotland. Wish we knew where!

1770. The Bristol Channel's going to be swaying with Captain Rees Rees (22) taking his vessel out for the first time off the Glamorgan coast.

1770s. Irish boy William Hunter newly arrived in Cornwall, probably intending to return some day.

1770. Sarah Bond bustles over to Parson Woodforde in Ansford to get her late husband's gravestone sorted.

1770. It's a dozen years since their father drowned in a lighter in the River Towy. How are the family of Griffith Morton doing?

1770/1. A boy is born in a lead miner's cottage in the northern Peaks. It's a hundred years since the plague: the Bagshaws wonder earnestly if this their first child will survive.

Favourite Corner #3 Almesforde Somerset: 1730s

It was Christmas 1995 and I had taken the train up to Taunton, done my customary jog past this lovely cottage (I picked the 2009 picture from StreetView before all the officeblocks went up):

... and then to the former site of the Somerset Record Office where I ruffled through DD/FF/7 concerning my yawnworthy Speed ancestors of Ansford. At the time they had not been fully catalogued and amidst the following marginally interesting documents

• Mortgage by demise of lands at New Close, Ansford for 500 years 1771
• Assignment of Edward Speed's mortgage. 1779
• Conveyance of premises at New Close, Ansford 1800
• Copy wills of Edward and Murry Speed (1780s)

 ... was the Will of Edward Murrow 1732! Now I already knew the name 'Murrow' as a given name but didn't stop to linger on the frontispiece. Within nanoseconds I was in the document and reading. I could see that Edward's granddaughter Sarah Speed (my ancestor) was named, and her apparent mother Elizabeth (Mrs Speed), a daughter of Mr Murrow.

The marriage for Sarah Speed's parents (William and Elizabeth) had not eventuated, and would cause plenty of confusion when it did, especially as I failed to read the Will correctly. I'm guessing the Will and above Deeds were retained by a local solicitor (Dyne Drewett of Castle Cary?) and so escaped the bombing of Exeter in 1942. Thank you, solicitors! (Not a phrase I utter regularly.)

Murrow left land at Ballage, Weekway Close, New Close (above) and Cary Moor. I should really attempt to work out where the land came from. Rather wonderfully, Weekway at Wyke passed to his daughter's second daughter's illegitimate only child, another female, named Agnes. (The information that Agnes held Wykeway came to me from Agnes's knowledgeable 4xgreat-grandson Derek Williams, b. 1929.) However the 18th century zapped her in other ways: she passed away in childbed of her fifth son at forty.

Once I had cooled down, I located baptisms immediately for Mr Murrow's three surviving daughters on the microfiche of the International Genealogical Index in the searchroom. But marriages for all three girls were missing, barring the remarriage of the eldest girl (to our Mr Speed).

Edward Murrow was survived by his wife, and eldest child Elizabeth, who were joint executrixes.  His third daughter Mary was heavy with child, and died a week later.  Frances Murrow had predeceased her parents, leaving daughters by her husband Stephen Widdows.

And the names of the grandchildren gave pause for thought. As expected: the four Speeds (Sarah, William, Betty, Edward) then there were four Widdows girls (Dinah, Martha and two others) plus little Grace Dyke and her soon-to-be-born sibling. EXCEPT that there was a twist in the tale.

Dinah was (1) Elizabeth's daughter by a first marriage, not Frances's, and (2) married the widower of aunt Mary (not long in the grave) within two years. And you can read about her and her son here and here.

It may be that you can read the rest of the notes on this tree. I have left off the character, life and eventual murder of Frances's last surviving daughter, Martha, as her sad end would certainly hurt the tone of this female-strong blog post.

Upwardly mobile

This needs no explanation as we progress through each generation:

1) Ned Dick, haulier, Ansford, Somerset, baptised 1735 the poor relation

2) George Dyke, apprentice to a tailor, Milborne Port, born 1779, perhaps the only son

3) Charles Dyke, tailor and draper, Lyme Regis, born about 1811 (baptised age three)

4) Charles W. P. Dyke, tutored in Chardstock by an Oxford graduate, later had a military outfitters somewhere nr Finchley road, born 1845

5) Oswald M. Dyke, Colonel in Indian Army, born 1878 in Lyme Regis, married Vicar of Sidbury's granddaughter

6) Richard C. Dyke, Colonel in Indian Army, inherited Bicton Old Rectory, married in Nepal

7) Wife of His Excellency the Ambassador of the United States of America (past)

Favourite Corner #2 Northcountry: 1830s

In this series we are looking at favourite corners from within the family tree. I think it is nice to focus on a particular group who lived in a definable place and time. So here is this 'time-shot'.

If you have your reading glasses with you, you may be able to detect some of the stories within. The majority of these were resurrected and resuscitated in 2008 after a considerable period of time had elapsed.

References and sources (some):

• Death certificate 1844 (PDF) for John Gibson (1844) at South Shields: General Register Office, England & Wales
• Newcastle Courant 1844. Newspaper report into the death of John Gibson, following his knee being trapped between two wagons and his death about a week later. The inquest was held in a public house, but not the Waggoners Arms ran by his brother.
• 1851 census for Lower Birthwaite (later Windermere) shows Annie Gibson (c. 15) living with her aunt Margaret and husband James Atkinson (then childless).
• 1841 census for Westoe, South Shields shows John Gibson, Jane and Annie living together before the events three years later disrupt this unit forever.
• Photographs of John and Jane Johnson sitting together laughing and secondly in front of their farmhouse with their sheep in the foreground, gathered from opposite ends of the country (private: scans held)
• The story of "Granny from Old Town" in email correspondence c. 2010 from the son of the great-great-granddaughter of Jane, which lady had remembered her mother (b. 1885) referring to this 'Granny'. At the time no-one knew the significance of those words.
• Tommy Oliver and friends in Ryton, Crawcrook & Greenside Through Time, 2013, Nick Neave, John Boothroyd, Amberley Publishing. The photograph appears to be have been provided by Greenside local history group.
• Marriage record for John Gibson and Jane Dodd, 1836, Allendale. Northumberland Archives.
• Marriage record for Annie Gibson, 1856, Windermere. Cumbria Archive Service. Annie grew up on the banks of the Tyne. It must be she who provided the information that her father was a 'putter' which has been deliciously mis-heard as 'butler'. (My thanks to Phil Taylor for working this one out.) He was also listed as a 'farmer' by my great-aunt in the 1980s but this would be an elided reference to Annie's stepfather.
• "Eloped with the gardener". This is a note from Linda Noble in email to me in 2008. Linda descends from the Dodds (her mother was a Dodd) and must have known the story. She was a retired librarian based locally, so would not have just made it up!
• Planted sycamores [at Scalehouses]. This is from a letter by Caleb Watson of Scalehouses, Cumberland, to his brothers' family in Australia, in 1890. The images were posted on the website of John Watson which none of us appear to have noted down. John passed away in 2020 and at some point I will locate his great site on the Wayback machine, if I can find a record of the name!
  

Favourite corner #1 Somerset: 1830s 40s 50s

The trouble with family history is you have everybody's story in your computer, so which ones can you pull out? This family group is a snapshot in a period of time, a time-shot if you will. The very last events depicted, George the dentist in hot pursuit of the princess Aimee Crocker, did not occur until around 1908, but I could hardly resist including it.

The majority of the rest of the events we are looking at 1830s, 40s and 50s.

As this is the blog equivalent of the picture round, I'm going to have to let you make out the text and connections as best you can. Suffice to say we have a lot of stories and story elements, depicted above, from the women in the family. I have held back and not revealed what happened to the next generations. That is a whole other story, but you can try here and here.

Some references and sources:

• Letter from Thomas Haine to his married sister Mary Haine in Ohio 1837 re Farmer Whittock 'fell never to rise no more (private: scan held)
  
• Letters from Sarah Maby to her half-sister Mary Haine in Ohio c. 1842 re Feltham sisters in service and 'the newly weds' (private: scan held)
• Parson Woodforde's Diary unabridged {1769}
• Letter from George Crocker to his relation c. 1908 re pursuit of the US Crockers (private: scan held) (Aimee referred to in error as Aida in the chart)
  
• Fred the alcoholic baker: common knowledge in the family. Discussed at Symes/Hockey reunion c. 2005 Somerset
• Marriage certificate for Jane Feltham (1838) at Christchurch, Bristol: General Register Office, England & Wales
  
• Death certificate (PDF) for Ann Welch (1862) at Smarden, Kent: General Register Office, England & Wales
• Passenger lists for 1855 showing Hannah Roddam, Thomas Roddam and Ann Cotty sailing from England to USA
• FindAGrave for the cemetery at Buffalo Gap, South Dakota
• Past and Present of the City of Springfield and Sangamon, Joseph Wallace, 1904 re Joe Feltham arriving with his sister Hannah, from Bayford 'Beyford'.
• 1841 census for Millbrook, Ditcheat confirming Ann Feltham is living with (uncle) Joseph.
• 1841 census for Cucklington showing Hannah Feltham as servant to the vicar

From Bollington to Macclesfield in 25 years: a Cheshire journey in family history

Very many moons ago I knew I had to get to Bollington. But which one? I decided it was the one just outside Macclesfield, a settlement of cotton spinners and weavers.

Back in 1992, I must have written to my great aunt (born 1903), and her (subsequent) executor sent me a handwritten transcription of a Will, still in the family, dated at the testator's death bed, December 1856.

This Will of my 4x great-grandfather never made it to probate (oopsy!) but informed me that my distant aunt Esther Carline (b 1816) had recently died at nearly 40, leaving a family. From the wording it looked like she had married James Fox.

Still a school kid I hot-footed it down to the reference library in town and located the Derbyshire microfiche. <pre internet><pre internet> There was the marriage of Esther and James, 1839 at Matlock parish church. And baptismal records for nine children, ceasing at her death.

Next, still without leaving town, I combed the probate registry for the Foxes. I could not find James but surprisingly I did find Esther:

I'm not sure how long this all took, but within six months of receiving that letter from my great aunt, I'd tracked my new aunt Esther to Bollington, Cheshire.

Well actually I hadn't as she'd died back in Matlock, but it looked like her husband had left town, presumably with the nine kids in tow, to begin a new life among the cotton mills of Cheshire.

That's it! Nothing more to know. Until eventually eventually, probably late 1995, I get to visit the Census Rooms in the basement of the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, London.

{{{ time has passed, tick tock }}}

Finding the Fox family in the 1861 census of Bollington, near Macclesfield, was a big moment. There were NO surname indexes. I did have information from a researcher, Joan Measham, in Matlock, that the Fox family had definitely left by 1861. (Derbyshire had an excellent census surname index.)

The resulting census entry had me completely confused. James Fox was shown as married (to wife Mary), and among their nine children were names I'd hoped to see, others I'd never heard of and more that were missing.

My first census entry and it was a blended family! I didn't know what all to make of it.

~~~~

In the words of Dr Dre, that was 95. It's now 2021 and I'm back in Cheshire again, not in pretty (stunning!) Bollington, but finally doing battle with Macclesfield itself. Who will win, me or it.

In the 1980s I recall a tv show Beat the Teacher hosted by Bruno Brookes, in which pupil "Jonathan from Macclesfield" wiped out his competition, without mercy.

I recalled that cousin Sandra in Macclesfield, Esther's descendant (duly sleuthed) had been beyond wonderful in resolving the second-most complex of Esther's clan.

But this paled into the background now as I was up against....

Joe Turnock.

Joe Turnock was a rogue. A charmer, a ladies' man, no stranger to ducking, diving, wheeling, although not dealing. And my 3x great-grandfather.

After siring my forebear out of wedlock (thank you DNA), a spell in clink and then widowhood, he had chosen Macclesfield on which to inflict his next promise. Vows of marriage were exchanged there with hard-working widow Ellen, Mrs Stafford.

He would absolutely have recognised the surname, as it was Stafford Gaol that had control of his liberty just five years prior.

He's at home in Macclesfield in 1861 in a textbook nuclear family and then pouff! no further trace. I did spot the signs that Ellen his wife was doing just fine, however.

Did Joe die in 1862 as many artless family trees suggest. Of course not. Did he have more children around the countryside: undoubtedly.

But this week from Cheshire itself came part of the answer. "Ellen kicked him out!" Macclesfield, quite literally, said "no". Thanks to Ellen's descendant (duly sleuthed) for this nugget.

I certainly didn't think that I'd be back in this area, genealogically, and now that Joe Turnock has departed stage left, we can return our thoughts to the nine children of Esther Fox (affectionately remembered) who assuaged or augmented the grief at the loss of their mother by swallowing sobs over the relentless noise of the cotton mill machinery in the charming and peaceful town of Bollington, near Macclesfield, 1861.

(not Bollington near Chester!)

DNA: 1845 surprise. Found: one lion

I just got notification that Elizabeth O'Neal's April blog party is on DNA and Genetic Genealogy. Today is the last day of April, so I'm getting my skates on, and serving up an appetiser for the party.

Here we go:
My family tree hasn't changed that much in recent years, but in February it put in a polite but firm request to change permanently and irrevocably.

The big old "gap" in the family tree where Unknown Male had a child with my Millicent Bagshaw, in 1845, just got answered.

I was working through my clusters from Ancestry DNA, and as you know, finding groups of people who didn't fit anywhere, but who did belong *somewhere*, together.

It feels like I'm in the movie Madagascar, with me trying to find the Lion at the centre of a party. At the moment I'm just seeing and hearing a group of chipmunks boogying on the outside. They only match 20 centimorgans (cM).

We're not getting any closer to the Lion. Ok, so these folks were kind enough to do the DNA test and might not like the "chipmunk" analogy. They had pretty basic family trees and one guy had no tree at all. But his name was "Len Millwood" and that name, Millwood, appeared in the tree of the other person in his cluster.

Up the Millwood tree we go, then we find dozens of shared Hammersley connections, descending from Ellen Turnock (1798) who married Mr Hammersley. Not all belong to the same cluster and very few have online trees. In one case "Ralph J Lorenz" (living in USA), I muscle up and examine every single gentleman of this name before landing on one from Staten Island. Bingo his grandfather's marriage record mentions the name Hammersley.

I discover the Turnocks are the epi-centre of the clusters but all these dozens of 20cM matches ain't helping me determine which one is Unknown Male. Many of them don't feature in clusters being right in Ancestry's cM cut-off.

Turns out, it was Joseph Turnock (b. c. 1823), sometime stonemason, maybe thief, and most definitely a labourer. Twice married: then disappears. He's our Unknown Male. The Lion at the centre of the party.

We suspect the deed was done in the street market in Buxton, Derbyshire, April 1845 about 15 miles equidistant from both parties.

Joseph's ancestry hails from north Staffordshire, England, around the Moorlands, which has been great to evoke. I'm even hopeful we can make an educated conjecture on an another illegitimacy three generations prior: the Unknown Male responsible for Miss Innocent Goostrey (1754), Leek.

Once again I'm very grateful for all those (new) cousins who took the Ancestry DNA test, were sporting enough to engage with me, and who Absolutely bear no resemblance to any of these characters in the major blockbuster cited above.

Midlands ancestry and GEDmatch (UK)

I've been trying to make sense of SNPs and centiMorgans, segments, chromosomes and phasing. Reading about eastern Polynesian endogamy has been helpful with some real life examples of how genetic material may be inherited.

What Are The Odds from DNApainter is proving fairly straightforward, though is limited (it says) when each result shares an average of <40cM with the tester: 90cM is better. And I'm not sure what its views are on endogamy, complex relationships within the extended family, or generally "sticky" DNA (without there necessarily being endogamy).

I've tested with Ancestry DNA, which has been highly informative, reassuring and maddenly suggestive. I'm in the process of exploring the benefits of uploading this data to other sites, this month it's GEDmatch.

Yesterday I focused on a family group in Leeds. Ancestry very helpfully confirmed that our shared origins were in the Midlands (which I interpret as Staffordshire and the conurbation where Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire all met). I say confirmed, as I'd already guessed this from the useful data at GEDmatch.

I'd have been unwise to look at this match, despite the "Midlands" tag, without knowing two things, that Peter (from Leeds) matched Mrs C (from Liverpool), that as well as matching each other they matched us. And secondly, and most critically, that all three parties actually share some precise segment of the same chromosome.

For both of these requirements, I needed GEDmatch. In fact it was at that site where the shared segment in question, and its three holders, was identified. The amounts shared are small (and so not resulting in a cluster of matches at Ancestry). It is nonetheless a cluster though, one that could easily have been missed.

I'm glad I persevered. Mrs C had popped up in another triangulation exercise on the site a week prior, so I'd already done the digging and knew her connection to us. We both descended from Jonathan Gee (origin: Hyde, Cheshire) and Sarah Brasier (origin: Kinver and Enville, Staffordshire).

GEDmatch's new triangulation, therefore, hinted quite strongly that the Leeds family also descended from this couple, or from one or more of their parents/grandparents. Further back seemed unlikely as we'd be talking ninth cousins, which, with very little endogamy present, seems unlikely for matches of 11cM plus.

The Leeds family's tree was largely spoken for and not looking very Midlands. The Yorkshire part did not fit with a gradual drift up from our Chesterfield branch. I couldn't see any geographical overlaps over the period in question.

I was intrigued by the final grandparent: Mr Davies from Wales. Closer inspection of the excellent tree showed that this chap's birth record was very much missing in action. But his Dad, of the same name, was a Wire-Drawer.

My antennae says Midlands, for that occupation. Exactly what we need. I'm still short of biographical detail, but going back through his tree, I saw some names I recognised. This wire-drawer was from Kinver, and descends from the only surviving brother of Sarah Brasier (born 1751).

You can bet I'm keen to establish full biographical detail on this branch, as it strongly appears we can paint in those 11 or so centiMorgans as being from Kinver.

I have more reading to do. More records to find. But all this is just a warm-up flex and stretch before I take on Ireland. Am I ready? After 11 May maybe, as our local café's famous Irish breakfast will be back on the cards.

Thanks GEDmatch, by the way. I'm genuinely tickled to have 7x great-uncle waiting in the wings to be a bona fide relative, particularly one right at the heart of the Industrial Revolution in the Midlands (for better or for worse).