Exploring my family history - past and present

27 Sept 2015

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!)

20 Sept 2015

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.)

The Real Hunted: Facebook finds spikes and hurls them my way

I have been watching the Channel four programme Hunted, a remarkable piece of enjoyable television showing people actually on-the-run. I do not feel particularly worried about what the State are up to in my direction: as long as they are not employing temps to print out my case file by accident. I am much more concerned about private companies gathering information about me.

And now Facebook has already started growing spikes in a previously warm welcoming environment. The tale begins with this family historian contacting people, legitimately I trust, but using the Bookface site as a medium. To and fro go the messages. Mostly to, but occasionally fro. I have had some lovely messages on Facebook recently. After contacting people out of the blue to discuss their family history, I have received quality, warm, responses. This is comparable with the responses I have had by letter down the years. (As discussed, maybe those days are gone, with the modern generation not inculcated into the ways of letter-writing.)

So far, so heart-warming. Here is an exemplar quote 'Thank you for reaching out to us.' Did I know these people? No-yes. Do I know them now? Yes. Was it possible to have physically, or heaven forfend via email, have known these people in advance of the message - er, no, which is why I used social media for that purpose. One bloke replied to my random message with 'I'll tell my Dad he's got a new project apart from gardening'.

Today came a stark message from Facebook. "You have been friending (Facebook term) people on our site who afterwards stated (in a licensed interrogation) that you did not truly know them." Apparently I should have Followed them (these are people educated pre-Harry Potter, they are Follower-free).

A sinister run of television adverts, purportedly showing people having friendly fun, with plenty of slow-motion purple woolly jumper running hugs and chortling kids in yellow wellies stamping in rainy puddles, ends with a Be the Best style message 'THAT is what friending means, you terrible users!'

The site thanked me for participating in the exchange, after questioning my motives, and giving me no choice but to remove some Friend requests from their list. There was no Skip button or link. At least Google has or had 'don't be evil'. Facebook like all self-righteous organisations and individuals, will end up limiting freedoms as part of their drive for personal freedom.

21 Aug 2015

Findmypast launch index to the probate calendars 1858-1959

Findmypast launch index to the probate calendars 1858-1959
http://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/world-records/probate-calendars-of-england-and-wales-1858-1959

My first thoughts are, goodness, I have been working for a month on an index to these records, does this totally nullify my project? On some reflection, I think being able to search the indexes for any text is a good, clever and simple idea. However, its use really depends on how well the OCR (?) data has been cleaned. If you are looking for a name, occupation or street address and the records have been partially mis-keyed, or even are recorded in an unfamiliar format (e.g. 1-2 St. John-villas, London-road east, Berwick, North Britain), you could easily miss them.

Good luck to anyone searching for someone named John James. The old WillFinder database at First Avenue House was notorious for being impossible to search for someone male of the James/ John/ David lastnames. The beauty of the Tom's Wills index which I am curating will be in the visible juxtaposition of entries, and the genuine ability to browse across parishes and across many entries referencing the same surname. For me, seeing the records in context is important and without genuinely being able to browse, a chunk of the experience is missing.

Will Findmypast move towards an experience similar to Ancestry's, where more data is given in the search results? They are assuredly mistaken about the list of 500,000 names. That is off by a factor of 20 if you only count the decedents, and a factor of over 50 if you include the spouses, heirs and solicitors. (On checking, they clearly mean pages.)

Should you wish to search for using an ambiguous keyword such as Bury, you may get surnames when you are looking for place and vice versa too. Below is an example of searching on Jones.
In the meantime, come and browse the old streets and byways of the probate indexes at Tom's Wills.

Searching for Jones gives 57000 identical entries: http://search.findmypast.co.uk/results/world-records/probate-calendars-of-england-and-wales-1858-1959?contents=jones

12 Aug 2015

Records from a Big Bank - details of unclaimed estates

These records are from a Big Bank. I was googling a new relative today (12 Aug 2015) when I noticed that they appeared in this enticing document called 'unclaimed accounts', published by the bank under the authoritative-looking URL of important-information/pdf/unclaimed-final-ac.pdf. How very interesting. It was definitely our guy, and contacting his grandson on Facebook got me confirmation of this barely an hour later. I went back and grabbed the names of as many people with British connections that I could to highlight them here. I understand that this bank has sold its unclaimed assets to a third party, in at least one country where it operates. More recent versions of this list do not include those listed below. These bank accounts could have been opened before 1982 (when Harare became known as Salisbury) and some were opened after 1974 (when the delights of Cleveland opened their doors). I think I would be annoyed as a relative if I was told the money had disappeared, so perhaps genealogists can help people look into this project?
go to www.haine.org.uk/wills/unclaimed.php

5 Aug 2015

Tom's Wills - the index to British wills

Announcing the presenting online of Tom's Wills - an index to British wills currently running from 1933 to 1935. Tom Chatley was arguably the first person to conceive of an index to the list of probates held around the country. These were in book form for many years. He began writing out the entries on a card index in the 1930s, and these finally made it to the printed internet page in 2015. It was his ambition to collect together the interesting addresses and info about the personal representatives. Now that can be shared so that you too can find your relatives. Tom had a particular soft spot for people in Wales who were otherwise completely stuffed. As looking for Joneses in Wales is really tough without an address, perhaps Tom's Wills can help you? It's online at Tom's Wills.

27 Jun 2015

Ten tricks to help your family history (for free!)

Here's some handy tips which I've gathered over the years to help me maintain my batting average of contacting two or three new cousins a month. It's high time your research got even easier, too!

1. Hustle to get the modern day address you need for free

2. Match the marriage with the births

3. Make freebmd work for you - even when it's wrong

4. Leapfrog over that missing marriage

5. Confirm the name at birth before you do anything

6. Turn a death entry into an address

7. If it sounds right, it is Wright

8. Guess the name of the child

9. Try ALL the censuses

10. Pinpoint your Jones using local records to help

10 Jun 2015

Finding 4 New Jersey husbands: no marriage index

... or "Wrestling, Swimming Pools and Silk".

One bright morning in half-term I couldn't stay in bed any longer. By six I was on Ancestry.com wondering if cousin Claire had made anything of my leads, concerning our Hunt cousins in New Jersey. I'd discovered Beatrice Hunt born 1907 in Salford had married an Italian man and died in Rancho Cucamonga after deciding to search Passaic county for all the English Beatrices. Of course she was alonely possible. Claire had done something similar for the second daughter, noting the existence of a child, Verna. By 0804 I had confirmed this and stood possessed of Verna's birth name and married name. By 0806 I had learnt she starred in two recent YouTube videos, including one with her grandson, six foot four pop journalist Giancarlo. Before I jogged off for my doctors appointment at half nine I resolved to find the other two, trickier, Hunt sisters, and that's what happened. Here are Betty and Lily in the 1930 census for Paterson with their incorrect birthplaces. Unfortunately the next census won't give the parents' birthplace of England, so it's time to use FamilySearch, for free, to comb the whole town in 1940 for clues.

The fact that they must have been born across the Hudson, in Manhattan, would turn the impossibility of finding them into a distinct possibility. Searching all the girls in Paterson New Jersey yielded plenty of possibles...
but an unexpected link pulled both girls out snap and pronto!

This is the 1940 census of Paterson with possibles for Betty and Lily grown up.

And so is this. Hmmm, Quicks appearing twice? Suspicious!

Writing to Giancarlo, he indeed confirmed Betty had married Victor. And the Quicks and Cobianchis are living just a block from each other and/or the 1930 home on Straight Street. It's all a world away from scary old Salford. Victor worked in the silk mills as an examiner. Wrestling is a big local sport. The pools closed in the 1930s for regular cleans. A Hunt nephew drowned in the fast-flowing Passaic river. I am going to the States in August and northern Jersey is gonna talk to me more than its swankier neighbour just across the water. Go garden state.

4 Apr 2015

Gateway to the Wall and Canal

Annie Gibson! (my grandmother's grandmother)

Born just before civil registration, and seemingly not baptised, she is not living in her birth county nor her adopted county of Westmorland in the 1841 census. She appears as if a magical tree child by Lake Windermere's shores in time for the next census, of 1851. In hindsight there were plenty of clues to her origins, but they were so unexpected we didn't dare to look.

150 years after her birth, and the sands of time had eradicated her photograph, accent, story from our collective memory. But her grandchildren knew a few clues about her. She was they said a Northumberland farmer's daughter. We didn't know that there was so much more to it. That Crawcrook would prove chock-full of cousins and Penrith too. A lot of energy was expended on solving her husband, Mr Airey's line, known to live near the Lakes forever...

Annie's father's family were from the Wall - Hadrian's wall. Annie is named in the will of her father's father, as Ann, daughter of my late son John Gibson. She was an only child, and predeceased her mother, leaving a large family of ten children, all of whom married, and all bar one had family. (Today however, only five have living descendants.)

It struck me that the granddaughters proved difficult to trace at times and lived in quite a variety of interesting places. The list follows: India, Yemen, Iraq, Venezuela, San Francisco, Egypt, Toronto, Cape Town. And the very hardest child to find moved to a little cottage in the Chiltern foothills which she was to enjoy for one year and six months. The grandson, of whom there were not many, lived in Wimborne, Middlesbrough and Manchester, hardly the same at all.

I am sure stories are attached to most of the exotic places these 'daughters of the Lake' sojourned in. Several require use of the Suez canal to visit, and Aden in Yemen was reported as 'no place for a woman'. The lady in Venezuela was greeted after some months by a semi-naked son who had gone upstream with the natives for a time. The escape from London poverty to California came about thanks to a granddaughter winning a typing competition. She never returned, settling with her east coast ranching husband and is captured whinnying with laughter as she slams her land-vehicle into gear. We haven't yet accounted for her.

3 Apr 2015

Royal possibilities

Here are my Royal possibilities:
Miss Muldoonie. Wealthy Irish heiress who ends up marrying my male Irish forebear, about 1810, despite her family's best efforts to prevent the union. Presumably she was still a Roman Catholic, as her name is very Irish. I am still not sure how this money connection could be rotated backwards through an Anglo-Irish overlord and leave us in a polite society drawing room in Covent Garden, 1600s. But I think it might.

Margaret Rea. This lady from parochial Bogralin, somewhere in Scotland, was born in about 1761. She lived to see her great-granddaughter nearly reach majority, though they may never have met. This lady became my grandmother's grandmother. The devious illegitimate breeding rats of illegitimate Stuarts, from James the Fourth and Fifth, had plenty of time from 1500 to inject their DNA into Margaret.

Alexander Millrea. A fisherman at Kirkinner, Wigtown, I shall eat my hat if his ancestry won't include some trace of Scottish kings, whether through Bruces, Stewarts, or Hays.

The Glassons of Camborne. They, or the Bohemias, or Hamblys or any of my other Cornish lines could easily incorporate some of Hugh Courtenay's stock. He is recognised as a gateway ancestor for Cornish people owing to his marriage to Margaret de Bohun, King Edward's granddaughter.

The Pearces of St Austell. These are the poshest side of my entire tree, and were squires for a time. The maiden names of the wives are skipping close to those of Godolphin, Carminowe, and other known 'squirely' names.

Sir Harry Hotspur. Statistically Harry, earl of Northumberland, simply will be ancestor of my Charltons who lived on the Tyne west of Newcastle for generations. He will be their ancestor several times over.

Katherine of Berain and Joan Cherleton. These two ladies both venture into Wales as did members of the Herbert family. They may just be in time to be forebears of my Welsh stock, comparatively wealthy smallholders with land who gave it all up for the total insecurity of life under the iron lords, in the great smelting works. For every Pakistani worker who slides off a Dubai skyscraper, at least ten Welsh ironworkers met their premature deaths in Victorian times. I imagine Rebecca Phillips, the Mortons of St Ishmael, the Jennet line in Cadoxton and the Evanses of Bassaleg could all throw back to the above Welsh ladies.

The Hastings family. They or another line may have settled in the Midlands. My Gee family in Chesterfield and my Fox line in Matlock both could easily have absorbed a medieval royal ancestor generations before. A Gee cousin it seems wrote a Victorian detailed account of her adopted city, Nottingham, qualities which not all of my Derbyshire mining ancestors showed.

The Wentworth family. They were in Suffolk and I am confident that either my poor soil-tilling Smiths, my perhaps African Edens or my Quaker Flowers ancestors will have been able to grab a good thimbleful of Royal blood from this source based as they were just over the border into Norfolk.

Richard the Third mania

I enjoy re-reading the Plantagenet story, and trying to remember the many husbands of the key women, the various Eleanors, Elizabeths and Mauds. And certainly seeing if more has emerged of Richard the Third's female line.

Empress Anne of Hungary, wife of Ferdinand, performed the neat trick of buying up the best genetic real estate. She has got the maternal-line rights to a large chunk of Europe's royalty. Her line includes such gems as Queen Victoria, all the good-time Louis kings, Philip of Spain and Philip of Edinburgh.

Small wonder there were precious little maternal line goodies left for Cecily of York and her sisters, whose fortunes wavered so dramatically during the wars of the Roses. They spent the Tudor period holed up in damp crumbling piles, far from Westminster palaces. It sounded very hard work to unearth this clan.

I got extremely jealous of those with a personal connection to the Roses folk, and decided I would try to find my own. First step, to browse the book of Americans with Royal descent, to see which English towns harboured them during the crucial 1600s period.

Then I remembered I had a slightly Royal connection in my Cornish line, waiting for my attention. Mary Harry born 1640 was the granddaughter of Alexander Angove of Phillack whose ancestor quite possibly had been Michael Angove the blacksmith hung at Tyburn in 1497. He had led a march to London protesting against the Welsh King's taxes.

But it was Mary's grandmother who the spotlight turned on. Apparently owning a tenement in a deer park, at Park house - a Grade II listed building, still standing in distant Egloshayle. It seemed romantically possible that she was the daughter of Reginald Haweis, landowner at Treworgie. And whose father is listed as Stephen Hawes of the Bushes, Walsham le Willows, Suffolk. And who has been conflated with another Stephen Hawes - somewhat older and from Aldeburgh, Suffolk, a poet and later gentleman of the bedchamber, a courtier (for that old rogue, Henry the Seventh).

And, who was of course, inevitably, rumoured to be.... an illegitimate son of Richard the Third. Which is where we started.

The tree you wish for

I finished reading Johanna Angermeyer's book about her German uncles living in the Galapagos. I thought, that would be nice. Then I started researching my Becks who it turned out were the only white people on part of the Solomon Islands.

I finished reading Eric Newby's book Love and War in the Apennines. Two minutes later, I was researching my missing cousin Arthur Taylor. Tonnes of evidence pointed to him living, of course, in Italy, and even more startlingly not only 'during the War' but a hair's breadth away from meeting Mussolini himself. His work took him to many mountainous corners of Italy, and almost to Malta where Newby's own story started.

Today I woke up keen to browse once more the DNA discoveries concerning King Richard the Third. I firstly read about his family. Then I turned to my Cornish forbears, who I believe remain the most likely to yield a Royal ancestral line. I had a little look into the murk of medieval history, and that is the subject of my next post.

Be careful for the family history you wish for, it might just happen....

21 Mar 2015

A Cornish Mine Agent in 1850s Jamaica

A quick google gives a shade more info on 3xgreat-grandpa Henry Lowry who spent one or two years in the Port Royal Mountains of Jamaica, in a little settlement named Silver Hill, as a mine agent or adventurer.

We have the attached letter, and reference to a book owned by him in Jamaica published 1851 is found via Google. Now a London paper takes up his desperate story for more money.

Lowry was a miner from Truro, arriving 1853, and seemingly leaving 1855, dying 1861.

London Daily News 24 August 1855
The directors of the Port Royal and St. Andrew's Copper Mining Company have received a report from Mr. Henry Lowry, upon his return to this country, in which he observes as follows : The English staff consists of 11 men and your mining agent. Captain Ciernes, Labour is generally abundant, and the natives are likely soon to become tolerably efficient workmen. It is my decided conviction that the operation, at Silver Hill ia particular, will result favourably ; the lode is the only quartz lode (I have brought specimens for your inspection) which I have seen in Jamaica, and is in every respect promising as could be desired. I believe nothing but a little perseverance will be requisite to make Silver Hill an important and profitable mine. As the operations have proceeded, nothing has occurred to alter my convictions ; the continuity of the lodes and branohet has been established from level to level, and nothing can exceed the regularity and compactnett of the formation in No, 2. I think any company would be warranted in spending a much larger amount of capital than has already been spent in the operations here, if it should be required, and I have no hesitation in recommending you to to effectual and complete development of the mineral ground.

8 Mar 2015

Cousins laid to rest

My aunt was sure cousin Eva married the bus driver and settled in San Francisco. I combed through all the 1940 census and found a husband who was a railway carriage cleaner. Everything matched up, and to my delight the San Francisco marriage indexes, now in image form on FamilySearch, confirmed this.

Rumoured to be illegitimate, it was certainly a surprise to note she survived her father 93 years, and was nearly the last of her generation. Thank goodness my great-aunt was around to forestall this awkward eventuality. Her father passed away of tuberculosis in Wood Green not that far from me some time before the first world war.

It really is odd she survived so long. We had a phone call in the 1940s to tell us her older sister had died, exhausted by finding money at all hours of the day - and still another sister was confined to Colney Hatch lunatic asylum in the thirties. So hats off to Eva for clawing her way to the end of the century.

Another of the cousins disappears off the face of the earth in 1964 having proved her mother's will. She was then living in Surbiton. It now turns out she used the money from the estate to buy her own cottage just outside Henley. But she only enjoyed the cottage for two years before passing away herself. The person with whom she occupied the cottage survived another 29 years however.

Firstnames across England

The following firstnames were popular in the stated counties in the Victorian era:
Cornwall - Margaret, Catherine, Martin, Matthew, John, Henry, Thomas, William, Edward, Kate, Jane, Eliza, Mary
Somerset - James, Thomas, Elizabeth, William, Grace, Sarah, Mary, Stephen, Richard, George, Ann, Joseph, Mark
Norfolk - Robert, William, Susan, Henry, Rosa, Sarah, Martha, Samuel
Northcountry - Jonathan, Ralph, Margaret, Hannah
Derbyshire - Joshua, Joseph, Luke, Esther, Ellen, Jane, Anthony, Sarah, James, Titus, Nathan, Hannah

Further comments welcome

Marital Status

My seven great-aunts each had a subtly different marital status: divorced, widowed, unmarried minor. Unmarried adult (spinster), married, separated, and ... annulled. Perhaps the last one should read 'femme sole'.

The divorced aunt also squeezed in a common-law relationship, changing her name but not walking up the aisle, and changing it back when the relationship ended.

The aunts furthermore spanned three centuries. The firstborn was a Victorian, while three made it into the twenty-first century.

7 Mar 2015

Beating Google's Cache to find old PDFs still online

I was frustrated not to be able to get copies of this carehome newsletter, 2005, anywhere:
http://www.clsgroup.org.uk/uploads/calypso4summer2005.pdf

By luck and not really much thanks to any advice published on the internet, I found this link:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.clsgroup.org.uk/uploads/calypso4summer2005.pdf

Hey presto, full details about my relatives who lived at Lowton near Warrington.

21 Feb 2015

Miss Rebecca's Men: the publican and the soldier

Rebecca Dibben was born in the village of Tarrant Gunville, Dorset in 1794. Aged 20, her first child was born on the island of Guernsey, about 1814, and was given her mother's name.

Rebecca must surely have married the child's father, but this is not the only missing marriage in the family. We cannot find marriages for her sister Jane nor sister Mary either, although both have many descendants.

It was only last week I found the identity of this first husband, Mr Cox, by first name Thomas and as you can see from the below image, he was an innkeeper. We have recently learnt - thank you! - that Rebecca's marriage took place in 1812 in Guernsey in what was probably a piece of post-Napoleonic craziness. She was 18 and her two younger sisters rapidly became Mesdames around the same time, with no trace of a marriage in the UK. Was this Guernsey fever? Soldier fever?

I have combed through the Death duty records for the period 1812 to 1824 looking for a suitable Thomas but not found him. There was an innkeeper of this name operating in Crediton, Devon, 1815-1821 but he may have been the 50yo Thomas Cox who dies in the parish ten years later.

Cox was the first family member in Guernsey. There were Coxes later to marry Rebecca's cousin W Burge, who came from Child Okeford. Some of this family are thought to have settled in Guernsey, specifically Samuel Drake Cox, who appears in online searches.

Rebecca's second husband was the unlucky Abraham Mackreth of Cockermouth. Barely three weeks after the marriage he is dead, but Rebecca is/was already carrying his child and he is born either at Cockermouth with her hostile in-laws, or at Sturminster Newton where her own family lived. Rebecca next became the wife of a market gardener in Ringwood and then an innkeeper in Ringwood, who unfortunately was carted off to the lunatic asylum. That was husband number four: no more!

Mackreth and Rebecca's son was very unlucky in love, too. He married the dazzling Charlotte Quick of Kenton, Devon not far from his stepfathers' (sic) home in Ringwood. However seven years and no children later, Charlotte began to make other arrangements for the security of her genetic burden!

She fell for the Norfolk-born Thynnes who were no apparent connection with the titled variety, later Marquises of Bath. However, they each duped the other. She said her maiden name was Glendinning, well that was originally her mother's rather grand name. He pretended they were heirs to the Carterets as the London Thynnes certainly were.

It all had to end, and Thynne who was actually now or later in the Royal Artillery was told to leave Charlotte alone. Charlotte was chaperoned with baby Sophia out to Australia in 1856 with her younger brother ensuring she arrived safely. Once there, it seems there was little family contact. She had a nice lump sum of money keeping her going and lived for another 25 years or so out in the barren cultureless sun. Baby girl marries twice and has a few descendants. 'Carteret' becomes, as I'd originally guessed, 'Cartwright'.

Meanwhile back in England, Mackreth junior was living with his housekeeper and when word finally came in of Charlotte's death, he married her, having had someone Object to the banns when they originally tried to marry 20 years earlier! Thynne had married in 1858 but had no surviving issue by his real wife, dying in Norfolk, perhaps wondering where baby Sophia had gone. He had wanted to keep her as the evidence of the unusual birth certificate suggests, but likely Charlotte's family had Quickly disposed of that notion.

Dignity was saved.

Ultimately, Miss Rebecca, her two children (Rebecca Buggins and Abraham Mackreth) all settled in Brighton where they all lived happily ever after, and even had some Guernsey-based cousins plus her sister Jane come and visit.

The snip of the marriage certificate for Rebecca Cox's happy marriage to Mr Buggins doesn't reveal his occupation, bath house keeper on the Brighton coast. Odd that being totally naked with strangers was deemed normal by Victorians, but staying with the woman or man you loved was deemed utterly disgraceful.

For more about the Dibbens see counties, toes, match, Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire and search.

17 Feb 2015

Will: 'You still need me'

Some wills are great. And some don't tell you anything at all.

I had been waiting for the Norris will for a while - safe in the knowledge it'd fix a few mysteries for me. Nope. We still have no idea what happened to the nephew that had the papermill in Australia.

This week at exactly midnight - eleven wills dropped into my inbox. I was already asleep (brownie points there), but at 7am you bet I woke up fast. A whole bunch of them were frustrating or just plain brief, but the Edith Taylor will was surely the best of the bunch.

The last known of three siblings - my question was 'who is going to get your money?' Not only does she start me on a hunt for her globe-trotting twin brother, but she throws me a nice chewy bone naming some of her cousins' kids as well.

Of course the price has changed. What I spent in those precious dawn seconds, was what it cost me to get 2 years' worth of wills at one a week, back in the old days. Well, my old copies aren't going anywhere, and aren't telling me much of anything new either.

When it comes to solving tricky family puzzles: 'Will', I definitely still need you.

Disclaimer: I didn't actually go to Italy.

Long journey: Birds and Family Members Always Come Home

Some searches have you going through the wringer on your way to adding a twig properly onto the tree. This parish magazine from Shropshire is charmingly online, and answers at a swoop who 'Major Roberts' was - listed in a family obituary, turns out he was Miss Jones's second husband - no wonder I couldn't make the connection. Although born in Wolverhampton her parents brought her back to Shropshire to be baptised. I eventually caught up with the baby girl featured, now a director of a rather iconic part of Glastonbury Festival, lor' luv 'er!

Barbara G Walker is not an obvious addition to the tree, at first. By and large we are churchgoers and hardline feminism hasn't won many supporters on this side of the pond. However, peeking back into Barbara's (ironically, male) forebears - we see signs of plenty of strong women, who would give Barbara their strongest backing as she ploughs a very difficult furrow. Maybe her extremism 'grabs male territory' so that most women can live their lives with a bit more freedom than the generation before.

Cordelia Fuller was one of those mysteries of a dozen years or more. (And explanation has still not come in of who exactly Cordia lived with in the mid-west back then. Update: it has.) Eventually I did not find her marriage by checking under her maiden name, but by waiting for her descendants, the Smiths, to post a tree on Ancestry. Which they did. Here is the original will, photostatted in 2000.

And here the photo of Cordelia as an older lady in the Smiths' heartwarming book, Ocean Depths. The family still live and are based in Kansas and the mid-west.

Italy: From Stranger to Native

Mocked routinely in reference to their wartime episode, this young nation is unfairly maligned for enjoying life and for a culture where ordinary people treat each other with respect and courtesy.

For the first time this week, I feel I can get under its skin, and explore it from a native's perspective.

~~~

This time yesterday I had no idea about the next photograph. Like a lion closing in on its kill, I now have the whole story trapped in my pretty jaw. I had never previously thought much of Italy. The grey skies of Santa Margherita La Figueres and its doomy town were enough to put me off forever. But really, this is because I do not like the seaside. Introduce me to the mountain slopes and I am fast interested. I approached this will with scepticism:

'I leave to my niece Alice Barone or her husband Raffaele Barone the residue of my estate' - Edith Taylor

This lady won't be Italian (example)! Any more than the Corleones are Italian, or Papa John's Pizza, or sodding Dolmio sauce. Or perhaps more appositely, Ragu.

I braced myself to comb through directories of retired Italian Americans in Florida and outer New York state. Still no sign of Alice Barone. Was she in fact, an actual Italian?

The 1929 shipping record showed: Arthur Taylor, 45, secretary (YMCA), sailing from England to New York giving an address in Rome - that's Rome in Italy to give it the space on the page it deserves.

Subsequent shipping records coughed up the proof that Arthur Taylor of Italy was indeed born in Windermere. And here he is, we think, outside the property he loved, on the slopes of the Alps. Not a grey cloud in sight, and definitely no cagoules or misleading palm trees (take note Santa Margherita!).

The very same weekend, I determined to find if cousin Caroline was still living in Italy. She was preposterously easy to find - as no doubt she intends. She runs a guesthouse. The guesthouse contained the most complicated set of directions I have ever seen. Coming from the other way? 'I can't be bothered to type it all out backwards so follow your nose and call me from the church.'

The power of three is a well known literary device. Forgive if my heart isn't in it, at all. Yes this is the Third Italian Connection. I would much prefer to go back to the alps, to the first one and find out a lot more about the folks in Pinerolo. What was wartime like there - why did their only girl go to Sicily and does anyone remember her? Who were her childhood playmates. And, yes, if you're still interested here is the third connection.

Sadly the Merifields had no family. I am sure the Landuccis had a great story to tell - but it isn't mine, quite.

Forgotten Times: Are They Gone?

Ethel Robinson was an unmarried cousin. I needed to find her death record, and ideally some biographical content. Maybe this is her after all?

Nearly 70 years after this family left Somerset for Australia, the property names still evoked hamlets and villages within their ancestral county. Interesting too, that they wended their way to Adelaide's grandest of its many churches. But small chance the generation today will be able to so neatly integrate themselves with their past.

To my shame I have not yet purchased this book. It writes in a readable and relevant way about a WW2 hero, an intelligent perhaps awkward young man, whom so many 20th century figures managed to get to know. He was doomed to be my cousin from the very moment his grandfather downed tools as a grocer in Cumberland and began his long journey to be a minister in India.

Conradi's book wakes up the memories of three of Thompson's cousins: two died in Italy, and the third might have lost part of her reason for living there too. Here is her peaceful stone in a lovely English setting. In the book these people are animated again briefly. In this quiet spot, perhaps it will be possible to remember them once more, far from the mad rushing of nearby towns.

It feels a very long, cold, time since 1855. A very long time indeed, especially in Ireland, where anything prior to 1865 really is the dark ages. Somehow this record from donkey-drawn cart days peopled by sons of Cromwell, has trickled down to us. It is a pretty thin streak of trickle, but as nearly as we can be sure - is my great-grandfather's aunt marrying Mr Brodie. Ballyporeen is on the road out of Mitchelstown to Waterford, crossing a couple of county borders along the way.

The Brodies were one of the first of our family out in Boston: they had plenty of time to get out there before the Civil War, although I think they did not take advantage of this. Despite all this, Miss Loretta Brodie features in our family journal from before the war, and was still alive not so long ago.

Rejoicing comes as I finally press the right buttons on Google, and out comes tumbling one of the Brodies' granddaughters, Annie Dwyer Amico, whose obituary shows she has plenty of real children that are a direct link back to the marriage on the Waterford road.

Instagram and Family History

Apple products have never really wowed me. It's hard to grab text from a webpage now, with an iPad, so I tend to take screenshots. And I thought maybe to put these screenshots on an Instagram account. But it's easier, once a month to place them on Google Drive, and then use my PC to put them on a regular hard-drive the old fashioned way. And maybe go back in and take PDFs of webpages in order to truly capture the text. (However, text files are among the most unwieldy of the lot, as you cannot control the formatting.)

So, let's hear it for Instagram anyway! A blurred cheer. I was fairly sure this lady was my cousin. I followed her progress as she said she was going to England (an example of the classic 'future in the past' grammatical tense). I saw her itinerary screenshotted as a Google Map, and there on the route was the rural south of England. Bingo!

There is no way this west coast jetsetter would have gone to this sparsely-peopled area were it not for a certain great-aunt. Flicking through the Instagram pages, there she was. The 4th cousin in California visits the last of the Lowrys in England. Well, almost the last, as my grandmother is still alive too. She seemed pretty old when I last wrote in 1992. This lady put me onto all the rest of the cousins.

If anyone else has used Instagram for family history, let me know... This is a really stunning photograph, by the way.

Newspapers: Shock and Ordinary

I found two of my relatives were at pivotal points in history. In 1880, one saw Ned Kelly hang in a Melbourne gaol. He more than saw him hang, he legitimised it. In 1970, one (actually a relative on the same branch) re-enacted aspects of the Vietnam war in some quiet Quebec suburb. His purpose presumably to encourage people not to kill each other. Both generated plenty of copy for newspapers along the way.

It is the third article that is the most interesting to me. It is not about young men fighting to get the truth or not to fight, but an older man realising he wants to give even more back to the community. As I put in the snip - the Washburns have become part of the town life of Jamestown; but when their progenitor, William Smith arrived from England in 1872, he could so easily have disappeared on the vast continent. Thanks to him sending a photograph, from a Jamestown studio, many years later, we do know he is the same man. We wish the Washburns well and enjoy reading about the homely nature of our cousins' lives there. Thanks to the newspaper.

16 Feb 2015

Three Sisters: Fifteen Counties. Lasses from Gunville take on the South.

These are all the counties where it is known the Dibben sisters lived. I can only count fifteen, but as this is in the space of 1 or maximum two generations, the girls have done very well indeed.

They came from Gunville, in Cranborne Chase, near where Tess of the D'Urbervilles kept poultry for her beloved - that village is named 'Trantridge' in Hardy's chronicles.

The address of Gunville goes back to the will of William Speed of Ansford, 1800 who makes it clear that Mrs Dibben is his sister. She is quite some way from home, but the whole family were comfortable with long journeys - to markets, to distant churches for weddings. Her own parents had left their family in Somerset for a rather belated wedding in Dorchester some 30 miles away.

Here are the various places the daughters lived - explaining why it took some time to find them.

Buckinghamshire - Richard Welford had land here
Cumberland - Rebecca Dibben journeyed up north with her second husband, a widowed Cumbrian. Her husband died up there within weeks, and Rebecca returned to Dorset some time later - it is not clear whether she returned immediately or after the birth of her son.
Hampshire - Abraham Mackreth married here; his mother Rebecca lived here with her third husband John Spragg, market gardener, Ringwood
Dorset - the Dibben sisters were born or at least grew up here
Somerset - this is where the Dibben parents married and the eldest child (Mary) was born. She recalled this fact in her 80s in the 1871 census for Guernsey
Guernsey - three of the Dibben sisters are documented to have visited Guernsey, two had children there, and one died there
Sussex - three of the Dibben sisters died here, the eldest one had her eldest child here 70 years previously. The key draw in Sussex must have been Buggins's Bathing Bath-house in Brunswick, Brighton. This was technically in Hove and run by Rebecca Dibben's son-in-law, Henry Buggins
Middlesex - Jane Dibben married her second husband here and possibly lived with her husband in Chancery Lane; she certainly lived briefly at Ashford, Middlesex in a census. Rebecca Dibben's granddaughter and alleged granddaughter were both born or baptised here.
Surrey - Jane Dibben's two children were born in historic Surrey (Stockwell and Newington), one was baptised at St Matthew Brixton where the massive nightclub now is (in the crypt). Later, in 1851, her niece Rosa from Guernsey would be working here as a nursery nurse - in the town of Reigate, before emigrating overseas. Finally, Jane's eldest child Ellen would ultimately die in this county, in Putney, in her forties.
Wiltshire - Jane Dibben lived here with her first husband in the market town of Marlborough. Her eldest sister is stated to have had a child here, too. Though he was a seafaring man, and it is not a seafaring county.
Devonshire - Mary Dibben had at least one of her children here, Elizabeth in Plymouth in about 1820. It has strong seafaring connections
Herefordshire - Rebecca Dibben's daughter Rebecca Cox found work as a nurse in this county, and married here in 1852 at Little Hereford to the bathing house proprietor of Hove, and it is this marriage which causes many family member to come to Sussex.
Hertfordshire - Jane Dibben settled here with her second husband, barrister Richard Welford. It is likely he commuted into London. He had his own large stables at Goff's Oak House. His previous residence in the county was at Northaw Downs. Jane's elder daughter married here at pebbled St Mary Cheshunt
Kent - this is where Jane Dibben's only surviving child made her home
Warwickshire - Jane Dibben went to live in isolated Allesley, outside Coventry after her husband become district judge. Although he retired here, and her daughter married here, she left for Brighton immediately after his death.

Plus:

Cheshire - this was the home of Rebecca Dibben's son Abraham's in-laws. He stayed with them briefly, but the marriage broke up

There was actually a fourth sister, but she is not as exciting as the others. For starters, she actually gets married in the local church - none of her other sisters do that. In fact all the other sisters have missing marriages. Also - she never branches out on her own. She does visit her sister in Guernsey and of course end up in Sussex, but she is not the trailblazer.

A family history video story has been uploaded to YouTube.

Everything but the Pit Yakkers: Counties Occupied by a Somerset Farming Family

Have you ever dreamt of your descendants occupying the whole of England?*

With scarcely any artistic licence, the Hutton family from Ditcheat, Somerset, stand out for me as having occupied every single English county (bar one - clue is the accent) since the original couple married in 1788. As you'll see the majority of these counties were populated within three generations (number in parentheses) and by folk of the actual name Hutton. These were offspring of the eldest son, by and large, William. Several sons and grandsons managed big estates, which accounts for a new jumping-off point for the next generation.

I have left in Nottinghamshire, as surely somebody from the Warwickshire or Leicestershire families popped across the border at some point or other. This post will self-destruct by 2016 if I haven't found a Nottinghamshire Hutton by then.

I have included counties if someone was documented to have lived there, or if a vital event took place there. Weak counties so far include Bedfordshire (1881 census only) and Cumbria (where a birth happened in 1918).

The list of ceremonial counties are minimised to include all the amalgamated counties of 1974, but none of the new ones that were introduced the same day *wink*. A poncier definition might be - all current ceremonial counties are included, except where these were wholly contained in one or more pre-1974 counties.

Bedfordshire - Harry Hutton (3)
Berkshire - Arthur Alford (4)
Buckinghamshire - Pat Haill (5)
Cambridgeshire - Henry Plaister (2)
Cheshire - Martha Preece (4)
Cornwall - Dawn Cossey (5)
Cumbria - Gladys Hutton (4)
Derbyshire - Alfred Moody (3)
Devon - Richard Plaister (3), David Hutton (5)
Dorset - Mary Hutton (Beck) (4)
Durham (Co) -
Essex - Francis Price (3)
Gloucestershire - Emily Plaister (2), Reginald Hutton (4)
Greater London - Jane Hutton (1), William Plaister (2), Evelyn Hutton (3)
Hampshire - Elizabeth Hutton (Morrish) (1)
Herefordshire - Thomas Hutton (3?), Annie Griffin (4)
Hertfordshire - Annie Price (3)
Huntingdonshire - Mary Plaister (3)
Kent - Edmund Hutton (3)
Lancashire - William Preece (4)
Leicestershire - Philip Hutton (4)
Lincolnshire - Jane Chippett (2)
Middlesex - Mary Chippett (2)
Norfolk - Alfred Morley (5), Molly Snelling (5)
Northamptonshire - Robert King (3), Philip Hutton (4)
Northumberland - Anthony Beck (5)
Nottinghamshire - surely somebody!
Oxfordshire - Maurice Hutton (4)
Shropshire - Thomas Hutton (3)
Somerset - Robert Hutton (2)
Staffordshire - Nellie Moody (4)
Suffolk - Mary King (3), John Preece (4), Ernest Hutton (4)
Surrey - Henry Hutton (2), Arthur Barlow (3)
Sussex - Ellen Hutton (4), Herbert Hutton (4)
Warwickshire - Ellen Hutton (Pullen) (2), Albert Tilling (3)
Wiltshire - Elizabeth Hutton (Preece) (3), Robert Hutton (3)
Worcestershire - William Kingston (5)
Yorkshire - Ethel Snape (4), Ronald Heard (5)

*It is hard work creating catchy first-lines

15 Feb 2015

The Something, The Baker, the er- Mint-cake Maker?

Everyone knows the fiction: get within a dilating pupil of a mountain and you need ridiculous amounts of sugar. Now!

Considering the last relative in Windermere was a mint-cake millionaire, how come we never saw a single SLICE. Or even a photograph of someone else eating a slice.

My aunt writes:
'I was fascinated by all the family news but it has stretched so far that I can only really grasp the Aireys and the Bagshaws. I remember my mother visiting her Atkinson relatives when staying with Auntie Louie who had a parrot.'

Now she gets down to business:
'They went to see the mint cake being made at the factory and my mother having the sweet tooth that you have correctly shown as running through the family, even to its outer-most edges, was disgusted when they were not given a sample or better still a few whopping slabs of the mint cake. Atkinson's meanness was legendary!'

The Atkinson brothers had married into the Aireys (twice in fact). They were based in Windermere, apparently, but this is the first I'd heard of them. In fact, I'd never heard this story before, which seeing as it is about the absence of sweets, rather than sweets themselves is perhaps not surprising. Stingy sweetmakers not being our finest family product.

Rivalling the claim for best family product is our excellent sweet tooth. My dentist hasn't seen me for years as he says there is 'no point'. His busy accounting software beeped several times when I came in - perhaps it knew there was no money to be made here. Five generations of eating baked northern goodies have kept the plaque-monkeys at bay!

There is a business called Country Confectionery in Bowness, which seems to be run by the Atkinsons. It is quite a small shop, but doubtless does a good trade and the above comments concerning 1940s Atkinsons are in no way meant to apply to the current ones (phew). The Kendal Mint Cake by a rival company dwarves the shop in the above illustrations, doesn't it.

Umpteenth cousins Ken and Lorraine couldn't resist calling into a great cafe in Ambleside when they visited. Lots of cakes were consumed. In fact, Ken's Whiteheads were bakers who got ousted from their property in town by the more money-grabbing Airey cousins. Presumably the Whiteheads actually let people eat some of their produce.

Our childhood family holidays centred around amazing moments when Eccles cakes, lardy cake, cream horns, mint humbugs - or our favourite calling point - a sweetshop on a hill in Guildford, all came to fruition and waxed their lyrical bounty.

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