Wordless Wednesday
The Geneabloggers meme Wordless Wednesday.
Tombstone Tuesday: Head
TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: Continuing the Geneabloggers meme with a headstone in Barkway, Hertfordshire for Thomas Head and his wife Sarah Cane, formerly Head.
This headstone belonging initially to Thomas Head stood out – he was joined by his wife upon her death, who is noted as his widow but had become the wife of another man.
This is the first time i’ve seen a stone recognising a later relationship – which leads me to wonder where George Cane was buried….
SOLVED: Elizabeth Levitt Where Are You?
Genealogy solved! John, Elizabeth and Richard Levitt have been found – hiding as a ‘Harding’ in the 1871 Swaffham Bulbeck census from Cambridgeshire.
Last night, after posting about how I was struggling to find some Levitt relatives on the 1871 census, I stumbled across them.
I’d spent quite some time trawling through records on sites like FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.co.uk and FindMyPast. I even manually went through each folio scan one-by-one, courtesy of my copy of the 1871 census for Cambridgeshire from S&N Genealogy. There was no sign of them at all in Swaffham Bulbeck.
Assuming that all three had perhaps eluded the census enumerator (as a few people did), despite being in the same place before and after this census, I gave up and put them aside for another rainy day.
One last little search on Ancestry.co.uk just before retiring for bed saw me searching very vaguely for any John and Elizabeth in Cambridgeshire 1871 with a John being born in 1838 or 1839.
A list of search results appeared and nothing remotely Levitt, Livett, Levet, Levit etc stood out. So I thought that I would just work my way through a few and started clicking to view the census returns regardless of the surname it had turned up – after-all I had exhausted all other search ideas.
John and Elizabeth Harding were just one of these, and after clicking through and staring at the census return for a few seconds, I noticed that Elizabeth Skeel was living immediately next-door aged 90.
This was significant as Elizabeth Skeel was an ancestor – that was certain. She was the mother of the Elizabeth Levitt that I was looking for.
I then noticed that one of the Hardings was a 27yr old unmarried Richard S Harding. Again, Richard Skeel Levitt never married and would have been 27yrs old.
I’d found them!
So who were the Hardings? Well, amongst John and Elizabeth Levitt’s children was an Ann Maria Levitt born about 1841. She went on to marry a George Hunt Harding. This fact help me unravel what I was staring at.
John ‘Harding’ was noted as the ‘Head’ of the household, with Elizabeth ‘Harding’ noted as his wife. Then, the unmarried Richard S ‘Harding’ was listed as the son. Following him was the married Ann Harding noted as the daughter, and lastly two children noted as ‘grandson/granddaughter’.
This doesn’t exactly make sense. At first glance, you might have thought that Richard and Ann were married with two children and were living with his parents. If Ann was Richard’s wife, then she would have usually been noted as something like ‘son’s wife’ or ‘daughter-in-law’. Noticing Richard’s marital status was the final piece of the jigsaw.
One question here is though, and maybe it was one that confused the enumerator, was that whilst Ann Harding is noted as married, there’s no sign of her husband George. I’ve started looking for him, but as yet, he’s missing… so the search starts again!
WANTED: Dead Or Alive
Killing off your relatives is a crucial part of your work…. as a genealogist, not as a marauding tyrant.
I’m hoping that aside from in genealogy, that there’s nowhere else where the mark of a successful day is one where you’ve killed off a load of your relatives.
Anyone tracing their family tree is sure to stumbled across at least one elusive relative at some point in their research. That relative will cause them to spend many hours following potential leads and plenty of head scratching and brow creasing before either solving or putting it off until a rainier day.
This is a routine I know well.
Help! My Grandmother was a zombie
I’ve recently struggled to kill off a maternal 4x Great Grandmother called Elizabeth Yarrow (née Wright), who appears to have died twice (about 2yrs apart) and been buried – in neighbouring parishes (!). Her death(s) fall right at the start of Death Certification in England and Wales. One of them is even noted as being in London and that her body was carried back on the train.
However, there’s seemingly no death certificate for her (the only one that matched in name turned out to be a baby), and parish records and the gravestone all contradict eachother.
The hidden Grandparents and Uncle
I’m currently struggling to find a my paternal Gtx4 Grandparents John Levitt with Elizabeth (née Skeel), and one of their sons Richard Skeel Levitt, during the 1871 census. I can find the rest of their children, but for some reason in 1871 they vanish.
I have them living in the same parish in all the censuses before and after this particular one. So, did they elude the enumerator? Were they away somewhere? – and if so, why don’t they appear somewhere else?
The surname has many variants but having done some pretty vague searches and very specific ones too, they remain elusive. Richard never married and seems to stick with his parents until their death, after which he goes to live with his other unmarried brother. It’s odd that all three seem to be missing.
The Serial Bride
Okay, to be fair, three marriages is probably nothing compared to some, but Mary Tingey surprised me. Born in 1820, she married to John Crisp in 1846. He died soon after their son was born. Within 4 years she had remarried to widower James Martin (my Gtx3 Grandfather) in 1850 and the following year they started their own family. After 5 children – with seemingly just one surviving (my ancestor) tuberculosis and scarlet fever, and then the tragic train accident that claimed her husband, Mary lived alone as a widow. I’d hunted for her death for some time, but the searches were unsuccessful.
I hadn’t considered that instead of being buried somewhere out of step with the rest of her family or that she had been recorded for some reason under an earlier name, that she had remarried. One evening I stumbled across the marriage in 1877 with 57yr old widow Mary Martin, formerly Crisp (née Tingey) becoming the second Mrs Matthew Watlington. To add to the confusion, the new surname occasionally appears as Watling.
Check, check, check and then cross-check…. again…
These are just three of several situations where I’ve struggled to solve a puzzle. Whilst I know that checking and cross-checking is absolutely crucial to accurately recording your genealogy, it can be all too easy to accept even documentation and gravestones of the time as being accurate.
I’d like to say that I’ve learnt my lesson the hard way… but I say that every time it happens.
Surname Saturday: HALE
Continuing the Surname Saturday genealogy blogging meme by looking at the HALE family of Knotting and Potton, Bedfordshire.
For this Surname Saturday entry, I’m going right back to the late 17th century to tell you about the Hale family from a small village on the Bedfordshire/Northamptonshire border.
In 1660, with the death of Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of Charles II still fresh in people’s minds, a William Hale (b.c. 1621) and his wife Elizabeth from the tiny village of Knotting had welcomed their son Thomas into the world. By 12th August of that year he had been christened in the parish church. It’s not known yet whether Thomas had any siblings but I suspect that he probably did as there are some other Hales in the same village at the same time (a William and Eleanor Hale are having children in the same parish during the same period).
On 14th September 1686, when Thomas Hale was about 26yrs old, he married Bathsheba Jennell at Knotting parish church. Sadly, within 10 months he became a widower with Bathsheba being buried at Knotting on 21st August 1687. Research notes at FamilySearch.org show the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth in 1687, whom I’m assuming was the daughter of Bathsheba. Perhaps she died during or as a consequence of Elizabeth’s birth?
By 1689, Thomas had remarried to a woman known only (so far) as Elizabeth (possibly Elizabeth Fairy or Elizabeth Westcot – the Knotting parish registers will hopefully reveal this), and on 4th July the family returned to the Knotting parish church to christen their new son William Hale. William appears to have been the first of at least 10 children for this new family, with Giles Hale being the youngest born in 1703.
William worked as a tailor. By 1706, he had met and married Elizabeth Truelove in Potton. It was here that the couple made their home, bearing 11 children, starting with Elizabeth Hale in 1707 and ending with John Hale in 1725.
It appears that William died in 1730, with his wife following him to the grave in 1735.
The 1911 census for Knotting included a Mr Hale.
Stretham Old Engine
The Stretham Old Engine.
It’s been there on my horizon every time I visit my parents. Every time I pass it, I think ‘I’ll visit that soon’. By complete chance, today was that day.
The Stretham Old Engine, which sits on the banks of the Old West River is now in the hands of The Stretham Engine Trust, who open it for a few days each year to the public. By complete chance, I happened to find the website and saw that it was open this afternoon.
Long gone are its days of steam – the engine became redundant when it was replaced by electric pumps along the bank of The River Cam. However, this doesn’t stop The Trust from lovingly taking care of this beautiful example of industrial innovation.
Years ago, someone told me that there was a Yarrow mentioned on a plaque here. This had slipped my mind until I was already driving through Wilburton on my way to Stretham village.
Sure enough, there on the front of the engine room, sits a plaque to commemorate the building’s construction in 1831. Amongst the names, is a ‘J Yarrow’ listed as one of the commissioners.
Whether this ‘J Yarrow’ is John Yarrow or James Yarrow, I’m unsure, but both would have had an interest in the drainage of the fens as the family were substantial land owners in the area.
Whilst the guidebook and exhibits don’t appear to mention the full name of Mr Yarrow, and there’s no mention of who it might be online, I’m sure that there’s some documents somewhere that will soon provide the answer as to the full names of those commissioners.
It’s nice to feel that my family played a pivotal role in shaping this part of the landscape.
Check out the rest of my photos and a video of part of the engine in action.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
Her Majesty the Queen has given Prince William and Catherine Middleton the title of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their wedding day.
Her Majesty the Queen has given Prince William and Catherine Middleton the titles Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
The announcement ends months of speculation as to whether the title would be chosen as the couple’s new title after today’s royal wedding.
The announcement follows just two days after the Queen visited Cambridge to open a new plant science laboratory and to visit St John’s College.
The previous Duke of Cambridge
The giving of titles on wedding days is a long tradition in the royal family.
The last Duke of Cambridge was Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge. He was the son of Prince Adolphus the 7th son of King George III. He was born at Cambridge House in Hanover, Germany on 26th March 1819.
Prince George inherited the title of Duke of Cambridge upon the death of his father in 1850. However, Prince George had no legitimate heirs, despite having married and raised children. George married in 1847 to Sarah Fairbrother – an actress – the daughter of a servant in Westminster. Their marriage was done privately which therefore contravened the 1772 Royal Marriages Act.
This meant that the marriage did not exist in British Law and therefore his bride would not be granted the title of Duchess of Cambridge or ‘Her Royal Highness’, and she would not be recognised by Queen Victoria.
This in turn meant that their children were illegitimate and therefore not deemed as heirs to the dukedom titles or to the throne. The title consequently became extinct upon Prince George’s death in 1904.
The new Duke and Duchess titles start from Prince William’s marriage to Catherine Middleton on 29th April 2011.
- Announcement of titles (www.royal.gov.uk)
Wordless Wednesday
Wordless Wednesday
Surname Saturday: FREEMAN
Surname Saturday takes a look at the FREEMAN surname in Cambridgeshire.
An old name that stretches as far back as the Middle Ages.
Dating from at least the Middle Ages, it is widely believed
Distribution
In 1881, there were 19,124 people with the surname in Great Britain, ranking the surname as the 197th most common surname. Current estimates suggest that it hasn’t changed very much at all, with 24,892 (an increase of just over 5,000), placing it as the 208th most common surname. Over in the USA, there’s an estimated 162,686 people with the surname.
1891 statistics from Ancestry.co.uk show that the distribution of the surname gave a few concentration areas in England.
Freeman in Cambridgeshire
The most recent Freeman ancestor in my tree was Mary Ann Freeman, born in Prickwillow – a village close to Ely, in Cambridgeshire in 1837. She was the oldest of ten children of John Freeman and his wife Mary Grey.
Mary Ann married Edward Moden, an agricultural worker of Coveney. Together they had six children, the last of which (my ancestor) was born four months after Edward’s death in 1867. Mary Ann, with a large but young family, remained widowed until 1871 when she re-married to David Seymour in Coveney. A few months later, the family had moved to Green’s Farm in Ely, and they welcomed their first child together, followed in 1874 by their last child.
Mary Ann’s parents, John and Mary, were from Prickwillow and Ely respectively. John was one of 11 children of John Freeman and his wife Phoebe of Coveney. John (snr) was in turn, one of seven children of William Freeman and his wife Sarah, again of Coveney. Prior to this generation, the family remain a little tricky to locate, with only a few speculative possibilities – but all in Cambridgeshire.
Freeman as a middle name
There are two occasions in my tree, one of which is an ancestor, where the surname has been used as a middle name. Whilst middle names were often the maiden name of the child’s maternal side, which fits for John Freeman Moden, whose mother was the Mary Ann Freeman detailed above. The same cannot be said for John Freeman Dewey.
John Freeman Dewey (b.1856) was illegitimate. Therefore, the use of the name could be a nod to his paternity, like in the case of Sabina Steadman Taylor. Alternatively, the choice of ‘Freeman’ could easily just hark back to the origins of the name – ‘a free man’ (of no master – or father). The identity of John’s father remains, and probably always will, a mystery.
Happy Anniversary Ernest and Maude
On this day in 1929: Ernest Herbert Barber married Maude Yarrow at Wilburton, Cambridgeshire.
On this day in 1929, my maternal great grandparents; Ernest Herbert Barber (1902-1983) and Maude Yarrow (1899-2004) were married at St Peter’s Church, Wilburton, Cambridgeshire.
I was very lucky to have known them both well, as well as Maude’s siblings who appear here as bridesmaids. One of which (Agnes, far right) is still alive today.
Happy Anniversary!
History Repeating 