Tag: Genealogy

Surname Saturday: Dunham

The DUNHAM family of Witchford, Cambridgeshire is the subject of today’s Geneabloggers SURNAME SATURDAY meme.

This week’s Surname Saturday post focuses on research I’ve been doing today. This morning I found my link to two new maternal family names, one of which is Dunham (the other is Foreman), so I’ve been typing this entry all day, covering the amount of information that I’ve uncovered in just a few hours.

Witcham church
Witcham parish church, Cambridgeshire, has seen a mixture of building extensions through the years, and more recently removal of headstones to ‘make the grass cutting easier’!

My connection to the Dunham tree happens in Witcham, Cambridgeshire in 1815 when John Hawkins married Jane Dunham. These two people were to become my Gt x 5 Grandparents, with my ancestry following down through their daughter Sarah Hawkins.

John Hawkins, who was illiterate at the time of their 1815 marriage, worked as a labourer. He was born about 1796 in Witcham.

Jane Dunham, who could at least sign her name in 1815, was born in about 1793. At the time of the marriage, the Banns and Marriage entries state that they were ‘otp’ (of this parish), however no trace of Jane could be found in the church records until the Banns.

The censuses

Having found the 1841 census entry for John and Jane, along with their growing brood of children (they had eight in all), the shortcomings of the 1841 census was unable to tell me which village Jane was actually from.

The 1851 census revealed the clue – it was Witchford – a village I have personally had connections to all my life, and in fact I was named after it (it’s St Andrew, although I wasn’t fortunate to be named the ‘Saint’ bit… yet). It’s one where several other of my ancestral families have lived and still do, and many of my ancestors and relatives have been buried.

Witchford, Cambridgeshire
St Andrew’s Church at Witchford, Cambridgeshire, home to yet another ancestral name.

With this piece of information I was able to rummage through the Witchford Parish Register and found Jane’s baptism in January 1794. Her parents were given as William and Alice Dunham.

The family grows

I then looked to see if this Jane had any siblings – with a rummage either side of her own baptism. I found four other siblings – 3 sisters and 1 brother. Having gauged the range of the births, I then crossed my fingers and looked for a William and Alice marriage.

There it was! William Dunham married Alice Foreman in Witchford in June 1789.

Next up was the burials. Another rummage revealed what seemed like an unfortunate picture:

  • William Dunham – he appears to have died in 1844, outliving all but his daughter Jane.
  • Alice Dunham (née Foreman) – died age 52 in 1821.
    • Elizabeth Dunham – the oldest, born in 1790. She died weeks later.
    • Alice Dunham – Born abt 1791, died in 1800.
    • Jane Dunham – my descendant, born 1793 – married John Hawkins.
    • William Dunham – Born abt 1797, appears to have died in 1799.
    • Rebecca Dunham – Born 1799, died 1800.

From this, it appears that after marrying Alice, they both have undergone insurmountable pain and heartache by outliving all of their children apart from my ancestor, Jane Dunham.

There’s no indication as to why the children died – disease? prematurity? harsh conditions? malnutrition? The possibilities could be anything at this period in history where life expectancy for adults wasn’t as it is today, and infant mortality rates were still high.

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.

Thomas Head
Thomas Head and his wife, who remarried.

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….

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

William Yarrow and his wife Elizabeth
Elizabeth Yarrow (née Wright) seems to have died and been buried more than once.

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

Mary Watlington (formerly Martin, formerly Crisp, née Tingey)
Mary Watlington (formerly Martin, formerly Crisp, née Tingey)

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).

Knotting, Bedfordshire
St Margaret’s Church, Knotting

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.

FREE: Family History guide and cd-rom with The Telegraph

Free Family History step-by-step guide and CD-rom inside every copy of The Telegraph on 19th and 20th February 2011.

In association with Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, The Telegraph are giving away a step-by-step Family Tree guide and CD-rom, that will help you to trace your ancestors in only 14 days. Find out more about these great gifts at The Telegraph website.

Free Family History guide with The Telegraph

If that’s not enough, the fifth Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE event takes place at London’s Olympia between 25th and 27th February. I’m going to be going along on Friday 25th in a bid to catch talks by Monty Don and Tony Robinson.

Surname Saturday: GIDDINGS

Surname Saturday – it’s the turn of the Giddings family from Fleet, Lincolnshire and later from March, Cambridgeshire.

My Giddings ancestry from Lincolnshire and later from Cambridgeshire provides me with one of my favourite photographs in my collection.

Elizabeth Giddings (1831-19??)

At some point between October 1791 and December 1793 my 5x Great Grandparents Thomas Giddings and his wife Rebecca (née Watson) left the village of Fleet on the border of Lincolnshire and brought their family of at most 3 children to March, Cambridgeshire.

By 1798 the couple had grown the family to 5 children with the youngest, Daniel Watson Giddings (my Gt x4 grandfather) having been born that year.

The Giddings family appear to have been Baptists, attending The Providence Baptist Church in March – this is certainly the place of many of their appearances in parish records.

Illegitimacy

In 1852, my Gt x3 Grandmother Elizabeth Giddings (pictured) gave birth to my Gt x2 Grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth Giddings. This must have been a real test for both Elizabeth and Sarah as illegitimacy was heavily frowned upon during this period and both mother and child would have bore the weight of the ‘disgust’ of the community they lived in. Elizabeth would have been encouraged to marry. Despite this, Elizabeth remained unmarried for another 10 years, finally marrying a Charles Lincoln from Potton, Bedfordshire in 1862. Together they had a daughter, Jane.

Tragedy

Sarah Elizabeth married my Gt x2 Grandfather James Martin from Little Downham, Cambridgeshire and the couple settled down to rear a family of 13 children. Sarah must have been as tough as her mother, as she saw six of her children plus a son-in-law and daughter-in-law all go to the grave in her lifetime. One son died as an infant, another was killed when he fell from a horse as a working child. She then lost a daughter and son-in law, and two sons as a result of the First World War. I’m unsure of the cause of death for one of her daughters and her daughter-in-law. All in all, Sarah and her family suffered terrible losses.

Sarah died just five years after her mother in 1925, aged 72 years at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Surname Saturday: TRUELOVE

Surname Saturday theme : Truelove of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.

The Truelove surname is one of my favourites. More so when I discovered that my Truelove ancestor married someone with the surname of Goodsole. You can only imagine that they were therefore the ideal couple.

The earliest record of my Truelove ancestry is John Truelove and his marriage in 1671 to Eleanor Goodsole in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.

John is noted as a tailor and other than this scrap of information, I’ve yet to find anything else for certain about him. I’ve received a copy of a handwritten tree but this gives his death in October 1751 in Potton, Bedfordshire. I find this difficult to believe as in 1671 he would have been in his late teens or early 20s (an average guess there), which means that by 1751 he would have been around 100 years old. I’m guessing that the 1751 death may have been a son or nephew, rather than he himself.

His birth is currently elusive although I admit that I have yet to check the Leighton Buzzard records in person. However, those who I believe are his parents – Edward Truelove and Joan Pratt were married in the parish in 1654. There is one John Truelove born in 1649 to an Edward Truelove, but this is in Bishopsgate, London. If this was him, then it would appear that Edward (at the age of just 17) fathered him with a woman named Elizabeth. If this idea is correct, then Joan Pratt would be John’s step-mother.

John and Eleanor had six known child – including Elizabeth (my ancestor) who went on to marry William Hale of Knotting, Bedfordshire, and my brief coverage of my Truelove ancestry passes on.

Littleport Society announce 2010-2011 meetings calendar

I’ve just received the Summer 2010 (Issue 77) of The Littleport Society magazine and with it came the calendar of their meetings at the Village Hall in Littleport from 7.30pm.

They are as follows, but please note that you should check before travelling and I take no-responsibility for any changes made to the line-up below. Non-members are always welcome.

2010:

  • 7th Sept: Brian Jones – “William Harrison the Fenland Poet”
  • 5th Oct: Veronica Bennet – “The National Trust Properties of Cambridgeshire”
  • 2nd Nov: Stephen Kelley – “Life in Britain during WWII”
  • 7th Dec: Iain Harvey – Christmas organ concert – this will be in St George’s Church rather than the village hall.

2011

  • 4th Jan: Ken Wallace – “Autogyros and other flying adventures”
  • 1st Feb: AGM and Members’ Short Talks
  • 1st Mar: Janet Morris – “19th Century Rural Paintings”
  • 5th Apr: Les Millgate – “The History of RAF Duxford”
  • 3rd May: Tony Kirby – “Technology and the Victorians”
  • 7th Jun: Susan Oosthuizen – “Cambridgeshire from the air”
  • 5th Jul: Michelle Bullivant – “Poison and powder – cosmetics through the ages”

Visiting the tree of knowledge

In May this year, I return to education.

I’ve been toying with it for years but I finally sent off the paperwork (and cheque!), so I begin my way up the Undergraduate ladder.

At the moment, my first module of study could lead me to a BA in History, a BA in Humanities or even an Open Degree (that would enable me to study both History and Psychology and would award a BA or BSc depending on how many points in which type of study modules I am awarded most).

My first module is in Family History and will see me looking at things like deciphering photography, primary sources and secondary sources.