L - Lafayette Nathaniel Norman

Lafayette was born in 1868 in Winthrop, Buchanan, Iowa. He was the tenth child of Nicholas Norman and Mary nee Taylor. His parents had come to America as young adults in about 1847. Mary with her family and Nicholas apparently working his passage as crew. According to family lore, they knew each other distantly in Somerset but were not aware of the travel plans each of them had. They met again by chance when Nicholas’ ship was wrecked, and the one Mary’s family were travelling on was part of the rescue.

They married in 1849 in Bloomdale, Wood, Ohio where Mary’s family had gone immediately after arriving in America. Most of their older children were born in Ohio before the family settled in Winthrop.

A couple of years after Nicholas went to America, his brother-in-law followed him to Ohio. Once established about a year later, his wife – Nicholas’ sister – followed with their young children. Clement Warren, Lafayette’s uncle, was drafted in Bloomfield in 1863 and fought in the American Civil War which went from1861-1865. Did Lafayette’s father also fight in the war?

What prompted his parents to name him after the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the War of Independence fought almost a century before he was born. Nicholas was a farmer; did he stay on the farm and not join up to fight in the civil war? Perhaps, naming his sons born during and just after the war was meant to be a symbol of his patriotism. Perhaps Lafayette’s elder brother Grant was named for Ulysses Grant famous for leading the Union Army to victory in the civil war and a citizen of Ohio. I have seen instances in other families of children being named for Lafayette and George Washington, possibly for a similar reason.

Lafayette spent most of his life in Winthrop and Byron Iowa. He married twice; with his first wife Lillian he had two daughters. He was employed by the Post Office and on most censuses gave his occupation as Cashier in a Bank. Lillian died in 1926 aged fifty-eight.

Just a year after her death, Lafayette remarried.  His new wife was seventeen years younger than him, just five years older than his eldest daughter. They had one son born the following year and named Lafayette Nathaniel, like his father. His new bride was also a widow and brought her two children with her into the family. In 1930 they were living at Lake Worth, Palm Beach, Florida, but returned to Winthrop by October 1933 when Lafayette died aged sixty-four.

Kind of cool that having been gifted his father’s name Lafayette Jnr raised his family in Independence, Buchanan, Iowa.

Lafayette’s grandchildren would be fourth cousins to my Dad – fourth cousins once removed to me – that’s not too distant at all in the grand scheme of life. Do you know these people? Are they in your tree? Can you help me fill in some gaps?

 

 

J - James Cording

James was the third son of Edward Cording and Mellony, nee Townsend. He was born in Carhampton, Somerset in 1834 and baptised a month later at Timberscombe St the Bible Christian Chapel. 

According to his obituary in The Pantograph (Bloomington, Illinois) he emigrated to Canda in 1858 and moved to Illinois, USA in 1862. I have not found passenger lists to confirm that arrival date, but on 1 January 1859 he married Eliza Norman whose family had also emigrated to Canada in the 1850s. The Normans were from Luxborough in Somerset, about 5 miles from Carhampton. Were James and Eliza an item prior to emigration, did they form a relationship on board ship, or after arrival in the new colony?

James and Eliza had a family of eight children. Their first daughter was born in Hamilton Ontario, but the remaining seven arrived in Illinois; in Centralia, Marion County and then mostly in Livingston County in Strawn and Forrest. As in England, James was farming in Forrest.

By the time of the 1870 census his elder brother John had also emigrated and was living with is wife and children on the adjacent farm. It would see that John had arrived between 1863-1870. A couple of years later in 1872 a younger brother Albert emigrated and around the same time Eliza’s brother William travelled back to England and married James’ younger sister before returning with her to Illinois between 1872-1874.

By the late 1890s James and Eliza’s siblings’ families had spread as far as Michigan, Canada and California with the majority remaining in Illinois. Their own children lived mostly in Forrest.

Eliza was badly injured in the major rail disaster at Chatsworth on 10 August 1887. Her sister Emma was one of the victims. She died in 1912 and James in 1925 and are both buried at the Forrest Township Cemetery.

I am connected to James’ family through his wife Eliza. Her father Richard was a brother of my great great great grandfather William Norman.

Are any of these people your people? Let me know if you think we might have a connection.

 

 

 

The Family of William Norman and Sarah Vickery

On Friday 19 December 1817 at St Mary Magdalene in the tiny village of Withiel Florey in Somerset a wedding took place. Just three days before the winter solstice. It was the only marriage that year, in fact it was 15 months since a wedding had been celebrated there. Four days earlier William Norman accompanied by his future brother-in-law had been granted a license after swearing an oath to the Lord Bishop of Bath & Wells. William was from Huish Champflower a neighbouring parish to his bride. The license states both bride and groom were upwards of twenty one years…the church record says they were married by license with the consent of parents. Both William and Sarah signed their own names in the register.

Why would consent be required if they were both of age ? Perhaps it was because William and his bride Sarah Vickery were first cousins.  William’s father and Sarah’s mother were brother and sister. Theirs was a family deeply rooted, like many in this branch of my tree, in the parishes on either side of the border between Devon and Somerset on or near the Brendon Hills and Exmoor.

Sarah and William spent the early years of their marriage farming at Tripp Farm in Clatworthy.

It was there in 1818 that their first child was born just three months after the death of Sarah’s mother. In her honour they named their daughter Jane Vickery Norman. They farmed there for at least six years before moving to Treborough where they lived and farmed at Chapmans Farm. By the time they arrived in Treborough they had three children: Jane, Marianne (Mary Ann/Marian) and William. Another daughter Elisabeth had lived just 15 weeks. A further two daughters, Sarah and Caroline completed their family at Chapman’s.

At Chapmans, the census in 1851 recorded that there were 260 acres and that William was employing 3 labourers.

Marianne was the first of their children to marry. On 8 October 1846 she married Thomas Davys of Kingston in the parish of Raddington. Her siblings Jane and William were witnesses to the marriage. Two pages later in the church record, Jane and William were witnesses to another marriage. This time Sarah married James Davys, the younger brother of Marianne’s husband, on 18 January 1849. On the same page, four months later Jane married Joseph Partridge on 12 April. James Davys was a witness this time along with William. Turn the pages a couple more times – 1852 was a popular year for marriages in Treborough and there is Caroline’s marriage to Thomas Langdon Norman, a first cousin, on 24 June. This time George Sutton was the witness alongside William. Thomas Norman’s father was a brother of Caroline’s father, William.

William married Mary Dommett Raddon in Exeter, Devon in 1860, they had one daughter and lived most of their married life in Bristol where William was a publican running the Bell Inn in Hillgrove Street for a number of years before retiring to Nailsea.

After her marriage Jane and her husband farmed at Monkham Farm near Luxborough. They had just two sons before Joseph died in 1853. Jane stayed and ran the farm, her parents came to live there too until their deaths. William died 12 April 1874 and Sarah 1 January 1881. Jane died at Monkham Farm 30 July 1887.

Marianne and Thomas lived at Kingston which he had inherited from his father and grandfather. They had a large family of six daughters and three sons. Two of the sons died young, the third trained as a jeweller and had a business in Truro, Cornwall. They spent some years away from farming in the drapery business in Bristol, but returned to Kingston for the last twenty years of their lives.

James and Sarah lived first at Nethercott Farm in Lydeard St Lawrence. They were there on the 1851 census where James was farming 80 acres of land and employing 1 labourer. On census night Sarah’s younger sister Caroline was visiting and they were parents to one son. Their second son would arrive 6 months later. I had hoped that birth certificates might reveal their places of residence so that I could create a timeline, but no. For the first four children just the parish of their birth was recorded. However sons number 3 & 4 were baptised at Bathealton and their birth certificates state Milverton - which is a sizeable parish - as their birthplace, which suggest that home was no longer Nethercott. They were at Hurstone by 1857 though as the three youngest children are recorded as being born there. On census night 1861 they were at Hurstone with their family of six boys. Just one month after the census they would welcome their first daughter, however Caroline lived just 7 months.

It was Hurstone they left behind, servants and all, when they joined the growing emigration movement, packed up their family and set off for New Zealand in 1862. It has been suggested that James was left £600 by his grandmother, in contrast Thomas as the eldest son was left the lease of Kingston. This endowment, it has been speculated was possibly used to fund the move and establish James and Sarah’s new life in New Zealand.

Their plans did not initially come to fruition, but they were obviously made of tough stuff. Three more children completed the family after their arrival in New Zealand, one born in Auckland and the youngest two in the Coromandel where gold was the lure. Farming was something they knew and they pursued this endeavour in the Tuhikaramea area near Hamilton.

It was in Thames that Caroline, her husband and young daughter joined James and Sarah, arriving in Auckland in 1864. Sadly Caroline died at Shellback Creek near Tararu on the Thames Coast just 5 years later. Caroline & Thomas’ daughter Harriett married her first cousin, James and Sarah’s second son.

Other members of the wider Norman family were also emigrating from England, several cousins and an uncle went to Canada and America – some even fought in the Civil War. I’m sure there are others too – I just haven’t found them yet. 

Drapery was big business it seems and several other members of the Norman family and the Davys family were in this industry in the 1800s – another area I need to research further and record. Time permitting there are more new blog posts under development.

I have some other posts about members of the wider family, or which mention them if you are interested to read them while you wait for me to get organised.  The Great Chatsworth Rail Disaster  . YMCA and Land - there may be others.

I have made a map it still needs a bit of tweaking but for now using the link should allow you to move about the locations I have talked about.

N - Norman

Were the Normans Normans ?

Certainly their surname suggests they could be. A bit unoriginal though. Perhaps they were Anglo-Saxon serfs, who took their name from the landowner to whom they were tied.

I like to think that my Norman ancestors did have roots in Normandy. They lived in Huish Champflower and the surrounding parishes which sounds a bit French but is actually Old English. Huish referring to a household or hide of land and Champflower apparently refers to the family who owned it in the 12^th century. If that is so then why is it called such in the Domesday Book completed in the 11^th century ?

In the Domesday book the parish is part of the land held by Roger Arundel.

“Roger himself holds HUISH CHAMPFLOWER. Aethelric held it in TRE and it paid geld for 2 hides and 3 virgates of land. There is land for 12 ploughs. In demesne there are 2 ploughs and 5 slaves; and 20 villans and 6 bordars with 6 ploughs. There is a mill rendering 12d, and 20 acres of meadow, and 60 acres of woodland, [and] pasture 1 league long and half a league broad. It was worth £6; now £7.”

By the 18^th century our Normans don’t appear to have been landed gentry, but many of them were farmers employing a number of labourers to work the land. Possibly that would place them socially as villans were they there and counted in the Domesday Book, and assuming they retained their social standing through the years. But if they had been slaves they might have taken their name from their “master” and later worked their way up the social ladder.

Church records and the research started by earlier genealogists in the family in the 1970-1980s, have traced the family back to the early 1700’s. Not a great deal survives earlier than that – and DNA evidence starts to get pretty sketchy around there too.

The common ancestors who most trees DNA and non-DNA seem to settle on are Richard Norman baptised 1719 at Stogumber and his wife Sarah Long. They were married in the church at Clatworthy, after banns, on 24 December 1747 and had at least 5 children. The baptisms of some of the children record their place of residence as “Huish.” Richard’s parents are possibly John Norman and Elizabeth Nation who married on 30 May 1717 at Stogumber, another neighbouring parish, and had about 8 children.

Two of Richard and Sarah’s children are my 5 x great-grandparents. (Pedigree collapse is real in my tree)

Jane born in early 1754 married John Vickery (from another Huish Champflower family) at St Peter, Huish Champflower on 14 December 1774. They had 10 or so children a number of whom died in infancy. Their daughter Sarah born 14 November 1789 at Huish Champflower married her cousin William Norman.

William’s parents were Robert Norman (Jane’s younger brother born late 1760) & Jane Venn who had married at Clatworthy on 8 May 1782. Robert and Jane had a large family of 12 children, most of whom married into other local families, Langdon, Darch, Sellick…

By the mid 1800’s many of the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of those common ancestors Richard and Sarah had emigrated across the globe to the colonies; Canada, America, New Zealand and more than likely Australia ('though I haven’t found them yet !)

#52Ancestors, Disaster

August 10, 1887.

Three things happened on this day, and one thing didn’t. The first two seemingly unconnected.

Grass fires were set by section men along the Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway.

An excursion train left Peoria between 7.00pm and 8.00pm stopping at stations on the way for passengers who had paid $7.50 for the round trip to Niagara Falls.

It was summer, the grass was dry and the weather warm and windy.

Now here is the thing that did NOT happen: nobody checked the fires – the foreman although he had been instructed to do so, did not.

The excursion to Niagara Falls was very popular and the train was at maximum capacity. Many passengers had come from Iowa to take the trip and some planned to go on to Canada and New York. Emma Duckett, wife of the local doctor in Forrest and her sister Eliza Cording were just two of the hundreds of ticket holders,  and boarded the train in Forrest. Reports say it was speeding along at about 35-40 miles per hour as it crossed the Livingston county line, trying to make up for lost time.

The train was due to arrive at Chatsworth at 10.23pm but was running late and it was about 11.45pm when it finally got there, stopping for a few minutes before carrying on into the night.

Between Chatsworth and Piper City there was a shallow ditch, about 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep. The railroad crossed this via wooden trestle bridge. The ditch, a dry stream bed, was filled with dry timber and leaves.

Remember the unchecked fires ? 

By the time the driver saw the burning trestle it was too late. The first engine crossed the bridge, but its weight caused the bridge to collapse behind it. The second engine rammed into the bank, cars crashed into each other piling thirty feet high. The sleeping cars at the rear were not as badly damaged. The second engineer’s watch stopped at 11.54pm.

Emma was one of the 80 passengers who were killed outright. A further 120, including her sister, were injured. Initially estimations of the loss of life were far greater and it was reported that Eliza was also among the dead. The first relief train arrived from Forrest about an hour later, Dr Daniel Duckett was amongst the group on board. One of the first bodies he came upon was that of his wife.

Others had run from Chatsworth and Piper City to help. Women bought linen and bandages for the wounded and assisted where they could. It started to rain at about 3.30am and rained until dawn almost two hours later. Some of the wounded and some bodies were taken by train to Chatsworth early in the morning. People arrived at the scene through the night and into the next day, searching and hoping to find their loved ones.

That other not so endearing side of human nature was evident at the crash site too. Opportunists stealing from the dead and wounded; in some cases leaving nothing to identify the person by. Photographers from the newspapers turned their backs on the suffering and turned their cameras on the ruins. I am often shocked at the invasiveness of today's media, of the relentless pursuit of paparazzi to get the “money” shot. Seems things weren’t so different 150 or so years ago.

Emma Venn Norman was born about September 1847 in Luxborough, Somerset England. Her father was the youngest brother of my 3 times great grandfather; she was a first cousin of my 2 times great grandmother. Emma emigrated with her parents and siblings between 1851 and 1859 to Canada and later to Michigan and Illinois. On 10 July 1869 she married Daniel Duckett in Livingston county Illinois and they had two (possibly three) children. Daniel died a few short years later in 1890. Their son went on to study medicine and followed in his father’s footsteps.

There are many accounts in newspapers all over the US of the trainwreck, even in New Zealand papers (albeit in October). I wonder if my great great grandmother saw the reports. Did anybody write back to England telling the cousins they barely remembered of their devastation ? Did anyone pass on that sad news to her cousin Sarah in New Zealand ? Perhaps Sarah never knew what fate delivered to her kin that day.

Google will find you lots of information if you are wanting to read more.