U - Unknown

I have an overwhelming number of people in my tree called Unknown. I knew they were there, but doing this A-Z challenge searching for people to write about has dramatically brought the situation to the forefront.

Unknown spouses, unknown surnames, specifically unknown maiden names of spouses, unknown children. Some are unknown because the records don’t exist or in the case of many women, they are never given an identity – just considered a chattel of their husbands.

Others are forced to be unknown because although there are records, we are paralysed in our research by the 100-year rule and unable to confirm names and events.

I need to do something about this to make my tree as complete as I can. So, my challenge for the next wee while will be to pick away at the list and see if I can give some of them an identity.

If you are looking for me, that’s where I will be, standardising place name formats and reducing the number of unknown people in the tree.

T - Tabitha Turtle

Tabitha was born on 29 June 1831 in St Marylebone, Westminster. On her baptism record on 7 August that year at All Souls her father is recorded as a Servant and Chandler and the family were living at 22 Harley Mews. Tabitha was the eldest known child of Thomas Turtle/Turtell/Tuttle and his wife Ann nee Boddington. Her parents were both from Oxfordshire and had married at Christ Church, Southwark, Surrey on 7 August 1828.

DNA matches link Tabitha to my family through the Boddingtons with her mother likely to have been a sister of my great great great grandmother Hannah.

By the time of the 1841 census Tabitha has 4 younger siblings, there was a fifth who had died aged about fourteen months. At this time the family seems to be one of six families living in one building in Upper York Street, perhaps a tenement. Thomas is only recorded as a male servant.

In 1851 Tabitha is employed as a Parlour Maid to the Vicar in Peasmarsh Sussex. Her father and brother were still in St Marylebone, lodging with a husband and wife in Little George Street where the head of the house was a Coachman and Thomas was recorded as a Cab Driver. Her sister Maria is a scholar at the Parochial School in New Road Sy Marylebone, and Rebecca the youngest sibling is living with an aunt and uncle in Standlake Oxfordshire. I have been unable to find either her mother or her sister Ann in 1851. Perhaps they had died and this is why the family were spread across four different households at the time of the census.

In 1856 Tabitha and her sister Maria emigrated to South Australia arriving at Port Adelaide on the Fitzjames on New Years Eve 1856. Two years later she married John Hooker. They had one child before he died in Kapunda in 1860 aged thirty-nine. Very soon after his death Tabitha remarried to Thomas Cook.

Two years later, Tabitha’s youngest sister joined them in South Australia, sailing on the Sir John Lawrence, the first ship to arrive under a new Emigration Scheme.

But what happened next? There is a death in New Zealand for a Tabitha Jane Cook under suspicious circumstances in 1875, but the age doesn’t quite fit to be this Tabitha. But then information on death certificates is notorious for being error filled.

Do you know the Turtle/Turtell/Tuttle family? Can you help me?

S - Sarah Elizabeth Laney

There are two people in my tree with this name. My great great grandmother, born in Nelson New Zealand in 1850 and her first cousin born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire in 1839.

I came across the elder Sarah from a DNA match which Dad had – third cousin twice removed. Pretty faraway, but the only one at that point possibly hinting at the next generation back. Always sceptical about some of these small matches I did a bit of research of my own. Ancestry had identified the match as being on my grandmother’s side which was correct and age, place and other family names seemed to match – or look likely too. The biggest hook for me that this was right, was that her father’s name was Leander.

It isn’t a very common name, I’m not even sure where it comes from, but it sure helped to persuade me that the tree was correct and the match was valid. Leander appears through many generations of the descendants of my great great great grandfather who emigrated to Nelson in 1842 and raised a family there. I messaged the match, way back in 2020 and I am still patiently waiting on a reply.

Sarah’s parents were married in Oxford in 1827. At the time of their marriage Leander was living in Newbury, Berkshire. By 1841 the family had moved and were living in Cleveland Street, Wolverhampton. They had six children by then and none are recorded as being born in Staffordshire on the census. On later censuses the younger ones are recorded as being born there. They went on to have thirteen children, although not all survived to adulthood.

Sarah’s father is a musician on the 1841 census and in 1851 he is a Teacher of Music, and they have moved to Merridale Street. They were still at this address in 1861 with six of their children. On this census, Sarah aged 21 is a dressmaker. She married Joseph Simpson in 1868, he was a tailor. In the 1871 census Sarah is still listed as a Dressmaker despite being married with a toddler and another baby on the way.

Joseph and Sarah had a family of seven although three of her eldest children died before their second birthdays. By 1881 Joseph had become a Hardware Merchant’s Packer but Sarah was still contributing to the family’s income as a Dressmaker. Sarah continued to work into her widowhood after Joseph died in 1899. She died in Wolverhampton in 1912.

Maybe this Sarah is your great great grandmother? Or one of her siblings is your ancestor. I would love to hear from you and reconnect the branches of the tree.

 

R - Roxillanna Lawrence

What a great name – don’t you think? 

Roxillanna was born in Coventry in 1899. Her father was my great grandfather’s first cousin. They lived almost next door to each other for some of their childhood, but a seven-year age difference may have meant they didn’t know each other well.

Roxillanna was the middle child of nine although as her elder twin brothers died in infancy so she will have grown up as the third child with five sisters and one younger brother.

Her father was a Fruiterer, managing his own store in Birmingham and later Coventry. Her mother took over the business after the death of her father in 1917. Not long after his death, in 1918, Roxillanna married Cecil Payne. Cecil was a public servant on the 1921 census working at the Ministry of Labour employed at the Government Instructional Factory. In 1939 at the outbreak of World War Two he was an Assistant Production Manager.

Cecil and Roxillanna had two daughters.

But where did her name come from? Did she like it? It was quite different to her sister’s names – Nellie, Rose, Jessie, Gladys and Doris.

Do you know this family? Can we help each other? Please get in contact if you think we have a connection.

Q - Questions

Genealogy is all about questions. What do you know? Who do you remember? What was it like? Where did you live?

Some people answer willing to share, flattered that you have asked. Others don’t. Nothing to know here, what do you want to know that rubbish for? Some answers are chinese whispers with just a skerek of truth woven in. Other questions get answered with answers which create more questions.

There are so many places now to search and research, compared with what was available sixty or so years ago. But there is always a question before you begin, where can I find out about…?

Most of the records we seek are full of answers to questions posed by officials. What is your name? Where were you born? What is your occupation? When were you born? What is your father’s name? How old are you?

Slowly we can build a picture of the people we have never met and put their lives in context. See the world as they saw it, imagine their wonder if they could see today’s world (or maybe their despair).

Would the people who didn’t want to answer questions, or who gave vague answers be surprised about what we have been able to discover anyway? Would they feel that the past had been honoured, the people respected, their lives cherished?

I hope so.

P - Peternell Eastment

Peternell was born about 1733 and baptised at Hardington Mandeville in Somerset. Most of her siblings were baptised in East Chinnock which is where she married Richard Bartlett in 1760.

She and Richard raised a family of six sons and one daughter. Three of those children; Samuel, Ann and Joseph, would go on to have children and grandchildren who emigrated to New Zealand and Australia in the 1840-1850s. Samuel’s son Nathaniel came to Wellington, his grandson John to New South Wales. Ann’s great grandson George came to Auckland and two of Joseph’s daughters and a son came to Wellington, the two girls and their families settling in Hawke’s Bay. Another of Joseph’s daughters came to New South Wales and a granddaughter as well, daughter of one of the two sons who remained in England.

Perhaps others migrated too, to other colonies, or maybe some of her siblings and their descendants did.

The Bartlett line gets a little muddly, there are SO many Bartlett families in East Chinnock which by all accounts is a very small parish. A lot of research was undertaken by a cousin of my grandmother, along with my Dad and a few other cousins in the 1980-1990s culminating in a reunion in 1988 in Cambridge New Zealand and the unveiling of a plaque commemorating my great great grandparents at Hautapu Cemetery.

So far, I have found one granddaughter and two great granddaughters who were named for her. Both great granddaughters lived in Australia or New Zealand. One came with her husband and young family to New South Wales and the other was born in Ngaio, Wellington after her parents and older siblings had emigrated. I wonder if there are more.

But what of the Eastments? Peternell had at least five siblings and I have not done very much to see if I can follow them forward. I believe her father was William Eastment and her mother Joan Taylor. But the early 1700s is getting near the sketchy end of parish records to be 100% sure.

Perhaps you know more? Do you have Eastments in your tree? Or Bartletts? I still have some gaps there too.

O - Olive Laura Hammond

Olive was born in Appleby or Richmond near Nelson New Zealand in 1893. Her parents Walter and Eva were first cousins. Her grandfathers were brothers who had come to New Zealand in the early 1840s with their parents who were following other members of the family.

Olive was the eldest child of the marriage, although she did have an older half brother from her father’s first marriage. She had two younger brothers and a younger sister by 1899.

She grew up with her siblings in the Waimea area where her father worked for Hon. J. Barnicoat on his estate. He was the third generation of the Hammond family to be employed by Mr Barnicoat. His grandfather had travelled to New Zealand on the same ship as Mr Barnicoat who was tasked with surveying the Waimea plains. On Mr Barnicoat’s death he was able to buy part of the estate and farmed there for the remainder of his life. He was a founder of the Waimea Dairy Company and director for twenty years. He was also well known for his pedigree Friesian herd who won prizes at shows and produced superior milk for use in cheesemaking.

Driving through that area today, you can imagine it must have been a carefree and enjoyable life in those early days in the colony, when you were fortunate enough to have a successful farm providing a good income.

Olive’s brothers all married but she and her sister did not. Olive became a schoolteacher, sitting an entry examination in 1911 when she was eighteen. Her sister Vida became a nurse, training in Nelson and in 1940 was appointed Matron at Whangarei Public Hospital. Born in the year of the 3^rd Suffrage petition perhaps she was meant to be a strong independent woman.

When she died in 1964, she left £300 to two nieces (nothing to nephews?) and the remainder of her estate to her sister.

She and Vida are buried together at Richmond cemetery, in Richmond.

I am connected to Olive through her great grandfather. He was one of the three brothers of my great great great grandmother who also settled in Nelson in the 1840s.

Do you have these people in your family? There are LOTS of Hammond descendants in the Appleby, Waimea, Richmond, Nelson and Marlborough area – maybe we can expand our trees together. Please reach out if you are a cousin no matter how distant.