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.

 

 

 

I - Isaac Fidler

Isaac was born in London on 7 September 1772; he was the eldest son of Robert Fidler and Ann Elisabeth Dupree. Robert was possibly a grocer or a hairdresser, not too many records have been found for him. His father’s family had been living in London since at least the early 1700s. His mother’s family had arrived in Spitalfields in the early 1600s. Isaac was named for his maternal grandfather who was a silk weaver.

Isaac’s father deserted his family when Isaac was about seven years old. Poor law records show the family being removed from parishes in 1778 and 1780. By the time his mother applied for settlement in Shoreditch in 1782 only her two eldest sons were still living.

I am not sure what Isaac did for work, he married Elizabeth Thomas on 15 August 1796 at St Martin in the Fields, Westminster.

In 1812 in the Land Tax records Isaac and his family were living in Drury Lane in the parish of St Martin in the Fields, Westminster. He appears on earlier Land Tax records, but not all of those include an address. Three of Isaac and Elizabeth’s children were married within three months of each other (the two girls on the same day to brothers – cos why not?) at St James Westminster in 1823. One of these girls was the mother of my great great great grandmother.

I have not been able to find a death record for Isaac or Elizabeth yet and as far as I can tell they were not on the 1841 census. I think his mother may have died in 1831 aged 89.

Have you ever come across this family? Can you unravel some of the unknown? Please let me know if you can.

H - Hannah Boddington

Hannah and at least one of her sisters were baptised at Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire but seemed to live in Rousham. Hannah was baptised on 31 March 1799; her parents Richard and Mary nee Simons were married at Rousham on 8 July 1798.

Hannah married James Timms in Rousham on 5 July 1819. They had nine children all born at Rousham where James like most there was an Ag Lab. Eight daughters and one son. Three of their daughters were baptised Elizabeth, the eldest of the three died just a few weeks old and of the two others (who confusingly grew up to marry brothers) the elder one became known as Eliza instead.

Hannah was part of the sandwich generation, when the concept of such a thing was nothing to write home about.

In January 1839 when her youngest child was thirteen months old her husband James died from an inflammation of the bowel. Was this the origin of coeliac and Crohns in the family? In 1841 at the census Hannah and her five youngest children and her father-in-law, William Timms, were in the Woodstock Union Workhouse. Fallen on tough times you would imagine after the loss of her husband. The older three girls were married or living away in service.

I’m not sure how long they were in the workhouse, but William died there in April 1842. By 1851 she was living back in Rousham with her youngest two children, a grandson and her widowed father. Her daughter Hannah had died three months before the census aged 20.

In 1861, her children all married or living and working away, Hannah was still caring for her now ninety-five-year-old father who was recorded on the census as infirm. Richard died six weeks later. Hannah remained in Rousham until her death in January 1880.

DNA suggests links to the descendants of potential sisters of Hannah, I am yet to confidently say I have researched enough and found good evidence. Did she just have sisters, or where there some brothers as well? There are other Boddington families in the are who are possibly connected somehow yet to be unravelled.

Do you have Boddingtons who came from Oxfordshire in your tree? Some descendants seem to have emigrated to America and Australia, and likely other colonies as well. Please reach out if any of this sounds familiar to you. 

G - George Kelsey

For a long time, the furthest back we were able to confirm in the Kelsey family, was Thomas Kelsey born about 1808 in Hinnington, Old Forge, Grindle or Shifnal, Shropshire depending on which record you read. Back when we started census and parish registers were not available online – we didn’t even know what “online” was.

Mum and Dad had a copy of his marriage certificate, to his second wife which had been purchased mistakenly when trying to find the marriage of his son with the same name. We found Thomas and his wife on the 1881 census, because thanks to a couple of other certificates we had a location to look around. From the marriage certificate we also knew his father’s name, George.

Slowly records came online, we looked for other family members at each record release. Finally in the 1861 census there were two people who we hoped and guessed might have been brothers. They too gave their birthplaces as Hinnington or Shifnal.

Much more recently, church records for Shropshire became available online, an alternative way to research than finding a Family History Centre or affiliate library to read microfilm. These linked them all together, three sons and later possibly a daughter or two born and baptised between 1800-1810 in Ryton, Shifnal and Hinnington. After poring over old maps there even appeared to be a building or locality called Old Forge as well.

Their parents were George Kelsey (or was it Kelshaw, Kelsal, Kelshall or Kilsey) and Catherine Buckley. They were married in Ryton, Shropshire on 4 Mar 1798. They used all the spelling variations for their children’s baptisms, and their children perpetuated the variations in marriage, death and census records. Thomas even kept the variations up for the births and baptisms of his own children.

George’s parents are suspected to be George Kelsey (or Kelshaw) and Mary. They were married in Shifnal on 10 April 1766 and had a daughter, Mary, in 1769. George’s baptism is yet to be found or confirmed. George Snr was 93 when he died in Grindle in February 1821 – a pretty good innings for those times.

George Jnr died in January 1830 at Ryton. Now that we had a myriad of alternate names to search, I began looking for their children as adults in censuses where we had already tried and given up. William and John did not marry and worked most of their lives at Hinnington Mill where they were labourers. John died in 1862 at Kemberton which was where his brother Thomas lived with his family. William died of “senile decay” in 1885 in the Union Workhouse. What became of their daughter Mary and who was Ann Dulson the informant on Catherine’s death certificate? Could she have been a married daughter? Catherine died in Hinnington in May 1851.

Now with DNA some matches are suggesting there could have been another son, James, born about 1798. Could this be right? Has anyone found documents to support this? When I look at the suggested pathway there isn’t any evidence, but they ARE matches, on the right branch of the family, so there must be something somewhere – right?

Do you know? Is George’s family your family too? Please get in contact, perhaps we can collaborate.

F - Frances Jane Selleck

I’ve picked a random person here. I don’t know too much at all about Frances except what I have found on official documents. I only just realised now that she is related in two ways!

Frances was the eighth child of James Selleck and Ann, nee Palfrey. She was the second cousin of my great grandfather Francis Davys. Her maternal grandfather Joseph Palfrey and James’ grandmother Anne Palfrey were siblings. But she was also related the same way on her father’s side of the family. Her paternal grandmother Mary Selleck, nee Norman was a sister of James’ grandfather William Norman.

It is a tangled little web for sure, this part of the tree. 

Frances was born in 1867 in Clatworthy, Somerset. She would not have known my great grandfather because by the time she was born, he had been living in New Zealand with his parents and siblings for five years. Her father was a farmer, and they were living at Sedgeborough Farm in the 1871 and 1881 censuses. By the time of the 1891 census, although they were still at Sedgeborough, the farm had now passed to her brother Tom as their father had died in January of that year.

Frances married in 1900 to another strong contender to be the subject of todays blog, Fenwick Charles Clatworthy Greenslade. They lived at Parsonage Farm, Luxborough where they had three children. In 1921 at the census in June, they had moved next door to Westcott Farm. Frances died in 1926; she didn’t live long enough to see her children marry or to meet her grandchildren.

Do you have any Selleck, Palfrey, Norman, Greenslade or even Davys’ in your tree? Maybe you are part of my tree too. Please contact me if you think we might share some connections.

E - Emma Timms

My Nana’s father was the youngest in his family. He had five older sisters and one older brother. His mother died when he was about nine months old. For five years or so his eldest sisters probably cared for him along with their grandparents who lived nearby.

Nana didn’t talk about her aunts or uncle or cousins though, apart from one. Most of them were a lot older than she and her siblings, so it is possible she didn’t even know them.

Alice was fourteen when her youngest brother was born, almost fifteen when her mother died. She was born in Mason Street, Milverton, Warwickshire. In 1881 on the census, she is recorded as a Scholar even though she was eighteen. After this census though each time she is recorded as an Inmate or Pauper living in the Warwick Union Workhouse (later known as the Warwick Union Institution and the Warwick Public Assistance Institute). She died in1944 at Shipston Hospital in Shipston-on-Stour.

May was eleven when her brother was born and twelve when their mother died. In 1881 on the census, she is recorded aged fifteen, living away from the family (but still in Milverton) as a housemaid for a retired Army Major General and his family. She was married in 1887 to William Byford and they had five children, one of whom died in infancy. This is the family Nana sometimes mentioned, they were Green Grocers in the early 1900s. May died in 1946.

Mary was nine when her brother was born and their mother died. Before 1889 she moved away from Milverton to Birmingham. Most likely for work as Birmingham offered many opportunities not found in Milverton. She was married in Birmingham in1889 to Henry Edward, a Pork Butcher and had four children. Sadly, Mary died eight days after the birth of her fourth child and her husband returned with his young family to live in Leamington and Milverton. One of Mary’s daughters lived for a time with her aunt May.

Fanny was six when her brother was born and their mother died. Fanny possibly moved to Birmingham at about the same time as Mary. In 1891 on the census, she is lodging with a family in Kings Norton and was employed as a Metallic Bedstead Decorator. Two years later in 1893 she was married to John Ashford a Cycle Polisher, in Birmingham. They had five children and spent the rest of their lives in Birmingham. Fanny died in 1941.

James was the first son in his family; he was two when his brother was born and their mother died. He became a Cellarman in a brewery but later was a much-respected inspector for the RSPCA. He married Ellen Newey and they had three children. They lived in Emscote and Leamington. James died in 1943.

George, the baby of the family was born in 1877 and his mother died in 1878. His father remarried when he was five years old to a widow with no children who lived across the road. She died in 1932, thirty years after their father. As far as I recall she was never talked about by Nana, though surely, she knew her as they lived almost next door.

But this blog is about Emma – I have shared briefly what I know about all the other members of the family. We have DNA matches with the descendants of most of them. But what about Emma? 

Emma was four when her brother was born and their mother died; her fifth birthday was the day after her mother died. Her full name is Emma Jane; she appears aged seven on the 1881 census although she was eight. And that is it! She has just vanished. By the 1891 census she would have been eighteen, she could have married, emigrated or died, but so far (over probably 20-30 years) I have not been able to find one little clue.

Are any of these people your great great aunts or uncles too? Or great great grandparents perhaps? Do you know anything about Emma? If you do, please share I would love to hear from you.

 

D - David Hall

I have a bit of a conundrum with my great great great grandfather David Hall. He was born about 1800 most likely in Cavan, or Monaghan, Ireland. He married about 1820 to Margaret Pritchard and they had about thirteen children.

But who were his parents? 

There are a few challenges unravelling this.

·         There is at least one other David Hall born around the same time and in the general area.

·         The family is likely an Ulster Plantation family – because let’s face it, Hall is not a very Irish surname. They lived in the same area for generations, went to the same Presbyterian churches and intermarried A LOT.

·         David’s daughter Anne, my great great grandmother, married another Hall. Just a coincidence? A cousin or second cousin?

William Hall, Anne’s husband was the son of Samuel Hall and Sarah Bailey. We knew this, as well as who Anne’s parents were from their death certificates in New Zealand. For a long time that was the extent of our knowledge.

Then along came DNA and the discovery that other branches of Samuel’s tree had also come to New Zealand. Surely people at the time knew one another and the family connection – but overtime the knowledge was lost.

Contacting other DNA testers in an endeavour to unravel the Irish branch of our tree, research all seemed to point to Samuel’s parents being William Hall 1769-1833 and Arabella Reilly.

Certainly, there are a lot of DNA matches where you can see the connections to each other through Samuel’s siblings. Researchers had found records for the children of William and Arabella – at least seven – including a David.

We have DNA matches to William’s family including descendants of his aunts and uncles (Samuel’s siblings), so it seemed quite resolved there. We also had good matches with Anne’s family going back into the past a little further and following her mother’s maternal line. For most of the descendants of William and Anne everything made sense, they should have matches to both families. But then some of Anne’s siblings’ descendants appeared to have matches to William's family!

The only way I can see this being possible is if “my” David Hall born about 1800 and died on 26 February 1883 at Coppenagh Mills is the son of William and Arabella Hall, born in 1797 at Lattacapple. This would mean that my great great grandparents William and Anne were first cousins. Or is it just an endogamy effect living in the same community for so long?

What do you think? Do you have a David Hall in your tree too? Is he this guy, or another one altogether? Please contact me if you think you can help.