Perry

Randomly picked Martha Perry to work on tonight as she looked a bit sad. She was the first wife of our illustrious ancestor John Waterfall who left these shores and made it all the way to Salt Lake City. By far, the most adventurous ancestor. But he did all this with his 2nd wife as sadly Martha died in 1854. She died in childbirth and the child died too. She was only 39. Her daughter Ann went on to marry John Gibson, a sailor, and so on into the Gibson side of the tree.

Most fortunately, the fact that John Waterfall was a Mormon means that lots of people have already researched Martha Perry. So very little effort turned up a bit of her line – Henry Perry and Mary Ann Brittle seem to have been her parents. I can’t quite work out their movements as they seem to have come from Brompton / Chatham area of Kent, yet they got married at St Martin in the Fields, London no less. There is even some information on Mary Ann Brittle’s parents.

Always feels good to add in some new names to the tree…

Springett

A whole new branch! I knew that James Chapman married a Martha Sarah Springett but I’d not persued it until now. Luckily it was quite easy to find her parents – father Joseph a shoemaker, living in St George, Southwark and his wife Sarah Chamberlin. Already we are back to the 1780s but even better than that, I found IGI records from the parish of St Mary, Whitechapel, that give his parents – another Joseph Springett and his wife Frances Newberry.

Just found a good article on Horsleydown here.

There is also an article on Whitechapel here, the place where the Springetts are when we first come across them… It was a very poor area.

Perhaps the Springetts originated from outside London: the surname profiler shows the name is concentrated around Essex (Colchester) and also in Kent. This would fit with their later location in East London if they had moved in around the mid 18th Century. Only speculation….

Chapmans

Just wanted to check thru my Chapman line, as I seem to remember finding a problem with it a while back.

Definite: I have Samuel Furr marrying Martha Chapman on 13 May 1872 in St Olave, Southwark. She is 25, at 76 Tooley Street and her father is James Chapman, lighterman. He was also a witness. This puts her DOB at 1846/1847 but see below. Her place of birth in later census is shown as London.

However, her DOB from the marriage certificate seems to be wrong based on the other evidence. In 1881 she is 36 (1845) and 1891 45 (1845) and 1901 57 (1844).

In 1851, the only plausible Martha Chapman is aged 7, born Surrey St John living with James Chapman, waterman (34 = 1817, born Surrey St John), and his wife Martha (31= 1820, born Surrey St George the Martyr). She is their 2nd child after a son James (10) with other siblings Emily (5) and Sophia (4). There is also a Martha Sarah Chapman born Dec 1893 as the only plausible birth. She is also shown as 25, unmarried with James and Martha in the 1871 census. If so, this puts her neatly into the excellent family tree I was sent as the daughter of James Chapman, son of James Chapman, son of William Chapman – all watermen / lightermen on the Thames.

So I think my line is all checked and correct so far. Phew.

In Search of George Ford

So I’m trying http://www.familysearch.org and their excellent 1881 census search. If only Ancestry had such a good search engine. I’m trying:

George Ford, born 1875+/-2 years, head of household William Ford. I get 17 results – maybe one of them is the one!

I also checked the marriage record and he is down as “George F.” so I think it may be safe to assume he was George Frederick. Also, he died in July so that puts his earliest DOB at 1875, not 1874. Small steps but they may help….
Also went back to FreeBMD for birth of a George F. from 1875-1877. Found a few possibles. If I could match the two, I may have the George Frederick Fords who had a William Ford as a father…. Very hard work and not very conclusive.

The Fords – Going Nowhere

I was just talking about the Fords this week and how they are totally utterly stuck. Here’s what I have so far:

George Frederick William Ford is my grandfather. He was the son of George Frederick (William) Ford and Esther Shill, born Sept 1918. I have the marriage certificate information: December 1917 and he is a widower, aged 40, a munitions worker at 4 Pierpont Row, Islington. His father is named as William Ford, a cab driver.

There is also a death certificate: from 1944, age given as 70 and profession as sack mender.

That’s about all that can be said with confidence. Family knowledge is confusing and often conflicting: he shared the same birthday as Churchill (30 Nov 1874), he was born in London at Plum Pudding Steps / Ireland / Birmingham. He was married before Esther Shill (born out by his marriage certificate) and had a large family which he never saw latterly.

So he was born 1874-1877 probably to a William Ford. Location unknown. Not much to go on!

The Ladds continued

Aha, so the info on Joseph Ladds birth is from an IGI record, birth 27 Dec 1827 at Buckland, Surrey with parents Geo Ladd and Sarah. So that was taken from the parish records at Buckland, Surrey so it seems fairly solid.

So I looked up George Ladd and found his marriage to Sarah Burton, 31 Jan 1826 at Downe, Kent. This was taken from Bishops transcripts of Down, Kent. This is a place quite near Orpington where George and Sarah are later found in the census. Unclear how they had a stint in Buckland?

The Halls of Gloucestershire

Just doing some work on the other Gloucestershire families in my tree (Hall, Fry, Holliday, Shill).

The Halls are all in Beverstone and also a spell in Doughton to my knowledge but there is a question mark as the oldest Hall so far (Henry) is marked in the 1841 Census as not being of the County. I think he must have died literally just before the 1851 Census which is a shame!

I found an excellent website on Tetbury researchers which I have now contacted. Hopefully they will list me too. I contacted a Fry researcher to see if we have a connection.

There is information on the history of Beverstone here but it is a bit dry. Nothing much to say what was going on there in the 19th Century. My Halls seem to have drifted to Tetbury, the closest town. It had a population of 170 and 34 houses around 1870. It also had a ruined castle: “an imposing ruin…with drum towers at the four corners, and a short stretch of the deep moat is concealed in a wood behind the buildings”. As always, it’s easy to find out what the nobles were up to but maybe some Halls used to mooch round near the castle.

Most inhabitents were labourers and servants… Wheat, barley and oats were the main crops around 1801. Apparently around 1830 it all got militant with riots around Beverstone destroying threshing machines: these were the so-called “Swing Riots”, driven by poverty and bad harvests. The threshing machines deprived the Ag Lab of his traditional winter work threshing the corn. So it may be assumed that my Halls were having a tough time round about the 1830s.

Here is the full book review:

Gloucestershire Machine Breakers, The Story of the 1830 Riots by Jill Chambers, 2002, pp 256, Jill Chambers, £9.00.

On Friday 26 November 1830 a threshing machine, which was being brought from Wiltshire to Tetbury, was broken to pieces by a mob at Newnton who then proceeded to Tetbury and Beverstone destroying other machines. This was the start of 4 days of rioting which the establishment thought would engulf the whole of Gloucestershire. The Swing Riots, as they were known, started in the autumn of 1830 in Southern England as a result of low wages and poor harvests. The introduction of threshing machines meant that the agricultural labourer was deprived of his traditional winter work of threshing the corn and these machines provided a ready target for his anger. Jill Chambers has described in her book the riots, the arrest of the rioters and the trial and sentencing of the prisoners. 24 Gloucestershire rioters were transported to Tasmania and information on their life there has been collected from the Archive Offices in Sydney, New South Wales and Hobart, Tasmania. The book is divided into 4 parts. The first two parts are in the form of a diary describing the riots and the trial and the third part lists all prisoners alphabetically with details of their offences, sentences, families and subsequent lives. The last part includes Home Office correspondence, enrolment of special constables, expenses for prosecutions and other material which is in the Public Record Office in Kew. This book is thoroughly researched and comprehensive in its coverage of a violent period which rocked the establishment both in Gloucestershire and the country.

“

The Ladds of Surrey and Gloucestershire

The Ladd branch of my family tree isn’t very big at the moment and it’s not very sturdy. It seems to be the case that my Ladd connection originates from Dorking, Surrey but then moves to Gloucestershire.

Harriett Ladd (b.1867, death not known) was my great great grandmother who married James Rudman Shill and had many children. She was born in Malmesbury (Charlton), Wiltshire. She can be found in Wiltshire in 1871, aged 3, living at the Green, Tetbury with her parents Joseph (44) and Eliza. All the children are born in Tetbury (and they are there in 1861) apart from Frederick (aged 5) and Harriett so it seems the family moved there for a few years, then moved back to Tetbury.

Joseph Ladd is a blacksmith and his place of birth given as Dorking, Surrey. His wife, Elize, was born in Beverstone, Glos. so it seems reasonable to assume they met in Gloucestershire and indeed their marriage took place on 13 May 1852 at the Parish Church, Beverstone. Joseph was 24, a Blacksmith, living in Beverstone. His father is given as George Ladd, a labourer. The couple are in Tetbury in 1861 – Joseph aged 33 and a blacksmith but place of birth given as Buckland, Surrey – with their children Emma, Hester, Mary Ann, William and Eliza.

Buckland is in fact very close to Dorking, just to the east – as you can see on this Google map. Joseph’s year of birth is around 1827/1828 so before the BMD records started. My cousin Steve has cited me a birth at Buckland, Surrey on 30 Dec 1827 (so he was a Capricorn!) to parents George and Sarah.

I have been thinking until now that the line went back through a George and Eliza Ladd who are to be found in Dorking at this time but I think this is wrong. There are a George and Sarah Ladd in Orpington, Kent who look far more likely. Unfortunately in the 1841 Census Joseph seems to be living away from home at a Grocer’s in Dorking aged 14.

How did he come to be a blacksmith? And to travel to Gloucestershire?

Hello world!

This is my genealogy blog. I have been reading a lot about blogging genealogy so I thought I’d give it a go….. I don’t have so much time these days for working on my family tree so I shall use the blog to keep track of what I’m working on and where I’ve got stuck….

To see my family tree, view my website here: http://samsheep.rootschat.net