Memorial card for the 15 victims of the Whittall St explosion who were buried together at St Mary Whittall St.
This week marks a new beginning for me. I have decided to take part in the 52 Ancestors event, attempting to tell a story on a different theme every week. Hopefully, that will get me back into the swing of regular blogging. Let’s see. This week’s theme is ‘beginnings’, which seems a sensible place to start.
The Whittall St explosion of 1859 may sound more like an ending than a beginning. But it so shocked the people of the UK, that it helped bring in the Act of 1860. This governed the way that firearms, ammunition, and fireworks were manufactured and their components stored. In essence, it was one of the first occupational health and safety acts to be enacted. And at a personal level, there were new beginnings in the Groocock and other bereaved families as a result of this disastrous accident.
The Whittall St Explosion
Pursall and Phillips was a percussion cap factory located at 22 Whittall St in the heart of Birmingham’s Gun Quarter. Birmingham was one of the major centres of the global gun industry, employing thousands in the manufacture of guns and ammunition. In 1859 guns had largely moved from using flintlock to percussion caps to ignite the gunpowder. Percussion caps, however, were extremely dangerous. The fulminate of mercury used in the caps was very sensitive to sudden movements or pressure and extremely explosive. Factories in Birmingham at the time were usually small and jammed closely together.
On the 27th of September 1859, the unthinkable happened. A huge explosion tore through Pursall and Phillips mid-morning, reducing the entire factory to flames and rubble. There were around 70 employees at the factory. Many were women and children, who were often employed to do the small fiddly work. Indeed of the 20 people known to have died, 19 were female, ranging in age from 10 to 31 years. The one man who died, Humphrey Wood, had initially survived but ran into the aftermath to rescue his wife Elizabeth who also worked there. He was crushed when the building collapsed on top of him.
The Whittall St explosion captured in an engraving in the Illustrated London News, 8 October 1859
The cause of this (inevitable) explosion was a broken gas main in the basement, which added to an already volatile atmosphere. The three-storey building exploded, burned and collapsed around the unfortunate workforce, many of whom did not stand a chance of escape.
The Whittall St explosion made huge news all around the country, with a collection taken up for the families of those bereaved. The local community gathered together too. Most of the victims ended up being buried together on the same day at the local parish church, St Mary Whittall St. They only remained there until the 1950s however, as they were amongst the many who were exhumed and reinterred at Warstone Lane Cemetery in order to expand the grounds of the Birmingham General Hospital. Ironically, this was where most of the victims had died.
Martha Groocock
Martha Groocock was born Martha Benton around 1829 in Birmingham. She was one of the two eldest to die in the explosion. The other was Fanny Dollman, nee Earp.
Martha was born to John Benton and Mary Ann Wainwright. This Benton family originated from Kings Norton, as in ‘All roads lead to…’ if you are a regular reader! She used to be one of a handful of people in my tree who I was related to on both sides. Or more accurately her children were. She’s still related to my (now half-)uncle, but due to an unfortunate ‘Misattributed Parentage Event’ uncovered by DNA after my first 25 years of traditional research, she is now only related to me by marriage!
Martha married Henry Groocock, who to the best of my knowledge is still a blood relative(!), on Christmas Eve, 1848 at St Philips Cathedral in Birmingham. Henry was a cooper, born in Gilmorton, Leicestershire in 1827 to William Groocock and Betsy nee Boulton. Henry and Martha went on to have two sons, Henry (1853) and Joseph (1856). The marriage was not a successful one. How do I know this? Because Henry was already making new beginnings before the Whittall St explosion even happened.
Henry Groocock’s new beginnings
By the time of the Whittall St explosion, Henry had already bigamously remarried over two years earlier. His second wife was a young woman by the name of Emma Mason. She was in the very early stages of pregnancy with their first child when Martha died. Henry almost immediately married Emma again, legally this time and they went on to have four children together over the next 17 years.
He was not the only one to quickly make some new beginnings following the tragedy though. Remember the other ‘senior’ victim of the explosion, Fanny Dollman? Her husband William George Dollman remarried on Christmas Day 1859 – one of those oh-so-common Christmas weddings of the era. This was to be forgiven, and possibly expected in those times, as there were children who needed a mother. It was common practice to marry again without a long courtship. And at least he didn’t ‘pre-marry’ like Henry did. Although, wait…his bride was none other than the widow of the loyal Humphrey Wood who had died trying to save her from the explosion!
The remaining members of the Barnett family in 1913 (LtoR: Leah, Jack, Ted and Annie).
This week once again I’m giving an example of how paying attention to a name helps to overcome obstacles in your family tree. We already saw how naming patterns helped break down a longstanding brick wall. Now, here’s a family story I finally proved after discovering an unusual middle name.
My grandmother Ruby had a difficult childhood. She was orphaned by the age of 7 and spent quite some time in an orphanage until her older half-sister Ann turned 21 and could take her home. Consequently, she didn’t know much about her family background and had very few stories to share. Those she did remember have since been shown to have a grain of truth but became distorted over the years by a child’s fickle memory.
Ruby’s mystery brother
Ruby claimed that one of her brothers died on the railway tracks because he was deaf and didn’t hear a train coming. I knew she meant either one of her half-brothers or one of her stepbrothers, as she was the only child of her mother Leah’s second marriage. Leah’s first marriage had been to a widower with a brood of kids, and they had also had several children together. However, she didn’t know which brother the story referred to, and he died well before she was born. The way she described him seemed to portray him as maybe 5 or 6 years of age. Perhaps that’s the way she imagined it when she was told the story.
Early on in my family history journey, I tried to find out what had happened. I had no name or year of death, a vague guess at an age, knew it was probably around Coventry and the surname was Barnett. Not uncommon. Back in those days, even consulting census records was cumbersome, and these children were all born after the (then) recently released 1881 Census. There was no 1939 Register to see who was still around in adulthood. Baptism record availability was patchy. And newspapers were difficult to locate from 12000 miles away. We are so spoilt now with the immediate availability of such a wide range of resources via the internet, aren’t we?
My research progressed over the years and my focus was further back in my tree as a result. The story of my great-uncle’s death had been abandoned and forgotten after those early attempts to find the truth. I hadn’t really thought about him in 15 years. But I decided to resurrect the search and take my own advice about periodically reviewing my tree.
Two of the seven step- or half-brothers in Ruby’s family were known to have reached adulthood. That left five possibilities to investigate. None of them was noted as being deaf on the censuses, so that shortcut was eliminated! I decided to systematically research each boy as though they were new to me. Joy of joys, I discovered that the baptism records for their parish were now available with images on Ancestry! This was the very simple key to unlock the story after all these years.
Alfred Mario Barnett
Alfred Barnett was William and Leah Barnett’s first child together. I decided to begin with him. This was fortunate as I immediately learnt something new about him from his baptism record. He had an unusual middle name – Mario! While that may not sound odd these days, we’re talking about Coventry in Victorian times. There were not very many people bearing Italian names in Warwickshire outside of Birmingham. I checked for a death record – an Alfred Mario Barnett aged 15 was registered in Coventry in 1912. It had to be him.
A snippet of Alfred Barnett’s baptism record at St John, Coventry revealing his unusual middle name.
So where to next? Why the newspapers of course! The British Newspaper Archive has recently reached the milestone of 40 million pages of newspapers. A young boy dying in a railway accident should be newsworthy. His unusual middle name was eminently searchable. I knew the year and the approximate place, and…
Searching using Alfred’s middle name led to finding the reports of his fatal accident.
…I found him! There were several reports including some very detailed inquest reports…detailed enough to pin down the location of the accident.
The approximate scene of the accident marked on the 1888 Ordnance Survey map.
How did Alfred die?
Alfred and his friend John Keal went for a walk on the morning of Sunday 22nd September 1912. They were headed for the nearby London & North Western Railway line, although John later denied they were intending any mischief such as putting pennies on the line.
They got to the Folly Lane railway bridge, heading for the iron bridge further down, and decided to cut down the embankment one walking each side of the tracks. Another witness who was on the iron bridge said they were about halfway along when the express train approached. He said there was a strong wind blowing and it didn’t appear that Alfred heard the approach behind him. This may account for my grandmother believing he was deaf. He was hit by the train at between 50-60mph which caused devastating and unsurvivable injuries. The train driver, perhaps fortunately, was unaware he’d hit anyone until he reached Willesden and was informed of the accident.
A train rushing along the same piece of track in 1910 where Alfred later met his fate.
His unfortunate father had to identify his son’s mutilated body. No doubt it had a lasting impact. William died only 9 months later, leaving Leah and the remaining children in poverty.
Look out for those unusual middle names!
Finding that Alfred Barnett was actually Alfred Mario Barnett made the verification of this family story so much easier. After all these years, within 10 minutes of knowing this extra detail, the mystery was solved. Use names to your advantage. If they are unique, searching is a doddle.
So why Mario? It was an easy matter to check for Marios around Coventry, they were as expected, very thin on the ground. One was William’s former brother-in-law, Mario Veasey. Mario’s wife Maud had been a witness at William and Leah’s marriage, so it appears they were very approving of William’s choice of replacement for Mario’s deceased sister Lucy and the couples were close.
Serendipity strikes again
There were two little pieces of serendipity to this tale:
The next station down the L&NWR line was Rugby, just a few short miles away. This was the station at which Edward Horatio Girling worked when it first opened. This was of course before his unfortunate encounter with a cobra at London Zoo, after his return down south.
When I was 14, the same age as Alfred, I lived briefly in a village just outside Coventry called Baginton. As I was perusing the maps, I realised it was only about 3km as the crow flies from where Alfred had come to grief. I too had wandered as he did with friends at the weekends doing dangerous things (a homemade raft on the River Sowe comes to mind!). It’s amazing so many 14-year-olds survive to become 15 really, but it brought tears to my eyes. I wonder if my mum realised at the time that we were living so close to the scene of her uncle’s demise?
1912 brochure for the London and North Western Railway
I was planning on bringing you a very sensible and useful ‘how to’ topic this week. But yesterday I discovered a family story too good not to share. These days I think it’s really important not to miss a chance to have a laugh, even if this occasion will be at the expense of one of my relatives!
My lot have included many contenders for a family Darwin Award over the centuries. Just saying. But this one takes the cake. Or should I say…snake!
Edward Horatio Girling, train conductor cum snake charmer
Edward Girling (not the same guy of that name that I’ve previously written about!) worked at the London Zoological Gardens. He was the head keeper of their snake collection. Not that he had any qualifications in animal husbandry.
Edward’s job history was essentially as a railway worker. He had been a ticket collector for several years for the London and North Western Railway at Rugby station in Warwickshire. Soon after the stationmaster died and a new one was appointed, Edward was transferred down to Euston Station where he didn’t last long before being dismissed. He then took up a position as a guard for Eastern Counties Railway. So we can safely presume I think that his exposure to venomous snakes was at best minimal.
LNWR locomotive at the Rugby Shed. Credit: Henry L Salmon
However, geographically, if in no other way, he was suited to the position that came up at the London Zoo. He, like many railway workers of the time, was living in Camden Town, just a short stroll from Regents Park.
Arlington Rd, formerly Grove St, Camden Town. Edward lived at number 132.
In approximately April 1851 he was appointed at a guinea a week by Mr D. W. Mitchell, the Secretary of the Zoological Society. Mr Mitchell reported at the inquest that he had arranged for full training, and had insisted that two rules be followed. ‘Don’t touch the snakes’, and ‘Don’t turn up to work drunk’. He’d also provided a bottle of Libama Cedron, said to be an antidote to cobra bites. Just in case. Perhaps he knew there was a family Darwin Award waiting to be earnt.
In addition to his lack of reptile handling experience, he was reported to be fond of the odd drink (can you see where this is going?). His ‘wife’ Sarah was a witness at his inquest. She was asked by the coroner if he was a sober man. “Yes”, she said, then proceeded to say that on days when he was still drunk by the time he had to leave for work in the morning, she would keep him home till he was fit to go!
The Reptile House at the London Zoological Gardens. Source: The London Illustrated News, 2 Jun 1849
The Reptile House at the London Zoo was state of the art for its time. It had opened to great fanfare in 1849, and people were enthralled by the glass enclosures which allowed them to get close to the animals in safety. There was an additional safety mechanism that was to protect the keepers as well, a wire contraption that allowed the snakes to be moved from one enclosure to another so their own surroundings could be cleaned or food and water provided. Edward Girling was to bypass all efforts to keep him safe at work though.
A Quick Celebratory Drink…
On the evening of October 19th 1852, Edward and his colleague Edward Stewart went out for a quick drink to farewell a friend who was leaving for Australia. At the inquest, Mr Stewart reported that they had three pints of beer with the friend, before spending the rest of the night at a pub in Shoe Lane during which time they each consumed three quarterns (3/4 of a pint) of gin. They then headed straight to work, arriving at 6 am.
The Gin Shop by George Cruikshank.
And Now…for the Cobra!
Our Mr Girling was in quite an excitable state, though apparently ‘not tipsy’ despite their copious drinking and lack of sleep. Mr Stewart was the hummingbird keeper, though part of his role was to bring a basket of sparrows to the snake house as breakfast for them. On arrival with the sparrows, Girling opened a snake cage and brought out a Morocco snake, cried “I am inspired!’ and draped it around his friend’s neck. His friend was not impressed.
For his next trick, Girling announced, “NOW…for the COBRA!” His colleague protested vigorously at this, but it was too late. Edward Girling brought out the serpent with a flourish and stuffed it into his waistcoat. It went around his waist and appeared out of the back. Girling grabbed it about a foot behind the head and lifted it up to his face. Unsurprisingly, the cobra was quite miffed by now. In lieu of his breakfast sparrow, he instead struck at my forebear’s nose leaving 10 puncture wounds.
The Cobra de Capello.
In his panic, Girling completely forgot he had a bottle of antidote. While his friend ran for help, he returned the snake to its cage and wiped the blood from his face. He was transported to University College Hospital but rapidly expired despite the best efforts of the doctors.
Fame at Last!
The newspapers had a field day, as they would in this day and age. I have found reports from all over the British Isles and the US breathlessly reporting the gory details of his post mortem and the inquest.
The jury found, not unexpectedly that Edward Girling’s death was brought about by his own ‘rashness and indiscretion’ while intoxicated.
The Coroner’s idea of a cure. Nose sucking.
Multiple letters to the Times stated that he should have been given large quantities of brandy and forced to stay awake in order to survive. I would argue that he was already primed in alcohol and lack of sleep, and it didn’t do him much good!
Sometimes we hit genealogy brick walls and no matter what strategy we use, they just won’t tumble. Sometimes all we can do to save our sanity is to put them aside and move on with other lines until we find another relevant database or repository to search. That may become a repeating cycle for many years. In my case, 35 years – until genealogical serendipity occurred. Strap yourself in and make yourself a cuppa (perhaps not in that order) – this is a long post, but one which I hope you’ll find useful and interesting!
Searching for Norah Vaughan
My great-great-grandmother was Norah Vaughan. Norah obscured her early origins well. Perhaps not intentionally, but nonetheless the result was the same. The first documentation I had for her were census records in 1871, 1881, and 1891 after she became known as Norah Simpson. She was living in Birmingham with her bricklayer ‘husband’ Thomas and their children. The censuses indicated that she was born around 1848 in London. She died in 1893, but her death certificate shed no further light on her origins, as English death certificates rarely do!
Snippet from the 1871 England Census for Barford St, Birmingham – Thomas and Norah with their firstborn Thomas. Thomas’ name originally written as ‘Vaughan’ then corrected to Simpson.
The London connection
The censuses showed that her eldest son was also born in London. He was born in 1867, so I looked for a marriage certificate around that timeframe in the London area. Nothing. I kept broadening the search in both time and geography, and used wildcards. Nada. No apparent marriage. Interesting. I filed that away for future reference.
Thomas’ mother Hannah Simpson and his three youngest siblings turned up in the 1871 Census living in Wandsworth, just south of the Thames in London. His father William meanwhile, also a bricklayer, was back in Birmingham lodging with an unrelated family (presumably temporarily). Thomas and Norah were also in Birmingham by that point. I began to form a hypothesis that the Simpson family had moved down to London during the building boom of the 1860s, and that Thomas and Norah had met there. This family proved adept at not only building brick walls for houses but also genealogy brick walls!
At this stage, I only had Norah’s first name and no surname. There was no marriage certificate, so I looked for birth certificates for her children. Not all her then known children were registered, but I managed to find her maiden name on one – it was Vaughan. This explained the strange mistake made in the 1871 Census where Thomas was enumerated as Thomas Vaughan initially, then the ‘Vaughan’ scribbled out and replaced with ‘Simpson’. Now that I knew both surnames I tried again to find a marriage. Still nothing. The genealogy brick walls were just as high.
There was quite a gap early in the ‘marriage’ between the birth of the first, and so far known second child. Looking in the GRO indexes I found another child, Edward, born in Wandsworth in 1869. Given that it was likely that’s where my Simpson family were at about that time it was worth the punt. I bought the certificate. Lucky call, the mother was ‘Laura Vaun’!
Norah’s early years
I looked everywhere for a potential baptism for Norah. I started in London then spread the search wider. Nothing in the parish registers anywhere. There was one that caught my eye over in Herefordshire, but I followed her through, and her life continued on separately to our Norah’s.
I scoured the censuses of 1851 and 1861 for any possible misspelling of Norah Vaughan, and ultimately every Norah or variant of that name without a surname in the greater London area!
Once the Poor Law records for London were available on Ancestry, I found a reference to a workhouse admission in Stepney for a ‘Hanora Vaughan’ of the right age in 1863. She was admitted with a fever for a month and then discharged to the care of ‘an Aunt’. Not helpful, other than suggesting she was perhaps orphaned by then! There was an address that no longer exists, though I know where it was. I am still trying to trace who was living in that house at that time. I could find no other Hanora Vaughans in London that this one could be, other than my Norah.
There was only one other reference to an Honora Vaughan, also in 1863. It was a marriage – I sent for the certificate, but she turned out to be in her 30’s and a widow. Not mine, and not the workhouse Hanora.
The Irish connection
Here came another hypothesis…why would Thomas and Norah not marry, and why would she be in no parish register? Why would her family perhaps be avoiding the census and the parish church? Why were they not baptising or even sometimes registering their early children? I began to get a distinct feeling that she may have been Catholic. Thomas was bog-standard Church of England. If neither could jump what was a wide religious divide in those days, perhaps they could not agree to marry.
What group of people were often Catholic and were less likely to feel comfortable being documented (or had literacy levels which made it problematic)? Next hypothesis – her family were possibly Irish. London had a large population of Irish immigrants in those years, often living in desperate poverty. Also, one of the names that Norah is a derivative of is Hanora…but generally only if the child is of Irish origin. I was grasping at straws at this point, but looking at the context of place and time and social history helped me to make some educated guesses.
It occurred to me that this may be where my splodge of Irish DNA had come from. I had initially thought it was just a bit of noise, as I had no known Irish ancestry. But as time went on, algorithms tightened, reference populations grew and I tested in more places. As I write, it seems to have settled into a fairly consistent and substantial 10% across most testing platforms and is flagging Cork as the likely source.
So now I realised I needed the Catholic records. Where were they? I had Norah pinpointed to Wandsworth, and at least in 1863, in Mile End New Town (possibly her ‘Aunts’ address). Wandsworth is in the Diocese of Southwark, and Mile End New Town in the Diocese of Westminster. Westminster was available through FindMyPast. Nothing. Southwark was unavailable. I settled myself in for possibly a very long wait, knowing that they were likely to become available on FindMyPast in due course. The genealogy brick walls remained up and I turned to other lines for a while.
I try with a little help from my friends…
…now I am writing with a Beatles earworm distracting me! (Credit: Karle Horn/CC BY)
For those who have been following along with my blog for a while, you will know that I took a genealogy cruise last year. Part of that included a workshop session focused on breaking down genealogy brick walls. I enlisted the help of a room full of hardcore genealogists, just to see if I had missed anything, and what a fresh look could do.
It was suggested that Norah may have been born in Ireland but moved to London so early that she didn’t realise. I hadn’t really considered this possibility, so we scoured Irish records, finding one possibility who had unfortunately eliminated herself from consideration by dying young. But otherwise, the consensus was that Norah was just being bloody difficult.
The incomparable Mia Bennett facilitating the Brick Wall workshop
The moment I’d been waiting for arrived…
On the 26th June 2020, FindMyPast announced that they had released the Southwark Diocese records. Thanks to the difference in time zones I found out right on bedtime. This always happens with new record releases, so I am very glad that FMP has theirs on a Friday when I don’t need to be up early the next day!
Naturally, that was it for the next few hours. I held my breath and checked for Norah’s baptism…
After a small sulk, a cup of tea and a hitching up of my big girl pants, I decided to take a look at all the Vaughans in the Southwark records and reconstruct family groups. The next step would be to cross-reference against other records such as censuses etc., to see if I could work out who were Norah’s people.
Then, targeted DNA testing occurred to me. If I could build out these trees enough then connect Norah’s tree to them with enough good quality DNA descendants of hers attached, I could perhaps get a nibble from a DNA descendant of one of those trees.
So whose DNA did I have? I had myself, my two siblings, and two maternal first cousins in my generation, but that wasn’t ideal for this distance back. Who did I have further back? My mum, my uncle and their first cousin. Pretty good, but it would be better to also have a descendant of another of Norah’s children for improved overall coverage of her genome. I know one descendant of her daughter Elizabeth. If her Dad was still alive, he’d be perfect!
I wrote to Sue and explained the situation, then gently asked if he was still with us and if so, would he mind if I bought him a DNA kit? Yes, he was alive. No, there would be no DNA test. She was still busy working with documents and wasn’t ready to go down that path. Okay, it was worth asking, and I totally respect that. These bricklaying families make good sturdy genealogy brick walls, even if their descendants don’t want them broken down! Or do they…?
She wrote back again within minutes to say…but we do have the family bible with a lot of dates in, and some pressed flowers from between the pages, would you like photos? YESSSS!!! (please).
You thought this was going to turn into a DNA story, didn’t you?
Very quickly, Sue went round to her Dad’s place and took copious photos of the bible which had been presented to Thomas by the reverend at St Martin’s church in Birmingham in 1889. Thomas had written in the dates of birth for himself, Norah, and the survivors of their twelve children. I had only known about nine. He had put the children in order, and just written ‘dead’ after any that hadn’t survived.
The family of Thomas Simpson and Norah Vaughan.
This bible was literally a godsend! The minor win was being able to pinpoint a couple of the more commonly named children in the 1939 Register using these birth dates.
The major win was using the naming pattern to make some educated guesses about the names used on the Vaughan side of the family. I was then able to use those predictions to follow a paper trail to identify Norah’s birth family to my (almost) satisfaction. It wasn’t a DNA story after all, but I will only be 100% comfortable once I get a DNA hit using the family I found!
Following the names
Now that I had the full complement of children I could make sense out of the names and see the pattern that was followed. Many of the names were repeated throughout the Simpson tree.
Of the first six sons, there was one named after each of himself, his father and his grandfather. There was another that may have been his brother but was a younger brother rather than an elder one so I wasn’t sure, it was a bit out of whack. So that left a Charles, John and possibly Edward that were likely from Norah’s side.
The daughters made less sense. The first was Mary Jane, presumably from Norah’s side as there were none in the Simpson family. Elizabeth was too common a name to be specific, and Thomas had a sister called Harriet. His mother didn’t have a child named after her at all, perhaps she was due to be next but they stopped having babies!
So I did some poking around to see if I could find a Mary Jane Vaughan possibly associated with a Charles or a John that had any connection to London, and were maybe Irish, or had some other factor that could be pursued as a possible link to Norah.
Charles and Mary Jane Vaughan
Bingo! I’m sure I had seen and dismissed this family many years ago, perhaps before I made the Irish connection, and possibly because they were more of a Birmingham family than a London one. Charles Vaughan married Mary Jane Young at St Peter’s Catholic Church in Birmingham in 1865. Charles was a bricklayer. A BRICKLAYER! His father was Edward. EDWARD! I felt the bricks in the Vaughan genealogy brick walls begin to crumble.
I followed the family through the censuses. Charles and Mary Jane went to London soon after their marriage, i.e., around the same time as the Simpson family went there. LONDON! They had their first two children there before returning to Birmingham by the 1871 Census (as did Thomas and Norah). My final hypothesis is that Charles Vaughan and William and Thomas Simpson went to London together and it was through this that Norah and Thomas met.
Moving backwards through the censuses was easy enough. Mary Jane was from a small town called Chepstow, just across the Welsh border, and that’s where I found Charles too, although he was born in Cork, Ireland. CORK, IRELAND! In both 1851 and 1861, he was living with his parents Edward and Ellen (nee Reardon). I was expecting to find little Norah in the household in either 1851 or 1861. No such luck. My hopes were dashed. It had all been fitting together so well, perhaps I was just seeing patterns where none really existed, and those genealogy brick walls would remain standing.
The beautiful town of Chepstow on the River Wye. Credit: Roy Parkhouse / CC BY-SA
Because Charles was Irish-born I took my search from Ancestry over to FindMyPast, where the Irish records are fuller. And by then I’d done a bit of reading about Chepstow and Irish immigration. There was quite a dense population of Famine refugees from the late 1840s onwards. They all lived around the Thomas St area where Charles was living at the time of the Censuses.
I did a blanket search on Vaughans in Chepstow and found another family in the same street in 1851. John and ‘Anora’ and their daughters 10-year-old Margaret…and 3-year-old ‘Anora’. NORAH! For some reason, even knowing how she was enumerated I simply still cannot find this record on Ancestry, it seems a page has been missed from their collection. A reminder to check the same database on other sites if you can’t find what you’re looking for on your first site!
Snippet from 1851 Wales Census, Thomas St, Chepstow showing Norah with her till now elusive birth family. Her sister Margaret is on the next page, despite being the elder of the two daughters.
In 1861, Edward’s household contained an 18-year-old niece called Margaret. There is no record of a death of John and Anora’s daughter, nor was there another Margaret Vaughan around the area in 1851, so unless the first Margaret left town and another arrived to take her place, the evidence suggests that John and Edward were brothers. This makes Charles and Norah first cousins, although he was a dozen or so years older than her.
Life was tough for the Chepstow Vaughans. Norah’s mother died later in 1851. Edward and Ellen lost their youngest daughter 4 days later. A newspaper search finds multiple references to Edward and Ellen’s family, mostly in the court reports. They appear to have been a hard-drinking family with very short fuses. By 1861 I can find no trace of John and little Norah – I suspect they are in London by then – and they managed to avoid the census. Margaret, as we know, is with Edward and Ellen. She is still with the widowed Ellen in 1871 with her illegitimate daughter (also Margaret) then spends the rest of her life in the Workhouse, noted as an imbecile.
Charles is the only one of Edward and Ellen’s family to do well for himself. He leaves Chepstow with Mary Jane, marries her and the rest is history. I found some photos of them and their descendants back at Ancestry. The same cheeky face that my grandad had is there in several of those photos. Sue says the same of her family. That is not evidence of course. But it makes me smile.
A 130-year-old posy pressed between the pages of the family bible. I am intrigued to know what occasion this commemorated.
Now what?
I have built out the trees for the Chepstow Vaughans as much as I can at this point. I’ve attached that tree to another containing Norah and her descendants, then linked my spare DNA test at Ancestry to it. Hoping that I’ll get some hits on Thrulines. A DNA hit would really put the icing on the cake for me.
The odd names in the family bible have all been given homes. Mary Jane was not just Norah’s cousin’s wife but was probably almost a substitute mother to her. Charles was possibly considered a substitute father if her own had died or abandoned her (remember it was ‘an Aunt’ who took her to the Workhouse Infirmary, not her father). John was her father and Edward was her uncle…but I suspect John and Edward’s father could possibly be Edward too. Interestingly Charles had one son who he named Charles Edward John Vaughan. He distributed all the names to one child!
I’ve spent significant hours looking for the Vaughans in County Cork, but with no luck yet. It’s interesting that one of Charles’ daughters moved to Ireland for a few years and had some of her children there. Her husband was originally from Tipperary but they lived in Ballincollig, Cork. This may be a clue to pursue, or it may be a red herring. Time will tell.
This blog post is also unashamedly cousin bait. I’d love it if a descendant of Charles and Mary Jane was to stumble across this and reach out!
Finally, I have a renewed sense of hope around genealogy brick walls. This one had been niggling away at me for years. I guess it took a while for Norah to feel ready to make herself known. So this blog goes out on the 5th anniversary of losing my Mum, Norah’s great-grandaughter. I hope they’re getting along well!
It seemed appropriate to cover Tasmanian ancestors this week, as I have relocated to Tasmania for the foreseeable future to care for a close family member. Many Australians with long roots (by white settlement standards) in the country have a line or two leading back to Tasmania. Many others, like myself, find Tasmanian ancestors in collateral lines. As one of the major early convict colonies, Van Diemen’s Land is rich with history.
Tasmania is also a goldmine of easily accessible records, especially for the early days. One of my absolute favourites is the Tasmanian Names Index on the Libraries Tasmania site. Here you will find many birth, death and marriage certificates, immigration/emigration records, wills, convict records, divorces, bankruptcy records and surviving censuses. Not only is access free but there are usually images of the original documents as well. Go take a look and see what you can find!
As I am here in a caring capacity at the moment, I am not really walking in anyone’s footsteps right now. However, I would like to share the story of my son’s paternal ancestor, George Beard and a visit we took to a significant site in his life story on a past visit to this beautiful island.
George Beard – transported on ‘John Barry’, 1834
George Beard in later life
George Beard was from ‘The Stanleys’, neighbouring villages in rural Gloucestershire just outside Stroud. He was born in Leonard Stanley and baptised there as the son of Richard and Sarah (nee Clissold) Beard on October 1st 1809. By the time he reached adulthood, he was living in King’s Stanley just a few hundred yards away. He appears to have been well-raised. His conduct record states ‘connexions good’ and he was able to both read and write.
George goes off the rails!
George’s first known brush with the law took place in 1831. As recorded at the Lent Assizes of 1832, he was brought in on October 1st charged with stealing twelve yards of woollen cloth belonging to John Figgins Marling. Marling was one of three brothers involved in the woollen trade around the area, and at that time managed the local Ebley Mill. George, a clothworker, may well have been employed at this mill as it was located only two miles from Kings Stanley.
Ebley Mill
George was tried at the Michaelmas Sessions on October 18th 1831, found guilty of the first indictment but not guilty of the second and sentenced to 18 calendar months in a penitentiary. It is unclear what the second indictment was. Only one charge is mentioned on any of the surviving documents and newspaper reports. An extensive physical description was provided and his behaviour was deemed to be orderly. Presuming he served his full sentence he would have been released from prison in about April 1833.
Sadly, he was not to remain free for long. According to the records of the Summer Assizes 1833, on July 22nd he was placed in custody charged with theft of a timepiece belonging to a Richard Vines, another local clothworker. As a repeat offender, whose behaviour was now judged to be ‘bad’, his outcome was harsher than before. He was tried on August 10th 1833, found guilty and sentenced to be transported for seven years.
Prior to his transportation, he was held on the prison hulk ‘Justitia’ on the river Thames at Woolwich. The Quarterly Returns of Prisoners have him listed for three consecutive quarters as he awaited assignment to a transport ship. His behaviour was consistently noted as good once more – perhaps he was now more resigned to his fate. The final quarterly return contained the remark “V.D.L. 20 Mar 1834” indicating he had now commenced his transportation.
Convict Hulk ‘Justicia’
George became one of 320 male convicts to take the 129-day voyage to Van Diemen’s Land aboard the ‘John Barry’, which arrived in Hobart on August 11th 1834. It was almost a year to the day since George was sentenced. He did not attract the medical attention of the Surgeon Superintendent John Osborne, so presumably arrived in good health.
Life in Australia
As Police Number 2102, George was ordered by the Secretary of State to be allocated to the 2nd Class Chain Gang rather than be assigned as labour to free settlers. The chain gang was usually reserved for the worst prisoners and this placement appears at odds with the good behaviour reports prior to leaving England. However, the Conduct Record states that the Gaol Report says he has a ‘bad character in every respect’. Was a mistake made that led him to be given harsher punishment than he perhaps deserved? The same Conduct Record says that both the Hulk Report and Surgeon’s Report state his behaviour was orderly. This is not a case of mistaken identity, as the physical description provided on the Description List matches that from his first conviction in England, right down to the scar on his left wrist.
George Beard’s conduct record
It is known that his temper could be roused, however. In April 1835, he was placed in solitary confinement on bread and water for 6 days after ‘threatening to stick a pick in George Fountain’s head’, though note was made of his former good conduct. According to the 1835 Muster Roll George was assigned to ‘Public Works’ which is consistent with having progressed from being on a chain gang due to subsequent good behaviour. He may have been building roads, bridges, buildings or wharves in the fledgling colony in this capacity.
By 1838 he was assigned to ‘Cox’, though clearly without much enthusiasm for his work. In February, he received 25 lashes for neglect of duty and in August he was confined to a cell for 7 days, again for neglect of duty, this time combined with ‘general sullenness’. The magistrate who sentenced him to these punishments was Robert Wales, who worked for the Morven Police District around Evandale. Therefore ‘Cox’ was almost certainly James Cox, a prominent local pastoralist whose estate at Evandale was known as ‘Clarendon’. The mansion here was completed in 1838, so George may well have been involved in its construction.
Clarendon House
Freedom
George’s Ticket of Leave was granted on January 4th, 1839, five years into his sentence. This at least gave him the opportunity to choose his workplace, however, it is unknown where he worked after this time.
The following year he became eligible to apply for his Certificate of Freedom (Number 603, 1840) when his seven-year sentence expired. The 1841 Muster Roll shows he must indeed have successfully applied for the certificate as he is listed as ‘free by servitude’. Neither his Ticket of Leave nor his Certificate of Freedom appear to have survived and cannot be located.
Perhaps seeking a fresh start, George departed Van Diemen’s Land on the schooner ‘Essington’, bound for Portland Bay in the Port Philip District in November 1842. He settled around Belfast (later Port Fairy), marrying Mary Harris, a free settler also from Gloucestershire in 1848. He managed to avoid any further notoriety, living a quiet life with no mentions in the newspapers either locally or further afield during the course of his life. By the time he died on New Year’s Eve 1891 in Warrnambool, he had become a father to nine children and many grandchildren. A late starter to family life, he more than made up for it.
Visiting Clarendon
My son and I visited Clarendon House during our Christmas visit to Tasmania in 2017. Now run by the National Trust it remains a beautiful and stately homestead. Most interestingly, the convict quarters remain standing. It was eerie to walk inside them and wonder which room George would have lived in while he worked on building the house. It is a place worth visiting even if you don’t have any Tasmanian ancestors.
Convict quarters at Clarendon House
I really recommend having a dig around Tasmanian records if you too have Tasmanian ancestors, as they are an absolute treasure trove. There will be an upcoming blog on Tasmanian convict records…I have at least two convicts amongst my collateral ancestors to finish researching, and will do a ‘how to’ in more depth then!
For the past couple of weeks, I have dwelt on the darker side of our family histories. The black sheep and the shame they brought to their families at the time. Sometimes looking at their actions through our current day values rehabilitates them and shows them just to be human. Sometimes what they did will remain a dark stain on the family tree for all time.
Occasionally, however, it is difficult to know whether someone was a black sheep or just had a very exciting and unusual life! I have an ancestor who I am hesitant to label a black sheep using the limited amount of information I have. I have my suspicions he wasn’t always the ‘good guy’ but suspect his full story will never be known.
The glimpses into his life that I have found have intrigued me and left me wanting more. But for a man who clearly lived his life to the fullest, he left remarkably few records of it. Okay, that’s probably not true. There will be records somewhere. It’s just time to pull out all stops to find them. And perhaps I shouldn’t be writing about him till I’ve done that, but he irresistibly draws me in while we’re on this topic of ‘outrageous ancestors’!
Captain Ferdinando Kuffeler
Ferdinando Kuffeler was born in 1646, the son of Johannes Siebertus Kuffeler and his wife Catherine Drebbel (daughter of Cornelis Drebbel). I am yet to find evidence of his baptism. He may have been born in London where his father operated a dye works in Stratford-by-Bow. More likely he was born in the Netherlands, where the family also had dye works in Katwijk and Hulckenstyn near Arnhem, and where his younger brother Edward was baptised. My next step in locating his baptism records will be to do a deep dive into Dutch records around these areas in particular.
The first official records I have of his existence appear in 1668. On 22nd October, a marriage allegation is completed in London, showing him to be a bachelor of St Margaret’s Westminster, and his intended bride Katherine Graves of St Clements Danes. That very same day, they rushed off to the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in Knightsbridge and got married. In that same year, he is listed as a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber of Charles II. This is somewhat unsurprising, given that his grandfather had been at the court of James I, and his father had been involved in attempting to develop an exploding torpedo for Charles II.
Marriage allegation between Ferdinando Kuffeler and Katherine Graves.
Bigamist or widower?
At some stage, probably in the early to mid-1770s his wife bore him a daughter, Catherine. No baptism has been found, but she married in 1697 at St Margaret’s Westminster, to a John Burchett. I have found no evidence of Ferdinando and Katherine having any other children together.
Recently I found a Dutch book of pedigrees published in 1760 which contained the Kuffeler family, including Ferdinando. Known names and dates tallied well and it provided the names of several additional siblings to Ferdinando that I had not known of. It even stated categorically that Ferdinando had one child.
Genealogy of the Kuffeler family published in the Netherlands in 1760. Ferdinando is stated to have one child…
I flipped the page expecting to see the child listed as being Catherine. But no…it was a Leonora! Herein lies another mystery. Was he widowed and did he remarry in the Netherlands? If so, why would the book not show both sets of offspring?
I am slightly suspicious that Ferdinando may have had a family on both sides of the sea. I have not found a marriage for him yet in the Netherlands, nor is his Dutch wife named in this document. No burial record for Katherine has yet been found.
…but this child is not the one he had he had in London!
Interestingly, Leonora’s son Abraham Engelgraaf was living in London at the time of his death in 1775, which names the same wife as in the document shown above – so the family definitely had links with England. Whether or not the Engelgraafs and Burchetts knew one another is yet to be discovered, however!
Privateer or Scammer?
Now here is where I get really mystified as to how so little has been written about Ferdinando. Look at the advertisement below, found in a compendium called Rariora. The story sounds like an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling adventure! Interestingly he is referred to as Captain Kuffeler, hinting at some kind of military, perhaps naval career. No evidence has been found so far that this is the case.
Broadsheet advertisement for sale of shares in the Spanish Galleon booty found in ‘Rariora’.
There are a couple of possibilities here. Ferdinando really was taken prisoner and learnt of the wreck of a Spanish Galleon loaded with treasures galore. Or he made it up. Did he really swear an oath in Chancery? He may have, but it hasn’t turned up in the catalogue of the National Archives. Still digging. Did he really get a licence to fish for the wreck, or is it some elaborate hoax? Still looking. Regardless, at least one person bought shares…
Indenture of Assignment of a grant of 120 shares in the Spanish Galleon wreckage to Charles Gostwick of St Giles in the Fields.
Mr Charles Gostwick, a gentleman of St Giles in the Fields bought 120 of the 1000 shares from Ferdinando. If the expedition was successful, presumably he ended up an extremely wealthy man. I suspect he didn’t.
We know the Ferdinando Kuffeler selling the shares was the same Ferdinando as the one married to Katherine Graves (as if the strikingly unusual name wasn’t enough!). Take a look at the bottom of the Indenture and you can see his faint signature. A great match for the one on the marriage allegation.
I have as yet found no further mention of Ferdinando in records of the time, official or unofficial. He seems to have disappeared completely though he managed to remain partially obscured for most of his life.
Forgive me for doubting his integrity, but at this stage, I am unconvinced that he does not for one reason or another, deserve the black sheep title. Either way, he’s definitely a fascinating ancestor, about whom I hope to learn much much more…
Edward Girling is my three times great grandfather, and one of my grimmer black sheep ancestors. Last week I wrote about the spice that can be added to your family tree when you research the people that didn’t quite fit the mould of the rest of the family. In many cases, it can bring interest, joy and even humour into the tree. But at other times it can also be confronting and unpleasant to see the results of your forebear’s choices in life. I have two such ancestors, both named Edward (you’ve already heard the tale of Edward Field) and both responsible for the death of an immediate family member.
Who was Edward Girling?
Edward Girling was born in 1811 in Sandiacre, Derbyshire. He was the son of a self-described ‘quack doctor’ named William Girling, and his second wife Charlotte (nee Wilkinson). There is rarely a Girling in my tree who is not somewhat eccentric at the very least!
At the age of 21, he married Mary Boot and soon after the young couple and their daughter Charlotte moved to Birmingham where Edward worked as a scale beam maker. Three more children were born to Edward and Mary during the next twelve years.
Along came my great great grandmother…
Then in 1850 my great-great-grandmother Eliza was born. This child was different from the rest, however. Her mother was not Mary Boot, but Sarah Girling, nee Bytheway! Sarah had been married to a William Bennet Girling of London, but he had left her for another woman a few years previously, whom he subsequently and bigamously married. Sarah named Edward as the father of Eliza, and DNA matches have confirmed that we are linked to the Sandiacre Girlings. I have yet to connect the two Girling branches but it seems odd that both men that she bore children to shared the same unusual surname.
By that time, Edward’s younger brother Reuben had also moved to Birmingham with his family, taken up the same trade as Edward and lived nearby. One of his sons founded Girling Brakes, so they’re not all a bad lot!
The Death of Mary Girling
Fast forward to 1885. On the 15th of June Mary Girling was found dead in the marital home. Following an inquest held on the 19th June, a warrant was issued for the arrest of her husband. Mary’s cause of death had been deemed to be ‘syncope, consequent upon chronic bronchitis’. Edward was accused of wilful neglect of his wife during her illness, and charged with manslaughter.
The Birmingham Calendar of Prisoners (see below) outlines the bare bones of Edward’s case. But as I mentioned last week, black sheep often provide us with further sources of information.
Edward Girling’s entry in the Calendar of Prisoners.
Edward Girling in the News
Even by today’s standards, this was a sensational case. It was seized upon not only by the local press but all over the country. Newspapers from the Aberdeen Evening Express to the Luton Times and Bedfordshire Advertiser were reporting on the ‘deplorable character’ who was Edward Girling. And as is the situation today, not everything they said was accurate. Some of it was worse.
It seems that Mary had been living out of the marital home earlier in the year, as their youngest daughter was dying. Mary was living with her to provide nursing, comfort and assistance around the home. The daughter passed away in February and by Easter Mary had moved back in with Edward.
The inquest of Mary Ann Girling, as reported by the Birmingham Daily Post, 20 June 1885
The newspapers had reported that by this time he was living with his brother’s widow Fanny. Shocking stuff. Except that none of his dead brothers had been married to a Fanny. The brother that lived in Birmingham was still alive and married to a Lavinia. The newspapers either didn’t know (or decided not to report) that Fanny was actually his daughter-in-law, not widowed and they had been living together on and off as man and wife since at least 1871, when they are together on census night! Fanny’s children/Edward’s grandchildren were raised from early childhood by their father John. Edward and Fanny reportedly spent much of their time carousing at local drinking establishments.
Mary suffered from chronic bronchitis. In the weeks preceding her death, she had become bedridden and required assistance and medical attention. Her granddaughter Caroline and a neighbour Emma Layton had been trying to help her by visiting and bringing food and medicine. Mary had said she was being starved and beaten, and indeed the neighbour had been threatened with a stick when she brought some broth around for Mary resulting in police intervention. However in the fortnight before she died, no one had been able to see her, as Edward and Fanny had taken to locking her inside when they went out drinking for the day. When asked to provide a doctor they always said they were going to but didn’t.
The Trial of Edward Girling
Report on the trial of Edward Girling. Birmingham Daily Post, 7th August 1885.
The trial had been delayed when Fanny ran off in early July. She was charged with absconding to avoid giving evidence. The reason she gave was that she was being threatened by relatives of the deceased. I have as yet found no documents to support her having suffered any consequences of either this or for the death of Mary.
When the trial finally took place in early August, the ‘decrepit old man’ had obtained no legal counsel and defended himself against prosecutor Mr Etherington Smith. Unsurprisingly, given the shocking evidence provided by Henry Hawkes the coroner and multiple witnesses, it was a short trial. He was found guilty by the jury and received 18 months of hard labour at Winson Green prison in Birmingham. It would have and should have been a longer sentence, but the judge took pity on him because of his age. Nonetheless, he died soon after he did his time. I’m not sure he would have been mourned by anyone other than perhaps his daughter-in-law and girlfriend Fanny.
John and Sarah (nee Morter) Rigby were living here at Wilkes St, Spitalfields in 1861, when the census was held and when their son John married Charlotte Teague.
While I was in London attending RootsTech, I put aside a day to go wandering. Not so much tourist-style wandering, but ancestral wandering. A maternal branch of my family has strong roots in the East End of London, so I decided to walk in the footsteps of my London ancestors for a day! It is something I heartily recommend you do if you get the opportunity. However, as with trips to the archives, preparation is key. If you know exactly where key events occurred in your ancestors’ lives, or exactly where they lived, and worked, you can literally stand where they stood. An amazing feeling!
Preparing to visit your ancestral neighbourhood
Go through the documents you have collected for the ancestors in the area you will be visiting. Look for addresses, landmarks, churches, workplaces, schools etc. Make a note of the addresses. I made a spreadsheet so I could sort by street name, ancestor, event and so on. I added an additional column for ‘current street name’. Why? Because street names change more frequently than you might think! London was extensively bombed during WW2, and also underwent a lot of growth prior to that. Many many old street names were lost. I found this site invaluable in finding the current day names for 19th-century London addresses.
The next item I looked for to help me was an old street map. By using a street map from the era of your ancestors you can see not only where the streets are in relation to one another but, for example, how comparatively rural the area may have then been. Over the decades, streets may have been partly demolished, changed course or extended. I found a map from 1853, another from 1882, and even one from the late 1700s. I printed all these out, highlighted the relevant streets and attached my spreadsheet. Now I was ready to visit my London ancestors! Using Google Maps on my phone once there I could chart a course for my East End wandering.
The local church
The first place I stopped was St Matthew’s church in Bethnal Green. It wasn’t the only church used by my London ancestors. They often got married down the road at Christchurch Spitalfields. But for baptisms, burials and regular Sunday worship, this was their main church. When I arrived, to my surprise it was open, an unusual thing these days! Then I remembered it was Sunday. I tiptoed inside hoping to get a quick look at the interior, but I was spotted by the small congregation and ended up attending the service (and having a cup of tea with them afterwards!)
St Matthew’s church, Bethnal Green
The church had been badly damaged during the war, so the inside was quite modern. The old font that many of my family had been baptised in was gone. But it was lovely to spend a little time in the space where so many of their significant life moments had occurred. A little later in the day I popped into Christchurch Spitalfields too.
Plaque commemorating the bombing of St Matthew’s church in Bethnal Green.
The neighbourhood
Leaving the church, I followed the trail on my map and began seeking out the addresses my London ancestors had occupied. My main people from this neighbourhood were the Morter, Rigby, Teague, Townley, and Wright families.
Turning onto Brick Lane, I was suddenly confronted by market stalls, buskers, crowds and the smells of delicious foods! Brick Lane Market is held on a Sunday. I love markets! The sun was shining, I was on a genealogical adventure whilst simultaneously experiencing a market. Could life get any better?
Bacon St, Shoreditch. Formerly Thomas St, this street is the epicentre of my mid-1800’s London ancestry. John and Sarah (nee Morter) Rigby lived at number 5 in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, and Sarah’s mother died there in 1866. Enoch Teague as at 17 at the 1851 Census, his wife Sarah (nee Townley) having died at number 19 in 1842. Their daughter Charlotte was at 23 in the 1861 census living with her married sister Emma.
Cygnet St (formerly Swan Yard and Swan Terrace), Shoreditch. Between 1815 and 1820, John and Sarah (nee Wright) Morter were giving Swan Yard as their address as they were baptising their children, including their daughter Sarah. By 1841, Sarah junior was married to John Rigby and they were living in Swan Terrace at the time of the census.
Some of the original buildings at the addresses could still be found, however by no means all of them. Many old houses had been bombed and since replaced by office buildings, a school and a park. This was especially apparent when I visited New Inn Yard in Shoreditch, where hardly an old building could be seen.
New Inn Yard, Shoreditch. When John and Sarah Morter left Swan Yard, they moved here and continued baptising several more children. From this we know that they lived here for at least 16 years. Nothing remains of the buildings of the time.This was formerly 10 Brown’s Lane (now Hanbury St), the home of Charlotte Teague in 1861 when she married John Rigby. The blue plaque at number 12 is to commemorate the birthplace of Bud Flanagan in 1896. Just across the road, Jack the Ripper claimed his 2nd victim, Annie Chapman at number 29 (long since demolished).
Get walking!
I recommend walking in your ancestors’ local area if you get the opportunity. If nothing else it will give you a feel for the relationship of the addresses and landmarks to one another and the local geography. This will give you better insight when researching.
In my case, I truly felt a sense of belonging as well. I felt happy there. This feeling often occurs when I visit places that my family inhabited. I wonder if it is as simple as enjoying being there and seeing how my ancestors lived. Or is it something deeper? Is there something to epigenetic memory inheritance? Does it feel like home because part of me recognises it as such?
This week I am back in England, staying in the Midlands with my remaining close English family. Much of my family history has links to Birmingham and the surrounding areas. I was born there and many of my family lines extending back for several centuries are within the modern-day boundaries of Birmingham. Indeed, my maternal grandmother lived in the (now) suburb of Kings Norton right up to her death in 2007 without even knowing of the depth of her heritage there.
Map showing location of Kings Norton, on the edge of modern day Birmingham
My family links to Kings Norton, however, precede the commencement of parish registers and on some lines go back at least 700 years. It seems as though almost all genealogical roads lead to Kings Norton on several branches of my tree, both maternal and paternal. I’ve often wondered if that is why I’ve always felt a connection to Kings Norton village green or whether it’s just because it is a lovely little historical oasis in a large city.
Kings Norton St Nicolas’ church and the Saracen’s Head
It actually blows my mind to think that so many of my ancestors crossed paths on a daily basis with each other in what was at the time a small rural village. Their descendants gradually dispersed from Kings Norton to other towns, villages and cities such as Birmingham, Stratford on Avon, Dudley, and even further afield. Yet the lines still managed to merge again by the 20th century to produce my generation who are now living in Australia!
Kings Norton village green
As you know by now, the thing I love about genealogy is not the names and dates but the stories of my people. So today, I’d like to share a tale about one of my least favourite ancestors. We all have black sheep, and they often create the best family stories!
Edward Field (1623-1685) of Kings Norton
The Field family of Kings Norton, Worcestershire had been in the village for many generations and were quite powerful and well-respected in the area. Edward was the son of William Field of Bells Farm which still exists today. William had taken ownership in 1638 and lived there at Bells Hall with his family.
Bells Farm today
In 1642, the Civil War broke out. Although nearby Birmingham was strongly on the Parliamentarian side, Kings Norton and William himself were staunchly Royalist. Bells Farm was situated on the road that commanded the east, and while he was building fortifications and digging tunnels, the tradespeople of Birmingham were making weapons for Cromwell’s army.
Prince Rupert and his troops turned up in 1643, finding a friendly local welcome (including the Field family), and overpowered the Parliamentarians, almost destroying Birmingham in the process. However later in the year Cromwell’s army made a comeback with large numbers of men and heavy artillery and attacked Kings Norton. William had to surrender.
There is no further trace of William. He was never seen again. There is no burial record and his body is not in the family crypt. He is believed to have been executed and his body dumped.
Edward, a young man of about 20 years of age, profited well from his father’s death. Naturally he inherited Bells Farm, which had been damaged during the battle but was then left alone. He also however mysteriously managed to acquire several other properties and much wealth. To do so at this time indicates that he was in favour with the Parliamentary forces, despite them having seen his father and the village of Kings Norton as enemies.
By the time Edward died in 1685, he was a very wealthy man indeed. He had repaired and several times extended Bells Farm, to the point where by 1666 he was paying Hearth Tax for seven fireplaces. His will is voluminous and his six children each inherited properties and a significant amount of money (except his son John who got his watch and his books!). No trace of his inventory has been found though I hope it turns up one day as I’d love to see the list of items he had acquired!
Edward was clearly a resourceful young man, who saw which way the winds of war were blowing and switched sides. To have profited so immensely, it is hard not to believe that he must have betrayed his father to assist the Parliamentary forces in breaching the fortifications of Bell Hall. Whether or not he realised it would result in his father’s death is a matter of conjecture, as is whether he ever felt regret at what he had done. Whatever the truth I do not like this ancestor. But hey, it makes a fabulous family story!
Worcestershire resources are scarce!
One of the great things about having so many ancestors from a single village is that over the years I have gathered quite a collection of resources about it. Parish register copies, local history books, collections of memorial inscriptions, some poor law records, loads of local wills etc. Being in Worcestershire, there is comparatively little available online that isn’t just indexes and transcripts. Even then it is not well covered in comparison with other English counties.
Shout out to Familysearch, FindMyPast, Ancestry, etc…please get around to digitising and publishing Worcestershire records!
Have you ever repeatedly hit a genealogical brick wall over and over again and despaired of ever breaking through it? Have you ever felt as though your ancestors would let you know about their lives when they were good and ready and not a moment before? And have you then suddenly had an amazing coincidence that has seen those brick walls tumble? That’s genealogical serendipity, and it can feel downright spooky!
Ever driven past an overgrown cemetery in the middle of nowhere and decided to stop and take a look? Serendipity is when you find a grave with a surname you recognise and it turns out to be someone from a long lost branch of the family tree! That’s genealogical serendipity.
Genealogical Serendipity Strikes My Tree
When I moved to Australia with my parents as a child, I thought we were the first of our line to live in the state of Victoria. My mum had lived briefly in Sydney as a young girl before returning to England. However no one had ventured south of the New South Wales border. It turned out however that we were unwittingly tracing the steps of an ancestor.
Mary Scriven was my 4 x great grandmother. She spent most of her later adult life around Walsall in Staffordshire, after living quite a nomadic early married life with her husband William Sartain. However she suddenly turned up in a census under a different surname. I would have had difficulty finding her if she wasn’t living with a daughter. She had remarried and been widowed again in the years since the previous census. However, I could not find evidence of this second marriage.
I ended up putting this puzzle aside to brew, and instead traced where her various children went, in the time honoured FAN Club way. It turned out two sons had gone to Australia. Not just anywhere in Australia. One, Joseph, went to a tiny place in my state of Victoria that I happened to have visited a lot! Jamieson is literally just a tiny dot on the map, a former gold mining town of about 300 people. The other, Thomas, went to Melbourne (where I currently live), but then moved to Hamilton, a town in Western Victoria where I lived as a child. He is buried there in the cemetery just a few minutes walk from my old home.
Thomas Sartain and son William. Thomas was buried only a few hundred metres from my home in country Victoria. Credit: Steve Haynes
Intrigued, I started to investigate further…and discovered their mother, my missing Mary, had spent some time in Australia with her sons. Her second marriage took place in Melbourne. Thanks to the detailed nature of Victorian marriage certificates, this confirmed her mother’s elusive maiden name for me, and allowed me to progress the tree backwards. Genealogical serendipity. Mary’s second husband died soon after they wed and he is one of the first interments in Brighton Cemetery.
Mary Scriven’s second marriage.Mary Scriven’s parents revealed.
Have you had any serendipitous moments with your family history research? Comment below, I’d love to hear your stories!
