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Which of the Priestley Rioters Was Transported to Botany Bay?

The attack on Joseph Priestley’s home in Birmingham. Artist Johann Eckstein. Public domain.

Recently, I was preparing a presentation for an Australian audience on Birmingham history and included mention of the Priestley Riots of 1791. The commonly held wisdom is that four Priestley Rioters were sentenced to death, but only two were executed, one was pardoned and one ‘transported to Botany Bay’. There was no indication of who was sent to Australia, so I decided to find out. It’s amazing how often someone in the room is related to someone mentioned in a talk. Could I identify them? Did this person have an Aussie descendant in the room?

What were the Priestley Riots?

In 1791, a group of non-conformists (Protestant dissenters who did not belong to the Church of England) gathered for a banquet to celebrate the second anniversary of the French Revolution. Non-conformists made up a large part of the Birmingham community and were generally well accepted. However, for a small group of townsfolk this action was unacceptable. They stormed the banquet hall and tore down several religious meeting houses and private homes of non-conformists. The riots continued for several days.

An inflammatory cartoon of the time, wrongly depicting Joseph Priestley as attending the banquet. James Gillray, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who was Joseph Priestley?

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), was famous as the discoverer of oxygen and a key part of the Industrial Enlightenment. He was not just a chemist but a philosopher and a Unitarian minister too. Although he was originally a Yorkshire man, he moved to Birmingham, the heart of the Enlightenment. He was a prominent member of the Lunar Society, a group of men who would gather regularly to discuss science and the arts. Some of his fellow members included Josiah Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt and Erasmus Darwin.

Although the Birmingham Riots became popularly known as the Priestley Riots, he wasn’t even at the banquet that sparked them off. He was at home with his wife at the time. However, he was the Minister of the New Meeting House, which was destroyed (along with many of his papers and irreplaceable documents), and such a prominent member of the non-conformist community that his name was attached to the riots.

Joseph Priestley’s Non-Conformist New Meeting House. Creative Commons 0 – Public Domain

Of all the Priestley Rioters, who numbered several hundred, only fifty were subsequently arrested. Of those 17 were acquitted, some received very light punishment and just four were condemned to be executed.

So who were the Priestley Rioters condemned to death?

The four condemned were Francis Field (alias Rodney), John Green, Bartholomew Fisher, and William Hands (alias Hammond). The Hereford Journal of 31st August 1791 reports the judge’s speech on condemning these men:

Which of the Priestley Rioters was actually executed?

On the 8th of September, sentence was passed on two of the Priestley Rioters, Francis Field and John Green, as reported in the Oxford Journal two days later:

…and the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette on the 15th September 1791:

Bartholomew Fisher was pardoned…

Both articles claim that Bartholomew Fisher had obtained a free pardon. Therefore he could not have been the transported Priestley Rioter. The pardon was located, along with the correspondence that took place in making the decision. It backs up the newspaper reports. For anyone seeking similar information on one of their own research subjects, the documents are to be found on FindMyPast digitised from the HO8 and HO47 series at The National Archives.

Part of Bartholomew Fisher’s Free Pardon

…so that leaves William Hands. Right?

By a process of elimination, William Hands, alias Hammonds was the only one left who could have been transported. He had reportedly received a respite. This does not mean he was pardoned, just that his death sentence did not take place. Often a death sentence was commuted to transportation. So he’s our guy, yes?

Not so fast. I scoured the convict lists for New South Wales, the only place in Australia at the time where convicts were sent. After all, the common wisdom was that he’d been sent to Botany Bay. Nothing. Just in case he’d been kept on a hulk for a very long time and then sent to Van Diemen’s Land when that became a penal colony I checked there too. Still nothing. He doesn’t appear to have been transported.

So I went back to the Home Office records to see if I could find the correspondence regarding his respite. Sure enough, he had initially only received a week’s respite from being executed, then a further week while they investigated some further information received. It turned out that the witness statement against him was false. Someone who had a grudge against him had taken the opportunity to testify against him.

William Hands, the hero!

So what had really happened? According to the correspondence, he HAD been tearing up floorboards in the house but was trying to help people trapped in the cellar of the burning house to escape. He was not a Priestley Rioter at all!

Part of the correspondence of 11th September 1791 explaining why the High Sheriff of Warwick was seeking a second period of respite from execution for William Hands.

There were several frantic letters written, and finally, on 23rd September, William Hands received a free pardon and was ordered to be immediately released from custody.

Part of the free pardon of William Hands, 23rd September 1791

So which of the Priestley Rioters was transported?

No one. It was a myth. Of the four men convicted of being Priestley Rioters, two were executed and two were pardoned. Nobody in my audience got the opportunity to jump up and shout, “Wait, he’s on my family tree!” I didn’t even include the names of those convicted in the end. But that’s okay, I’m very glad William was set free!

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One Line on a Gravestone – Discovering Bigamy in the Jobbern Family

Last time, you heard about the tragedy that befell the Jobbern family after the almost simultaneous deaths of the two eldest children. This week, one line on a gravestone helped me begin to piece together where Catherine and her daughters went…and what they resorted to along the way.

Gravestone of Catherine and her daughters, Woodlands Cemetery, Stamford, CT, USA (photo: Graveyard Walker, used with permission)

Stage 1 – Manchester

Catherine and her two remaining daughters had clearly left Thomas in Birmingham by 1847. But where had they gone? They hadn’t remained in Birmingham, they were nowhere to be found in the 1851 Census.

Sarah Ann

The first one of them to be located was Sarah Ann. She had married John Baptist Bradshaw on 17th August 1847 at Manchester Cathedral. She gave her father’s name and profession as Thomas Jobern, silversmith which was a clear match.

Marriage certificate of Sarah Ann Jobern and John Baptist Bradshaw, Manchester Cathedral, 17th August 1847.

Neither her mother nor her sister had witnessed this marriage, so I wasn’t sure if she’d arrived in Manchester alone at this stage. It turned out that they had also married on the same day at the Roman Catholic church of St Augustine in Chorlton Upon Medlock, a mile away. This helpfully also further confirmed her identity by naming her mother as Catherine.

They’d not kept the marriage a secret, publishing it in the marriage notices of several newspapers in Manchester and Liverpool.

Marriage announcement in the Manchester Times, 21st August 1847.

Sarah Ann and John were easily found in the 1851 census in Hulme, Manchester. Further confirmation that this was the right Sarah Ann was provided by her birthplace of Handsworth, which was in the correct area of Birmingham. They had no children at this stage, but did have both a servant and a lodger. John was a wine and spirit merchant’s agent. She had clearly moved up in the world.

Catherine and Jane

So where were her sister and mother? The 1851 Manchester Census is very difficult to read in some parts due to water damage, but I eventually found Jane with her mother, now known as Catherine Fowler, also in Hulme, lodging with the Hayhurst family.

1851 Census for Catherine Fowler and Jane M Jobern, Hulme, Manchester

Interestingly Jane was described as a ‘Professor of Music’, while Catherine was a Monthly Nurse. Catherine’s name had changed to Fowler and she was described as a widow. The GRO index had a marriage between a Catherine Jobbern and a William Fowler listed for 1845 – so I ordered it.

Marriage certificate of William Fowler and Catherine Jobbern, St Augustine Catholic Church, 1st July 1845

Though she described herself as a widow at this marriage too, we know Thomas was still alive till 1851. This was the first bigamous marriage I stumbled across. One of the witnesses was her daughter Sarah Ann. This was a pattern that would repeat. I found William in 1841 with his first wife Jane, but do not know for sure that he was the widower he claimed to be either. It is probable that Catherine was telling the truth when she claimed to be a widow of her second marriage (if not the first!) in the census, as I’ve not yet found any trace of William beyond their marriage. I’m deciding whether to invest in the pot luck of death certificates to find him with such a common name – sometimes you need to avoid the rabbit holes!

So it appears that Thomas’ wife and both his daughters left him in Birmingham very soon after the deaths of Caroline and Thomas junior in 1844.

No further signs of them were apparent in Manchester so I began a broader search for Fowlers and Job(b)erns. One line on gravestone posted at FindAGrave suddenly revealed where they had gone.

Stage 2 – USA – ‘One line on a Gravestone…’

Catherine and both her daughters were buried together in Stamford, Connecticut in the US! One line on the gravestone showed beyond doubt it was the right people. However, the whole stone raised questions of its own.

Whoever had commissioned the gravestone did so after the death of Sarah in 1911 as it was obviously all carved at the same time. And they wanted it to be clear that Catherine Fowler had been married to Thomas Jobern, and that her daughters were his daughters. This is what tied the gravestone to the family from Birmingham and Manchester. Who that person was remains a mystery that I’m trying to get to the bottom of, but I have my suspicions (to be revealed later!)

What it also revealed was the husbands of the daughters. But wait, where was John Baptist Bradshaw? Sarah Ann’s husband was named as Isaac Wood! More on that later.

Sarah Ann

I managed to find John and Sarah Ann Bradshaw living next door to Catherine and Jane in New York City in the 1860 Census.

1860 New York Census. All the Jobbern women in two households.

John and Sarah Ann had had two daughters, mistakenly recorded as having been born in Mississippi. The vital records for Boston, Massachusetts reveal that this was actually where they had been born. So John had made it to the US with them sometime in the early 1850s.

Birth records for Louisa and Catherine Bradshaw in Boston, Massachusetts, 1854 and 1856.

I can find none of them in the 1870 US Census yet. Nor the 1871 England & Wales Census. But why would I even look there? Well…

…guess where I found the marriage of Sarah Ann and Isaac Wood in 1869? Manchester!!

Marriage certificate of Sarah Ann Bradshaw and Isaac Wood, 21st Dec 1869, Manchester Cathedral.

Both state they are widowed. It is the correct Sarah Ann. Her father is named as Thomas Jobern, though he has mysteriously become a ‘manager’ rather than a silversmith now. Digging into Isaac’s background explains why. He came from quite a respected and well-to-do family in the US. Sarah Ann was reinventing her background. Both of her teenage daughters witnessed this bigamous marriage, as she had her mother’s.

In truth, neither party to this marriage were widowed. This too is a bigamous marriage. Isaac had left his wife, Eliza Jane (nee Griffith) who was alive and kicking for at least two further censuses, and their two daughters, Eliza Jane Wood and Catherine Cole Wood. John Baptist Bradshaw appears to have died in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1881.

Death notice for John Baptist Bradshaw, in the Boston Globe, 2nd March 1881.

I don’t know how long Sarah Ann’s marriage to Isaac lasted. She is next found in the 1881 Census in Chinley, Derbyshire with her daughters (helpfully confirming their birthplace as Boston), listed as married, but Isaac is not with them, and I have found him in neither the 1881 Census, nor back in the US in the 1880 Census. He died in 1895 in the ‘House for Aged Men’ in Brooklyn, New York. This was a charity home, so he had fallen on hard times (perhaps disowned by his family for his actions?). He is buried in the Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Sarah Ann and her daughters had returned to the US by 1900 (probably before 1891 as they cannot be found in the 1891 English Census and Louisa married in 1896 in the US). She was living in Broad St, Stamford with her married daughter Louisa in both the 1900 and 1910 Censuses. The 1900 Census indicates her immigration was in 1854 which fits well with the birth of her daughter Louisa in Boston in the same year.

Sarah Ann died in Stamford on 24th November 1911. Multiple death notices were published in the newspapers of Stamford and Bridgeport in Connecticut, Boston and New York. These provide evidence of her further embellishing the story of her background. Her father was said to have been an aide to the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. Ahem. If you recall from the first blog on the Jobbern family, his service records show him as a private, discharged with a very bad conduct record, and he had never served outside of Scotland and Ireland on garrison duty only.

Sarah Ann’s death notice in the New York Times, 26th November 1911.

Catherine and Jane

Catherine had died in Fairfield County, Connecticut in 1874, and Jane on 4 May 1877 in Stamford. Sometime between 1860 and 1877 Jane had married an Isaac Hull. No trace of this marriage has yet been found on either side of the Atlantic, and thus far her life between these years remains a mystery. Her death notice provides nothing more than her date and place of death as Mrs Jane M Hull.

Clearly, this story is far from over. It is complicated by lack of documentary evidence to show when the transAtlantic movements took place. I’m yet to find them on any passenger lists, though they seem to have travelled across the ocean on several occasions. They also seem to have dodged some censuses though I’m still trying to find them. Some digging into other US sources such as tax records, directories, probates, land records etc may reveal more. It is an ongoing project as I am fascinated by these women!

But what of that one line on the gravestone?

Who could have had a vested interest in having a link recorded between Catherine, her daughters and the ne’er-do-well Thomas Jobbern? Everyone who had known him in the USA was dead. Or were they?

If you cast your mind back to the beginning of this story, Thomas had a brother John, my stepdad’s direct ancestor. He too had had ‘issues’ and was long dead, but he had several children including a daughter, Caroline Jobber. Long before any of the Jobbern branch story came to light I had known she had emigrated to the US in 1867. Indeed, most of the DNA matches to my Dad come from this US branch of the Jobber family. What’s more, she too had settled in Connecticut. I suspect she, as Thomas and Catherine’s niece, was behind the one line on the gravestone that revealed Catherine’s secret.

One line on a gravestone and a lifetime of subterfuge is gradually being unravelled…

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One Paragraph in a Newspaper…Discovering Tragedy in the Jobbern Family

I’m in the middle of some research into my stepdad’s Jobber/Jobbern family. It can be hugely helpful when a surname is unusual. In this case, it’s been a slow old slog and only recently it has gathered pace. The catalyst was a single line on a gravestone in faraway Stamford, Connecticut. More on THAT in the next blog! This has turned into a two-parter to save your eyes, dear readers!

This is the story (or as much as I have currently found!) of the family of Thomas Jobbern, the brother of Dad’s great-great-great-grandfather John Jobber. Notice the slightly different surnames – Dad always said that the family name ‘was originally Jobbern’. This has turned out to be true – from his 3 x great-grandfather down, they have all been Jobber. His brother Thomas’ line continued with the ‘n’ at the end of the name. The two variants were often used interchangeably in many other Jobber/Jobbern families. The number of ‘b’s in the name is also variable.

The brief death notice of the two elder Jobbern children in Aris’s Gazette, Birmingham, 22 April 1844.

The Jobberns

Thomas and John were the sons of Thomas Jobbern, born 1756 in Whittington, Staffordshire to Solomon and Truth (nee Hodgson) Jobbern. Thomas senior was the first known military man in the family. He served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 6th Regiment of Foot. Somewhere along the way, in either Ireland or Nova Scotia based on his service records, he picked up a wife, Caroline. Their marriage has not yet been found. I’m currently favouring Ireland as both his sons followed in his footsteps. They both joined the military and married Irish women while stationed there. As a result, my Dad has a healthy dose of Irish DNA from this and subsequent repeats in later generations!

Thomas Jobbern (1795-1851) and his family

Thomas junior was born on the 3rd March 1795 in Birmingham, Warwickshire according to his military records. Thank goodness for the thoroughness of the military as there is no baptism yet to be found for either he or his brother. He joined the 90th Regiment of Foot in 1811 and served in the 2nd Battalion. This battalion was on garrison duty in Scotland and Ireland for the entire time of his service. There has been no record found yet of his marriage to Catherine, born about 1796 in Ireland, though at least as you’ll discover later, I now know her maiden name…thanks to one line on a gravestone.

Thomas Jobbern appears to have had what we may in the 21st Century call ‘issues’ (from his military service records).

Together they had four children: Caroline Mary (born about 1819), Thomas (born about 1820), Sarah Ann (born 1822) and Jane M (born 1826). The 1841 census suggests they were all born in Warwickshire, however it is much more likely that the first two were born elsewhere. Thomas was not discharged from the army until 1820 at which time he was in Stockport, Cheshire. Although his discharge was on medical grounds, his conduct was noted as ‘very bad’. This may have some bearing on later events.

1841 Census of the Jobbern family, All Saints, Hockley – note incorrect age of Catherine, she was not a daughter, she was his wife and of a similar age to him.

Tragedy Strikes the Jobbern Family

In 1843, Caroline Mary Jobbern married Samuel Homer, a coach builder. Only 10 months later she was dead at the age of 25. She died on the 4th April 1844 at her father’s residence and was buried at Hockley All Saints church six days later. Her cause of death was described as ‘water on the lungs’. The modern term is ‘pleural effusion’ and can have many causes ranging from infections, pneumonia, TB and cancer through to trauma. We do not know what the cause was in Caroline’s case as it does not appear to have been investigated further.

Caroline Homer’s death certificate

As if this wasn’t enough, just two days after she was buried, her 24-year-old brother Thomas also died. He too passed away at his father’s home and this time of consumption, now known as tuberculosis (TB). This may lend weight to this also being the cause of Caroline’s pleural effusion but we will never know.

Thomas Jobbern junior’s death certificate

The deaths of the two eldest Jobbern children were so close to one another that they appear as consecutive entries in the parish burial register.

Caroline and Thomas, buried just one week apart, as recorded in the burial register of All Saints, Hockley.

One can only imagine what devastating impact this would have had on the Jobbern family. The father, already known to be troubled, the mother who had lost her two eldest children, and the two young daughters remaining must have suffered agonies of grief. And it does not seem to have brought them closer together.

There are several military pension documents over the ensuing years, and in one from October 1847 the note was made that he had no family. Wait, WHAT? There were no deaths registered for any of them, so where did they go?

Thomas Jobbern Dies

The Returns of Payment for September 1851 noted that his pension was ceased due to his death on 10th September of that year. Remember that date. He did not die until late 1851.

Thomas Jobbern’s pension ceased due to his death

This meant that I should be able to find him in the 1851 census. His burial record indicated his residence was Price St, Birmingham. Even a manual trawl, household by household fails to reveal him in this street. In fact, he cannot be found anywhere on the 1851 Census at all, despite using all the tricks to find someone on every site that holds this census. I wonder if he was sleeping rough by then and missed being enumerated. Or perhaps he sent the enumerator away in a drunken rage, refusing to take part. Again, we’ll likely never know.

Thomas Jobbern’s burial record, claiming he lived in Price St, Birmingham

But what about the missing family members? Their deaths hadn’t been recorded between their last mention in the 1841 Census and their absence in 1847. Where were they? That is a story in itself…and one for next time as the Jobbern family plot thickens…

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Time to Dismantle ‘Accepted Wisdoms’ – Frances Scully or McHugh?

Last year I wrote about the mysterious disappearance from records of Augustine Hoy. This time around, I want to unravel his wife’s maiden name, which is just as mysterious! Was she Frances Scully or McHugh?

The commonly held wisdom is that Augustine’s wife Frances (or Fanny) was born Frances Luby Scully. I’ve known this to be so ever since I started researching the family in the 1980s. But time and the gradual collection of both documentary and DNA evidence have undone my belief that this is the case. Today I want to illustrate why I have concluded that Frances Scully was actually Frances McHugh.

It is also unashamed ‘cousin bait‘. At last count, there were 189 trees on Ancestry alone that almost all attribute the name Scully to Frances, most unsourced. If just a handful of them stumble over this blog and are open to looking at the evidence, it may go some way to prevent the further proliferation of the name Scully (at least in that part of the tree!). Also, I’m hoping someone holding further documentary evidence one way or the other that I have not yet found may get in touch!

Augustine Hoy Frances McGeow marriage
Marriage certificate of Augustine and Frances

Who was Frances?

Frances was the wife of Augustine Hoy. She was born in approximately 1814, probably in the West Indies (according to her death certificate) though of Irish background. A small but significant bit of African DNA that pops up among descendants regularly shows she was possibly of mixed race. This may support the claim on her death certificate that she was Caribbean-born.

The first documentary evidence I have of her existence is her marriage to Augustine in Eccles, Lancashire, England in 1833. They had three children together before emigrating to Melbourne in 1841 with the surviving two, thankfully after the 1841 Census where they were living in Liverpool.

Augustine Hoy 1841 Census
Augustine, Frances with surviving children Margaret and Augustine in the 1841 Census, just prior to emigration.

After settling in the Western District of Port Phillip Colony, later Victoria, they went on to have a further six children together. Five of these lived to adulthood. She was rumoured to have been a cook for the whalers at some point during that time, though no evidence of this other than family stories has yet been found. She died in Warrnambool in 1895.

Augustine Hoy passenger list
The Hoy family on the passenger list of Intrinsic.

Which Documents Show Her Maiden Name?

Documents that potentially reveal her maiden name include those relating to her own marriage and death, and the civil registration (birth, marriage and death) and possibly baptismal records of her children. An obituary with lots of lovely detail would be welcome but none has been located as yet.

Only one child’s birth was registered in England. One was born well before, and the other just five days (AAARGH!) before civil registration commenced.

Augustine Hoy junior's birth certificate
Birth certificate of Augustine Hoy junior.

Civil registration did not begin in Victoria until 1853, so the births of all but her last Australian-born child could not be registered and it seems the last one was just not registered. Luckily, Victorian marriage and death certificates contain the mother’s full birth name where known.

See the table below for what records I have found containing a maiden name for Frances. It is worth noting that her marriage certificate was signed with an ‘X’, indicating she was illiterate. This would account for the spelling variations in her surname. McHugh is by far the most common variant of this name and is why I’m using this in the face of so many possible spellings!

Frances Scully or McHugh in documents
Scully vs McHugh in documents

What About DNA?

As usual, I then turned to DNA to utilise the other form of evidence that may help answer the question.

At AncestryDNA, I have a great-great-granddaughter and great-great-great-granddaughter (from a separate line) of Frances amongst my kits who have been sorted into ancestral groups. So I did a search for Scullys and McHughs amongst the group which I know to be related through Augustine and Frances’ family.

The only matches with a Scully in their trees were those who had attributed this as Frances’ surname. No other Scully families at all. There were a bunch of McHughs and McCues, all from County Mayo.

Repeating the process over at MyHeritage where I also have the DNA of a now-deceased great-great-great-grandson as well as the above two, I found the same thing. Again, predominantly from County Mayo, although there were a couple apparently from County Galway too.

Frances Scully or McHugh?

Wherever Frances gave her own maiden name, it was a variant of McHugh (written on her behalf as it sounded to the writer). This is significant. Who would know better than she whether she was Frances Scully or McHugh?

Her daughter’s civil marriage certificate also gave this name. It’s often the case that daughters know their family history better than sons.

Frances Scully or McHugh Mary Ann's marriage certificate
Mary Ann Hoy’s marriage certificate

Three sons used another name for their (first) marriages, two Scullys and a Tully. Two of them married twice. Both of them gave a variant of McHugh instead at their second wedding.

Frances Scully or McHugh - Augustine Hoy 1st marriage certificate
Augustine Hoy’s first marriage certificate
Frances Scully or McHugh - Augustine Hoy 2nd marriage certificate
Augustine Hoy’s second marriage certificate
Frances Scully or McHugh - Joseph Hoy 1st marriage certificate
Joseph Hoy’s first marriage certificate
Frances Scully or McHugh - Joseph Hoy 2nd marriage certificate
Joseph Hoy’s second marriage certificate

Son Thomas only married once and was one who used the name Scully. However, his witness was his brother Augustine who had also used the name Scully at his own first wedding and may have helped him fill in his wedding certificate. (Thomas may have stuck with this belief. The authorised agent who acted as the informant at his death used Scully too – who gave him this information? His wife was dead, so maybe one of his children?) The other sons just didn’t know their mother’s maiden name at all.

Interestingly, son Augustine was the informant at Frances’ death and gave her parents’ names as ‘unknown’. Perhaps he was too emotional to remember at the time that her father at least would have been a McHugh or a Scully. He also got one sister’s name wrong, though can be forgiven as she died before he was born.

Death certificate of Frances Hoy, 1895

The DNA appears to support the McHugh surname but not the Scully surname.

So was she born Frances Scully or McHugh? Based on the evidence I have so far, my deduction is that Frances was born Frances McHugh.

So Where Did Scully Come From?

So let’s now jump into the land of supposition and guess where Scully might have come from. I believe there’s a good chance it will turn out to be a family name, just further back in the tree (this would also make it less likely to turn up in DNA matches). For example, if Frances talked about Scully relatives to her sons (especially Augustine) at some point, maybe the assumption was that she was born a Scully. Time will, I hope, tell.

The other name that is often associated with Frances is the middle name Luby. I’ve only heard this from other family members, but on multiple descendant lines, so this belief goes back several generations. I am yet to see any document containing this middle name, nonetheless, it appears to be associated with her. Luby is also an Irish surname. So I’m keeping my mind and eyes open in case this may provide a clue.

Next steps

  • I’m currently trawling through the McHughs in the area around Eccles and Liverpool to see if I can find any evidence of other members of her family there. She was quite young when she married, so there is a chance that she wasn’t originally there alone. She may turn out to have witnessed a wedding or been a sponsor to a child of a family member if this is the case. Utilising the ‘FAN Club‘ may be very useful.
  • I’m also building out trees of DNA matches to see if I can find the McHugh connection between them. I’ll be extending the search to ungrouped matches and other sites where I have DNA kits for her descendants uploaded.
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That Pesky Townley Family! Navigating Through Obstacles Seeking The Truth

Over the past few weeks (now that the Duddleston dust has settled), I’ve finally resumed my search for the origins of my Townley family. Earlier attempts, what feels like a century ago, hit brick walls. Even now, there are obstacles to overcome.

Be methodical when tackling obstacles in your family tree. (Photo by form PxHere)

They’ve Got the Wrong Man!

Most researchers have come to the conclusion that ‘my’ William Townley was ‘The Rev. William Townley’. He was the vicar of Orpington in Kent and apparently the son of a linen dealer named John Townley. Unfortunately for this to be true it would involve him coming back to London periodically to produce children with his wife Sarah (nee Gussin) and claiming to be a victualler rather than a vicar on baptism records!

Baptism of Frederick Townley, 14th November 1813 (the date in the margin is his birthdate), St Botolph without Aldgate, London. His father William is clearly noted as a victualler.

According to the Clergy of the Church of England database, at the time of his supposed son Frederick’s birth in Aldgate he was a deacon at Old Windsor in Berkshire. He had moved on to Wyrardsbury, Buckinghamshire as stipendiary curate by 1814, while his family (according to the accepted wisdom of the genealogical community) continued to be raised in Aldgate. Although he was in London for a short while before this he was based in Marylebone, not Aldgate, and by 1816 he had taken up the position of Vicar in Orpington. He remained there until his death. He’s there in the 1841 Census. Tithes were still being paid to him in 1843. Finally, his death, still with the title of Vicar of Orpington is announced in the Gentleman’s Magazine as having occurred on 24th September 1847.

Surely it would have been scandalous and not a little inconvenient to have his family ensconced in London for all that time? Especially when he was rattling around his church-provided Vicarage with only a couple of female servants for company?

I stick to my claim that William Townley, husband of Sarah Gussin, who claimed to be a victualler was….wait for it….a victualler!

William Townley, Victualler not Vicar

It just so happens a William Townley purchased his Freedom of the City of London by redemption through the Innholder’s Company as a victualler in 1803.

The Freedom of the City document showing William’s entry to the Company of Innholders as a victualler.

John Townley, Gardener not Linen Dealer

The document does indeed name his father as John. But John is not a linen dealer. He is a gardener, and the document tells us where he was from in the margin. Let me turn that image around for you and save your neck.

Detail from the Freedom of the City document margin, showing that John was a gardener, deceased.

Great handwriting, huh? And it led me down the garden path, no pun intended. I read the place as being Carshalton. Carshalton is not in Kent, it’s in Surrey, the county next door. Hmmm, it could have been a mistake by a clerk who hadn’t spent much time south of the Thames. I ran it past a ‘jury of my peers’ at The Genealogy Squad without letting on what I thought it said. They unanimously said it was Carshalton, confirming what I had thought. So, I hit the parish registers to try to find John’s death and hopefully William’s baptism.

Nothing.

I ended up searching through a hundred years of the Carshalton parish register the old-fashioned way until I went cross-eyed, not relying on indexes or transcripts, looking for evidence of Townley families in the parish. There was nothing found to indicate that there were Townley families established at Carshalton.

So, if Carshalton doesn’t seem right, Kent might be, right? I looked for places in Kent that had a name that could conceivably be construed from the margin notation and decided to give Charlton a look. There are two Charltons in Kent. One near Dover and one near Woolwich. William and Sarah’s first couple of children were baptised in Southwark, not too far from the Charlton near Woolwich. This wouldn’t likely have been Sarah’s doing, her family was from Epping in Essex. So, I opted to start with investigating that one.

Charlton House, Kent (Bencherlite, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Charlton, not Carshalton

The good news. It seemed Charlton was the location of a grand house with massive gardens, so gardeners would not be unusual there. Secondly, I found a John Townley buried at the parish church in 1798. Promising.

But the bad news was there was very little of the parish register available in the usual places. I extracted what I could find, a grand total of less than ten of them and way too late for my William’s baptism. With a bit of digging, I found that North West Kent FHS had the full parish registers on CD-ROM and ordered a copy from them. While I waited for them to arrive from England, I began the quest to tie up all the Charlton Townley families from any sources I could find in the meantime and ‘FAN club‘ the stuffing out of them.

Robert and Mary Ann (nee Hammond) Townley stood out. He was a blacksmith not a gardener, but he was from Charlton and was baptising children there in the handful of records I’d found. Census records showed he was of an age to possibly be William’s younger brother. So, I built their tree out and down through the years, incorporating clues as to how the other Townleys fit with this family. Gradually they all began to fit together and I was gathering confidence that the local Townley families seemed to spring from one source. Many were gardeners and many also had strong links to Hackney, a massive market gardening area in that era.

Taking a deep breath, I added the word ‘HYPOTHESIS’ in the name suffix box on Ancestry (so as not to confuse anyone) and linked Robert to John the gardener as a son. I was still waiting for the CD so I decided to see whether DNA would help confirm things. Apart from myself, there are four DNA kits I manage that come from that same family line – 2 siblings, a first cousin and a 3rd cousin.

The Townley family emerges

Within hours, common ancestors going back to various children of Robert and Mary Ann began pinging up against all of these kits. My mum’s DNA never made it to Ancestry before she passed away so I went to the site where hers was. Same result, matches that went back to Robert were there too. Carshalton was hurled out of the window and Charlton is definitely where John Townley had died and his children were raised.

I say raised rather than born, because when the CD-ROM arrived, I could only find one baptism of a child to John. Joice Townley was baptised 4th July 1790 to John and Betty.

Baptism of Joice Townley, 4th July 1790, Charlton, Kent.

Joice went on to marry David Lake at St Botolph Bishopsgate in 1807. This was only a third of a mile from St Botolph Aldgate where my William and Sarah were baptising their later children.

So it seems that John arrived in Charlton somewhere between Robert’s approximate birth in 1788 and Joice’s in 1790. It is highly likely he was the 1738 son of Nathaniel Townley, a gardener of Chelsea and his wife Jane (nee Cheasey). Nathaniel and Jane moved to Lewisham (3 miles from Charlton) by 1744 and remained there for the rest of their lives.

Ploughing through the registers it looks like the other children of John and Betty who mostly stayed in Charlton, married and had children, were John, Mary and Thomas. I’ve now built their trees out and down too, looking for more DNA pings. Betty was likely the Elizabeth Townley who witnessed both Mary and my William’s marriages in 1797 at Charlton and 1801 in Aldgate respectively. The signatures are certainly the same person.

Where To From Here For The Townley Family?

Betty at this stage could be Elizabeth Cutter who married John Townley in 1757 at St Botolph without Aldersgate. Or more likely Elizabeth Panter who married John Townley at St Mary Rotherhithe in Southwark in 1766. Or perhaps an entirely different marriage that I haven’t yet found. More work to do, there are some pros and cons to both hypotheses. The next step is to find the baptisms of the pre-Charlton children, including my William. Wish me luck!

So, lousy handwriting nearly put a spanner in the works here. It pays sometimes to not trust your eyes or even the eyes of multiple others when it leads you to dead ends. Be creative, look at all aspects of the writing. I’d still be looking round Carshalton if they hadn’t written Kent next to it. Think outside the squiggle even if it doesn’t make sense. Try it all out. Deeply. FAN club the entire village if you have to. And never assume a victualler is a vicar.

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RootsTech 2022 : Now That The Dust Has Settled…

It’s been two weeks since RootsTech 2022, so I’ve decided it’s time to come out of RootsTech Recovery mode and tell you a little bit about my experience. Well, so carried away by the excitement was I that I basically went nocturnal for the entire time! I got up at 3 in the mornings to catch the live sessions, because I live in a very unfriendly time zone for things that happen in the US. But it was worth it. See here for some of the highlights!

There was a LOT going on! Live sessions, the Expo Hall, Relatives at RootsTech and of course over 1500 pre-recorded lecture sessions as well as cultural education through food and dance. In my last blog, I stressed the need to pre-prepare to keep the FOMO in check, and I’m very glad that I took that time to know what my priorities were.

I remained super-focused on what was live during those days only. This meant I could really relax and get into the moment, without panicking that I would never get to everything I wanted to see.

RootsTech 2022 Keynote Speakers

The keynote speakers were inspiring as always. The way they told their stories, interweaving the importance of their families’ influence and often learning something new about them (courtesy of FamilySearch) was both exhilarating and moving. I especially enjoyed Maysoon Zaid, Matthew Modine and Diego Torres.

RootsTech 2022 Sponsor talks

It was also great to hear of some of the new tools and resources available from companies. There is a new DNAPainter tool from Jonny Perl ‘Shared cM Investigator’, which predicts how much DNA your parent would share with your DNA match. Ancestry is collaborating with Photomyne to improve the gallery experience. MyHeritage has released Live Story (your ancestors narrating their own life story!). The Society of Genealogists gave a wonderful presentation about the exciting Roll Pedigree project. They are scanning, indexing and placing online the beautiful collection of roll pedigrees in their collection, some dating back several hundred years.

Other RootsTech 2022 Live Sessions I especially enjoyed…

I made sure to attend all three of the Talking Family History sessions. I’m already a subscriber to Talking Family History which is run by Michelle Patient and Fiona Brooker. Therefore I knew the time would be well worth spending here. They ran Q&A sessions on DNA, Australian and New Zealand research and Brick Walls, with lots of discussion.

Prerecorded lectures

I have barely scratched the surface here. But you know what? That’s fine. I prepared for this. I have my playlist sorted. My plan is to work my way through those sessions I’ve marked on a needs basis throughout the year. As I work on Irish projects, I’ll go watch the Irish sessions, etc. I can relax.

RootsTech 2022 may be over. But it’s barely begun.

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Preparing for RootsTech 2022 – The Most Exciting Weekend of the Year!

Discover your family story preparing for Rootstech

There are so many amazing genealogical events every year that give us all the opportunity to learn, connect and advance our skills from beginner hobbyist to professional. With the challenges of the past couple of years, the genealogical community has pivoted beautifully. Virtual offerings have increased accessibility to all.

The biggest by far has been RootsTech, the annual conference run by FamilySearch. Last year, there were over 1.5 MILLION registrants for over 1500 virtual presentations. This year, the number of registrants looks likely to beat that! The virtual nature of the conference makes it accessible not only because of the comfort of watching without travelling, but you can spread most of your viewing out indefinitely.

100% Virtaul 100% Rootstech

I am thrilled to be an Ambassador for RootsTech this year! I’d like to help ensure that everyone gets the best out of this totally free event so that they can climb their family tree more successfully after attending. It was amazing to attend RootsTech London in 2019, but I’ve had equal pleasure and value from attending virtually since.

As with anything though, the key to getting the most out of something is to prepare before going in. So today I’d like to help you prepare for RootsTech. Read on to learn what has helped me navigate this huge and somewhat overwhelming experience so that you get the full benefit!

Preparing for RootsTech – Sessions

Sooooo many sessions to choose from, where do you start? Firstly, when do you start? Now. Sign in to your FamilySearch free account, and register for the conference if you haven’t already done so.

First, let’s tackle the live sessions. At the top of the page is a ‘Main Stage’ tab. This is where all the time-sensitive content is. There are some great keynote speakers, such as Matthew Modine, Azumah Nelson and Diego Torres. There are also presentations on what’s new from some of the key industry players that you won’t want to miss. I’m especially looking forward to hearing about some of Jonny Perl’s new tools at DNA Painter! As a global event, you will be relieved to know that session times will display in your local timezone (so you don’t need to count on your fingers to work out what time that really is for you!). Add the ones you want to see into your diary so you don’t forget to tune in.

Next, check out the list of pre-recorded sessions. Unsurprisingly, it’s under the ‘Sessions’ tab, which will take you to this screen:

search sessions preparing for RootsTech

From here you can filter in multiple ways to zero in on the sessions that are of most interest and select them. They are then in your own personal playlist. These sessions are all pre-recorded and can be watched at your leisure for at least the next year.

Preparing for RootsTech – Connecting

One of the key themes for RootsTech is connecting with family. This can be achieved by becoming a better researcher through the learning you take away from the sessions. But you can also directly connect with relatives also attending. This can make up for being unable to network in person at the virtual event and in some ways is better. You don’t need to spot them in a crowd, you can find them using the ‘Relatives at RootsTech’ feature.

find your family rootstech

If you have your ancestors entered on the FamilySearch Family Tree, and consent to being part of ‘Relatives and Rootstech’ when you register for the conference, the tree will be searched to find others who descend from the same ancestors.

Remember this is a collaborative tree, so I recommend checking that you are connected to the correct people. So go check that you’re happy with where you are sitting in the tree first so you get the right relatives on your list. So far I have a couple of thousand relatives identified with a handy summary of how and from whom we connect, with the ability to message them.

You can also see if and how you are related to famous people, for example, Charles Dickens!

Preparing for RootsTech – Research Help

get help at Rootstech

Everyone attending RootsTech has the opportunity to book a 20-minute one on one session with a professional genealogist for assistance with a brick wall. This is great because we all have brick walls in our research!

Preparing for RootsTech – Bargains

And last but definitely not least, don’t forget to visit the Expo Hall to visit the multitude of sponsors. Many of them have special offers available at their stand and people you can speak with to get information about their offerings. For those who are as into further education as me (and of course you are, you’re attending RootsTech aren’t you?), I am especially tempted to pick up more discounted courses at the National Institute of Genealogical Studies, even though I’m already working my way through three certificates at the moment! I can’t wait to see what else I can save money on!

So here we are, two days out. So use the time to get prepared and have a great time!

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The Duddleston Family – Another Brick Wall Is Demolished!

brick wall demolished Duddleston family

Edward and Ann Eginton (also Egginton) are my 4th great-grandparents and have been a bit of a nightmare, to be honest! No matter where I looked, I could not find the record of their marriage. Ann stubbornly remained ‘just’ Ann. This week, I uncovered her maiden name. She was born into the Duddleston family, and I now have a whole new family to explore.

Edward and Ann Eginton

So how did this brick wall tumble? Like the Vaughan story, it’s a long tale. Strap yourself in. I knew Edward was from Birmingham, baptised as the son of William and Mary (nee Holt) at St Martin in 1778. Edward and Ann had baptised their first known child William at the same church in 1802. Immediately above this entry in the register is the baptism of his brother Francis’s daughter Ann on the same day. There were no more children baptised to Edward and Ann in Birmingham until 1818, when three more were baptised over the next four years. How odd.

Building the tree forward to the era of censuses, I found links between William and some other Egintons born in Yorkshire. This led to me to travel north (in a virtual sense!) and do some more digging there. Edward and Ann had settled in Sheffield for several years where he worked as a silver plater in the cutlery industry. Many children had been baptised and some buried there before they returned to Birmingham. I now had a beautiful timeline of their offspring, with no overlap between the two places or unexplained gaps, that covered Ann’s entire expected fertile years.

But I still had no wedding to give me her maiden name. There was nothing for an Edward Eginton and an Ann in or around Birmingham, and nothing in Yorkshire either. I now knew that it had likely taken place around 1800/1801, given their ages and when their family together had commenced.

Grasping at straws

The other day, on a whim, I decided to check out FreeReg.co.uk for this marriage. This site can be useful as it contains transcriptions of parish registers from all across the country, including many places which don’t yet have good coverage at other sites. There are no images, it contains purely derivative sources, but it’s a starting point. Bingo! There was an entry that was in the right timeframe, just 10 miles from Birmingham in Walsall, Staffordshire. It was, however, between an Edward Egerton (not Eginton) and Ann Duddeston.

It wouldn’t have even turned up on the search if it weren’t for the eagle eye of the transcriber, Dale Braden, who made a note that the vicar had entered it as Egerton, but the groom had signed clearly as Eginton. The transcriber entered the transcription under both surnames. THANK YOU DALE! I’m not surprised the vicar got it wrong. The couple were clearly not really of the parish, as claimed. It had been almost forty years since any Eginton had appeared in the register and would be more than twenty years until an Egerton turned up. There were no Duddestons at all.

Egerton Eginton note on marriage transcript Duddleston family
The note added by the transcriber at FreeReg which set me on the right path.

Now I needed the image. Reminder: always get back to the original source if possible! FindMyPast holds many but not all of the images for Staffordshire parish registers. Unfortunately, their Walsall, St Matthew coverage was only transcriptions, and they had indexed it only under Egerton, not Eginton. FamilySearch had similarly indexed the entry, but I knew they would have an image available on request. So I used their free lookup service to get the original parish register image.

I already knew Edward’s signature looked like this:

Duddleston - Edward Eginton signature 1836 Duddleston family
Edward Eginton’s signature at the marriage of his son Thomas Eginton to Mary Locke, 14 March 1836, at Aston, St Peter and St Paul.

He had been a witness to his son Thomas’ marriage in 1836. So, seeing a matching signature on his own marriage document would be great supporting evidence.

When the ‘Egerton/Duddeston’ marriage image arrived though it was clearly not the original entry, but a Bishop’s Transcript. Everything, including all the signatures, was written out neatly in the same hand, and they’d written ‘Egerton’. I would have to take Dale’s word for it for now and find some other sources of evidence until I could track down the actual parish register.

Finding Ann Duddeston [sic]

Yes, this was an error as well. The Duddeston surname quickly turned out to be a dead end. However, there was an Ann Duddleston of the right age who was baptised in 1780 by Hugh and Ann Duddleston in Birmingham where she was known to be from. Could this be her Duddleston family?

I turned back to Edward and Ann’s marriage entry. The witnesses were John Webster and Elizabeth Yeomans. I decided to see if they were related. By now I knew most of Edward’s family and nothing jumped out at me from there. But Elizabeth turned out to have been Elizabeth Duddleston, who married William Yeomans in 1795 in Harborne, just outside Birmingham at that time. Elizabeth was a member of Hugh and Ann’s Duddleston family…Ann’s elder sister!

Hugh Howard Duddleston and Ann (nee Hilton) were really beginning to firm up as Edward’s wife’s Duddleston family. So I began to build their family tree down and peruse their associated documents. It wasn’t long till I found Edward Eginton again signing his name with his distinctive flourish on his initials when he witnessed the 1818 marriage of Ann’s brother Thomas. His signature had matured over the years but it was clearly the same man. The other witness was Elizabeth Yeomans, Ann’s sister.

Duddleston - Edward Eginton signature 1818 Duddleston family
Edward Eginton’s signature at the marriage of his brother-in-law Thomas Duddlestone to Deborah Foster, 21 April 1818, at Birmingham, St Martin.

So now I had the same Edward Eginton witnessing a Duddleston marriage of another child of Hugh and Ann, his hypothesised parents-in-law, alongside the woman who had witnessed his own marriage. I’m happy with that!

Does DNA support the hypothesis?

Now I decided to turn to the DNA…it was stretching the limits of autosomal testing but would I find matches who descended from the same Duddleston family? I sure did. Since I’d built the tree down as far as I could on all lines and attached it to Ann over the course of several days, Ancestry had had a chance to do its magic, and I had four matches who connected with the common ancestors being Hugh Howard Duddleston and Ann Hilton. Three had public trees, and they were from different lines of the same Duddleston family. My brother had six matches, four of whom were unique to him, tying him to this Duddleston family through still other lines. So far there are DNA matches who descend from three of Hugh and Ann’s children. My half-sister (on the ‘other’ side!) had no Duddleston relatives amongst her matches at all.

One further match even extended a further generation back. I had already come to the conclusion that Hugh Howard Duddleston was the son of Ralph of Wolverhampton. There are not many Duddleston families. In fact, Ralph’s was pretty much the lone Duddleston family in the area at the time.

Rather conveniently so far, at least two of his sons emigrated to the US. This is always a bit of a bonanza when it comes to DNA. More people in the US have had their DNA tested, and those early immigrants often had large families with most of the children surviving compared to England. Therefore, the chances of a DNA match with a descendant are good.

The match that was from this generation was a descendant of Hugh’s brother Thomas Duddleston who as it turns out was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. I’ve been able to find a swathe of documents on him and will be building his line of the Duddleston family out too. Sigh, I feel yet another one-name study emerging out of this find. I just can’t help myself.

So, in conclusion…

We know that original sources are better than derivative sources. However, sometimes we need to start somewhere. Without that note on the transcription of the ‘Edward Egerton’ and ‘Ann Duddeston’ marriage in Walsall, I perhaps would never have found the Duddleston family branch. Do not dismiss transcripts and indexes when you are having trouble finding an elusive ancestor.

Remember to look at collateral branches, check witnesses, use the ‘FAN club’. It may make your tree big and unwieldy to include all these other people, but it’s often a great source of pieces of evidence that may not lie with your direct ancestors. And that big tree also helps with identifying DNA matches in that family line.

Good luck with breaking down your next brick wall. The Duddleston family look like keeping me busy for a good while now!

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Workplaces – The Most Exciting New Addition To The Census in 1921

workplace 1921 census Austin Birmingham
The Austin Motor Works, Longbridge, Birmingham around 1920

The 1921 Census of England and Wales was released with great fanfare on January 6th 2021. It is the last census that most of the current generation of family history researchers will see (the next will not be available for 30 years!). So it’s important that we take the opportunity to mine it for all the information we can extract. Countless articles and blogs have been written about the 1921 Census itself. I’d like to focus today on an aspect of it that can be extremely helpful with our research – the inclusion of workplaces in the 1921 Census.

Every census contains slightly different information, depending on what the government of the day wanted to know about the demographics of their population. We tend to forget as genealogists that the census was not designed for us, but for their planning purposes! I am very grateful that they focussed on workplaces in the 1921 Census.

Workplaces in the 1921 Census – what’s the big deal?

Every previous census has contained the occupations of people at each address. So why is adding the name and address of their workplace in the 1921 Census of any additional advantage? Well, it’s all about context. It’s all about enriching the stories of your ancestors’ lives. As a passionate seeker of my family’s stories, this new addition of workplaces in the 1921 Census has been my favourite thing so far!

I have focussed on only looking up my direct ancestors while the census is pay-per-view, cheapskate that I am. Just wait till it’s included in my FindMyPast subscription, they won’t know what hit them! There were seven households containing my grandparents, great-grandparents and even some great-great-grandparents still living in 1921.

What have I found so far?

My ancestors of that era mostly worked in the metal trades around Birmingham. Unsurprisingly, many of them worked at the Austin Motor Works in Longbridge (see photo above). Two of my grandparents grew up to work there too, so it featured in my childhood a lot. Good to know it was a multigenerational thing!

I knew that one of my great-grandfathers, William Simpson, worked as a painter and decorator and that he had died falling from a ladder. It was wonderful to find his workplace in the 1921 Census. It wasn’t a major factory like the Austin. How was I able to establish that? I found a photo online. It was a small firm called Pitts and Phillips. The address showed me how close he lived to his place of employment and I was able to map his likely route to the office on Google Maps (although I’m sure he spent most of his time onsite at jobs).

workplace 1921 census Pitts and Phillips Birmingham
Pitts and Phillips, Bristol Rd, Birmingham in 1923

Now I intend to dig through Birmingham Archives and see if they have any documents from the firm. Perhaps they might have records of the workplace accident that led to his death? Perhaps they kept employment records? Dig through the relevant archives to see what you can find in their catalogues.

If I’m really lucky there might be a published history somewhere of this or one of the other companies I’ve discovered my ancestors working at. If I’m really REALLY lucky there might be photos that could include them, or at least show more of what their work involved.

For the larger companies like the Austin there might be staff magazines. For any company, a search of newspapers using their name might pull up some stories, where the ancestor’s name wouldn’t. if the company is still going, you may find a history on their website…

You get where I’m going with this? Workplaces in the 1921 census lead us to all sorts of record sources to help flesh out the family stories. Find them, plunder them and build out your family stories!

“Out of Work”

One apparent oddity you may notice is that ‘out of work’ is written next to the workplace. How can someone be simultaneously out of work and employed somewhere? Many of my family members had this on their census forms.

William Simpson – employed but ‘out of work’

This is for the same reason as the census was delayed from April to June. 1921 was a time of great industrial upheaval and strikes were occurring at the time they were originally going to hold it. They delayed till June to allow it to go ahead less impeded by strike action. However, many people were still involved in or affected by industrial events by June. So they were employed by a company but may not have been actively working there at the time of the census. When I see the size of some of the households and how many were out of work, I wonder how they survived, and hope they were soon back to paid employment!

Enjoy trawling the 1921 Census, I hope it brings you luck in adding colour and enrichment to what you know of your family in that era!

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Goodbye (and Good Riddance?) 2021! But Let’s Accentuate the Positive!

Happy New Year 2022
Photo by Mariia Ion on Scopio

Every year, Jill Ball, aka Geniaus, encourages us fellow geneamates to do a review of our year in genealogy focusing on the positives. It’s a great idea that I recommend everyone does, even if not as a blog. It’s very heartening to realise that we have all made achievements in 2021 from the countless hours we have spent slaving over a hot keyboard!

So here is my contribution…

1. I got the most joy from…

…finally identifying the last of my 3 x great-grandparents. This was the father of an illegitimate son who became my 2 x great-grandfather. It’s been decades but finally, I have a name…and it’s not the rumoured name that made it down through several generations. An entire complex cover story took several years to be systematically disentangled and disproved. Now I realise why it was constructed. This was absolutely one of my biggest achievements for 2021.

More to come on this one, I can’t NOT blog it, but it may take a while to find the time to devote to the telling of this saga! it could even end up as long as the Vaughan story…

2. The Covid situation gave me an opportunity to…

…get more involved in local family history societies that weren’t at all local to me. Most of them opened up Zoom meetings instead of their usual face-to-face ones 12 000 miles away from me. Often the timezones were challenging, but it has been especially nice to put faces to names of members that I’ve heard of but never seen for up to 35 years!

Achievements in 2021 - Community
Photo by Francisco Javier Martinez Navio on Scopio

3. I managed to attend a face to face event…

…nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Everywhere I had booked for this year cancelled their face to face events and for much of the year, we were in lockdown. Luckily, they were often replaced with online versions!

4. My main focus this year was…

…my Dad. Getting him home from Ireland after an ill-timed holiday in early 2020 was a 14-month marathon effort. He left just before Covid struck and international borders closed while he was away. That was followed by 5 months this year living with him in Tasmania on his return. I packed up his home and life around him whilst providing the 24/7 care he needs and brought him back to Victoria to be closer to family and quality care. This was a single-handed task and is definitely my greatest achievement of 2021. He’s now settled and happy again. Family is everything. It evens trumps family history, though I couldn’t abandon that entirely!

5. A new piece of technology or skill I mastered was…

…I don’t know if this counts as ‘mastering’ or just ‘discovering and making use of’! But I’m gradually working my way through the list of things to look up if I’m ever again in an FHC affiliate library by using the new FamilySearch Record Lookup Service.

Have you found an index entry for your probable ancestors but need to see the original image? This fits the bill perfectly. I’ve found it especially useful for my Worcestershire ancestors while I continue to wait for Ancestry to put the Bishops Transcript images online. It’s free, it’s fast and it’s a whole lot cheaper than paying 16 pounds per image to get it emailed from the Archives!

6. A geneasurprise I received was…

…the sudden and almost simultaneous purchases of the two main French genealogy sites by the big guns! MyHeritage purchased Filae, and Ancestry purchased Geneanet. In a year when my Huguenot heritage was confirmed this is perfect timing! I’m already a Geneanet subscriber but was tossing up whether to join Filae. Now I don’t have to, the records are appearing where I already have access!

7.  A Facebook Group that helped me was…

…The Genealogy Squad. I learn something new on a regular basis from the friendly conversations amongst the 45 000 global members (the Squad’s achievement for 2021!)

Confession – I’m also a moderator there and this is a shameless plug for people to come join the party!

Achievements in 2021 - Teamwork
Photo by Francisco Javier Martinez Navio on Scopio

8. My 2021 social media post that I was particularly proud of was…

…the one where I unravelled the mystery of where my Morter family came from before arriving in London, I knew it was likely to be East Anglia somewhere given the surname distribution, but it’s been a needle in a haystack until DNA knocked down the brick wall.

Since then I have had more and more DNA matches also turn out to be descended from the Norfolk family a further generation before my London ancestors. The hypothesis just keeps on firming up.

9.  A new genealogy/history book I enjoyed was…

…‘Spitalfields’ by Dan Cruickshank. As someone with significant ancestry from that area of London, it was a great read, adding plenty of context to my family’s lives and even mentioning a couple of addresses that my ancestors were linked to.

As for fiction, Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s ‘Chester Creek Murders‘ was the beginning of a great new series to get hooked on!

10. I was impressed by…

…so many of the speakers at webinars watched throughout the year, either through conferences that converted from live events to virtual ones (such as RootsTech Connect and Family History Downunder), various family history societies, Scottish Indexes, Family Tree Webinars, etc.

I love how technically the subject of genealogy is finite, but there was never a presentation that I didn’t take away something useful from.

11.  A great journal or newspaper article I found…

…was not a big one, not a particularly complex one, but a very enlightening one. It reported the 1844 death of James Underhill, father of my newly identified 3 x great grandfather Samuel Underhill (unnamed father of Frederick George Seal). This newspaper article added a layer of context that linked the Underhill and Seal families directly, not just by locality and occupation, but by specific workplace and hierarchy.

12. I got the most value from this subscription…

…oooh, this is a tough one. There are very few subscriptions I have that I would willingly give up. They all provide value in their own way.

Naturally, I am subscribed to the major sites for accessing records – Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage, TheGenealogist, but I’ve also increased my society memberships to 10 (doubled!) to cover the main geographical areas of research, and I am a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists.

More niche sites such as DNAPainter, Genetic Affairs, the Talking Family History Virtual Lounge, Geneanet, IrishAncestors, RootsIreland, Fold3 and Family Tree Webinars are invaluable, and of course, I save EVERYTHING I find to Evernote for easy accessibility and searching. I’d rather go without shoes than lose any of my subscriptions.

A little hint though…check each of your society membership benefits, they may offer significant discounts to other subscription sites which will save you some significant outlay!

13. I progressed my DNA research with …

…a return to network graphing after a couple of years break from it. I always loved how visual it is, but I needed to familiarise myself with all the new DNA tools appearing on the testing sites as well as 3rd party tools continually popping up. With limited time, network graphing was shelved for a while. But I’m pulling on my wellies, wading back in and finding clear confirmation of conclusions drawn as well as some further intriguing ‘clumps’ to explore.

Achievements in 2021 - Connectivity
Photo by Francisco Javier Martinez Navio on Scopio

14. A DNA discovery I made was…

…a couple who are repeatedly popping up among  US DNA matches, and are clearly connected to one of the branches of a certain pair of great grandparents. I must find time to build out the tree of this couple and see where and how they fit in. It could set a load of dominoes falling to parse this branch more effectively.

15. A newly found family member shared…

…photos of her family members that showed we were definitely of the same line. Then the same thing happened on another branch of the same line, from another relative who didn’t know the first. We’re all so similar, the Seals definitely have a ‘look’.

16. I splashed out and purchased…

…a package of 40 courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies which will keep me busy for the next year or two! The perils of being the ‘lifelong learner’ type, it keeps you poor!

17. Another positive I would like to share is…

…a really helpful side effect from what has been such a tragic and challenging couple of years is the number of records that have been digitised and indexed and are now available to us via home access. So many long-term projects sped up, so many ongoing projects were completed. This has to be the greatest global achievement for 2021 in the genealogical world. I am so grateful to all those who have made this possible.

So how about you? What will you remember as YOUR genealogical achievements of 2021?