Geoffs Genealogy

Geoffs Genealogy Update 18 October 2011

2011-10-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is probably my last post on this blog.

Its purpose is to let you know that the Geoffs Genealogy website has had a complete makeover, courtesy of my daughter - Helen - and my son - Alex. They have been working on this project these past few weeks, and have produced a new design and a very much better website, with excellent functionality.

I hope you will enjoy looking at the new site. At the moment the content is the same as on the previous site, but I hope to be adding some new stuff before long.

The tree has been updated, and also benefits from a new look. Enjoy!

As the new website includes a blog, this blog is rendered superfluous. All the posts from this blog have been copied across, and can be read on the website.

Just a reminder of the web address: www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 September 2011

2011-09-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

The highlight of September has to be the week we spent in France, in the beautiful Aveyron
countryside. Fabulous weather, lovely food and some really stunning places to visit ensured that we had a smashing break. We thought that was our summer finished, but with its usual unpredictability the British weather has given us a surprise, and September is going out with a spell of gorgeous weather that far exceeds anything we had in what has been a pretty nondescript sort of summer in England. We must enjoy this while we can, of course, because without doubt our normal autumn weather will take over 'ere long.

We are now nearer to sending out the trees to those people who have been awaiting them patiently these past three months. They are nearly ready, and we have an up to date list of Bankes descendants who have requested copies, so hopefully we will get that job done very soon.

In the time I have had available in the past couple of months I have been updating my treeing records, and doing mundane things like filing my pieces of paper. I am never keen on these jobs, but if we are to be able to find the records we want when we want them we need to attend to them in a methodical way, and if you had seen the great big pile of paper that has been building up in my study you would appreciate that the attention I'm currently giving these tasks is well merited.On top of that, it is now time to start work on the December edition of the Shropshire Family History Society Journal, so that will occupy me quite fully for the next few weeks.

As I'm having a break in my research activities it is probably a good idea to reflect on the areas of research that I want to concentrate on when I get back fully into my research.

There are a number of issues that I want to address. I'll briefly mention two of them:

1. Just where did John Bankes (abt 1650 - 1719) come from and who were his parents?

I know, I've harped on about this at length many times before, but although I am not actually directly descended from this man he looms so large over our research activities that I really would love to resolve this issue. My reading of the Court of Chancery documents tells me that at one time he owned property at Roding, which I believe probably was situated in the Epping Forest area. I aim to follow up on this, to try to ascertain what was this property, and how Bankes came to hold it. Did he, I wonder, hail from that neck of the woods? A long shot, but worth a try. I expect to be in touch with Essex Archives service before too long, to try to develop this line of enquiry.

2. I am actually descended from Mary (Rand) Mitchell (abt 1668 - 1739), half sister to Bankes, so it does occur to me that over the years I have not devoted nearly enough effort to tracing her Rand origins. There is a reason for that, in that I live in Shropshire and do not often get the chance to look at records that I may need to research in order to pursue this research. Up to now the relevant information I have found has been held in London, but given the fact that many people moved into London from outside the City, there is no telling where this chase may take me.

When I researched "our" John Rand (abt 1684-bef 1745) I found more than one record stating that he was a Barber Surgeon of London.

We have traced a record of the Apprenticeship and Freedom relating to a John Rand, Barber Surgeon of London. This document was dated 1697, and concerns a John Rand, son of Samuel Rand of Chichester, Sussex. As we know from Bankes's will that his half brother, father of John Rand born abt 1684, was named JOHN RAND, logic suggests that this Samuel cannot be "ours". However, a search of the Freedom Admissions of the Barber Surgeons' Company , and the City of London Freedoms Index has revealed that this man was the only John Rand to become Free of the Barber-Surgeons' Company whose date of Apprenticeship coincided with the time frame expected of "our man".

All very confusing.

Then there is Joseph Rand (b abt 1694). We know from several sources that he was a Carpenter, and we found his apprenticeship record dated 1708, in which his father (ie Bankes' half brother) was named as Joseph Rand, late Citizen & Haberdasher of London deceased. If I'm recalling this correctly, this Joseph Rand Haberdasher of London would have been a brother to Samuel Rand of Chichester, and both of them would have been half siblings to John Bankes. Certainly the thesis that Bankes's half brother may have been a Freeman of the Haberdashers' company seems tenable. The only snag is that the most thorough searches of the Haberdashers Company archives showed no record of this Joseph Rand, Haberdasher! Even the member of staff I asked at Guildhall Library was at a loss to explain this.

Then, to confuse things further, There was a Virginal Maker in London in the 1660s named John Rand, and his wife Mary. They had a son - John - baptised in 1661, and a daughter named Mary, baptised 1668. Interestingly (or maybe merely coincidentally) these baptism dates coincide more or less precisely with the chronology I had calculated for my Rand forebears. Additionally, these people had links to Oxfordshire, and so did John Bankes' first wife - Elizabeth Atherton (abt 1640 - bef 1715).

I would not be surprised if I have confused you with all this. It is all very confusing, but imagine the sense of triumph I shall have if I manage to solve any of these mysteries!

I'll let you know when I start out on these trails.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 August 2011

2011-08-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we went to a Jamboree of the Maliphant clan, which was held at Upton Castle in Pembrokeshire www.uptoncastle.co.uk. Whereas the reunion that we organised in June was a gathering of people descended from one couple - the parents of John Bankes' Rand siblings - this was a gathering of people with a connection to the Maliphant name, and hence more of a one name gathering. Where does Maliphant fit in to my family history? Well, Jan's 2 x maternal Welsh grandmother was a certain Ann Maliphant (1836-1918) who married Evan Hughes in 1855, so she is qualified to attend the gathering.

The Maliphant name has been traced in this country back into Norman times, and at one time people of that name owned Upton Castle, hence the significance of this venue to members of the clan. Unfortunately, the weather was not too kind to us on this occasion, but everybody who attended seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves, which was the main thing. You can see some photographs of the event at the Maliphant Jamboree website.

The building at Upton Castle is not open to visitors, although the superb gardens are available for public viewing on payment of an admission charge. We were served up a lovely lunch and made to feel very welcome by the owners of the castle - Stephen and Pru Barlow, and were allowed access to parts of the grounds not usually open to public viewing.

Having organised our reunion with Helen in June I can appreciate how much work must have been done by Andrew & Bruce Maliphant to make this event possible, and they will rightly take great pleasure from its success. This was the third Maliphant Jamboree. The next one will be held next July in Swansea. If you have a Maliphant connection I'm sure that you would be most welcome to attend.

It's now over two months since our Bankes Descendants Reunion, and Helen and I are aware that we still have not managed to finish off the work of preparing the updated trees for the people who requested copies. Quite honestly, we have been so busy since the big day that we simply have not had time to complete the job, so our apologies for that. Probably a classic case of "biting off more than we can chew". We have now completed the extra research that we needed to do to bring the Pedigree as up to date as possible, and hopefully we shall be able to make the necessary amendments to the tree and contact the relevant people in the next few weeks.

Similarly, I have not added the photographs of the event to the Geoffs Genealogy website. This is due to a number of factors, which I won't bore you with. Suffice to say that I shall rectify the situation as soon as I can, and in the meantime am including a few photos in this posting, just to whet your appetite!

The wonderful thing about these family or one name gatherings is the way in which a group of people from different backgrounds and geographical areas invariably get on so well together with people who they have never met. Of course, we are not really thrown together - we choose to attend, after all - but it really is a very good experience and a positive reflection of human nature.

In the process of researching the extra people who we have been adding to the Bankes Pedigree I have become acquainted with a couple of very interesting characters, who were both flying planes in the early days of aviation. In the course of our Bankes Bingo game at the Reunion Helen mentioned John Thearsby Bankes Price, who was a true World War One hero. To quote from Helen's notes :

John Thearsby Bankes Price (1895-1916) was born [in Chicago] the following year.

[He] appears to have been [his parents'] only child; he ... had an eventful life as a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Service, flying biplanes in the first world war. He was present at what has been described as “the most historic and significant episode in naval aviation” – the first ship-launched airborne torpedo attack on a ship on 12 August 1915. After many near misses he was killed on 17 September 1916, when after engaging enemy aircraft over Turkey. His Schneider seaplane, for no clear reason, burst into flames, killing the pilot.

I was able to look at a number of the accounts of WW1 actions that John was involved in, which Helen had used in her research. He was flying his biplanes over the Dardanelles and also over Egypt and Palestine, based on the vessel Ben My Chree. I even found an artist's impression of one of the attacks that he took part in. It really is amazing what we can find on the internet!

The other flying man was Harold Essex Reynell (1887-1972). He was the son of Bankes descendent Eugenie Mary Davies (1856-1908) and her husband, Harold Essex Reynell (b 1853). Eugenie married her spouse at her home parish church of Llangain, Carmarthenshire, in 1881, but the couple must have moved to live in Kobe, Japan, in the early years of their marriage because that was where Harold Essex Reynell Jnr was born in 1887. It was also the place in which Eugenie died in 1908.

By 1916 Harold Jnr was serving in the British forces in the First World War - a Captain in the Black Watch. However, he was also recorded in the listings of holders of Aviators’ Certificates that were compiled by the Royal Aero Club, although I suspect that his flying activities were more pleasurable than those of John Thearsby Bankes Price.

After the war he seems to have been quite an international traveller, as there are a great many passenger lists in the archives that attest to journeys that he made with members of his family - chiefly between the UK and USA or Canada, but also to the Philippines. He married in 1917, to Georgiana Catherine Liddell (1898-1981), and they had two children.

As I said, the details of these people have now been added to the ever-growing Bankes Pedigree.

Have a good month.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 July 2011

2011-07-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

July has been a busy month. In the first part of the month we were in Austria, enjoying a few days holiday in wonderful scenery and lovely weather. He had a super time, and included in our stay a visit to Salzburg, birthplace of one of my heroes – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

We visited Mozart’s birthplace, and were totally absorbed for a couple of hours, looking at many kinds of Mozartabilia – letters by the great man, his hair, his violin and harpsichord. All wonderful. If you are ever in Salzburg I can recommend this to you, even if you aren't

On my return to the UK, early in July, we went to see a tremendous open air production of Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors at Stafford Castle. We go to the Stafford Festival Shakespeare production every year, and are always entertained quite superbly. This year was no exception. If you live within reach of Stafford and haven’t yet done so I heartily recommend that you give it a try next year, when the play will be Romeo & Juliet.

Next, I had to crack on with preparing the next edition of the Shropshire Family History Society journal, which will be published in September. I always find it a fascinating challenge, choosing the right content to fit together in the 48 pages available, correcting the typos and fitting it all together. It is a job I’ve done for quite a few years, and one I still enjoy.

All this has meant that I have had little time available to deal with the aftermath of the Bankes Reunion, which we held in Surrey on 18th June. A number of attendees kindly advised me of Bankes descendants who need adding to the tree, and also quite a few people have requested pdf files of their section of the tree. I have started working my way through the additions, and when I’ve got those all sorted out Helen and I will pool our resources to make the necessary addition s to the tree and send out the pdf files.

I’m aware that I also need to put on my website some of the photographs from the event. I’ll get around to that as soon as I can.

My apologies if this all seems to be taking quite a while, but alas, in addition to all this activity I have to earn a living as well, and thus time is limited.

The notes relating to the talks that were given at the reunion are available for viewing on the internet at the following urls:

• The slides for my talk on John Bankes can be seen at:
http://www.slideshare.net/helga73/john-bankes-1650-1719
• The slides for the Bankes Bingo can be seen at:
http://www.slideshare.net/helga73/bankes-bingo-notes
• The slides for Helen’s talk on Robert Hanham Collyer can be seen at:
http://www.slideshare.net/helga73/robert-hanham-collyer

I have no treeing research to report this month. I would just like to mention a concert that Jan & I attended last Friday (29th July) at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. It was a programme of music composed by Richard Strauss, William Walton and Sergei Prokofiev, all played by my favourite band - The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) – a fantastic orchestra – conducted by Andris Nelsons. All the pieces performed were new to us, and all were quite spectacular! The highlight was the performance of Walton’s Violin Concerto by that most incredible violinist, Midori. She left us all quite spellbound by her skill and artistry. It really was a privilege to have been there. The CBSO and soloists then decamped to London and repeated the performance at the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, 30th July. I watched it all again on tv, and again I was spellbound!
If you like classical music, do catch this on the BBC iPlayer. You won’t be disappointed. As for me, I’m a sucker for all this stuff, so I’m off to give ear to the latest BBC Promenade concert.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 23 June 2011 - Bankes Reunion

2011-06-23T12:52:00.000-07:00

Our Reunion of John Bankes’ Descendants took place last Saturday, 18th June 21011, at Coulsdon United Football Club’s clubhouse in South London. After a downpour the previous day, which caused difficult travelling conditions for some of the attendees, the weather on the big day was much improved – showery with sunny intervals.

The Reunion was attended by 43 descendants of the half siblings of John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher of London (c1650-1719), who came to Coulsdon from far and near. Their ages ranged from 12 to 96!

Our ice breaker was a game of Bankes Bingo, organised by Helen (Culshaw) Mitchell. This provided some light hearted amusement, whilst enabling us all to learn a bit about the lives of some of our forebears.

This was followed by a talk, given by Geoff Culshaw, the writer of this blog, on John Bankes. I outlined what we have learned about Bankes over the course of some 24 years of research, and how we have obtained the information. I also mentioned some of the things that we don’t know about Bankes. Basically, we know quite a lot about his business life, but lack information on the dates and whereabouts of his birth and first marriage.

It would be lovely to think that we may solve this conundrum one day, but it does not seem likely at present!

After a period of mingling, including a splendid buffet lunch, we reconvened for our second talk. This was delivered by Helen (Culshaw) Mitchell, and had as its subject the amazing Robert Hanham Collyer. A glance through the Robert Hanham Collyer Chronology on the Geoffs Genealogy website is sufficient to tell you that this was no ordinary Bankes descendant. By turns he was a medical doctor, a showman, a gold prospector, an inventor, and a host of other things as well. Helen related his life story in an informative but lighthearted style, and provided all of us with a most entertaining talk.

There was then a little time left for further mingling before the attendees started to wend their way to their homes. All said that they had enjoyed the event very much. Many of them had learned something new about their family or the Bankes Pedigree, whilst others had met "new" relations or become re-acquainted with people they had not seen for many years..

I must just mention the enormous family trees that adorned the walls of one of the rooms at our disposal. There were three trees, which Helen and I had specially produced for the occasion - one each for descendants of our eighteenth century ancestors Mary Rand, Anne Rand, and Joseph Rand. They took up three of the four walls of a very large room, and people were able to enjoy looking at their own section of interest. Attendees were encouraged to write on the trees, adding information that was missing, or correcting any errors that they could spot. Many people did this, I’m delighted to say, and it will be my task to assimilate this extra information into my records.

Attendees were told that if would like a copy of their section of these trees they should contact either me or Helen. We will then provide them with specially formulated pdf file and the name of the printer who produced the tree for us, so that they can obtain a copy themselves.

As soon as we can manage it we shall post the slides from the two talks on the internet. We will let everybody who came to the event know when we have done this. We also plan to make available the notes that were used for the Bankes Bingo game.

One disappointment for me was that my photographs of the event did not come out at all well. I have therefore asked whether anybody has some photographs that they are happy to share with me. I have already received one positive reply to this plea, from Don Bates, and I thank him very much for that. If anybody else can help me I shall be very grateful to them.

After all the months of planning, it seems strange to think that the Bankes Reunion is over. Now, on to the next task - preparing the September edition of the Shropshire Family History Society journal. That will occupy me through most of July.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 May 2011

2011-06-01T00:19:00.000-07:00

On 19 May I went on the Shropshire Family History Society coach trip to the National Archives, at Kew. I had a few things to reprise there, plus one new source to look at.

Some years ago my daughter, Helen, went to Kew and researched the Admiralty records relating to Bankes Mitchell, who died at sea in 1763. When Helen did this research it was not possible to take photographs of the source material, and I thought it a good plan to have a look at these most interesting records myself, and photograph them.

The records are quite fascinating. The Captain’s log gives you so much information about the day to day whereabouts of the ship, damage sustained by the vessel and consequent repairs, and the deaths of seamen. It is quite compelling reading. I was amazed to see that in 1763 the voyage from the UK to the West Indies took a mere six weeks. This seemed to me remarkably fast progress, so I checked several voyages. The time at sea was roughly the same in all cases.

Bankes Mitchell died a mere two days before the Hampton Court anchored off Plymouth on 20th August 1763, and was buried at sea at 10 o’clock am.

Before starting its voyage home in July 1763 the Hampton Court had been moored in Havana harbour for the best part of a year. Presumably the ship was part of the British force that secured Havana after its capture from the Spanish in 1762, during the Seven Years War. In the Treaty of Paris of February 1763, which ended the worldwide conflagration, Havana passed back to the Spanish.

As I’ve said before, it’s always good to place the lives of the people you encounter in your research in their historical context, and this piece of research certainly did that.

Next I reprised the great big box of records relating to the Court of Chancery case that resulted from the dissatisfaction of some of the beneficiaries of John Bankes’ will. This box (TNA source ref C105/21) contains various written artefacts that were presented as evidence in the case – a real mixture – Bankes’ accounts, rental agreements, indentures recording the transfer of property, tradesmen’s bills from Bankes’ lifetime, Bankes’ will, and loads more. I recall how excited we were when we first came face to face with this box a few years ago, and although I already hold photocopies of some of the items I relished the opportunity to photograph as many as I could.

How wonderful to handle the very documents that our forebears handled all those years ago, to see their signatures etc. Fantastic. I now have digital images of many of these items and face the not inconsiderable task of cataloguing them! That will have to wait until after the Bankes Reunion.

Lastly I looked at the divorce papers relating to the proceedings brought against Edwin Claringburn by his wife – Mary Jane nee Lambert – in April 1909.

Apparently in 1905 Edwin had left Mary Jane and set up home with a certain Florence Farrel. The liaison between Edwin & Florence had produced a female child before Florence died in February 1909. There was no reply to these accusations from Edwin Claringburn, and the divorce was granted by the Court.

The thing about this that I found surprising is that the papers relating to the case included a copy of the marriage certificate relating to Mary Jane Lambert’s marriage to Edwin in 1897, and a copy of Florence’s death certificate. Her death was registered in the name of Florence Clarke by Edwin Clarke(!). That would have been very hard to trace by normal means.

This proved, once again, how valuable Court records can be. If you get a chance to use them in your research you will be lucky indeed.

Also, always remember to take your digital camera to you when researching at TNA. Unlike most archives, there is no fee to pay if you want to use your camera, and they even provide camera stands to combat our shaky hands!

The Bankes Reunion is now only 18 days away, and we are still working towards what we are sure will be a really enjoyable event. Here’s hoping that the sun shines on us, that all the people who are attending have safe journeys, and that we all have a jolly good time!

See you there!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 9th may 2011

2011-05-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late writing this blog entry, the result of a couple of days' sojourn in Carmarthenshire. We had a great time in South Wales, and included in our crowded itinerary re-visits to three graveyards of significance to the Welsh branch of the Bankes Pedigree.

Why revisit these graveyards?

Well, I have to confess that I have mislaid the photographs we took on our previous visits, and as the Bankes Descendants' Reunion is now only a few weeks away I am trying to ensure that I have available as much material possible for the big day.

The three graveyards we visited were St Bridget, Llansantffraid and St Michael, Llanfihangel Ystrad, both in Cardiganshire, and St Cain, Llangain. The first of these is located on the Cardiganshire coast. We arrived there at about lunch time, mainly looking for the graves of members of the Herbert family. David Herbert (abt 1767 - 1835) was vicar of this church, and in 1796 married Mary Price (abt 1777 - 1856), daughter of Joseph Price (abt 1747-1817). As far as we know Mary & David had five children and when David died in 1835 his son, William Herbert, took his place as vicar of this parish. William was vicar of Llansantffraid for 48 years and lived to the ripe old age of 98.

As was the case when we previously visited this church, we were able to go inside the building and photograph the memorial to the Herberts on the East wall of the church. It is a lovely church, set high above the Cardiganshire coast. Many of the graves bear witness to the fact that many of the people who lived here in the nineteenth century were mariners, and the hazardous nature of their daily lives. A number of the Bankes descendants were mariners.

Next we went to Llanfihangel Ystrad, which is situated a few miles to the west of Lampeter. We had a list with us, detailing the graves thet we had photographed some years ago, so finding them now would surely be easy! Well, perhaps not!

We made several circuits of the graveyard but still failed to find some of the graves. This doesn't really matter much, as we already have a record of the inscriptions, but it would have been nice to be able to complete the job.

Last time we visited this churchyard we had difficulty finding the graves of Charles Davies and the above mentioned Joseph Price, both of whom died in 1817. Eventually we realised that they must be the two graves that were covered (and I do mean covered!) in ivy over towards the gate. I had to strip the ivy off the graves before I could confirm that these were, indeed, the graves of Charles and Joseph. Well, by the time of this latest visit the ivy had well and truly covered these graves again. I saw no real need to attempt to remove it this time, so photographed them as they are.

Joseph Price was a son of John Price (abt 1720- abt 1756) and Deborah Rand (abt 1722 - abt 1765), who I regard as the founders of the Welsh branch of the Bankes Pedigree. They lived in Llanfihangel Ystrad, and I believe it highly likely that they were buried in the churchyard ao St Michael's. However, there is no stone in their memory, and the burial records for the relevant years have apparently been lost, so there seems no way of researching this.

Later in our short stay in Wales we visited Llangain, a small village just outside Carmarthen, to re-visit the church of St Cain. Here are buried Charles Bankes Davies (abt 1825 - 1870) with his spouse, Mary Ann, nee Rees (1819 - 1897), and their son, another Charles bankes Davies (1859 - 1925). We found all these graves and photographed them, but noted that whereas when we visited them a few years ago they were quite easily read, by now the stones have become covered with a brown coating, and are all but unreadable.

On returning home I recalled that a couple of years ago we visited the library in Swansea and I found an interesting book on the hisitory of Llangain (The Book of Llangain by Haydn Williams, pub Halsgrove, 2007). This book contains some photographs of the rather grand house that is Lwyndu, the Llangain home of the Bankes Davies family until it was sold in 1926. There are photographs of the house, the coach house and the lower lodge (which we have seen previously). There is also an obituary to Mary Ann (Rees) Davies, that was published in The Welshman when she died in 1897, and information about the Bankes Davies family. Appparently, inside the church there is a memorial to Charles Bankes Davies and his son of the same name. I've copied all this stuff for possible use at the Reunion in June.

Yes, the reunion is now that close! We are busily working towards what we hope will be a smashing day. If you are a descendant of one of the siblings of John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher (abt 1650 - 1719) please do visit my website and book a place at the reunion. People are coming from near and far, and we are really looking forward to meeting you all.

In the next few weeks we will be sending information to all the people who have booked, telling them how to find the Reunion venue and information about timings etc. In the meantime, I hope May is good to you.

Happy hunting!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 8 April 2011

2011-04-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

I seem to say the same every month, but for sure the past month has passed so quickly. It's hard to believe that we are in April already, and here in the UK the gardens and hedgerows are all breaking into vibrant growth. A lovely sight to see, to be sure!

Only about ten weeks now until our John Bankes Descendants' Reunion at Coulsdon. I've been working hard for weeks now, trying to ensure that the Pedigree is as up to date as possible for our big day. It will never be up to date, you understand, but I would hate it if our attendees should be disappointed to find that their particular interests are missing when they come.

Helen and I are also addressing other needs for the big day. I need to prepare my talk on John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher of London (c1650-1719) for one thing. Then there are the identity badges to prepare, and the tree - now there's a bit of a conundrum! How to fit the vast Bankes Pedigree on to sheets of paper in a way that is accessible to visitors. Believe me, this is proving a bit of a challenge, but rest assured that Helen & I will find a solution!

There are lots of other things to sort out for 18th June, so I think we shall be very busy between now and then. Our thanks to Dot for covering the catering. That's an enormous help. As far as we can tell at the moment, we should have about 40 or so people attending the reunion. They come from several different lines of descent from siblings of Bankes:

Some descendants of Joseph Rand - the Welsh branch

Some descendants of Mary (Rand) Mitchell - my branch!

Some descendants of Anne (Rand) Deane - This branch included the Fiveash and Yaxley families.

We are still trying to track down more Bankes Descendants to invite, and will continue to do so right up to the day of the reunion. If you are descended from one of the Rand siblings of Bankes and are interested in joining us for the day, have a look at the relevant page on Geoffs Genealogy and /or contact me at via one of the links on the website.

I read a very interesting book recently. It had been on my wish list for a couple of years before Helen bought it for me for my birthday last year, and when I read it it certainly lived up to the reviews I had seen. It is entitled Jack Tar, and was written by Roy & Lesley Adkins. You can get some information about it at the authors' website.

This book tells you pretty well all you may want to know about the everyday life of the seamen in Nelson's navy. I suspect that we are all aware these people had a really hard time, but I think most of us have probably not imagined the half of it. This book goes into a lot of detail about most aspects of a life on the ocean waves in the C18 - C19 British Navy.

I'll just mention one of the many points that I found interesting in this book. When discussing impressment the authors make the point that if a non-British man was impressed, it was possible for him to evade service in the navy if he could satisfy the authorities that he was not British. The point that really interested me was that many USA citizens found it impossible to escape the net in this way because in those days there was no such thing as an American accent and most people did not have documentary proof of their American nationality. I had never thought of this before, but it should not suprise us that so soon after the War of Independence an American accent had not developed. All of which begs the question - when did the US accent - in its many variants - start to develop. Answers please by email via one of the many email links on Geoffs Genealogy.

Reading this book put me in mind of several Bankes descendants who served in the British Navy, and in particular of Bankes Mitchell (Abt 1720-1763). He was a son of Robert Mitchell (abt 1692 - bef May 1742) and Elizabeth nee Russell (abt 1693-abt1740), and brother to the writer Mary (Mitchell) Collyer (abt 1716-1762). In 1744 Bankes was recorded in the Middlesex Deeds Registry as a Watchmaker. However, by 1763 he was in the navy, serving on the Alcides, a captured French ship, having previously served on the Temeraire, another captured French ship. A few weeks later he was transferred to the Hampton Court, and he served on that ship until 18 August 1763, when the Captain's Log states "Departed this Life Bankes Mitchell Mariner and at 10 committed his body to the deep".

To complete the picture, Administration of Bankes Mitchell's estate was granted in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury to his sister, Hannah Mitchell (abt 1723-abt 1796), on 23 November 1763.

Why would a watchmaker swap his occupation for the rigours of life as am able seaman in the navy, especially at the age of around 42? That was quite an advanced age in eighteenth century England.

I'm no expert on naval records, but to me the letter P in the column of the Muster Roll that is headed "Whence and Whether Prest or Not" tells us that Bankes Mitchell was impressed. If I am reading this correctly it appears that within a year of being forced to join the Royal Navy Bankes had died and was at the bottom of the sea. I think about the hardships he must have endured, the separation from his family and a host of other things that I read about in Jack Tar, and I am very thankful to have been born in the mid twentieth century.

For me this is the essence of family history. It's not just about accumulating a collection of names, but a process of sharing in the experiences of the people we trace so that they become more than just names on a sheet of paper.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 28 February 2011

2011-03-01T10:27:00.000-08:00

I signed my will early in this month.

I had decided to revise the will I made about 25 years ago to reflect changed circumstances, not least the fact that our children are now grown up.It was a pretty straightforward procedure; the job was done & dusted in a trice, and hopefully the fact that we have done this will make life a little easier than it otherwise may have been for my familywhen I pass into history.

I'm afraid future genealogists won't glean much from my will. The names of my wife and children, my address, a few other nuggets of information. They will probably be disappointed! This thought made me reflect on the great value that wills have been to me in my research, and I'm going to reflect on this in this blog entry.

The first Will I ever saw in my research was the Will of our benefactor - John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher (abt 1650-1719). This was found on my behalf at the old PRO, Chancery Lane by Helen Bradley, then Archivist at the Haberdashers' Company, and is still one of the most informative wills I have ever seen. Among the pieces of information I gleaned from this document were the names of many of Bankes'relations, plus details of many of his properties and his many bequests. It also told us other details, such as the burial place of the testator, his first wife and at least one of his children: The fact that he and his first wife - Elizabeth Atherton (abt 1640-bef 1715) had produced eight children, all of whom had predeceased John Bankes, and so on.

Armed with this mountain of information I set out on my research, and I'm still going at it today, about 21 years later! I still have numerous research issues that I need to resolve concerning my Rand forebears (the Rands were John Bankes' half siblings and Mary (Rand) Mitchell (abt 1668-1739) was my direct ancestor), and I very much hope to resolve at least some of these before I'm through.

Interestingly, for all that Bankes'will was so informative, there are things it didn't tell us. For instance, it failed to mention that there had been a marriage settlement between John Bankes and his second wife - Elizabeth Trevers (abt 1670-1733) - which had stated that in the event of one of the partners in the marriage dying, the surviving widow or widower would keep the property that she or he had brought to the marriage, and not be entitled to any of his or her spouse's estate other than that which was given to them in their spouse's will. I found this information in one of the many Court of Chancery records that I have looked at, and it went some way to explain why the bequests John Bankes made in favour of his widow seemed quite small.

Bankes' will also failed to tell us how he earned his living. Yes, it did refer to him as a Citizen and Haberdasher of London, but that merely told us his livery company. It didn't give any hint that in fact he was a carpenter & builder, heavily involved in rebuilding London after the Great Fire in 1666.

Mention of Elizabeth Bankes reminds me that her will opened up a veritable can of worms. In naming her daughters as beneficiaries, Elizabeth mentioned Elizabeth Mitchell, wife of Robert Mitchell. After further investigation I proved that this Elizabeth Mitchell was indeed the wife of "our" Robert Mitchell,Citizen & Skinner of London (abt 1692 - bef 1742). Robert was John Bankes' nephew, being the son of Mary Rand (mentioned above) and Robert Mitchell, Citizen & Feltmaker of London (abt 1658 - bef 1706).

I realise that all this can be a mite confusing, so just to clarify, what I'm saying is that through the wills of Mr & Mrs John Bankes I learned that a nephew of Bankes married his wife's daughter by a previous marriage. Good stuff, don't you think? It would have been hard to find this out without wills. Parish register entries may have led me towards this conclusion, but as the PRs of the period did not ususally contain much information other than the date and the name of the parties involved, it is unlikely that they would have proved these relationships.

I'll just mention one other person who featured in a clutch of very informative Wills. Thomas Hunt (abt 1723-1789) was a London Attorney, and represented some members of his family in the Court of Chancery proceedings relating to the estate of John Bankes. He was the author of the tract Truth Faileth; so that Equity Cannot Enter: Exemplified from a short Abstract of the Proceedings in a Cause in the High Court of Chancery. Well, he was named as an executor in two wills left by members of the Jacobson family who were resident in the Channel Island of Jersey. Not only that, but in his own will he named as relations Samuel Jacobson and James Jacobson, both born London and later of Maidstone, Kent in Kent. His connection to the Jacobsons stems from his marriage to Mary Jacobson (abt 1737-1806), daughter of James Jacobson (abt 1692-1759) & Mary Mitchell (abt 1700-aft 1750).

The Jersey folk who named Thomas as their executor were:

Esther Jacobson (prob 1789)
Magdalen Jacobson (prob 1781)

Without these wills we would probably lack proof of the connection between my ancestor and the Jersey Jacobsons, so the information in these documents is very valuable in our research. In fact, the information we have unearthed over the years leads us to believe that Henry Jacobson (abt 1690-1760), nephew to my ancestor, James Jacobson, made the move to Jersey and married Magdalen Dorey (abt 1690-1764). We have a copy of Henry's will - the only will we possess that was written in French! The above Esther and Magdalen were daughters of Henry J & Magdalen.

The day of our Bankes Reunion is fast approaching. Only three months to go, and preparations are now be gathering pace. Over the past months I have tried to contact as many Bankes descendants as I can, and invite them to what we hope will be a really enjoyable event. I'll continue this effort right up to June, but if you are a descendent of one of the siblings of John Bankes and you would like to come to our Reunion, please do have a look at our web page and consider joining us for the day. The more the merrier!

Quite a number of people have confirmed their booking by paying the £15 charge, and we really do thank you all for that. Quite a few people have said they will come but have not yet paid the £15. As we now need to firm up on the numbers, in order to arrange catering etc, we would be grateful if you would make your payment. If paying via PayPal causes you problems please contact me by email through a link on the Geoffs Genealogy website and I'll be happy to organise an alternative method of payment for you.

We will soon be contacting all the people who have paid, asking them to complete a simple registration form to aid us in our preparations.

See you all next month!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 January 2011

2011-01-31T19:30:00.000-08:00

I've done very little research in January. I've been pretty well occupied preparing the next issue of the Shropshire Family History Society Journal, and what other time has been available I've spent updating files for the Geoff's Genealogy website.

My work on Thomas Hunt Doctor page of the website has taken a lot longer than I had anticipated. This is because I got some of the files mixed up and ended up inadvertently creating duplicates, which thoroughly confused me and the software! I therefore had to enlist the services of my resident genius, who sorted out the problem in a trice but, alas, I then had to re-do a lot of the work, which was rather frustrating. Anyway, I've now almost completed my work on this page, and will be able to upload it any time now. Maybe today.

The changes I've made to this page are as follows:

a. I've added quite a bit of information about the children of Thomas & his first spouse, Martha Mary (Colam) Hunt.
b. I've added information about Thomas Hunt's professional career, namely about his involvement in the Dispensary for Diseases of the Skin.
c. I've added to the References page, both to the references and to the Bibliography.

Further changes already uploaded during January are as follows:

Thomas Hunt Lawyer
Minor tweaks to the text. No major change.

Thomas Hunt Baptist Minister

a. Extra detail added to the existing text
b. Information added re Maria (Edwards) Hunt's property in Bedfordshire and her connection to the Munn family.
c. Page updated to include information concerning the family of George Box Drayton and his wife, Martha (Hunt) Drayton, and their children
d. Image added, showing the grave of George Box Drayton at Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington.

I had intended to continue updating Geoff's Genealogy further, but now think I shall have to put this work on hold, as I have a number of other items to attend to. I shall return to it as soon as and when I can.

Although I haven't been doing any more research during January I have high hopes of a more productive month in February. Additionally, I am anticipating a trip to Lancashire before too long, to carry out some more Culshaw research. I am also intending to go to The National Archives at Kew in May, to do some more work on the Bankes Pedigree.

I am still trying to contact as many people as possible, to invite them to our John Bankes' Descendants Reunion on 18 June. We want to get as many people there as possible, to make it a really great day, so if you are a descendant of one of the siblings of John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher of London (abt 1652-1719) please do visit the relevant page on Geoff's Genealogy and book your place.

This is a fairly short blog entry this month, as I have no new research news to report. I'll try to do better next month!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 December 2010

2010-12-31T07:50:00.000-08:00

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that I have spent some ttime over the past couple of weeks working on some updates to the Geoffs Genealogy website. These updates are very much overdue, and are a "work in progress". To date they are as follows:

The Bankes Biography page now encompasses the information I found about Harcourt Buildings in the Temple, London, which was built by Bankes in 1703. I have also included in this text some information about sightings of Bankes in the Window Tax and Land Tax returns, and tidied up the text in some places.

The Articles section of the website has undergone significant change, with the addition of three more articles, all of which have been published in Family Tree Magazine. The titles of these are:

Livery Companies - Apprentices & Freemen
Understanding the Gazettes
Life & Death in the Nineteenth Century

Hopefully you will find something of interest in these.

I have reviewed the text on the he Arthur Ackland Hunt, Artist page, updating it where necessary and correcting one or two errors. Probably the most significant addition to this page is the information I gleaned from the 1911 census.

I have also done some work on the Links page, taking off one or two links that are obsolete, updating a couple that had changed, and adding a few that I hope will be of interest to you.

I shall be making further changes to the website over the next few weeks, and will keep you informed in my next blog posting.

The first ever Reunion of John Bankes' Descendants is now only six months away, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to meeting some friends and relations again, and also meeting some Bankes Descendants for the first time. The people who have already said that they will come include descendants of Mary Mitchell, Joseph Rand, and Anne Deane, so you can see that whichever of Bankes' siblings you are descended from, the event should be relevant to you.

If you haven't yet decided whether or not to attend, I urge you to come and share what we are sure will be a very good day. It helps us greatly if you could commit to coming sooner, rather than later, so that we can form a picture of how many people are coming and plan accordingly.

It is now time to close this blog for the year, and attend top the festivities. I wish you all a happy and healthy New Year.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 November 2010

2010-11-30T12:15:00.000-08:00

Well, the weather here in Blighty certainly has taken on a wintery chill in the past week. As I write this we in Shropshire have a covering of snow on the ground and are having to contend with icy roads and footpaths as we wend our way to the office or the shops etc. It’s very unusual for this sort of wintry weather to invade our shores so early – winter hasn’t even started yet – and following quite a harsh winter last year it certainly is most unwelcome. To counter thoughts of the winter chill I am keeping my mind on the fact that it is only seven months to our Reunion of Bankes Descendants, which will undoubtedly be held in blazing sunshine, next June.

Bookings for the reunion are going well, and we expect to have a great day, with people from all the branches of descent from John Bankes’ siblings in attendance. I do hope that if you are a Bankes descendant you will reserve yourself a place at this event as soon as possible. Just to clarify, the only qualification you need to be able to attend is that you are able to trace your ancestry to a sibling of John Bankes, Citizen and Haberdasher of London (abt 1650 – 1719). It doesn’t have to be a male line of descent. My ancestral link back to Mary Mitchell is mainly via a female line, but I am still very much a Bankes descendant, and proud of it! If you are not sure whether you can qualify, have a look at my website, and see whether you can find your forebears on the Bankes Pedigree. If you are still not sure whether you are a Bankes descendant send me an email using one of the links on my website. I’ll be delighted to hear from you.

Just to clarify, the half siblings of John Bankes were:

John Rand (abt 1661 – bef 1716)
Joseph Rand (abt 1665 – bef 1708)
Mary Mitchell (abt 1668 – 1739)
Elizabeth Hopkins (abt 1662 – 1728)
Anne Deane (abt 1679 – aft 1733)

A couple of months ago I told you about my research into the first known wife of Robert Hanham Collyer (RHC) (1814 – abt 1891). You may recall that I had traced the death and probate record of Susannah Hawley MacDonald (abt 1815 – 1869) and had learned quite a lot about her and her kinsfolk. At the time I ordered a copy of her will from the UK Probate service. In the past I have found that a copy of a will would take but a few days to arrive, but in this case it took a whole month before I received it! When it came it was accompanied by a note apologising for the delay, which was caused by a huge increase in the number of orders for copy wills. Apparently steps are being taken to deal with the situation, which I assume means extra staff. It does not surprise me that the number of orders for copy wills has gone up so markedly. After all, the Probate Calendars from 1858 onwards started to appear on Ancestry.co.uk during the summer, and one would expect this to result in a significant number of orders. Hopefully the Probate Service will get this sorted out sooner rather than later. It must be quite a money-spinner for them.

Anyway, Susannah’s will was an interesting document, which yielded several important pieces of information.

Firstly, it named the cemetery in which she wanted to be buried. Not that unusual in itself, but what was unusual was the fact that she stated that her son had been buried in grave number 16074 at Kensal Green Cemetery in West London, and she wished to be buried with him. Kensal Green is a vast cemetery, and I feel sure that quite a few Bankes descendants were buried there. I have never searched its burial registers, but I certainly need to do so sometime. I believe that a copy of the early records – up to 1872 - is held at London Metropolitan Archives, so I should add this to my ever growing research list for my next trip to London. The cemetery is owned privately, by the General Cemetery Company, and I guess they may be able to advise the whereabouts of the more recent records.

Susannah named her deceased son as Summer MacDonald – an unusual forename, I think you will agree. I have encountered Summer previously, as a passenger list dated 28 July 1845 recorded his arrival in New York with his mother and stepfather – Robert Hanham Collyer – after crossing the Atlantic from Liverpool on the vessel St Patrick. Actually, in this record, Summer was named as Somerset R McDonald, and his age stated as 7 years. Thus he was apparently born c 1838, about two years after Susannah had married her first spouse, Robert Collins MacDonald. To date my efforts to trace Summer / Somerset in the records have proved unsuccessful, but I am keeping an eye open for him as I carry out my research. It is perfectly possible that he was not born in England or Wales, as I do not know where his family may have been at the time of his birth.

Another interesting aspect of Susannah MacDonald’s will is that she gave information about deceased members of her family. If I had not already known I would have learned that her late father was James Clarke of Sid Abbey in Devon. Her deceased spouse – Robert Collins MacDonald – was a Major in the service of the East India Company.

The will had three codicils, each of them revising the bequests. Through these codicils we can see that prior to 1863 Susannah had been resident in Bath, Somerset, but in 1863 she was living in Bayswater, Middlesex. When she made her first codicil in 1865 she had moved back to Bath, but by the date of her second codicil in 1867 she had returned to live in Bayswater and she was still living there when she died, in 1869.

Bequests were made to a number of family members, but the over-riding thing about this will so far as I’m concerned was that at no point did Susannah name her second husband, Robert Hanham Collyer (RHC). At the time this will was made RHC was in his second marriage, to Emily Jeans Clements Collyer – a marriage that was annulled in 1864, because at the time of the ceremony Susannah was still alive (see previous blog postings). It seems that the break-up of Susannah’s marriage to RHC was probably a stormy affair, and she cut him out of her life completely, reverting to her first husband’s surname. However, as it seems that the couple were never actually divorced, legally they were still married at the time of Susannah’s death, and my understanding is that under the law relating property belonging to married women, RHC would have had a good claim to her estate. My assumption is that that is why RHC sued Susannah’s executor in the Court of Chancery in 1875-6. However, the available records indicate that he did not win his case.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 1 November 2010

2010-11-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to say that a number of people have said that they aim to be at the Reunion of John Bankes' Descendants in June 2011,and we are hoping very much to get a good attendance.

It should be a really enjoyable day for all of you who are interested in the Bankes Pedigree, and we are hoping to meet people from all the various lines of descent from the half siblings of John Bankes.

One person said to me the other day that she did not feel that the event was for her as she has only a tenuous link to a sister of John Bankes. In fact, Anne Deane (abt 1679 - aft 1733), half sister to Bankes, features in her family history, so she has just as much of a claim to be a Bankes descendant as I do! The point is that you will hopefully be able to meet people who are descended on the same line as you, and thereby enjoy a social event, as well as maybe adding to your knowledge.

Anyway, for information about the event please visit our special page on the Geoffs Genealogy website.

A while ago Ancestry placed online a collection of images from London parish registers dated 1538-1812. These were unindexed at the time, but valuable insofar as you could search through them page by page, as we used to do in records offices in pre-internet days. Well, a couple of weeks ago Ancestry published an index to these records, making our searches so much easier. Needless to say I've been spending some time searching these records - with considerable success.

Some years ago I traced a marriage licence allegation relating to a marriage in 1715 between a certain Robert Mitchell and Elizabeth Russell. The forename of the bride tied in with the facts we had gleaned from the Haberdashers' Company's Bankes Pedigree Book, and these factors made me think this document could relate to my family. Comparison of the signature of this Robert Mitchell to a sample of the signature of "my" Robert Mitchell, Skinner of London (abt 1692 - bef May 1742) was inconclusive. I thought them similar, but there were nine years between the two specimen signatures, and as Robert was a young man at the time it is reasonable to suppose that his signature was evolving at the time. I entered Elizabeth Russell on to my tree, placing her surname in brackets to indicate that there was an element of uncertainty about this.

Some time later I found the Will of Elizabeth Bankes (d 1733), widow of John Bankes, as well as some documents in the Court of Chancery relating to proceedings involving this lady. The will, which was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in 1733, included reference to Elizabeth's daughter Elizabeth Mitchell, wife of Robert Mitchell, and this relationship was confirmed in the Chancery documents. I already knew that Elizabeth's surname on her marriage to John Bankes in 1715 was Trevers. This latest piece of evidence indicated that if I was correct about Elizabeth Russell being the wife of our Robert Mitchell, Elizabeth Trevers / Bankes had probably been married previously to a Mr Russell.

I found several other pieces of evidence, which gave me more information about Elizabeth's family. As far as I know she had two other daughters, besides Elizabeth. I discovered the names of their spouses, and also the names of their children. Still, I could not definitively resolve the question about Robert Mitchell's wife and John Bankes' widow, and this poser remained "on the back burner" for a number of years ..... until now.

Using the parish registers on Ancestry I traced the marriage of Hannah Russell to Edmund Jones at St Olave Bermondsey in 1705. I also found the births of two of their children in the same parish in 1706 and 1708, confirming the information I had found. Further confirmation of the Russell connection came in the discovery of Arabella Russell's marriage to John Young at Bermondsey in 1711. Mr Young evidently died after a few years, and Arabella remarried in 1730, her new spouse being John Craister.

Actually, Mr Craister died in 1739 - I have a copy of his will - and sometime later Arabella married for a third time, to Richard Spindelow, Gentleman of St James, London.

All of these marriages took place by Licences, granted by the Vicar-General's office. I have ascertained the dates of these licences and hope to be able to look them up sometime in the new year, at the Society of Genealogists in London.

As if all that was not enough, I have also traced more information about the children of the above mentioned Hannah Jones. For instance, I now know that in 1752 a daughter named Alithea Jones married a doctor in Bedford!

So there we are. the pieces of information I found in the Ancestry parish registers have not only enabled me to prove that the surname of Robert Mitchell's wife was indeed Russell, and that she was the daughter of the second wife of John Bankes, but also provided the links to piece together all the other bits of information about Elizabeth's family that I had previously found. I have not managed to find her marriages to Mr Russell and Mr Trevers, or the burials of her first two spouses, but I am satisfied that these events did take place and hopefully I may find them one day. For now, my next task is to enter all this information into my computer records.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 04 October 2010

2010-10-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

The most important piece of news this month is that we have fixed a date for the first ever reunion of descendants of John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher of London (abt 1652-1719).

We are at the earliest planning stages at the moment, but we shall be setting up an extra page on the Geoffs Genealogy website in the next couple of weeks, and this will provide full details of the event, which will take place at Coulsdon, Surrey on Saturday 18th June 2011.

Coulsdon is south of London and just north of the M25, and thus very accessible to travellers (including me). We will provide full instructions on how to get there well before the event.

I should say at this stage that we are very grateful to cousin Dot, who is not only playing a big part in the organisation of the reunion, but also has made available the building in which we will all meet. A very warm "Thankyou" to you, Dot.

We will need everybody who is coming to book in advance, so that we know how many people we are catering for. Unfortunately, we cannot run the event on a "free of charge" basis, but we shall keep the charge to an absolute minimum needed to cover costs. In truth it's your attendance we want, not your money!

I can't tell you how excited I am about this. It should be a really great day. Hopefully a chance to meet old friends, make some new friends, and to share our common family history with fellow Bankes descendants. The only qualification you need to attend is a place in a line of descent from one of Bankes's half siblings!

Incidentally, if you have any ideas of particular features or activities for the reunion please do let me know. It is perfectly possible that you may come up with something that we have not considered!

Following on from my previous blog entry, I have been busily adding to our research into the life of Robert Hanham Collyer (1815 - Abt 1891) and those who played a part in his life. Due to time constraints I need to bring this research to a halt - for the time being, that is.

In doing this research I have found some really interesting material about Robert and the lady who we take to have been his first wife - Susannah Hawley (MacDonald) Collyer, nee Clarke.

In a court hearing in 1873, at which what we believe to have been his second marriage was annulled, Robert stated that Susannah had left him in 1846, within a year of his marriage, and he had not heard from her since. He further said that in 1859 he had been told that she had died, and he believed this to be true because the information came from a person who he regarded as reliable. Strange that he couldn't recall this person's name, but we'll leave that to one side.

As I was annotating these court proceedings for my records I thought that this evidence by RHC seemed barely believable, and set out to see whether in fact it stood up to examination.

I looked for Susannah on the censuses, and found her on the 1861 enumeration for Bath. She was living as an East India Company annuitant with a female servant, apparently in rented rooms. I also found a record of her death in 1869, at Hendon, then in Middlesex and now part of North London. The Probate Registry Calendars are now available on Ancestry.co.uk, so I was able to search for an entry for Susannah. Sure enough, I found it. In all these records Susannah gave her surname as "MacDonald" - the name of her first husband, who had died before her marriage to Collyer. It seems that she did not want to be associated with RHC, so when he said they had parted and never seen oine another again that was probably true.

I'm still very sceptical, however, about RHC's statement that he was told of his wife's death in 1859. As one finds out more about RHC, one learns not to take what he said at face value.

The probate record gave the precise date of Susannah's death - 20 August 1869, and told me that the probate was granted to a certain James Palmer Woodward of Upton upon Severn, Worcestershire. This name rang a bell. I recalled that in a High Court action in 1877 Robert Hanham Collyer, the defendant, referred to a case he had brought in the Court of Probate against somebody named Woodward in January 1876. Unfortunately, nearly all the records of the Court of Probate have been destroyed, and it seems that the papers for this case are not available to us. However, my guess is that RHC may well have been suing James P Woodward in respect of the probate of Susannah's will. If I'm correct in this it means that RHC certainly knew about the date of Susannah's death by 1876. Probably we shall never know whether he knew earlier than that, but I'll keep a sharp eye open for further evidence.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 August 2010

2010-08-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

There I was, looking to do a bit of treeing on the August Bank Holiday Monday. When I attempted to log on to the internet there was nothing!

OK, I thought, it will probably repair itself in a while, but by the evening we still had no connection, and there was nothing obviously wrong at our end. I phoned my supplier, who attended to my call with great politeness, but the remedies they prescribed didn't work, and thus I am now waiting for them to test the line. It is all very frustrating, and serves to remind us of how much we take the wonders of modern technology for granted.

In the meantime, I am preparing to write a long-overdue letter to Jim, my Collyer cousin in the USA. Jim has treated me to much information about his branch of the Collyer dynasty, and I really feel quite guilty that I have not really given him much in response. I'm therefore spending some time preparing what I hope will be a sizeable package of treeing goodies relevant to his interests. In these circumstances we often turn to our old friend Robert Hanham Collyer (1814- abt 1891) and this time is no exception.

I thought that before selecting the material to send to Jim I should update RHC's record on my database, so I've been giving attention to dealing with that pile of paper that I've had on the shelf for about eighteen months. I've now almost completed that job, and thus can see laid out on screen the full extent of our knowledge about this man. This is by no means the whole picture, as every time I type his name into Google and carry out a search I find more references listed that there was the last time I did it. There is plenty more to dig into in future, assuming I have an internet connection!

I've written before about this absolutely remarkable individual - I use the word in its proper sense, as he truly was an INDIVIDUAL!

For the benefit of those who aren't familiar with RHC, I would just outline his career by saying that he was born on the channel Island of Jersey in 1814. From 1833 to 1835 he was a medical student at London University, before emigrating with his parents and siblings to the USA. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1836 on the vessel Kensington.

He then obtained his medical degree at Berkshire Medical Institution, Pittsfield, Massachussetts, and embarked on his career proper.

He was a leading advocate of mesmerism and phrenology, having studied under Elliotson and Spurzheim, and toured the US and Europe lecturing and giving demonstrations of these techniques. He also claimed to have discovered anaesthesia, and was annoyed that he had not been credited with this achievement. He claimed to have carried out surgical operations, including the dislocation of a hip, and the extraction of teeth, and actually incorporated tooth pulling into his lecturing performances!

It is evident that he was blessed with a very fertile mind, being responsible for a large number of scientific inventions, including a gold crushing machine (in 1854) and an " Improved mode of preparing the residue of beet root, mangel-wurtzel & c., left after sugar-making and distillation, to be used as a material in making paper" (abt 1856). Quite a range there!

He wrote many published works, mainly on the subject of mesmerism and phrenology, but possibly his best known literary work was Lights and Shadows of American Life, published in 1838, a description of his initial tour of the the USA.

Although a naturalised American, Collyer spent a great deal of time outside his adopted country, and can often be spotted in the English records. In fact, he appears to have been based in London from about 1855 to about 1877.

His private life was a tangled one, to say the least. We know of at least five female partners or wives, although we have only traced two marriages, both of which took place in England. One of these marriages was to a sixteen year old girl. Collyer admitted to being 41 at the time, but in fact he was 50! The marriage produced two children before the then Mrs Collyer realised that her husband had a previous spouse who was still alive! She sued for an anullment of the marriage, which she was granted in London in 1873.

In 1838 he came to suspect that his then wife was having a liaison with Captain Marryat, the author of the book Children of the New Forest. He hid under the bed in his Louisville hotel, and when the couple arrived in the room, and started doing what people do in these situations, he emerged from under the bed and confonted them. Imagine the scene! Captain Marryat concocted a very thin alibi for his actions, and the newspapers had a fine time over the affair. However, in the event, the good Captain and Collyer resolved the matter without the need of a duel or a court case, and the affair died down.

There are many other aspects of Robert Hanham Collyer's life that I have not mentioned, many of which you would certainly find most interesting. This man has continually surprised us for the past 15 years or so, and we are quite sure that there is still plenty more for us to discover. He was dismissed as a quack and a charlatan by many people, and one can see why. That said, he was obviously a very talented man.

Jim, you have a treat in store for you!

Oh, by the way, my internet connection has been repaired, so I can now upload this post!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 16 August 2010

2010-08-16T11:14:00.001-07:00

Those of you who have a Facebook presence will probably be interested to know that we now have a Bankes Descendants Facebook group. You can join the group by clicking here.

Geoff's Genealogy Update 09 August 2010

2010-08-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from a week in the wonderfully beautiful Aveyron department of France. Mostly good weather, lovely food and lots of interesting places to visit. What could be better?

Treeing has taken a bit of a back seat in the past few weeks, but I have one or two items that hopefully may interest you.

A few months ago I bought a new genealogy computer program, with a view to updating the software I use to keep my family history records. I have always used Family Tree Maker, which I have found to be very user friendly. I have, however, always had reservations about its reporting features, as I have found them rather limited. My new acquisition is Family Tree Maker 2010. This version of FTM is radically different from the 2006 version that I have been using, so much so that I have shied away from using it, fearing that my precious treeing time will be taken up in getting accustomed to it.

Well, as an intermediate step I have put the new program on my laptop, and having played around with it for an hour or so my initial impression is that it seems an improv ement on previous versions. It will take a few days to find my way around it properly, but the reports appear to offer much more flexibility, and the on-screen space is used far more effectively than previously. The program also offers a number of new tools, such as a mapping facility to show you where your forebears lived. I feel fairly confident that I shall be using this program as my main genealogy package before too long.

It may be of interest to you if I mention acouple of websites that have recently come to my attention, which I think could be of great help in our research.

Firstly, not exactly new, but of great value is the online Welsh wills section of the National Library of Wales website. Here you can see the actual wills of your Welsh ancestors whose probates were dealt with in the Welsh ecclesiastical courts up to 1858, free of charge. The search mechanism is easy to use, and you can view and / or print out the wills free of charge. I've already found a few interesting specimens that relate to people on the Welsh branch of the Bankes Pedigree.

Actually, I have a bit of a problem with one of these wills. Information from the Bankes Pedigree Book tells me that Charles Davies, spouse of Elizabeth Price (Abt 1753-1833), daughter of John Price and Deborah Rand, died in October 1817. I have found a will that seems to fit
with that information. However, the frustrating thing is that there is a distinct shortage of names mentioned in this document, so it is not possible to say positively whether or not this was our man. I don't think this will was drawn up very well, as it was very loosely worded and lacked personal detail to identify the beneficiaries, but presumably it served the purpose.

London Lives 1680-1800 is a really great user-friendly website for those of us whose interests lie in the Capital in the eighteenth century. To quote from the website:

"London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages from eight London archives and is supplemented by fifteen datasets created by other projects. It provides access to historical records containing over 3.35 million name instances. Facilities are provided to allow users to link together records relating to the same individual, and to compile biographies of the best documented individuals..."

I've done some preliminary searches on this site, and found some references that I'm pretty sure relate to my ancestor - James Jacobson (Abt 1692-1759) in the parish chest records of St Botolph, Aldgate, so it's well worth giving this a go.

My mention, in my last blog entry, of my search for the Gearys in the censuses and civil registration records led my cousin Pat to do a bit of delving - with very successful results. Thanks to Pat I now know that in 1911 Thomas Geary was living in Bath, Somerset, in the household of Frances Hill, a spinster neice, who was aged 72. In fact, apart from Thomas and two female servants, the household consisted of three other spinster relations, ages ranging from 46 to 71. The entry showed that Thomas was a widower, thus giving me a starting point in the search for the death of his wife - Louisa (Hunt) Geary.

I found what looks like Louisa's death entry in the civil registration indexes in the March quarter of 1903, the death being registered at St Albans, Hertfordshire. Due to the prohibitive cost of B/M/D certificates I have not sent for the certificate, but I would be amazed if this were not the relevant entry. There are no other entries for a Louisa Geary in the period 1901-1911, and the age ties up as well. I wonder what the Gearys were doing in St Albans. maybe there were more relations in that area.

Next I set out to find the death of Thomas Geary, sometime after March 1911. I looked at The Times Digital Archive Online website, which is often accessible via your local library, and although I could not find a death announcement, I did find a most interesting item in the Points from Letters column of 27 May 1922. Headed A Link With 1770, it reads:

'Lieutenant-Colonel Drage's account of his link with 1787 is an interesting one, which I can comparewith that of my own great-uncle, Mr Thomas Geary, barrister-at-law, who was born in 1828 and died at Bath in 1916. His father was born in 1770, and the two lives, therefore, covered a period of 146 years between them. Should my youngest brother, Rev B H Geary, VC, or any of the younger members of my father's family, reach an advanced old age, a period of over two hundred years will have been covered by the three lives, as the above brother is only thirty-one now. - Mr A Bernard Geary, Sports Club, St James's-square, SW.'

This set me off looking for Thomas Geary's death entry in the civil registration indexes. I found it in 1914, not 1916. His death was registered in Bath during the March quarter of that year.

So there we are, another gap in the Bankes Pedigree is filled in.

Happy hunting to one and all until the next time.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 17 July 2010

2010-07-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

I’m rather late with this blog entry. I’ve been working on several projects at the same time, and resolved to finish them before blogging. Sometimes I have to discipline myself in this way, in order to get things done. Anyway, I’ve just completed my last task - the preparation of the next edition of the Shropshire Family History Society journal - so am able to revert to what passes for “normal”.

A few weeks ago Mrs GC and I went on a guided walk, looking at the remains left behind by what used to be a thriving mining industry on the outskirts of our home town of Newport, Shropshire. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in what is now woodlands, men used to mine limestone, transporting it by canal to the River Severn for on-shipment, or by means of the main road to Wolverhampton & Chester, which still runs past our town.

I’ve lived in the town for over twenty years, and had been aware that that there had been mines in the area in the past, but have never really delved into local history, and was very surprised to see the number of shafts and kilns in the area, and also the remains of an engine house that probably dated from the 1790s. We also saw one of the canal basins associated with this industry, and learned about the course the canal took from Pitchcroft to nearby Lilleshall This was certainly an evening well spent, and opened my eyes to the fact that what is now a beautiful country area was once a hive of industry.

Moving on to the Banks Pedigree, I have recently found some information about the Jacobsons.

Esther Jacobson was a daughter of William Jacobson & Mary Gutteridge, being born on 25 November 1770. A few months ago I traced her on the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses. Throughout this period Esther was living with her sister in law – Sarah Jacobson - the wife of Esther’s brother, another William Jacobson (1776-1834). They lived at 6 York Place, Shoreditch, which was William’s address at the time of his death. In William’s will, proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in October 1835, Sarah inherited all his leasehold estate, and that presumably included the York Place residence. Thus, Sarah was shown as the household head on all these entries. I also note that on all these entries, the two ladies had servants in the household, one in 1851, and two in 1841 and 1861.

Sarah died in the September quarter of 1863. I found the relevant entry in the Civil Registration index. In the June quarter of the following year, Esther also died, at the ripe old age of 93. When I was at Kew in May I found the entry for her probate in the National Probate Registry Calendar, which enables us to pinpoint the precise date of her death, and also her address at that time.

More grist to the mill!

Another area of research I’ve ventured into recently concerns Thomas Geary and his spouse, Louisa, nee Hunt. Thomas was a London barrister, and he married Louisa, the eldest daughter of Thomas Hunt, Surgeon, in 1860, when she was 31 years old. Until quite recently we knew little of these people, except their approximate birth dates and the fact that they married in 1860. We have never traced any children of this couple, and it seems that there were none – at least to judge from the relevant census entries. I have traced Thomas & Louisa on all the censuses between 1861 and 1901, and nowhere is there any record of children.

The 1861 census was taken only seven months after Thomas and Louisa were married, and shows them living with Thomas’s parents in Fulham. Thomas senior had been born on the Isle of Wight, and was a fund holder, aged 90, but there is no record of his occupation during his working life. He must have been prosperous, though, to judge from the fact that there were three servants in the household.

By 1871 Thomas’s father had died, and his mother was living as a widow (aged 88) in the household in Kentish Town, then in Middlesex but now part of North London. Thomas and Louisa “only” had one servant, - a lady who had seen service in his father’s household in 1861.

In 1881 Thomas and Louisa’s Paddington household was smaller – just Thomas and Louisa and Louisa’s sister – Esther Maria Hunt. By 1891 it was smaller still – just Thomas and Louisa – no relatives or servants, and the 1901 entry is similar. On both these censuses the household was at Kilburn Park Road, Willesden, in Middlesex.

I have tried to find the family on the 1911 census, but without success. I thought maybe they had died before 1911, but then I found an item in The Times newspaper of 27 May 1922 which gives Thomas’s date of death. It was a letter, written by a great nephew of Thomas named A Bernard Geary, and states that Thomas Geary died in Bath in 1916. As Thomas’s father had been born in 1770, the writer of the letter cites this as an example of inter-generational longevity in that the combined lives of father and son spanned 146 years. Armed with this information I looked for Thomas Geary’s death in the Civil Registration Indexes of 1916. It was not there, so I extended the search range and found the entry in the March quarter of 1914. The registration district for this event was Bath, in Somerset, so presumably Thomas had died in or near that lovely town.

I have not obtained Thomas Geary’s death certificate, but have wondered why he was in Bath at the time of his death. Maybe there were other family members living there? I can’t find any on the 1911 census. Possibly he was in a home for the elderly in Bath.

I still have not managed to find the death of Louisa (Hunt) Geary, although I keep on going back to this from time to time. Quite possibly her surname was mis-spelt, which may also explain why I have not found either of these people on the 1911 census.

I leave you this time with a really great website that I came across a couple of weeks ago. If you are interested in 18th century London, as I am, take a look at Lucy Inglis’s Georgian London blog. It is full of interesting articles about Georgian London, and was voted History Website of 2009 by the readers of History Today magazine. I’m finding much to interest me there, and I’m sure you will, as well. There are also a number of interesting sites in the Links section.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 May 2010

2010-05-30T11:08:00.000-07:00

On 20 May I visited The National Archives at Kew, travelling on the coach that is so splendidly organised by Shropshire Family History Society.

I have been visiting Kew for about 20 years, on and off, so you would think that I know the ropes pretty well. I like to think that is the case, but unfortunately I still get caught out by something nearly every time I go there, as you will see…...

Unfortunately, my TNA reader's ticket had expired last November. The tickets last for three years, and quite rightly the people at TNA needed to see some id from me before mine could be renewed. My frustration was that I knew the details of some of the sources I wanted to look at, but could not order them in advance because my ticket had expired. If you are able to order documents in advance they can be made ready so that you can plunge straight into them on your arrival, thus saving about 40-60 minutes of valuable research time.

The renewal of my ticket was my first priority on arrival at TNA at about 10.30 am. I had with me my two items of id and sought the renewals desk. When I originally obtained my ticket the desk was on the ground floor, easy to find as you entered the building. Although there was a queue of people seeking tickets TNA had several staff on hand and the queue was dealt with very speedily. Between then and now, however, TNA has had to make economies and reorganisations, and the current system left much to be desired. The location of the tickets issuing desk has been moved to the second floor, and it is now in a room that seems not large enough to enable people to queue in reasonable comfort. There was only one person manning the desk, and as it was taking about 7 minutes to deal with each case, we punters stood to lose a significant amount of valuable research time. There were about seven people in front of me, so you can see that I stood to lose about 50 minutes before I could even order my documents!

We Brits are great at queuing, and we all stood there chatting and behaving ourselves. After a while one of our number politely asked the chap on the desk if a second desk could be opened up. He made a quick phone call and after a few more minutes a reinforcement arrived. This young man did not look too happy, however. He barked some instructions to we queuers, adopting a tone that I thought totally unnecessarily stern, and in so doing he certainly ruffled a few feathers. However, we all bit our tongues, and it has to be said that his arrival did speed up the process of issuing readers’ tickets. He dealt with my case, actually, and I emerged with my new ticket after about 35 minutes.

Off I strode, to order my first three documents, eagerly tapping my fingers on the keyboard. I had decided that my priority was to investigate Michael Bayly Smith’s career working for the Great Western Railway in the mid 19th century, and ordered two of that company’s Registers of Clerks – sources refs RAIL264/3/20 and RAIL264/1/25. I also ordered another item – a bit of a mystery item – that I had identified in the TNA Catalogue. I’ll come to that later.

On being informed that the pieces I had ordered would be ready for my use in about 40 to 60 minutes, I decided to spend the interim period by looking up some wills in the Calendars of the National Probate Office. This I did with some success, and after 45 minutes I made my way to the original documents reading room to see whether my documents were ready.

As I went through the scanner that we all have to pass through on entering and leaving the reading room I was sternly reprimanded by the person who checked my papers. My offence? The pencils I was taking into the original documents area had erasers in the ends! I knew that erasers are a taboo in this area, but had overlooked the fact that my plastic cased pencils had erasers in the ends. An error, certainly, but surely not worthy of such a severe telling off as I received!

The crisis was resolved by the simple expedient of removing the offending items from the pencils and leaving them on the lady’s desk. I was advised, none too graciously, that I could collect them on my way out.

I eagerly collected the first of my documents and quickly found the entry relating to Michael Bayly Smith (abt 1828-1873). It was written in a very fine hand, and recorded his postings from 1846, when he joined the company as a young man, to 1862, when he resigned from the company. This record shows that he served at a number of stations, starting at Gloucester, then continuing at Trowbridge, Melksham, Warminster, Chippenham, Chester and Wolverhampton. In 1846 he earned £70 per annum as a passenger clerk and by the time he left the company he was employed as a goods agent, earning £155 pa. As well as annotating the details of these pages, I photographed the relevant pages of this source. This is one of the very good aspects of TNA. They will let you use a digital camera to photograph items, so long as you don’t use a flash and you only use the images for private study. They even provide camera stands to enable you to take your photographs. Excellent.

We know that by the time of the 1871 census Michael had married, and was living in Brixton, South London. He was then working as a Railway Superintendent of Goods Traffic, but we don’t know how long he had been in London, or where he had been during the years between 1862 and 1871, except that he was married in 1870, at St Saviour, South Hampstead.

Sadly, Michael died in 1873, aged about 45.

When I went to look at the second source I found that I had been given the wrong document! I don’t think I had ordered it incorrectly, but maybe I had. Anyway, on trying to re-order it I found that somebody else was using it at that time. Can you believe that? Out of all the documents in TNA, two researchers wanted the same item at the same time! More frustration!

When I told the young man on the desk in this department he was most helpful, and said he would try to intercept the document before it went back to storage. I should leave it about an hour and then go back to him. More delay! I went off to my lunch.

I soon ate my lunch, and was ready for the fray again. However, the requisite hour had not passed since my conversation with that nice young man, so I decided to go and look at that other (mystery) document. This was the first of several documents I had identified in the TNA catalogue that related to Antonio Da Costa (abt 1783-1850). Antonio married Sarah Love Hunt, a Bankes descendant, who was a daughter of William Hunt (b abt 1763) and Sarah Love (b abt 1763). William was a son of Thomas Hunt the lawyer (abt 1723-1789) and his wife, Mary Jacobson (abt 1737–bef 1806).

Anyway, the Da Costa name is sufficiently exotic to fascinate Mrs GC immensely, so I feel it my duty to find information about them when the opportunity arises. Hence my interest in source ref C205/2/72, which is described in the catalogue as “Aliens named: Antonio Da Costa: Middx temp George IV”.

I had no idea what I may find in this source. I know that Antonio was foreign. In the latter years of his life he was Brazilian Vice Consul in London, so I surmise that he may have been born in Portugal. If only he had lived an extra year, I may have found his birthplace on the 1851 census, but no such luck - for him or me!

I know that from 1792 aliens were forced to register with a Justice of the Peace where they resided, and believe that there were further laws passed in the 1830s to force people born abroad to register on arrival in the UK, but my knowledge on these matters is sketchy, to say the least.

Anyway, on opening the box containing the document I had ordered I knew I was facing a problem. The bundle was enormous! How somebody had ever managed to fit it into the box I shall never know! Furthermore, on first sight “my document” appeared to be missing – at least, it certainly was not in its correct place in the bundle. Eventually I found it, but in doing so I had to disturb all the other parchments in the bundle, making the task of putting them back in the box even more formidable!

The document consisted of two very large hand written parchments. It appeared that some London gentlemen were making a complaint against our Antonio, saying he owned property on Claremont Terrace, Pentonville, London that he was not entitled to own. I had lost so much time already that I really did not have time to do justice to this document. I decided to photograph it and study it later, at home. The photographs were duly taken, and I intend to go back to this source when time permits. However, I then had the task of getting the bundle back into the box.

I did try – honestly!

Unfortunately I found the task impossible, and it was with some embarrassment that I went to the documents desk seeking assistance. The chap there sent me over to the enquiries desk, and the man there tried to send me back to the documents issuing desk! I felt like a tennis ball, being despatched across the room by these two individuals! Finally, the man on the enquiries desk came and looked at my box and my bundle. He agreed that my task was pretty much hopeless, and moved the documents and box into the documents issuing area, for somebody to sort out.

Now I went back to look at RAIL264/1/25.

This time the document was there. Actually, it really repeated the information I had gleaned earlier in the day, from source RAIL264/3/20, so it didn’t take me long to complete my work with it. I photographed the relevant pages of this source, and went back to the fiche readers to further search the wills calendars, collecting my erasers en route.

TNA has a great many computers available for use, and it is well worth using them while you are there. You can use them to search among the many TNA records that have been placed on line by commercial firms, and the beauty is that you do not have to pay for looking at these records. As there were quite a number of non-conformists among the Bankes descendants, I decided to round off my day by looking at the non-conformist records that are online at http://www.bmdregisters.co.uk/. I found a number of relevant entries, but the one that gave me the greatest pleasure was the marriage of John Price (abt 1720-1756) to Deborah Rand (abt 1721-abt 1765). Deborah was a grandchild of John Bankes's half brother, Joseph Rand. These people were not my direct ancestors, but over the years I have been in contact with many people who are descended from them, and I have been seeking this record for about 15 years. They were married at the Fleet Prison in London on 19 October 1745 (source ref RG7/222, fo 27).

Our coach left TNA at 5 pm sharp. I had spent a very busy day, with many frustrations but also a fair amount of success. In spite of all the hassles I look forward to the next trip to TNA in September. At least then I shall be able to order documents in advance of my visit!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 7 May 2010

2010-05-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

We are now well and truly into Spring in the UK, and I must say it is a joy to see all the bulbs flowering in the gardens and at the roadsides.

Quite a bit of my time over the past month was spent preparing the June edition of the Shropshire FHS journal. This has now been "put to bed" and is with the printers.

I've continued with the ongoing process of updating my family history files, mindful of the need to update the Geoffs Genealogy website as soon as I feel that I've done as much as I can.

An email from Ginny a few weeks ago, set me off researching the McRodden line. The McRoddens entered into the Bankes Pedigree in 1897 when Thomas David McRodden (abt 1875 - 1912) married Mary Ellen Jones (b 1876). Mary Ellen was a Bankes descendant, being descended from Joseph Rand, half brother to John Bankes. She was a daughter of John Jones & Mary Rees - you can find the family on their tree on Geoffs Genealogy if you are interested.

Anyway, after a few nights spent researching on the internet I now know that Thomas D McRodden was Irish, being born at born in Balbriggan, Dublin. I have traced eight children of this Thomas & Mary, and in some cases I've been able to trace their descendants. All very pleasing. Another twig on the tree!

The McRoddens lived in South Wales, in the Cardiff area, and my research suggests that there may still be some members of the family in that area.

Speaking of South Wales, last weekend we went to Carmarthenshire - an area we often visit to enjoy its lovely scenery and tranquility. On this occasion we visited Llanegwad church, seeking some monumental inscriptions. We have a number of relevant burials records that we obtained from the parish registers, and had visited this graveyard before, but had no success in our search. Nevertheless, we thought we would give it another go. Well, I'm sorry to say that the state of this graveyard was very bad indeed. I understand the modern trend towards treating a churchyard as a nature reserve, although I don't agree with it, but I have to say that this is quite the most unattractive graveyard I've ever visited. The photo gives you some idea of the problems we family historians face when searching for a grave there. Needless to say, our search was fruitless, and sadly we cannot see any point in trying again.

During the past few weeks I've also managed to fit in a bit more research on one of my Lancashire lines.

John Cross (abt 1820 - abt 1868) married Elizabeth Culshaw (abt 1823 - 1864) in 1843 at Penwortham, just outside Preston. They had eight children, and I have been piecing together the lines of descent from one of their sons - Robert Cross (1856 - 1908) and his wife, Mary Carr (abt 1854 - 1931).

Mary Carr was born at Birkdale, near Southport, and this was where the family settled. To my knowledge they had ten children, and I've managed to trace a lot of information about them and their descendants. All very satisfying. I have found the 1911 census extremely useful in this and other research. It is great to be able to gain information telling us how many years the people on this census had been married, and how many children they had had, and to be able to use this information to firm up our research. Also, when you look at these forms you are seeing the actual signature of your ancestor. A rare treasure indeed!

I'll just mention one or two sources of information that I've found useful recently. Firstly, Google Books. If you haven't used this resource in your research yet, I urge you to do so. I won't attempt to explain the scope of this wonderful facility, which is free and expanding all the time! To find out about it have a look at http://books.google.co.uk/googlebooks/about.html

Another resource well worth looking at in your research is Google Street View, which is available from Google Maps. By using this facility you may be able to see the actual street or building in which your ancestor lived. Of course, this is not always possible. Many of our forebears' homes have been demolished, and even if they still exist it may not be possible to identify the correct house because of changes to the house numbering system. However, a search of Google Street View can often pay off, so it is definitely worth a shot.

The last resource I want to remind you of this time is the Times Digital Online Archive. This is a subscription service, and it is probably unlikely that you will want to subscribe. However, it is worth asking your local library whether you can access this website via their website, as many libraries subscribe and make The Times Digital Online available to its readers free of charge. If you can get access in this way you will be able to search 200 years of The Times newspaper - invaluable as a source of information about the life and times of your ancestors, and if you are lucky you may find an ancestor mentioned. In my experience the quality of the indexing is very good.

I think that's enough for now. Good hunting!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 March 2010

2010-03-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

Another month gone, and still no updates to the Geoffs Genealogy website.

I'm still trying to get as much data entered on the tree as I can, so that when it eventually does appear on the web it will be as up to date as possible. I've been using online resources to find births, marriages and deaths in the civil registration indexes. I'm taking a bit of a chance in this, as without buying the relevant certificate there is always a possibility of adopting the wrong index entry. However, the cost of buying certificates en bloc is prohibitive, and my experience tells me that the number of errors I have made using this method is very small. Where I am in doubt about an entry I either omit it entirely or add a query to the record. Hopefully I am not undermining the validity of our research.

Mention of the cost of BMD certificates in England & Wales leads me to mention the quite extortionate increase that the UK government has applied with effect from 6 April. From this date the cost of a certificate will rise from £7.00 to £9.25. Really, I realise that our nation is skint, but this is ridiculous! Apparently the official line is that this quite exhorbitant increase is justified by the need to make sure that the fee charged reflects the cost of producing the certificates. I ask you, does it really cost £9.00 to copy a certificate and post it out? If so, I would suggest that some changes are needed in the way the General Register Office (England & Wales) operates.

I explained, in my last blog entry, how the 1911 census record for my great grandparents told me that John (1855-1924) & Elizabeth (1853-1931) Culshaw had had three children who had died before April 1911. Prior to this I had no knowledge at all about these extra Culshaws, each of whom had been born and died between censuses. I explained that I had identified the three missing children from civil registration indexes and also from the records of baptisms at St Mary RC, Leyland. The next logical step was to send off for some of the relevant certificates. I wanted to prove that I had records for the right people, and also to find out what caused the deaths of these poor souls.

The forthcoming price increase led me to order four certificates while the price is still £7.00, and these documents enabled me to piece together these details re my Culshaw forebears.

I now know that Abel Culshaw died at Preston, Lancashire on 11 August 1876, aged 6 months, the cause of his death being "Marasmus Pneumonia". According to the web page "Causes of Death in the Late 19th Century mentioned in the Register of Deaths, 1893-1907 " Marasmus was a "Progressive emaciation and general wasting due to enfeebled constitution rather than any specific or ascertainable cause." Abel was John Culshaw & Elizabeth nee Bennett / Eastham's first born child, my grandfather was their second born.

James Culshaw was born in August 1879, and was no doubt named after his grandfather - James Culshaw (1834-1923). He died only nine weeks after his birth at the family home in Farington, just south of Preston. The cause of his death was "Convulsions 24 hours". I don't know what may have brought about the convulsions. The above website suggests that tetanus could have been a cause, but doesn't really offer an explanation. Possibly James was suffering from a fever.

Amy Ann Culshaw died at Farington on 5 October 1884, aged one year. She had been suffering from meningitis.

All these deaths were registered by John Culshaw, father to the children, within two days of the events. John had been present at all the deaths.

Finds such as these remind us just what a dangerous place the world was in the nineteenth century, and bring home to us the very high rates of infant mortality that existed in those days. If you are interested in this aspect of our research you may like to look at my work on late nineteenth century infant mortality, which is available on my website. John Culshaw was an ordinary working man. As far as I know he was not particularly poor, by the standards of the time. I doubt whether the living conditions of his family were particularly poor. Yet three of his seven children died so young.

I wonder about the attitude of people towards infant mortality in those days. Nowadays in England a child's death is quite rare, and rightly viewed as a disaster, but when infant mortality was so much of an everyday experience social attitudes towards it must have been different.

In addition to all the information we have found recently about the Culshaws, we have in the past few weeks filled in much information about the Eastham family. If you are interested in all this you will be able to see these records on the tree when we eventually get around to uploading it to the website.

These new breakthroughs in our Culshaw research came about thanks to our recently established contact with our long lost Lancashire cousins. A couple of weeks ago we went to Preston and met these cousins. It was a real pleasure. They made us very welcome, and we had a fine old time, talking about various family topics. My Dad met his first cousin, with whom he used to play as a lad, for the first time for about 65 years! You can imagine that it was quite an occasion.

It's really great when our hobby leads us to such a joyous conclusion. Truly the icing on the genealogical cake.

Geoff's Genealogy Update 28 February 2010

2010-03-03T12:12:00.000-08:00

The Who Do You Think You Are Live family history show at Olympia, London took place last weekend, and I was there on Saturday and Sunday, lending a hand on the Shropshire Family History Society stand. I have no idea how many people visited the show over the weekend, but believe me, the figures are bound to be hugely impressive. Our stand was manned by five people on Saturday, and we were all kept busy for most of the day. We still had time for a look around, however.

A large number of commercial websites were present. All the familiar names like Ancestry, Find My Past and S & N Genealogy had large stands with lots of merchandise on sale, lectures being given, and lots of information available. Family Search also had a big stand, and plenty of people available to help punters. I have always found the people who man the LDS family history centres around the country to be extremely helpful, and that was certainly true of the people who manned the stand.

I was a bit disappointed by the number of family history societies that were present. In particular, it seemed a shame that some of the larger societies - Birmingham and Lancashire, for example, had not attended. Judging from the interest in the Shropshire FHS stand, I'm sure that their attendance would have been well worthwhile, and appreciated by their members in the south east of the country.

It is a commonly held belief in my family that the Guyatt name is of French origin (my gt grandmother was a Londoner named Hannah Guyatt [1857 - 1903]). I have traced the Guyatt line back to 1800, and am awaiting the next moment of inspiration to enable me to make further progress, but have not yet found any evidence of French ancestry. However, I do believe it quite likely that the name originates from France. My main reason for this belief is the reference to the name in A Dictionary of English Surnames (Oxford). I am quite sceptical of surname dictionaries, as I think that many of them are not very well researched, but I do consider the Oxford version to be one of the best around, as it carries lots of citations and appears well researched. Anyway, whilst at WDYTYA I took the opportunity to ask the people from the Huguenot Society to check their database for the Guyatt name.

The outcome of the search was that the Huguenot Society's database contained eighteen references to the Guyot name, but none to Guyatt or Guyat. It seems quite possible that Guyot could be a variable of Guyatt, but to find out more about these references I would have to buy more information. I'm not about to do that at the moment, partly for cost reasons and partly because I have loads of other treeing research on the go at the moment.

All in all the WDYTYA show was a great success for our society. We had loads of visitors to our stand, and hopefully were able to help many of them with their research. It is very likely that we shall be able to return to London for next year's event.

As far as my ongoing research is concerned, the most striking thing about the past few weeks has been the progress we have made with our research into our Lancashire Culshaw forebears. I have mentioned in previous entries that we had been rather flummoxed for a number of years in our efforts to find out more about the family for my great grandparents - John Culshaw (abt 1855 - 1924) and Elizabeth nee Bennett (abt 1853 - 1931). In my last blog entry I thimentioned that we had recently made contact with one of my father's Culshaw cousins. Well, the information she has given us has provided the answers to many of our long standing posers, and enabled us to further develop this line of research by filling in the detail of the siblings of my grandfather, William Henry Culshaw (1877-1925).

We now know that Elizabeth Culshaw (b abt 1885) married Matthew Birtwistle (b abt 1877) in 1910, this couple having one child. We also know that John Culshaw (b 1889) was married in 1915 to Mary Ann Rigby. As far as we know this couple had just one child.

The 1911 census entry for John Culshaw & Elizabeth nee Bennett informed us that their marriage had produced seven children, three of whom had died. This was a considerable surprise to us, as we only knew of four children, including my grandfather. Well, recently I was browsing the catalogue of microfiches currently sold by the Lancashire Family History & Heraldry Society, and decided to buy some of them. These were records relating to chapels and churches in the Leyland / Farington area, which I had not previously searched. I already knew that John & Elizabeth were Catholics, having found some family baptisms at St Mary's RC Church, Brown Edge, so I bought the fiches relating to St Mary RC church in Leyland. We struck gold, because the baptisms fiche contained the records of the baptisms of the three children of John & Elizabeth who had died before the date of the 1911 census:

1876 - Abel Culshaw
1879 - James Culshaw
1883 - Amy Ann Culshaw

I then searched the civil registrations deaths indexes on the Lancashire BMD website, seeking the deaths of these unfortunate children, and came up with:

1876 - CULSHAW Abel 0 Preston Preston PRES/170/42
1879 - CULSHAW James 0 Longton Preston LONG/11/64
1884 - CULSHAW Amy Ann 1 Longton Preston LONG/12/89

Yes, I know that I need to obtain the death certificates to be absolutely sure that I have identified the correct records, but there seems little real doubt about it.

So there we are, another few twigs on the tree. Now on to the next conundrum......

Happy hunting to one and all.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 January 2010

2010-01-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

2010 has begun with some very harsh weather here in the UK. Snow, ice and wind the like of which we haven't seen for many a year, and it hasn't finished yet. As I type this it is snowing on my corner of the world. I'm sure that if you are reading this in Canada, or the eastern states of the US you will laugh at our concern at what is, compared to your winters, a mere smattering of snow, but when you are not used to these conditions it is no joke, I assure you!

The weather has meant that I've only been to one football (aka soccer) match since Christmas - and that was a lousy performance by my team in quite cold conditions - but the good side of it is that there is not much one can do outdoors, so one may as well settle down to some more research.

So what has gone on in our research this month?

Well, there never seems to be a dull month as far as treeing is concerned, and January has been no exception.

I was contacted by Darlene, who is descended from the Herberts of Cardiganshire. These people feature on the Bankes pedigree from the time when Rev David Herbert (1767-1835) married Mary Price (abt 1777-1856) in 1796 at Llanfihangel Ystrad in Cardiganshire. David was a descendant of a long line of Herberts, who had occupied premises (or maybe the right word is estates) on the Cardiganshire coast near Llansaintfraid for many, many years. I have a tree that was given to me by Christopher, a Herbert descendant, which takes the line back to the 13th century. Christopher told me that it had been researched by his mother, and there are many aspects of it that may not be correct, but it is certain that the family had been in that part of Wales for many generations.

The union of David Herbert & Mary Price produced five children, two of whom died in childhood. Of the three other children Mary Herbert (Abt 1806-1884) married Rev David Parry (abt 1794-1877), who was a very well known Welsh preacher - known as "Silver Bell", no less. Rev Parry was vicar of Llywell, Brechnockshire, for forty years before moving to a neighbouring parish - Defynnog - in 1862. When he died in 1877 he was buried at Defynnog. We have visited his grave, as Defynnog is on our usual route when we go for one of our many summer weekends in Carmarthenshire. Apparently there is a portrait of him in the vestry of Defynnog parish church, but we haven't seen it.

David and Mary Parry did not produce any children. The only one of the five offspring of David & Mary Herbert who had children was their son William Herbert (abt 1795-1893). He was vicar of Llansaintfraid after his father, and held that post for well over fifty years. He married Elizabeth Morice (1793-1892) and they had five children, all of whom lived long lives. One daughter married a clergyman and two of the boys were also clergyman. The second daughter - Frances Elizabeth Herbert - featured at some length in this blog two months ago.

Darlene has sent me a big Word file containing a great deal of extra information about generations of the Herbert family before the time of the above mentioned Rev David Herbert, and it will be an interesting exercise to go through this and see what I can add to our tree. There is also, of course, material relating to her line of Herbert ancestry from the father of "my" David Herbert, and I certainly look forward to looking at that.

There has been a very exciting development this month on my Culshaw research. Through using various detective methods which I won't explain in this blog, Helen has got in contact with the daughters of a cousin of my father who dad has not heard from for about 70 years. Dad's cousin is alive and well, and living in Lancashire, and I am at the moment planning a trip to Lancashire to enable him to meet and spend some time with her. This really is so exciting! Dad is absolutely thrilled, and from what I gather he is spending much time talking with her on the phone! Helen and I really can't wait to meet these "new" cousins.

This really is a wonderful aspect of our hobby. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to meet many cousins, some close and some more distant, all kinsfolk who I would never have met , but for this obsession of mine. I count myself very lucky in this respect.

As if that was not all, these newly found cousins have given me some more information about a lady who has had me baffled for many years. I have written previously in this blog about the mysterious Elizabeth Bennett (abt 1854-1931), and how I could not identify her parents. Well, thanks to nformation we now have I have a new lead on the problem, and high hopes that we may be able to "crack it". I'll let you know more when I've got something concrete to report.

Apart from the above, I've spent ages adding information to the Bankes Pedigree so that when we update the website the tree will be as up to date as possible. I'm going to need to draw a line under this at some stage, but will carry on for a while yet.

On top of all this, January was the month when I've been working on the March 2010 edition of the Shropshire Family History Society Journal. It's done now, and off to the printers, and hopefully our members will be pleased with it.

One last thing to mention. Over the last weekend in February the Who Do You Think You Are? Live 2010 event is being held in the exhibition halls at Olympia, London. For the first time ever, we at Shropshire FHS decided to exhibit at this event, and five of us will man the stand over the weekend. I shall be on the stand on the Saturday and Sunday, 27 & 27 February, so if any of you are at Olympia on either of those days I'd be delighted to meet you. Of course, I understand that there will be many people there who are a lot more worthy of your attention than me, but I thought I'd
mention it, just in case.

Good hunting to one and all!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 December 2009

2009-12-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

So here we are, on New Year’s Eve, 31 December 2009. I hope that this year has been a good one for you. It has for me, in so many ways. I have enjoyed some super holidays, and a number of musical / operatic events, and generally had a pretty good time. This is in spite of all the economic gloom that has confronted us in the UK on TV and in newspapers each and every day.

As far as family history research is concerned, it has been a very productive year. I’ve mentioned before the immense boost to my research that was given by the arrival online of the London Parish Registers on the Ancestry.co.uk website. I have spent the last few months going through all the items I found among these records, cataloguing them and adding the detail to my family history records. I guess that I am about one third of the way through this work now, but I am sure that if I embark on another trawl of these records sometime I will find still more gems. So far I have met a number of new forebears, some of whom I’ve mentioned before in this blog. I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned Hannah Mary Elizabeth Smith (b 1885), a further child of my great grandparents, James William Smith (1853-abt 1908) & Hannah Guyatt (1857-1903), or Michael Archer Smith (b 1863), another son of John Brown Smith (1829-1875) & Mary Ann Archer (b 1830). These are just two of the many new discoveries I have made, and I can hardly wait to see what I can find out about them in 2010.

Apart from these discoveries the year has brought me a number of other pleasures on the treeing front. I was contacted by Mary, a descendant of Samuel William Archer (1790-1870), and we were able to help one another fill in some of the gaps in our respective Archer researches. Then I had the pleasure of getting back in contact with Shelley, who is descended from Jessie Mary Elizabeth (Smith) (1880-1941) & Thomas William Walter Codd (1877-1945). We believe that Jessie and William had fifteen children, but up to now we have “only” accounted for twelve. In truth, Shelley has done most of this research, and I am very grateful to her for sharing her results with me. We both hope that in 2010 we may be able to find the missing three children, and are working jointly towards that end. Through Shelley I am now also in touch with Jennie, another Codd descendant. Hopefully I shall be able to meet both Shelley and Jennie during 2010.

I have been delighted to get back in touch with Dulcy, my American cousin. We had lost touch with one another over the past couple of years, but I am thrilled to be corresponding with Dulcy again. Then there is Jim – another US descendant of Robert Mitchell Collyer (1787-1859) & Elizabeth Dugarden (b 1798). He contacted me after visiting the Geoffs Genealogy website early last summer, and we have been in regular correspondence since. He has been so generous in the information he has sent to me, it is quite amazing. I hope I have helped him to some extent, because he has certainly helped me! I look forward to continuing this friendship in 2010.

Mention of the Collyers brings to mind that wonderful character Robert Hanham Collyer (1814-abt 1891), who I have mentioned in this blog several times previously. I have had the great pleasure of working with two US academics who have been studying this extremely colourful and interesting character, and I have benefited more than I can say from the insights that I have gained from AJ and David. I hope, very much, that I shall hear from them again in 2010.

Apart from these people I am indebted to a number of other people who have helped me to further develop the Bankes Pedigree during 2010, and others who have kept in touch through the year – some of them quite close cousins, others less closely related but cousins, nonetheless. I do not have space to mention you all, but I do thank you all.

My aim is always to update the Geoffs Genealogy website at this time of the year, to update the material that is already there and add some new content. You will not be surprised to learn that I am behind schedule, and do not expect to be able to update the site for a few weeks. I shall do this as soon as I can, however, and will announce the updates in this blog.

I close for this year by wishing all my fellow researchers a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year 2010.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 29 November 2009

2009-11-29T23:49:00.001-08:00

I'm still working my way through the many London parish register entries that I gleaned a few weeks ago. They really are most illuminating, and some of them are entries that I had sought for a long time. In this entry I discuss briefly a few of these entries, and how they have proved of value to my research.

George Clayton Collyer was born in 1879, the son of Joseph Collyer (The Younger) and Dulcybella nee Clayton. He was a surgeon, practising over many years in Old Street Road, London.

We knew, from the Bankes Pedigree Book, that in about October 1817 George married Elizabeth Shelton, and discovered from other sources that this couple had one child - George Clayton Collyer Jnr (b 1825). That was as much as we knew until I searched the Marriage Licence Allegations at the Society of Genealogists some years ago. These records revealed two subsequent marriages. A marriage licence allegation dated 1842 showed that at that time George was intending to marry a certain Louisa Nelme, suggesting that his first spouse had probably died before that date. That was not all, however. I traced a firther marriage licence allegation dated 1844, which showed that George was then intending to marry Esther Homan. This indicated that George's second wife had probably died before that date. When George died, in 1852, his will named his then wife as Esther, so I assumed that Esther Homan had survived him.

The evidence of the Shoreditch parish registers gives us the detail to complete the picture re these events. George's first wife - Elizabeth (Shelton) was buried in January 1842 at St John Baptist, Hoxton. She was, apparently, aged 48, which suggests she was born c1794 - a little earlier than I had thought.

George's second marriage - to Louisa Nelmes - took place on 15 October 1842 at St John Hackney. This was only nine months after the burial of his first spouse. However, Louisa died twelve short months later. Her burial took place at St John Baptist, Hoxton on 21 October 1843, aged 55.

George's third marriage was at St Stephen Coleman Street, London, on 27 November 1844. His bride, Esther Homan, was a widow. Her father's name was William Nutting, so presumably her maiden name was Esther Nutting. As mentioned above, Esther survived George Clayton Collyer, and I have no idea when she died. For all I know she may have married again, but I have not found any evidence of that. I did, however, find the burial of George Clayton Collyer, which took place on 20 February 1852, aged 64.

In terms of hatches, matches and despatches, this family is now nicely tidied up. How I wish that the same could be true of so many other families on the Bankes Pedigree!

Then there is the case of Evan Edward Evans.

Some years ago, working in concert with Christopher Browne, a Bankes descendant on the Herbert line, we realised that the very respectable Herbert family of Llansaintfraed in Cardiganshire contained an element of scandal. William Herbert (1795-1893) was for most of his life vicar of Llansaintfraed, succeeding his father - David Herbert (1767-1835). The church in this small coastal community celebrates the long service of the Herbert family, and contains a commerative plaque in their memory. This plaque mentions Frances Elizabeth Herbert (1829-1895), the spinster daughter of William.

In the course of our joint research we obtained a copy of the will of Frances, and in this document she named as a beneficiary her son - Evan Edward Evans. What was all this, we thought? The vicar's unmarried daughter having a son? We resolved to find out more about this.

Although there was no trace of the baptism of Evan Edward Evans in Llansaintfraed, we managed to trace a likely candidate on the 1881 census, living in lodgings as a student Living at Christ's College, Brecon. This person was aged 18, and said to have been born at London. This all made sense, after all the vicar's daughter was hardly likely to give birth to an illegitimate daughter at home! In London she could be quite anonymous. Christopher contacted Christ's College at Brecon, enquiring about this person. A most helpful reply told us that this man was born 1863 and after attending the college had later had a career in the civil service, dying around 1926.

We traced Evan on the 1891 census. This time he was at Sheerness, Kent, a Customs Officer, born C1863 at Bermondsey in South London. It all fitted, but no actual proof that this was the right man.

The 1871 Census recorded Evan living as an eight years old child at Garnfach, Llansantffraid. The head of the household was Daniel Evans, aged 66, a farmer of 66 acres, and Evan was recorded as his grandson, born Bermondsey. It all fitted. Presumably Daniel's son was the father of Evan, but who was he?

On to the 1901 census. Evan was enumerated as a Boarder, living on his own in one room at Highgate in London. He was aged 37, born Bermondsey, and an Examining Officer Customs.
Bearing in mind the evidence of Christ's College, Brecon, I next looked for records of his death in 1926. I found a notice in The London Gazette of 1 March 1927 (p 1398):

LIST OF INTESTATES, WHOSE ESTATES WILL, IN THE ABSENCE OF KIN WHO ARE ENTITLED TO SHARE THEREIN, BE ADMINISTERED BY THE TREASURY SOLICITOR ON BEHALF OF THE CROWN

EVAN EDWARD EVANS, late of 2, Prospect-road, St. Albans, Herts, whi died there on the 6th November, 1926

I found the relevant entry in the National Probate Calendar:

1927
Evans Evan Edward of 2 Prospect-road St Albans Hertfordshire died 6 November 1926 Administration London 23 July to the solicitor for the affairs of H M Treasury.Effects £1490 – 13 – 6d

Evan, apparently, had died intestate. There had been nobody to inherit his estate, so it reverted to the Crown. Rather sad, I thought.

I had pieced together a pretty comprehensive account of the life of Evan Edward Evans, but still not proved beyond doubt that this was our man. This proof came recently, courtesy of the Baptism registers on Ancestry. The register for St Mary Magdalene Bermondsey contains the following entry:

9 August 1863
St Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey
Child: Evan Edward Evans (born 7 June 1863)
Parents: Evan & Frances Elizabeth Evans, Clapham
Father’s Occupation: Schoolmaster

So Frances Elizabeth Herbert had morphed into Frances Elizabeth Evans and she and her "spouse" were resident in Clapham, South London. Fascinating. I have searched for their marriage entry but so far, not surprisingly, failed to find one.

It has taken six years to put together the pieces of this jigsaw, but it has been an interesting pursuit. The next task is to trace Evan Evans, the father of Evan Edward Evans.

Was Evan Evans really the father of Frances's child? For now we have to assume so.

Was he the son of Daniel Evans of Llansaintfraed? That remains to be seen.

I lost contact with Christopher Browne some time ago. If you should read this, Christopher, please get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you.

Now it's on to other things. That's the beauty (and frustration) of this hobby. There are so many loose ends to be tied up. It's never ending!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 31 October 2009

2009-10-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

This month has mainly been taken up with work on the December 2009 issue of the Shropshire Family History Journal, and looking at the results of the research I have done on Ancestry.co.uk, searching the London parish registers that have recently become available on that website. The journal is now almost completed, I'm pleased to say. Just one or two queries to be ironed out in the next few days before I can place the order with our printers.

I had intended to work on arrangements for a reunion of John Bankes descendants, which I had hopes of holding next year, but I simply have not enough time to do this, so at this stage it looks as though it won't happen in 2010. If you are a Bankes descendant and have any thoughts on this project - positive or negative - I'd be interested in hearing from you. Personally, I think it's an idea with great potential.

It's almost time for me to think about preparing updates for the Geoff's Genealogy website. I have found so much "new" material this year that it is hard to know where to start. At the moment I'm concentrating on updating my family history data, so that when we next upload the tree to the website it will be as up to date as possible.

Now to the London parish registers.

My 2 x great grandfather was a certain John Brown Smith (1829-1875). He married Mary Ann Archer (1830-aft 1880), a Bankes descendant, and they had several children. For much of his career John was an Excise officer, and as such was moved around England a lot. Excise officers were moved from one place to another quite often because their role in levying taxes on maltsters left them open to bribery, so it was deemed prudent for them not to be in one place for too long. This means that tracing the births of the children of Excise officers can be problematic - you don't know where to find them!

Some years ago I obtained details of John Brown Smith's Excise postings and therefore became aware of the places he had been posted to during his career. With the help of a fellow Smith researcher I was then able to identify the births of all his children. It all tied in with the census returns, and seemed to be a "done job". However, Helen & I were looking at the London baptisms that recently appeared on Ancestry.co.uk, and were amazed to find an event in Clapham, South London, on 13 March 1864.

This record chronicles a double baptism - two children of John Brown Smith and Mary Ann. One of them we already knew about - George Smith (1858-1937), but the other was a complete surprise to us, as it introduced us to a new figure on our family tree - Michael Archer Smith (b 17 August 1863). I looked him up on Free BMD, and it seems that his birth was registered in Shoreditch registration District. Shoreditch was the usual stamping ground of my Smiths, and was where the family was recorded on the 1861 census. I haven't yet been able to trace Michael Archer Smith on any other sources, but be sure that I shall be trying!

John Brown Smith was dismissed from the Excise service in December 1860, "following feigned survey at maltsters and other neglects and irregularities" whilst stationed at Wantage Ride, Reading. The evidence suggests that he then made his way to London, bacause, as mentioned above, in April 1861 he was at Shoreditch. His occupation on the 1861 census was recorded as "Wine Cooper", so presumably he was putting to use his experience of the booze trade. The civil registration entry for the birth of Michael suggests that the family was probably still at Shoreditch in August 1863, but by the time of Michael's baptism - March 1864 - it seems that the family was at Clapham, in south London. Not only that, but John Brown Smith's occupation was described as "Clerk". It seems likely that the family's situation had changed considerably. The 1871 census shows the family back at Shoreditch, John again being recorded as a "Clerk". However, when his son, John Henry Smith (1855-abt 1909), married in August 1874 John Brown Smith was described as a "Railway Clerk", and when he was admitted to Fisherton Anger Asylum in Salisbury in October 1874 he was described as a "Ticket Collector".

Given the above occupational information about John Brown Smith, it seems to me quite possible that "Clerk" is synomynous with "Railway Clerk" or "Ticket Collector". This theory is strengthened a little by another Smith find in the London parish registers on Ancestry.

John Brown Smith's father was James Bayly Smith (abt 1800-1850), another Excise officer. He married Alice Brown (abt 1801-aft 1851) in Edinburgh, and they had a number of children. As was the case with John Brown Smith, we had thought that we had found all of his children, but we now have to add another twig on the tree.

The discovery Helen made was a marriage between Michael Bayly Smith (age 42) and Ann Eason at St Saviour, South Hampstead on 1 January 1870. James Bayly Smith, Gentleman (deceased) was shown as the groom's parent. Definitely our man! We searched Ancestry for more information about Michael Bayly Smith. There he was, on the 1851 Census, a lodger, born at Wolvercote, Oxfordshire, c1828, living alone in Melksham, Wiltshire. Occupation: Railway Station Clerk.

So far we have failed to locate Michael on the 1861 census, but by 1871 he was married to Ann, and they were living at Brixton, South London. Michael's occupation was "Railway Superintendent of Goods Traffic".So this man, like his brother, was working on the Railway. I wonder whether there is a connection there. Maybe when John Brown Smith was down on his luck, having been dismissed from the Excise and looking for an alternative career, his brother helped him to get a job with a railway company. Is it significant that Clapham, where John Brown Smith was apparently living in 1864, is not far from Brixton, where Michael was in 1871? Bear in mind that we have so far failed to find Michael in 1861.

The death of Michael Bayly Smith was recorded in the Civil Registration Indexes in June quarter 1873, just three years after his marriage. We searched the online catalogue of The National Archives, and found a reference to a staff record relating to his service with the Great Western Railway Company (RAIL 264/3/20). The description of the source states: "Michael Bayly Smith, age on joining as clerk: 20; date of entry: Aug 1846; last date of salary increase: July 1861; cause of end of service: Resigned Aug 1862". As you may imagine, I shall be looking at this item when next I go to TNA, Kew, but for now we can draw from it the conclusion that when the census was taken on 7 April 1861 Michael Bayly Smith was probably still living somewhere in the West country of England. The 1871 census entry tells us that his resignation from the GWR was not "the end of the line" for his career on the railway. He may well have left GWR to take up a post with a London railway company, and this would lead on to the information on the 1871 census entry I referred to above.

This lengthy narrative outlines the difference that just a couple of finds among the London parish registers that are now viewable on Ancestry.co.uk have made to my research, and how they have led on to further sources and lines of research. There are many other great finds I could tell you about, but I've probably rambled on for far too long already, so I'll spare you that.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 September 2009

2009-09-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

On the whole 2009 gave us a disappointing summer in the UK, but the UK weather in September has been good - dominated by high pressure that was conspicuously absent during July and August. Now, however, the autumn equinox has passed. The leaves on the trees are turning brown, and soon they will be falling to the ground. There are things I love about the British winter - some lovely scenes as the sun shines on a frosty ground from a blue sky, the football season at its peak and the five nations rugby to name but three. However, on the whole I tend to spend the winter looking forward to the spring and summer, in the vain hope of some good weather.

From a treeing point of view September has been quite an exciting month, for a number of reasons.

In the middle of the month I went to The National Archives for a day's research which turned out to be interesting on a number of counts.

I had placed an advance order online to ensure(?) that a couple of original sources were available for me to view on my arrival at TNA, so I made my way to the Map Room to look at them. One of the items I had ordered was a Court of Chancery Bill of Complaint dated 1846, relating to the cause Collyer vs Ashburner (piece no c14/503/C118). According to my interpretation of the TNA catalogue this source comprised one document, but in the event when I opened the bundle I saw that there were, in fact, half a dozen items to look at. I know, from past experience of looking at Court of Chancery documents in the causes relating to the John Bankes Trust, that these documents come in all shapes and sizes, and are often covered in dust! They can be very hard to handle, due to their size, and equally hard to read. On this occasion I was helped greatly by a member of the TNA staff, who perspicaciously realised that I was likely to have difficulty handling this bundle of documents and came to my rescue, showing me the best way to tackle the job.

I had no prior knowledge of these particular Chancery proceedings, but I did know that members of the Collyer family had been named as beneficiaries in the Will of Robert Pounds, which was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in May 1846. It was clear from this Will that Robert Pounds was a significantly wealthy man, and the bequests to the Collyers were of high value by most people's standards. I had seen that a certain John Ashburner, of Wimpole Street, Middlesex was named as an executor of Robert Pounds' will, so assumed that these proceedings were in relation to this matter. I was correct in this assumption.

The original Bill had been raised in 1846 in the name of Sarah Ellen Collyer (1824-1847) and her siblings Robert Pounds Collyer (1832-1851) and Dulcybella Jane Collyer (1829-1861). They claimed that the executors of the will were dragging their heels in paying out the bequests of Robert Pounds, and asked the court to force them to pay her out without further delay. As Robert & Dulcybella were minors, their mother - Mary Collyer (c1787-1864), widow of John Collyer, Carver & Gilder (1783-1840), was named as their representative in the proceedings.

The next document was the response of Ashburner to the Bill. This stated that although he had realised many of Robert Pounds' assets, he did not think that he had sufficient funds to pay out the sums bequeathed to the beneficiaries of the will. This response certainly rang bells with me, because in the 1720s the executors of the Will of John Bankes (c1652-1719) used an identical defence when answering the Chancery Bill raised by my ancestor, Mary Mitchell (c1668-c1739). It would seem that it may have been a common legal device in days of old in such cases.

Tragedy struck the Collyer household soon after the Bill was raised, when Sarah Ellen Collyer died suddenly in 1847. This caused the proceedings to be abated (ie stopped), and if the beneficiaries wanted to restart them they needed to raise a Bill of Reviver. This they did, later in the same year.

I do not know how the action progressed, but in 1851 Robert Pounds Collyer died, and again the proceedings were abated. They were restarted later in the same year, thus the only people now named as oratrixes (female plaintiffs) were Dulcybella Jane and her mother, Mary Collyer.

The documents in the bundle told me all this, and they included several other pieces of information of the type that we family historians thrive on - dates of birth and death, addresses, relationships and the like. As it happens I already had most of this information from other sources. What I really wanted to sort out was the nature of the relationship between the Collyers and the Pounds family. They were obviously very close. A couple of the Collyer children were given "Pounds" as their middle name, and the two Pounds wills that I have obtained both mention members of the Collyer family. However, these documents did not help me to answer this question. I shall have to look for other ways of tackling the problem.

As I mentioned above, these documents vary greatly in size. Some are very large indeed, and others merely large! In the time i had available at TNA it was not possible to study them in depth, so I wielded my trusty digital camera and photographed the most interesting looking of them, for future study at home.

Most of the rest of my day at TNA was spent searching the 1911 census. Things have changed since my last visit, in May. The 1911 census is no longer treated separately from other censuses. In searching it you use the same computers as you would for any other census. Similarly, TNA no longer provide staff dedicated to helping 1911 census searchers. The available staff now work on all the censuses. Personally, I wasn't impressed with the help I received when I asked for it, but no doubt others would disagree with that comment. We speak as we find, after all.

You may know that Ancestry have placed on line a collection of parish registers for London. These are baptisms, marriages and burials for varios dates in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are fully searchable, and you can study them either in your own home (for a fee) or in a large number of record offices and libraries around the UK (free of charge except for printing costs). I have been busily working through these over the past couple of weeks, and by doing so am managing to fill some of the gaps in my family history and the Bankes Pedigree. I am particularly pleased to have solved a few long standing research queries:

1. I found the previously elusive marriage of Thomas Hunt (1798-1879), the doctor, and his first wife - Martha Mary Colam (1808-1861). This ceremony took place by licence at St Sepulchre Holborn, in London on 8 August 1727. Interestingly, the bride was aged under 21, so would have needed parental consent to marry Thomas.

2. For many years I have been seeking the marriage of John Collyer (1783-1840), Carver & Gilder, to his wife, Mary (mentioned above in relation to Collyer v Ashburner). The Bankes Pedigree Book states Mary's surname as Powell, but I wanted to verify that. I wondered whether her maiden name may have been Pounds, in which case it would explain the connection between the Collyer & Pounds families (mentioned above). Well, I found the record of marriage, which took place on 28 September 1823 at St John Hackney. This confirmed the bride's name as Powell, and also showed that the groom was a widower. This set me off looking for John Collyer's previous marriage, which I found. He married Frances Fell by banns on 9 September 1819. I could not trace Frances's death, but it seems likely that she died within four years of the marriage.

3. Some years ago I noted that in his will, proved in 1871, Samuel William Archer (1790-1870), a brother of my ancestor Nathan Archer (1793-1845), named his wife as Ann, and his brother in law as James Woosnam. The relevant entry on the 1841 census also showed Samuel's spouse as Ann. As the only marriage I have ever found for Samuel was to Alice Blandina Hawkins at St Pancras church in 1831, I deduced that he was most likely to have had more than one marriage in his life. However, frustratingly, I have never been able to find a second marriage - Until now!

By searching the records on Ancestry I found that in 1835 at St Mary Islington Samuel, a widower, married Ann Woodman - not Woosnam - my reading of the Will was incorrect. I then searched for the burial of Samuel's first wife and duly found it, Alice Blandina Archer was buried at St John, Hackney, on 11 September 1832. The baptism records for St John Hackney show that Samuel and Alice's daughter - Alice Blandina Archer - was baptised on 10 October 1832. It therefore seems reasonable to hypothesise that Samuel's first wife died as a result of childbirth.

I have previously identified another son of Samuel William Archer - William James Archer (c1835-1857). He was recorded on the 1841 and 1851 censuses, and was buried at Abney Park Cemetery in London in October 1857, having died at the age of 22. Whereas I had previously assumed that William was a son of Samuel's first wife, it now appears that this was not the case. I have not managed to trace his baptism, but presumably he was the offspring of Samuel and Ann Woodman.

So there we have it. More and more research material is becoming available on the internet, and gradually many of the long standing queries are being resolved, which is great. However, my biggest two posers remain. Who were the parents of John Culshaw, born c1760 in the Ormskirk area, and who were the parents of John Bankes and his half siblings?

Maybe I'll find out one day.

If you think you can help me in the search you know where to find me!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 3 September 2009 (As 31 August 2009)

2009-09-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

August was a busy month as far as family history is concerned. Not particularly in terms of research done - I haven't made any excursions to visit records offices, or spent much time researching online - but in terms of contacts made and correspondence.

I was delighted to renew contact with Shelley, who is a fellow descendant on the Smith line. She is descended from Jessie (Smith) Codd (1880-1941), and Thomas William Walter Codd (1877-1945). Jessie was a sister of my grandfather George William Smith (1886-1940), and therefore an aunt of my mother. Shelley and I have never met, but were in contact with one another in the 1990s, sharing research information. In the intervening years we have both made progress, trying to piece together the history of the Codd family. I think I've mentioned in previous blog entries that we believe there were fifteen children born to Thomas & Jessie, and that many of them died young.

Not surprisingly, given that the Codds were Shelley's direct forebears, she has made more progress than me with this research, but it is good to see that on the whole our research findings coincide, so there is a fair chance that we have drawn the correct conclusions. Assuming that there were fifteen Codd children we still have three left to trace, but hopefully we shall be able to do that between us.

Another recently established contact is Jim Smith, who hails from Pennsylvania, USA. Isn't it good how this family history lark brings us in contact with new friends across the globe?

Jim is descended on the Collyer line. Among his forebears he has Robert Mitchell Collyer (1787-1859) and his wife Ann Dujardin (1798-aft 1864), the parents of Robert Hanham Collyer (1814-abt 1891) . The family migrated to the US from England in 1836, having lived for periods in London and on the Channel Isle of Jersey.

Jim sent me the most fantastic collection of 47 family photographs portraying his forebears, accompanied by a fifteen pages long commentary. I have never before received such a fantastic volume of material in one go, and I really don't know how I can possibly reciprocate! I shall have a good dig through my records, and try to do justice to the task.

You may be able to imagine how daunting is the task of studying and archiving all this information! I can see that I am going to be occupied fully for the forseeable future.

In a couple of weeks I am off to The National Archives at Kew, for one of my twice yearly visits, courtesy of the coach trips run by the Shropshire Family History Society. These trips are fantastic value at £18, and (traffic permitting) enable me to enjoy about six hours research time at TNA. This time my efforts will be focussed on the 1911 census. I need to spend some time before the visit compiling a list of targets, and will spend as much time as I can looking for them. The beauty of searching the 1911 census at TNA is that it is free. All you pay for is the cost of the printouts which, at 20p each for each A3 sheet, are a bargain. There is also lots of help available in the search rooms, in case you are having difficulty using the facilities.

I also have a number of other items to look for at TNA, but need to organise my ideas on this.

You may be aware that the UK Government is looking for savings in these straitened economic times, and TNA has formulated plans to play its part in this. As I understand it, the plans involve the closure of the building on Mondays, the reduction of staffing levels, and the introduction of car parking charges, all of which, I believe, are quite worrying.

The argument for the Monday closures seems to be that more and more records are becoming available on the internet, so there should be less demand for actual time in the search rooms - a somewhat superficial view, I would say, and if you follow that argument to its logical conclusion we could end up with increasingly more restrictions on search room availability.

The proposed car parking charge, effective from January 2010, is £5 per day. This can be justified as a form of "green tax", but it is disingenuous, I think, to do so. The powers that be originally said that the charge would be set at a level that reflects the costs of providing parking facilities, but according to the Federation of Family History Societies, the breakdown of the costings indicates that TNA have actually set the charge to cover the costs of maintaining the grounds as a whole - not just the car parks.

As we may expect, there is the opportunity for members of the public to express their views re these issues, but one has the feeling that it is unlikely that any protests will have much effect on the decision. The need to raise money trumps all arguments, after all!

I fully understand that the country is in an economic mess,and that there is a need to look for extra ways of raising money, hopefully with minimum damage to essential services. I understand that to many people the services offered by TNA are not "essential", and are therefore a bit of a target. What concerns me is that the facilities at this wonderful institution will gradually be watered down, and public access will be reduced. To me these changes are "the thin end of the wedge", and will be followed, in due course, by further dimunition of services or increased costs. After all, what happened to the digitised Births, Marriages & Deaths civil registration indexes that we were promised when the Family History Centre in Islington closed?

Enough of this. I'm sorry this entry is a bit political, but I am afraid that I do not trust the UK powers that be - of whatever political persuasion - enough to believe that they will adequately defend the interests of TNA researchers when considering these matters.

To conclude on a slightly brighter note, I was recently carrying out a sweep of the internet, searching on "John Bankes, haberdasher", when to my amazement the wonderful Google came up with a source relating to the Bankes Trust that I would never have found by any means other than an internet search. This was an item in the Children's Newspaper dated 12 August 1933, entitled John Banks and his Money . The item referred to "kind-hearted John Banks", the bequests he made in his will, and the Court of Chancery cause. It reported the end of the Chancery actions after 200 years of litigation, and the reversion of the fund to the Haberdashers' Company. What a fantastic find! I had already discovered in The Times newspaper that the final act in this litigation had taken place in July 1933, and mentioned this in my biography of Bankes on Geoffs Genealogy, but I had never before thought of the Children's Newspaper as a possible source.

It just goes to show that you never know where the next piece of information will come from!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 4 August 2009 (as 31 July 2009)

2009-08-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm rather ,late with this blog entry, which is a eflection of the busy time that I had in July. I won't bore you with the details - you would surely find them rather tedious - but suffice to say that family history has had to take second place to other things over the past few weeks.

We went to France for a week during the second half of July - to the Loire valley. This was a really smashing break - our first visit to that part of the world and certainly an experience that would be worth repeating. We visited a number of chateaux and other places of beauty or interest, and the trip also included our first experience of Paris. We only had a few hours in the French capital, but that was sufficient to convince us of the necessity of a return visit of longer duration as soon as we can make it.

Jan and I tried to speak French as much as we could during this trip. We had been having French lessons since last autumn in preparation for this holiday, and we very much enjoyed trying to converse in the native language of our hosts. It was good fun. I don't say that we were all that brilliant, but we could make ourselves understood, and on the whole we understood the people with whom we were conversing.

Some of my kinfolk have suggested to me that there is French blood in my ancestry. This may or may not be true, but I've found no evidence of it as yet. My mother used to say that Hannah Guyatt (1857-1903), my great grandmother and the wife of James William Smith (1853 - abt 1908), was of French descent, and this belief has been repeated to me by some of my other cousins.

What I know for sure is that Hannah was born in London, and neither of her parents were French. Her father - John Guyatt (b abt 1827) was born in High Wycombe, Bucks, and her mother - Caroline Smedley (b 1820) was born in Walworth, Surrey. I don't know where her grandfather was born, or who his parents were, but it seems that he and his spouse migrated to High Wycombe
from somewhere else.

The available information on surname distribution in the nineteenth century suggests that most people bearing the name Guyatt were recorded in the south of England - in Hampshire and Wiltshire - so my guess is that the identity of my Guyatt 3 x great grandparents may lie in one of these counties. However, I haven't yet worked out how to pin down my forebears. This is on the back burner at the moment, pending a moment of inspitation!

What is apparent, however, is that although it is possible that the Guyatts do originate in France, we have to go back a number of generations to prove it.

Continuing the French theme, last Saturday Jan & I went to the Maliphant Jamboree at Bristol, which was attended by about 33 people in all. This was the first such event to be organised, and was in fact a gathering of the Maliphant clan. You may be wondering who the Maliphants were / are. Well, they appear in Jan's family history. Jan's 2 x great grandmother was a certain Ann Maliphant (1836-1916), and she married Evan Hughes (1834-1916) in 1855 at Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire.

The history of the Maliphant clan has been traced back a very long way indeed - back to the father of Henry Maliphant (d 1590) who was named Jenkin Maliphant (dates unknown). There is then a gap in the records - I believe of about 200 years - before more Maliphant sightings were found. I have to say, here and now, that neither Jan or I can claim credit for this research. Most of it was carried out by Gordon Maliphant who, I'm pleased to say, attended Saturday's jamboree, which was organised by one of his sons, Bruce. Bruce is in the process of taking over the custody of Gordon's records, so if you want to know anything about this clan he will be the person to contact.

"Where's the French connection?" I hear you ask. Well, it has long been assumed by Jan and I that the meaning of the name Maliphant is derived from the French "bad child". The story, which I assumed had some basis in research, was that the Maliphants probably came over with the Normans. However, in conversation with a number of attendees on Saturday, Gordon said that this theory of the origin of the Maliphant name was conjecture. He has never been able to put it to the test. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Anyway, we very much enjoyed our visit to the Maliphant gathering, and thank Bruce very much for arranging it. We met a number of people who we have never met before, and Jan was able to meet up with a long standing correspondent and friend - Mavis.

All this leads me to one or two general comments.

Firstly, I never cease to be impressed at the helpfulness of family historians. We really are a very friendly lot - most of us are happy to share our knowledge with others, so you should never be afraid to ask for help. Mostly it is a reciprocal thing, in my experience. The process of helping others often results in you gaining a bit of extra knowledge or learning a new technique.

Secondly, most family historians have a taste for the exotic. If we can find a criminal among our forebears, that is just great! If he or she was transported to Australia that's even better! Gipsy ancestry is usually welcomed, and whatever reservations the English & French people may have about each other according to national stereotypes, the prospect of French ancestry is something that certainly seems to whet the appetite.

Lastly, be wary of family folk lore, or uncorroborated stories. Don't dismiss them out of hand, but bear in mind that they can be very diverting, in more senses than one!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 June 2009

2009-06-30T00:47:00.000-07:00

June has been a very busy month for me. As it is the height of the gardening season I’ve spent much of my time working in our garden, which always looks at its best at this time of the year. We’ve also been away for a short break, and on the first Saturday in June I was busily engaged on the Help stand at the Shropshire FHS Open Day. Unusually, this year it rained on the first Saturday in June – in fact, it hardly stopped raining throughout the whole day. This did not put a damper on the occasion, however. The attendance figure was every bit as high as usual, and all the stalls seem to have enjoyed a successful day. On the Help desk we were as busy as ever. It is always interesting to talk to visitors to the event – both members and non-members - about their research, and to try to help them where we can. Often the process of doing this helps us with our own research queries.

We had two first rate speakers at the event. In the morning a large gathering was entertained and informed on all things probate by Else Churchill, a well known Genealogist, who has spoken, broadcast and written widely of family history related subjects. After lunch a similarly large audience attended our second talk, which was given by Geoff Swinfield, another well known professional genealogist and family history speaker. His talk, entitled “I’m Stuck”, was a most interesting tour de force of different research strategies we can try when our research reaches the proverbial “brick wall”.

Of course, we all have “brick walls” in our research. There are a number in my research, which I’d dearly like to resolve. Firstly, of course, there is the problem of John Bankes’s parentage. This has always been a brick wall to me, from the first day I started treeing over twenty years ago. I haven’t got a strategy to solve this one, either – even after listening to Geoff Swinfield. The sum total of all my efforts on this subject is that I know that my man was apprenticed as a carpenter somewhere outside the City of London, and he went to work on the rebuilding of the capital after the great fire of 1666. He became Free of the Haberdashers’ Company by redemption in 1673, so we know that he was in the City at that time. The fact that the estimated date of his birth – c 1650-1652 - was during the Interregnum, when parish records were often not kept, does not help the quest! I, and my fellow researchers, have tried so many leads over the years that I really think we need a huge slice of luck to resolve this research problem. That doesn’t stop me trying, however.

Then there is the Culshaw impasse. When I started researching the Culshaws I was helped by my good friend, Dr George Wilson, and quickly traced the male line back to John Culshaw (c1760-1841). Research seemed so easy! Then, wham! I hit the brick wall. I still have not managed to identify the parents of John Culshaw. I have checked all the seemingly relevant Wills, but these were quite ordinary folk (insofar as anybody is ordinary), and it seems that they did not leave a will. I have not checked all the parish chest documents, and it may well be that if I did that I may find the answer to my problem, but the fact that I am about 100 miles from the records, does not make it easy for me to spend the necessary amount of time on the research . I really must get back on to this research, however, as surely there must be a way of advancing it.

There are other Culshaw “brick walls”, I’m afraid. My great grandfather was John Culshaw (yes, another one – there were lots of them), who lived from 1855 to 1924 in the Farington / Penwortham area of Lancashire, just south of Preston. He married a certain Elizabeth Bennett (1854-1931). They were Catholics. It took me years to find their marriage certificate, and when I saw it it did not tell me the name of Elizabeth’s father. Census records consistently tell me that Elizabeth was born in Leyland, but I have not been able to trace her birth or her family on the census. There are several Bennett households on the Leyland censuses, but I have so far failed to identify the correct one. Obviously, the fact that Elizabeth’s father was not named on the marriage certificate suggests that Elizabeth may have been illegitimate, so maybe the bastardy orders may help me with this research.

This same Culshaw family provides me with another of my research posers – not yet truly a “brick wall”, but at this stage it looks likely to become one. John & Elizabeth had four known children, two of whom – John (born 1889) and Elizabeth (born c 1885) are a bit of a mystery. I found Elizabeth as a 6 year old on the 1901 census, but have not yet traced her on the 1911 census. Of course, it seems quite possible that she may have married by 1911. John, on the other hand, can be traced on the 1911 census at Barton upon Irwell (now the Trafford area of Manchester). He was living in the household of John & Lucy Cunliffe, and was said to be a nephew of the household head – John Cunliffe (born c 1866 in Preston). I am trying to work out how the Cunliffes were related to my Culshaws.

As a young man my Dad knew the Cunliffes, but he didn’t know what the connection was between them and his family. I’ve had a scan through marriages of the relevant period, and also looked at some censuses, but so far have not found the key to this. I think that a bit of family reconstruction is called for here, and this may turn into a long term project. Hopefully I’ll get there in the end, but if anybody out there thinks they may be able to help me I’d be pleased to hear from you.

Geoffs Genealogy Update - 31 May 2009

2009-06-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late with my blog entry this time. That's because we have been away for a week - on holiday in the beautiful Scottish Borders. We had a great time - lovely scenery, lots of places to visit, and lovely cooked breakfast each morning. Sadly, though, the week has passed quickly, and now it's back to work. Oh well, it was ever thus!

In the middle of May I paid a visit to The National Archives at Kew, taking advantage of a day coach trip organised by the Shropshire Family History Society. I decided to focus my attentions this time on the 1911 Census. This has been available online for a few months in ever increasing state of completion. As I think I've mentioned before, I had been resisting the temptation to avail myself of the online facility, as I believe it to be very expensive. However, I'm afraid I did succumb early in May and bought myself £25 worth of uses. These lasted me about 90 minutes, buying me nine census entries - the original entries, not the transcriptions - which confirmed my view that the use of this site is rather expensive.

If you use the same 1911 census facility at TNA, you do not have to pay these charges. All you pay is the standard TNA charge for each printout - from memory this is about 20p per sheet - and you can have an A3 printout for that as well! Your use of the 1911 census is limited to one hour at a time, but you can have more than one block of time. I had two separate one hour spells of use.

The system has been planned very well, to make it as user-friendly as possible. I was fortunate that when I took my seat the gent on my right gave me very full step by step instructions on using the system. He was a very experienced user, and was printing rucks of copies as he pursued his one name study. Good for him! If you are not fortunate enough to have such help available from your fellow users rest assured that assistance is never far away - there are a number of members of staff constantly around the area, whose job is to help 1911 census users.

How did I get on?

Very well, actually. As ever, I had a lengthy list of targets with me, and I managed to look for all my priority entries. No, I did not find them all, but at least I started the quest, and I returned home with eighteen relevant printouts on various different lines of research - Smith, Culshaw, Hewitt, Hunt etc. I haven't had a chance yet to sort them all out and catalogue them, but will get around to that soon, I hope.

Apart from the cost, I have two other reservations about the 1911 census online:

The results you see on screen when you carry out a person search do not show birthplace information. This is a serious omission in my view, as birthplace information can be a massive help in trying to ensure that your search has identified the right person, and avoiding wasting money by viewing records that are irrelevant. For instance, if you are searching for John Smith, born London, without the birthplace information you will be faced with a long list of people named John Smith, maybe living in various parts of the country, but you will probably have little idea which is "your" man. As it stands you would need to look at the transcription to check each of these candidates until you find the one you want. At a cost of 10 units per look (over £1), this does not come cheaply, and could easily cost quite a lot of money. The cynic in me makes me wonder why this vital birthplace information has not been made available freely by the 1911 Census people. As it is provided freely by other census websites, I assume it is a deliberate policy.

Searching at Kew enables you to view the transcriptions and records without cost, and thus obtain the birthplace information.

My second reservation about the 1911 Census online concerns source references, which are not handled very well, in my opinion. If, like me, you opt to see the full census entry you will not see the source reference on the document that you see on screen and print. If you save the jpeg file to your computer the file name automatically generated is, in fact, the source reference, but if you are working at TNA you will not get this option. The only other way to get the source ref is by viewing the transcription, and maybe printing it. This is ok at TNA, as you would only pay 20p for the printout, but if you are working at home, by doing this you will eat further into your precious credits, as you have to pay to see the transcriptions.

I am usually a stickler for recording source references, but on this occasion am severely lacking in this regard, I'm afraid. Next time I go to TNA I need to reprise the entries I have obtained, seeking the references.

In addition to the 1911 census, I managed to squeeze in some other research at TNA, continuing from my previous visit.

For many years I have been seeking the final Master's Report in the first Court of Chancery cause relating to the Bankes Trust. This is important to my research because many items of evidence date family events by reference to this report, eg "so & so died before the final report in the first cause" etc. The most recent evidence I have re the date of this report comes from Thomas Hunt's tract Truth Faileth; so that Equity Cannot Enter, which stated that it was dated 1727.

On my previous visit to TNA I had checked the indexes for these sources, and ascertained that there were seven Master's Reports dated 1727 (source ref C38/388) and a further five such reports dated 1730 (source ref C38/403). I had tried to look at these last October, but ran out of time, so I made a point of searching them this time.

In fact, when I searched the files I found that the number of items relevant to the first Chancery case re Bankes's estate were far fewer in number than the indexes had indicated. C38/388 contained only one document, while C38/403 contained three. Most of these items were quite short, but one of the C38/403 items, dated 1730, is fairly lengthy and deals with arguments arising from the order dated 4 August 1727 - indicating that that was the date of the final report in the first cause. Why had I not found it in C38/388, which is supposed to include all 1727 reports? I wondered.

Convinced that I must have missed this document, I re-searched the file but - no - the document was not there. There was only one thing for it, I would have to ask somebody where the missing report may be.

I asked two people before finding a member of staff with the necessary knowledge - Chancery records are quite specialised, and not many people are really knowledgeable on the subject. Ultimately I was told that the documents that were not in the files I had searched had probably been re-used in subsequent Court proceedings, and then filed with the then current records. In other words, I can have no idea where they may turn up!

Maybe I'll come across the missing Masters Reports some day, by accident, but in the meantime, piecing together the pieces of evidence I have, and noting the wise words of Thoimas Hunt, I feel fairly confident that that the date of the final Master's Report of the first cause was 4 August 1727. Now all I have to do is seek out the relevant individuals' records in my files and see what effect that information has on their dates of birth, marriage, or death.

Sorry if this has been a bit tedious to read, but I wanted to pass on to you what I have learned, as it may save you some work sometime. If you have any (polite) comments to add, please feel free to share them with me.

Geoffs Genealogy Update - 11 May 2009

2009-05-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Great news!

We have now uploaded the updated Robert Hanham Collyer Chronology to Geoffs Genealogy. This is the last of our updates to the website (for now, anyway).

This Chronology is greatly enlarged from its predecessor, but is by no means the final version. In fact I doubt whether there ever will be a definitive final version, such was the amazing life of this talented and colourful character. As the resources on the internet develop we are becoming aware of new information about this man, almost on a weekly basis. One day we will get around to writing all this up, but at the moment I have no idea when that may be.

I hope that some of you will find this Chronology of interest, and useful. Please let me know if you do.

Geoffs Genealogy Update - 30 April 2009

2009-04-30T10:46:00.001-07:00

To return to a constant theme of this blog, "how time flies"!

Yet another month has nearly passed, and as ever, I don't know where the past 30 days has gone.

Most of my time this month has been spent preparing the June edition of the Shropshire FHS journal. I've just about put it to bed now, having reviewed the proofs and given the corrections to our printers. I think this edition will prove interesting and entertaining to our members as, thanks to our contributors, we have lots of interesting content.

So what has happened on the treeing front in the past month?

A few weeks ago I made my long planned sortie to London - a rare opportunity to delve into the archives at the wonderful records offices in the capital. In Shropshire we are lucky to have an excellent rail service which runs from Wrexham to Marylebone, and I took the 6.15 train from Cosford, as that would get me to Marylebone nice and early, allowing me lots of treeing time.

My first port of call was the Guildhall Library, in the City of London, where I spent a few hours researching the fire insurance registers of the Sun Fire Office Insurance company. These registers have been indexed. for the period 1809-1839, and you can search the index online at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. I had done this before my visit, so travelled with a list of seemingly relevant source references.

I had not used these records previously, so did not really know what they would tell me. I was able to look at records relating to Nathan Archer (1793-1845) and his brothers Thomas Archer (1786-abt 1866) and Samuel William Archer (1790-1870). Also John Collyer (1783-1840), the Carver & Gilder of Frith Street, Soho,and David Price (1774-1840), who carried on his wool trading business at Dowgate Hill.

These entries record people who had fire insurance cover with the company, and tell you the relevant address, the value of the cover provided, and in general terms the nature of the items covered. The addresses can enable you to track a person's movements, and the valuations enable you to form a view as to their wealth. You can also get an idea of the period in which an ancestor was in business, and the names of their various businesses.

In 1816 my direct ancestor, Nathan Archer, was trading from premises in Long Lane, West Smithfield. The record shows that he was at this address with a certain William Thomas Archer, and that they were trading as printers & stationers. I do not know who William Thomas Archer was - presumably a relation. In 1818 William Thomas & Nathan Archer were recorded at the same address, but by then they were trading as "watch maker & stationer". I know that Nathan was a printer, so assume that William was a watchmaker, in common with a number of other members of the Archer family.

From 1817 to 1821 Nathan was recorded at 39 Goswell Street. Seemingly he had branched out in business on his own. Note that in the period 1817 to 1818 the registers show him at two addresses simultaneously. Note also that he had married Mary Ann Stephens (1792-1885) in June 1817. In November 1821 he was recorded in Shoreditch, trading in partnership with a certain Arthur Catherwood. We know from an entry in the London Gazette that this partnership was dissolved in 1823, and in November of that year we find a record of Nathan trading at Tabernacle Walk in the parish of St Luke, Finsbury. The last business address for Nathan that we glean from these records was 15 Old Street Road, Hoxton, which is where we find him in January 1839. This was where he was enumerated when the 1841 census was taken, in June 1841.

Hopefully you can see how these records help to build up a picture of Nathan's business activities, sometimes providing fresh information and at other times confirming information that we already had. I hope that the indexing project for these registers is continued, as I am sure that there must be much more information about my forebears for me to find, and as I rarely get to London it is unlikely that I shall find an opportunity to search the registers in the old fashioned way.

I have encountered a research problem regarding the marriage of Elizabeth Benrose (b 1755), daughter of John Benrose (b abt 1708) & Mary Deane (b abt 1711), to Edward Hymas (dates unknown) in 1783 at St Botolph Aldgate. This marriage is noted in the Bankes Pedigree book, so one assumes that the Haberdashers' Company must have seen evidence to corroborate it. Furthermore, the fact that these two people were husband and wife was referred to in the Court of Chancery proceedings relating to the Bankes Trust. However, when I looked at the entry in the parish register I found that that bride was described as a widow. This cannot have been correct if she was the grandaughter of Anne Deane, half-sister of John Bankes.

Whilst at Guildhall Library I took the opportunity to look at the Banns entries re this marriage. These confirmed Elizabeth's marital status as "widow".

I'm not sure where this leaves us. I do believe that this is the correct marriage, and that the evidence supporting that belief is reliable. I can only think that either the marriage and banns records are in error in this regard, or that Elizabeth had been married previously but her spouse had died and she reverted to her maiden name. This would not be particularly surprising today, but does it seem likely in the late eighteenth century?

If anybody has any views on this do feel free to share them with me.

After enjoying a successful few hours at Guildhall Library I moved on to London Metropolitan Archives, where I researched some parish registers. Apart from having a general search of some parish registers using old fashioned search methods - ie trawling through an unindexed microfilm - I also had a look at a number of entries that I had identified on the IGI as likely to be "ours". I recorded a couple of Hazeltine baptisms at St Matthew, Bethnal Green dating from the 1870s (the Hazeltines feature on our Guyatt/Smedley line), and also the marriage of Charles Benzoni (abt 1811-1885) to Eleanor (Brannan) Crow (abt 1809 - 1889) at St Luke, Chelsea in 1832. I also had a look at the marriage between James Matthews and Lucy Wildman at St Luke, Old Street, Finsbury in 1825. I'm very confident that this couple were the parents of Lucy Matthews (b abt 1826), who married William Holliday (abt 1818-1874) in 1841, but it would be nice to find further corroboration.

Apart from all this, I also had a look at some of the online records that are available at London Metropolitan Archives, and found a number of eighteenth century adverts for the literary works of Joseph Collyer the Elder (abt 1714-1776). These were in the Burney collection, an archive which is available at certain records offices and libraries.

All in all, a successful day.

Apart from this, I have been delighted to be kept quite busy by three correspondents in the USA who are each studying the life and works of Robert Hanham Collyer (1814-Abt 1890). More on this another time. We are still aiming to get the updated Robert Hanham Collyer Chronology updated to Geoffs Genealogy soon. We're having a problem with it because the file is now rather large, but hopefully we shall resolve this before too long.

Lastly, for today, I'll just mention that the Bloomsbury People project, run by Carole Reeves, now includes a section on Dr Thomas Hunt (1789-1879) and his family. Most of the material is derived from Geoffs Genealogy, but Carole has added some more information and presented it all very well, I think.

I wish you all happy treeing!

Geoffs Genealogy Update - 25 March 2009

2009-03-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

It seems ages since I last wrote a blog entry. I've been so busy lately - on a number of fronts - that I have had to neglect this blog, I'm afraid. Still, here goes ....

In the last entry I gave brief details of the updates that went live on the Geoffs Genealogy website during February. Although I say so myself, there is some good stuff there, so I think it's worth commenting on some of it.

I'm particularly pleased with the photographs of the children of Thomas Hunt and Martha Mary Colam that I've featured on the Thomas Hunt Doctor page. I am so lucky to have these, and my thanks go to Richard Bradley for sharing them with me, and also for allowing me to display them on the website.

As the internet develops there are more and more texts appearing in cyberspace that relate to the work of Thomas Hunt, the doctor. The Times Digital Online website holds many such items, as does the Google Books website. I haven't yet found the time to do justice to all this material, but hopefully I shall get around to this before too long.

The portrait of a young Robert Hanham Collyer on the RH Collyer page is another very valuable source, and I'm grateful to David Schmit for making me aware of this, and to the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, USA for allowing me to include it on the site. We have another picture that is said to be of Robert Hanham Collyer as an older man, and we Collyer researchers have been comparing this to the image on Geoffs Genealogy to try to see whether they both portray the same man. It is fair to say that opinions differ about this, but Helen and I believe that they are both of the same man. The sad truth is that we shall probably never know!

When we were updating the website we came to realise that the Robert Hanham Collyer Chronology was in great need of an update, such is the amount of material about this man that we have gathered since the chronology was placed on the website. Fortunately for me, Helen volunteered to carry out this work, which she has now completed. I just need to get it uploaded to the website, which I shall do as soon as I can - hopefully in the next couple of weeks. The updated chronology is about 80 entries longer than the version on the website at the moment, so you will understand that it adds quite a lot to our knowledge of this amazing man.

I created a new page in the Hunt section, displaying our current knowledge about Mary Ann Stephens and her spouse - Nathan Archer. In this text I write about the cause of Nathan's death - suggesting that his demise may have been due to dementia caused by syphillis. Cousin Alice in the US has expressed the view to me that his condition may have been caused by the chemicals he may have used in his daily work as a printer, a thought that, I must confess, had not occurred to me. This seems to me to be at least a possibility, but as I don't know anything about the chemicals that a printer would have used in Nathan's time I really can't comment on its likelihood. If anybody reading this has any knowledge on this subject I'd be very pleased to hear from you.

Another exciting new piece of information on the website concerns that text written by Thomas Hunt the Lawyer - Truth Faileth so that Equity Cannot Enter. I've included in the website a few lines about this wonderful source, and a transcription of the document. I really can't tell you how excited I am by this document. It is such a rare source, and tells us so much about Thomas Hunt. It's more than a bit frustrating that I have so far not been able to find a way of developing research into Thomas Hunt's life as a Customs Officer, but maybe I'll manage that sometime.

Last week the speaker at the Shropshire FHS monthly meeting was John Titford, the well known genealogist. This was the third time I've attended a talk given by him, and he was as informative and entertaining as ever. If you get the chance to hear him speak I recommend that you do your best to attend. He really is very good indeed.

The talk was entitled Barking up the Wrong Tree, and was based on case studies from John's research - both his own research and work he has done for clients. He showed how easy it is to end up researching the wrong family, and how one can try to avoid this situation, and one comment by John threw the search for John Bankes's parents into a new context for me.

Anybody who has read my Biography of Bankes will know that after some 21 years of searching - some by me and some by fellow Bankes descendants - I still have not identified his parents. They really are that elusive! I have worked out that he was born about 1648-52, and was aware that this was just at the time of the Interregnum and the execution of Charles I. I also know that during the Parliamentary rule the practice of entering baptisms, marriages, and burials into parish registers ceased. However, I had not thought through the logic of that, which is that it is extremely likely that no record of Bankes's baptism exists!

If we are ever to resolve this genealogical poser it is likely to be by means of sources such as Wills or other legal documents, rather than the baptisms register.

I thought I'd share this with you as an example of how in our research we often fail to see the obvious, even when all the facts are there for us! Needless to say, the hunt for John Bankes's parents continues .....

Lastly for this entry I'll just mention the treat that Jan and I had last night, when we went to see a performance of Mozart's wonderful opera - The Marriage of Figaro, by Welsh National Opera at the Hippodrome, Birmingham. This was absolutely wonderful. Although I have reservations about setting the action in a 1930s set, I must say that the singing was wonderful - I include the whole cast in that, the acting was super, and the orchestra just great. It made for a super night out.

When I was a lad I thought opera to be very "highbrow", and never ever would have given it passing consideration. Then, in my early thirties I took an Open University course which featured study of Mozart's sublime The Marriage of Figaro. To my surprise I found that the more I began to understand the piece, the more I got out of it. Thanks to the OU, Mozart and Figaro I became a great opera fan, and my love of this art form has only grown since then. One of the many ways in which the OU changed my outlook on life.

I really do think that if you don't give this art form a chance to work its magic on you you are missing a wealth of joy.

Anyway, I'm so hooked on opera now that tomorrow Jan & I return to Birmingham to see WNO perform Donizetti's The Elixir of Love - another wonderful piece. I can't wait for the curtain to go up!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 23 February 2009

2009-02-23T12:53:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to say that the latest set of updates to the Geoffs Genealogy website have now been uploaded. The following is a summary of the changes:

I have carried out a pretty comprehensive review of the site, tweaking the content on most of the pages, and in some cases added extra images.

There are three new pages:

A Haberdashers' Hall page which is accessed via the Bankes Button. This includes a short account of our visit to Haberdashers' Hall in September 2008, and a selection of photographs taken on that occasion.
A Siblings of James Jacobson Broker page, which is accessed via the Mitchell & Jacobson button. This contains information about the brothers & sisters of my direct ancestor, James Jacobson (c1692-1759) . These people were not Bankes descendants, but are of great interest to me.
I have added a page entitled Mary Ann Stephens m Nathan Archer, which can be accessed via the Hunt & Stephens button. This lays out what we know about this couple, who feature among my direct ancestors.

In addition to the new pages I have made very substantial changes to the following pages:

Thomas Hunt Lawyer. Visitors to this page will now find information about a most fascinating source that came to our attention during 2008, and which I have mentioned previously on this blog - Truth Faileth (its abbreviated title) is a pretty unique document, telling us much about the career of Thomas Hunt the lawyer, and his society.
Thomas Hunt Doctor. Thanks to the generosity of Richard Bradley I have been able to include photographs of many of the children of Thomas and Martha Mary Colam, and have also taken the opportunity to write a short account of the lives of each of these children.
On the Arthur Ackland Hunt, Artist page I have added some information about the children of Arthur and his wife - Emma Sarah Blagg.
The Articles section has an extra article linked to it - my Shropshire Review.
I have added a number of links to the Links page.
The information in the Tree has been updated to date. Hopefully I have included all the material that has come into my possession since the last update. If you are able to add to the tree please do drop me an email. There are a number of links on the website to enable you to contact me.
As I write we have some more work in hand, extending the Robert Hanham Collyer Chronology, and we hope to be able to upload the updated Chronology to the website before too long. However, we have been able to include a lovely lithograph of Robert Hanham Collyer on the Chronology page, which can be accessed via the Collyer button. I'm sure you will agree that it is a superb addition to the website.

I think that's about all I can usefully tell you about these updates for now. I hope that you all enjoy using the website, and look forward to hearing from some of you.

Geoffs Genealogy Update, 28 January 2009

2009-01-28T11:10:00.000-08:00

This has been a very busy month for me.

I've been wearing my editorial hat - preparing the March issue of the journal of the Shropshire Family History Society. At the same time I have been working on the next batch of updates for the Geoffs Genealogy website, earning a crust, and also attending to all the day to day things that everybody has to attend to.

The website updates are coming on quite well, if a little slowly. I have worked my way through most of the existing content, updating where appropriate, and prepared one new additional page. I still have lots to do, however, as there are articles to add, plus some photographs and, if I have enough spare time, I may add another page. With all this to work through it is likely to be a few more weeks before the site is updated.

One by-product of reviewing the content of the website is that I get reminded of some of the areas of my research that still need attention. When I was looking at the section on Thomas Hunt, the Doctor (1798-1879) (THD), I was reminded that I have never found out anything about of his son - Thomas.

To be honest, I don't know for a fact that this Thomas was a son of THD - that is, I haven't seen a record of his birth. In 1992 I received some information about THD from the Royal College of Surgeons, and included in this was a photocopy of a page from the Medical Directory of 1861 (p 154). This listed a certain a certain Thomas Hunt Jnr, who became a MRCS in 1859, and he shared the address of THD - 23 Albert Place, St Giles. Middlesex. I have not actually traced this man's baptism, although I am aware of an entry on the IGI that looks extremely promising. I need to check this out at London Metropolitan Archives when I get the chance:

Baptism 12Dec1819, Dulwich College Chapel - Thomas Hunt, son of Thomas Hunt & Martha

Given the patterns of naming children that often applied in families up to fairly recent times it would not be surprising if THD and his spouse named their eldest son Thomas. After all, Thomas was the name of his father and grandfather.

The date of birth that I have put on my family tree for this Thomas is 1826. Educated guesswork on my part, but one has to start somewhere. Similarly, as I have never yet traced the marriage of THD and Martha I have recorded it as "before 1826", assuming that they were married before the birth of their first son.

I know that some people would say that it would be better if I left this information out of my records until it is proved, and I would not argue with that. I can only say that my method of doing this suits me. It stands to remind me of unresolved research items. I always include a note in my research files to explain these situations.

Incidentally, this is a point to bear in mind when looking at the tree that is on my website. Some of the detail in that tree may be "estimated", and you would be unwise to just take it as fact. I have noticed that some people have copied information from Geoffs Genealogy and used it on their own website without any acknowledgement of the source of the information, or reference to me. Not only is this very impolite - plagiarist, even - it is also quite unwise unless you have checked the information before using it.

Anyway, to return to my subject, although this Thomas Hunt MRCS appeared in the Medical Register listings up to 1875, and was always listed with the 23 Albert Place address associated with his father, I have never yet managed to sight him in any census records. This is in spite of the fact that I have records of his father's family on the censuses of 1851, 1861 and 1871. Very strange! Bear in mind, however, that if he was born about 1819 he would have been over 30 by the time of the 1851 census, and it seems quite likely that he may have already ceased to reside with the family, whilst practising medicine from the same address as his father.

It would help my attempts to trace him if I knew where he was born. If he was the child whose baptism was recorded in the above mentioned entry at Dulwich College, I may be able to fill in that gap. As it stands, there were so many Thomas Hunts in the records that without some reliable basic information to found my search on it seems unlikely that I shall find him.

The fact that I have not found Thomas Hunt Jnr listed in the Medical Register after 1875 suggests that possibly he may have either died shortly after that date, or he may have moved overseas. As I have been searching this source online at www.Ancestry.co.uk, and Ancestry has not put online the Medical Registers for the period 1876 - 1879, I do not know whether Thomas Hunt MRCS was listed in any of those years.

Bearing in mind that the Medical Register was probably compiled one year in advance, I have searched the civil registration indexes of deaths from 1874 to 1880, looking for Thomas Hunt, possibly registered at St Giles, Middlesex. I have found one entry that almost fits the bill:

Deaths June 1877
Hunt Thomas age 47 St Giles 1b 313

This may or may not be my man, but I am presently deterred from buying the certificate by the age recorded in this entry - 47. If my man was baptised in 1819 this is unlikely to be him. On the other hand ...

So many ifs, buts and maybes. I'll let you know if I ever resolve this poser.

In the meantime, it's back to the website editing.

Geoffs Genealogy Update, 30 December 2008

2008-12-30T06:38:00.001-08:00

I'm off work for about ten days over the Christmas period, so between the turkey, mince pies etc I'm finding a bit of time for my favourite hobby.

Over the past month I've had a couple of new contacts on the treeing front. It's always good to hear from "new" Bankes descendants. I'm trying to make sure that when we upload the updated tree to the website in a few weeks time it is as up to date as possible, so if you do have anything to add to it now would be a good time for you to contact me.

As I think I mentioned in my last blog entry, I'm currently working on updates for the website. I'm reviewing the existing pages, and also looking at adding some new material. It will take me a little while to complete this work, as we have had a really good year in terms of interesting new discoveries, but I'll let you know when it's done.

One of the tools that has recently become widely available to family history researchers is DNA testing. I have long considered whether it would be worthwhile to have a DNA test carried out, without coming to a conclusion. The June 2008 issue of Ancestors magazine (Issue 70) carried an interesting feature on the subject. Two different people each had a DNA test carried out and reported on the results in two separate articles. Without going into a lot of detail, one of the articles was very positive about the outcome of the test, whilst the other one was very negative. I can understand that this probably suited the purposes of the magazine editor very well, as the two articles taken together put the pros and cons of DNA testing in a very tangible way, but as a means of clearing my uncertainty about such a project it didn't help at all!

In November I celebrated my 60th birthday. I had a day off work and celebrated by spending the day at home. In the evening we had a lovely family gathering and meal, and I was fortunate enough to be given some birthday gifts. One of these was a DNA test. Jan and Helen had obviously concluded that, left to my own devices, I'd never get the thing done, so they took the initiative. My thanks to both of them.

I was amazed at the speed with which the test results were available to us - less than two weeks after my saliva samples were posted off to Salt Lake City the results were there on the computer screen on Ancestry.com. Fantastic!.

What did the test results tell me?

Well, it seems that on my male side I "belong to haplogroup R1b, The Artisans, who first arrived in Europe from West Asia about 35,000 - 40,000 years ago". Evidently about 70% of people now living in southern England are descended from the Artisans, and there are also many Artisans descendants in Spain, Portugal, France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

My test results have been compared to the results of other participants, and I have been linked to a 250 people whose DNA matches mine. My nearest relations among these are four people, all resident in the USA. Two of these people who share a common ancestor with me within 13 generations, and the other two share a common ancestor with me within 15 generations. When you consider that I am 11 generations away from Mary (Rand) Mitchell (c1668-1738/9) half sister to John Bankes, it probably means that the unnamed ancestors I share with these people were born between 1550 and 1620.

My test results also matched those of a further 246 people, the matches with these occurring between 21 and 40 generations ago. That's a very long time ago!

I have the opportunity to send an email to these people, and I may do that in the case of the two who are most closely matched to me. You never know, it may result in an exciting new chapter in my Culshaw family history research!

Speaking of Culshaw research, in my last blog entry I told you about the Hesketh research that Chris had carried out. We were hoping that it would link to our Ellen Hesketh (c1761-1846). Alas, Chris tells me that it does not appear to link to our ancestor.

That's all for now. I wish you all a happy and healthy 2009, and - if you are treeing - good hunting!

Geoffs Genealogy Update, 1 December 2008

2008-12-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

It's blog time again.

On 30 October Helen and I joined my fellow researchers from Shropshire Family History Society on a coach trip to The National Archives (TNA) at Kew. I left with a long research list, and high hopes. How did I fare?

The number one item on my agenda was to look for any records of Thomas Hunt, Lawyer's employment as a Customs Officer in London in the 1750s. I was a complete novice as far as this piece of research was concerned, so I headed straight for the help desks, seeking advice. I had read up on the subject in advance, but it's always worthwhile to talk to the experts, I think. The prognosis by the man behind the desk was not promising. He suggested that this research would not be easy. Nevertheless, undaunted, I went on.

The man behind the desk was correct. I won't bore you by recounting the sources we checked. Suffice to say that there seems to be a gap in most of the records just about the time when our Thomas should appear. The only records that we were able to check were the Customs Officers Patent Rolls and the Warrants appointing Customs Officers, and we could not trace him in those.
Unless there is a surrogate source that we can use it looks as though we are destined to draw a blank in researching Mr Hunt's service in the Customs. Thinking caps on!

Not to worry, I had a number of other sources to look at.

We reprised some documents I had looked at on my previous visit to TNA. These were legal papers relating to the annulment of the marriage between Robert Hanham Collyer and his young wife, Emily Jeans Clements. The couple married in 1864 and had two children, but Emily discovered that Robert already had a wife - Susannah MacDonald - who was still alive. She sued for an annulment, which was granted in 1873. In 1877 Robert Hanham Collyer was sued again - by his legal representative in another action - for non-payment of legal fees. These documents are also at the TNA. I had photographed all of these documents previously, but a few of the pics were a bit blurred, so I re-photographed them on this visit. I now have a complete set of readable documents to study.

We moved on to look at a number of other sources, with varying degrees of success. We found several Court of Chancery documents relevant to the Bankes trust, and we photocopied these. As they are large documents we had to photograph them in sections, and we now need to piece together the various images, before we can study the documents.

On the whole, Chancery documents can be quite hard to read. The Bills and Responses are often very large documents, and the handwriting of two hundred years ago is not so easy to read. They were written in what you may call "legal language", and the same information was often repeated several times. On the whole it is quite difficult to spot the vital small snippet of new information that can mean so much.

If I am studying one of these documents at TNA I find that they are very time consuming, and I can spend most of my precious research time reading a document that actually doesn't tell me anything new. By photographing them I can do this work at home, meaning that I can cover more ground on my visits to Kew.

During the afternoon I ordered some Court of Chancery Masters' Reports relating to the Bankes Trust Chancery case. These documents contain the decisions that were made during the Masters in Chancery, sometimes with quite a bit of explanation of why the decisions were reached. Normally, document orders were taking about 30 minutes for the TNA staff to fulfill, so I thought I'd just have time to look at some of these. However, my order took about ninety minutes to arrive at the desk, so I ran out of time.I only had time to look at one item. This was very frustrating, and added to the frustration I had felt in the early stages of our visit. I had ordered the Collyer legal papers in advance of my visit via the TNA website, and they should have been ready for me to use on arrival. In fact they were not. For some reason my order had not been processed, and I had to wait for about 30 minutes before I could start work.

As a result of these delays, I wasted the best part of two hours possible research time, and as we only had six hours at TNA, this was very disappointing.

Better luck next time!

Jan and I paid another visit to Staffordshire Archives, in Staford recently, to complete our transcription of the Blagg entries in the Cheadle parish registers. The Blaggs are a most interesting family. It is apparent from the regoisters that they were prosperous people in the nineteenth century - John Michael Blagg (1793-1878) was a solicitor, as was his son - Charles John Blagg (1833-1915). The available records suggest that the family moved to Cheadle, Staffs in the eighteenth century from Nottinghamshire. I'm sure that a delve in the Nottinghamshire archives would be rewarded with much information. There are several connections to the clergy - notably Susan Anne Blagg (c1827-1888) married Richard Rawle (1812–1889), bishop of Trinidad!

Mary Adela Blagg (1858-1944) was a famous astronomer; a crater on the moon was named after her. As I've mentioned in previous entries, my interest in this family stems from the fact that Arthur Ackland Hunt (1841-1914), the artist, who features in Geoffs Genealogy, married Emma Sarah Blagg (1838-1896) at Cheadle on 24 July 1879.

If anybody reading this has an interest in this clan I'd be glad to hear from them. Although they are fairly distantly connected to my forebears I nevertheless find them very interesting people.

A number of other developments have occurred in my research over the past few weeks, and I'll mention a couple of them briefly before closing.

Firstly, Barbara, a Bankes descendant on the Fiveash line, has told me about a gathering of her clan that she attended during October. She has sent me some information about her Fiveash forebears that she obtained at this event, and I'm busily adding that to the pedigree at present. My thanks to Barbara for that.

Now to a brief mention of the Culshaws. These are my Lancashire forebears, and I'm sad to say that they get an absurdly small amount of my research time because the Bankes Pedigree is so endlessly interesting. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Chris, a fellow Culshaw descendant, contacted me with some potentially significant information. She had been doing a bit of research on the internet and came across a family of Heskeths, living in North Meols in Lancashire, who could possibly be our Hesketh forebears. We have known for some years that John Culshaw (c1761-1841) married Ellen Hesketh (c1761-1846) at Ormskirk on 20 Feb 1787. These are the furthest back Culshaws we have traced, and the problem has been to identify their parents. Well, it is possible that the Ellen Hesketh who Chris found at North Meols (bap 19 Sep 1761, parents William & Catharine (sic) could just be our ancestor. How to test this out?
We need to scour the records for a relevant Hesketh will, or a helpful MI, or something similar.
I feel a new year trip to Lancashire coming up!

Incidentally, Chris found this piece of information by carrying out a search of the National Archives website, which indicates how widely we should all be spreading our nets in the course of our searches.

My thoughts are now turning to the next updates of the website. I have so much material that I could upload that I'm really spoiled for choice, but it all needs some work done to it, and time is quite short. I shall try to get some of it on the site before too long, but at present I'm concentrating on getting the tree as up to date as I can, so that it is as complete as possible when we upload. Helen and I usually upload to the site every January, but I'm not sure that we will manage to do that this year. It may be somewhat later.

Cheers for now.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 28 October 2008

2008-10-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

I have been busy over the past few weeks, preparing the next edition if the Shropshire Family History Society journal, which is due to thud on to the doormats of our members in early December.

I have a trip to The National Archives (TNA) at Kew planned for the end of October, travelling on a coach trip organised by the Shropshire FHS. These trips are very good value, and enable us to have about six hours at The National Archives, depending on how good a journey we have, of course. I've been visiting TNA for a long time now, and have seen many changes there.

When I first visited the Public Records Office, as TNA was then known, I used to research at Chancery Lane in the centre of London. There was little or no computerisation in those days, and thus the systems there were relatively unsophisticated. At the time some of the records were held at the PRO's premises at Kew, but I found it more convenient to visit Chancery Lane, and most of the records I wanted to see were at that location, so I very rarely went to Kew. I well remember that my first forays into the records of the Court of Chancery - looking in wonder at the documents dating from the 1770s relating to the cause Mitchell v Holloway - took place at Chancery Lane. I also recall looking at microfilm copies of PPC wills and non-conformist records in the Rolls Chapel at Chancery Lane.

My visits to the PRO's newer premises at Kew were rare at that time. The first time I went there, with Helen - my daughter - we only had a few hours there, and really only had time to sample briefly the the computerised document ordering system! What wonders!

Eventually, the inexorable process of modernisation meant that all the records were moved from these wonderful old buildings at Chancery lane to the newly extended modern facilities at Kew. The PRO at Chancery Lane closed its doors for the last time in 1997, and a new facility was provided at the Family Records Centre, Islington, to enable researchers to use a number of key groups of records records - censuses, births marriages & deaths, non conformist records to name but three - in London.

Regrettably, earlier this year, the Family Records Centre closed. The records which it held on microfilm and fiche are available for researchers at Kew, but the big books that contain the civil registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths are no longer available for use. The UK government had a plan to digitise these indexes, and make them available both at Kew and on the internet, but it seems that that scheme has has encountered problems when only about half completed, and there appears to be no solution in sight. Until this problem is resolved, availability of the Civil Registration indexes is somewhat limited:

Microfiche at TNA Kew and various other repositories around the country.
Free BMD
Various commercial websites

Personally, although I subscribe to Ancestry.co.uk, I generally use Free BMD to search the civil registration indexes. The coverage of events up to about 1900 is pretty near 100%, and the search screens are clear and easy to use. The volunteers who have toiled away for years to bring the project to this point are fantastic, I think, and we should all be grateful to them. Ancestry also have the Free BMD index, but in my opinion their presentation of the data is not as clear as FreeBMD.

Anyway, enough of this digression. The point of this entry is really to reminisce about the halcyon days when the records were more easily available (at least to my mind) in central London, and to recall the many wonderful discoveries that I've made at Kew - too numerous to list here, I'm afraid. The most exciting discoveries I have yet made in my research were the bundle of documents relating to Bankes's business affairs.I have included images of a few of these on my website. These documents included tradesmen's bills for work done on Bankes's properties, rental agreements between Bankes and some of his tenants, and a set of handwritten receipts and outgoings accounts, in Bankes's own hand. Family history doesn't get much better than that!

Each time I go to TNA I never know whether I shall come away having found out nothing, or whether I am about to add another previously unknown treasure to my personal archive.

I'll let you know what happens.

Geoff's Genealogy Update 27 September 2008

2008-09-27T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

When I signed off my last entry on this blog I mentioned the upcoming open day at Haberdashers' Hall, London. Well, I'm delighted to say that I made the trip to London last Saturday with Jan & Helen, and together we enjoyed a terrific day out in the capital. This open day was part of the annual Open House London event, whereby on 20-21 September a number of houses around London were open for the public to visit free of charge. Luckily the weather was lovely for this event, and we noticed that there were many people walking the streets of our capital, seemingly en route to the next house on their itinerary. According to the information on the Open House London website the day was a great success.

So, what of our first visit to the new Haberdashers' Hall?

I must say, we were very impressed. It is quite fashionable to knock modern architecture, but I thought that this was a superb building. The facade blends well with the surrounding buildings in West Smithfield, but when you cross the portals and make your way into the building you come face to face with a lovely courtyard . The courtyard is grassed, with a most attractive fountain at its centre.In the walkways around the courtyard were displayed a number of interesting items, including sculptures by Barbara Hepworth and Lynn Chadwick.

We entered the Orangery and were greatly impressed by a painting of a Panorama of the Modern City of London by Jeffrey Morgan. This was a very attractive work, but what struck us most were the figures painted into the foreground of the picture. These were four eminent members - Princess Margaret, Sir Robin Brook, Robert Aske of the Haberdashers' Company - Princess Margaret, Sir Robin Brook, Robert Aske and "our" John Bankes (c1652-1719)! The artist had copied Bankes as he appears in his portrait, which has hung at successive Haberdashers' Halls since his death in 1719.

We went up the stairs, to visit the suite of rooms on the first floor. These are very fine indeed, and they contain many treasures. We saw many fine paintings (including works by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Kneller and Romney) much beautiful furniture, and many interesting and impressive artefacts. However, the item that we really wanted to see was the portrait of John Bankes, which still hangs in the Company's Court Room, as laid down in Bankes's will.

A few years ago I contacted the National Portrait Gallery in the hope that they could tell me something about the Bankes portrait. Of course, I would have liked them to be able to tell me when it was painted, and who was the likely artist, but I knew that it was rather a long shot so was not too disappointed when I got their response. They said (quite fairly) that it was not possible to date the portrait, or begin the process of attribution, without having access to the original. They considered that "... like so many city portraits the hand is competent but not recognisable.."

We spent quite some time gazing at the Bankes portrait, and taking photographs. To me this is the most wonderful thing. To be able to see an image of our benefactor, nearly 300 years after he died!

Usually the artefacts in portraits dating from Bankes's time were included to tell the viewer what type of person the subject was - his trade, or religion, his values etc. With this in mind I have tried, many times, to make sense of the iconography of this picture. On the table by Bankes there is a hat, and some other items. As far as I can make out these seem to be a light coloured cloth, a pair of compasses and some needles of some kind (probably wooden). I realise that I've almost certainly mis-identified some of these items, but if anybody reading this feels able to put me right I'll be delighted for you to do so. Try as I might, I cannot understand what the items tell us about Bankes. On this visit we were able to have a close-up look at the picture with this in mind, but we still were no nearer to understanding it, I'm afraid.

One other point - do the clothes worn by Bankes tell us anything about him, apart from the general point that he was a prosperous man?

One thing that struck me about the picture this time is that Bankes looks quite a young man. Possibly in his middle age. I have always thought that the portrait was probably painted to mark him becoming being Master of the Company, but he was in his 60s then, and he looks much younger than that. This throws up a number of possibilities. For example, maybe Bankes was in his 60s , but the artist flattered him by making him look younger - distinctly possible - or maybe the portrait was painted somewhat earlier in Bankes's life. If anybody reading this has any ideas on these and any other points, I'll be very pleased to hear from them.

Our visit to Haberdashers' Hall was completed by a short meeting with David Bartle, the company Archivist. He very kindly spared us a few minutes for a chat, and a look at the Bankes Pedigree Books. Yes - you read that correctly. There are two pedigree books. One of them is exactly as it was when it was created at the start of the 20th century - by Mr Eagleton, I think. The other copy is updated with any additional information about the Bankes pedigree that the company receives. Jan and Helen had never seen the pedigree boook before, and were very pleased to be able to put that right.

We left Haberdashers' Hall having enjoyed our visit greatly, and with a very favourable impression of the building which, I think, effectively combines the modern with the traditional. The building is well lit throughout, and has a very spacious feel, compared to the previous hall in Staining Lane. The Company's collection of pictures and artefacts are able to be displayed to very great advantage.

Having completed our main mission for the day, we were left to decide what to do in the remaining couple of hours before leaving for home. After a brief discussion we opted for a visit to Bunhill Fields, the great non-conformist burial ground in the City of London. A number of Bankes descendants were buried in this burial ground, including Joseph Collyer the Younger (1748-1827) and members of his family, and my direct ancestors, Ann Hunt (c1770-1811) and her spouse John Stephens (c1770-1802).

A great many non-conformists were buried at Bunhill fields over several centuries up to the 1850s. It is now managed by the Corporation of London as a garden, and I must saw it is beautifully maintained. There are two main paths that criss-cross the burial ground, and a sizeable grassed area with seating, where one can sit and enjoy the calm atmosphere of this tree-shaded haven. There are a number of famous people buried there, and we saw the graves of Daniel Defoe (writer of Robinson Crusoe) Susannah Wesley (wife of John Wesley) and John Bunyan (writer of the Pilgrim's Progress). The footpaths have been laid out so that visitors can easily see these graves, but the rest of the graveyard is only viewable through railings - a necessary precaution, I would think, to guard against damage. Thus, it was not possible for us to attempt a visit to the graves of our forebears.

We very much enjoyed the short time we spent in Bunhill Fields. It is a very restful place, and with the sun shining through the many trees, it looked very attractive.

As we left Bunhill Fields we noted the great Methodist Chapel on the other side of the road. This was John Wesley's chapel , and next to it is his house, which is also open to the public. We just had time to go into the chapel - which is a quite magnificent building - and Wesley's house. The house is quite small and modestly furnished, and contains many items that were once Wesley's possessions. Among these are his christening robe, his spectacles, a lock of his hair, items of his clothing, and a number of items of furniture. The house was staffed by two guides who were simply bubbling with enthusiasm, and very knowledgable on their subject. We learned a lot in our short visit, and left the capital having had a really super day.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 3 September 2008

2008-09-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

I'm a lucky chap. Since my last blog entry I have had a pretty good time.

Firstly, at the start of August I went off to Portugal for a week of sunshine, good food, and super company on the Algarve. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this holiday, and a brief escape from the rigours of an appalling English summer.

Secondly, over the August bank holiday weekend Jan and I went to North Wales. We stayed a couple of nights at Llandudno, in a really lovely bed & breakfast. It is many years since we last visited Llandudno, and I had quite forgotten what a fine traditional seaside resort it is. It truly is well worth a visit, if you have a mind to spend some time in North Wales. The reason for our brief sojourn in the town was our annual visit to Bryn Terfel's opera gala night at the Faenol festival. Although the weather over the weekend was pretty fair, on the evening in question it was quite poor, although the rain did hold off for the duration of the concert. However, the concert was quite as wonderful as it always is. Bryn was joined by Diana Damrau (soprano), Nadia Krasteva (mezzo) and Johan Botha (tenor) - all great stars of the Opera world, and they gave us a terrific show.

We have one more open air event to attend this year, and we are praying for a decent evening (seems unlikely though). On 13 September we go to Swansea to attend the BBC Proms in the Park concert - the Last Night of the Proms. Last year we enjoyed this event enormously, so we are going again.

A few weeks ago I was delighted to be contacted by Glenva, in Australia. She is a distant cousin of mine on the Holliday line, and we have exchanged information about our respective Holliday forebears. Our common ancestors were John Holliday (c1812-1874) and his wife, Louisa Matthews (b c1826). It will take me a while to enter up all the material Glenva has sent me, but I shall have the job completed before long.

The Hollidays are not Bankes descendants. They are the family of my late grandmother - Alice Louisa (Holliday) Smith(1891-1982), who married George William Smith (1886-1940). You can find them on the tree on my website. The Hollidays seeem to me to exemplify a recurring theme in family history research which I find endlessly fascinating - the way in which a family's economic and social fortunes can turn around completely. This usually seems to happen as a result of a single chance event, such as a fortunate or unfortunate marriage. Those of you who have watched the BBC TV series Who do you think you are will have observed this many times. Recently it showed how the fortunes of Patsy Kensit's forebears had veered between pillar of the community respectability and criminality.

I think it fair to say that over the last couple of centuries the Hollidays have generally been pretty ordinary working folk. They do not seem to have been particularly prosperous, in fact in one particular case in 1901 family members were in a London workhouse. Around 1880 James Frederick Holliday (1853-1938), a cousin of my great grandfather, decided to go to Bolivia to visit his brother, an engineer working in that country. In the course of his trip he stopped off in Santos, Brazil. There he had an encounter with a British man, the upshot of which was that he got a job working in Brazil and settled there. See what I mean about a family's fortunes turning on a chance event? In 1882 James married Elizabeth Daly (c1856-1926) in Rio de Janeiro, and they founded a branch of Brazilian Hollidays. This branch of the family seems to have lived through a few turbulent times, but came through to achieve considerable prosperity - leaving their British relations standing, in fact. If you look at the Holliday Family in Brazil Blog you will be able to read their story. George Holliday has set up this blog, which is effectively a Holliday family archive. Lots of wonderful stuff here - photos, transcriptions of letters and much more.

My cousin Pat has been beavering away of late, investigating John Bankes (c1652-1719). She had found that a certain Edward Banks, Haberdasher of London, was a Sheriff of the City of London in 1563-4, and wondered whether he could be a forebear of our John Bankes, Haberdasher. She carried out a very interesting piece of research, obtaining the wills of several members of Edward Banks's family. They came from Shelford in Cambridgeshire.

The upshot of all this effort is that there was not an obvious connection between our JB and the Shelford family, but - of course - that does not necessarily mean that no connection existed. The hunt goes on!

Another recent contact was Barbara, who is descended from Anne Deane, half sister to John Bankes, on the Fiveash line. Her grandmother was Alice Maud Fiveash (b 1883) and her husband, Richard Williams. Barbara has kindly sent me some information about her grandmother's family and the line down to her, all of which was "news to me". Another part of the Bankes Pedigree filled in.

The time of the open weekend at Haberdashers' Hall draws near, and I'm certainly hoping to take the opportunity of visiting the new Hall. If I make it I'll tell you about it in my next blog entry.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 29 July 2008

2008-07-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

As I write this entry the rain is beating down outside my house with extreme force, accompanied by the repeated cracks of thunder and lightning. A really spectacular storm is signalling the end of the five days spell of gorgeous, summery weather that we have enjoyed in the UK. The rain is much needed, however - at least the garden won't need watering for a few days.

The open air performance of Shakespear's Hamlet that we attended at Stafford Castle a couple of weeks ago was absolutely great. Amazingly, given the prevailing weather at the time, the evening was dry - so the cast did not get a soaking. However, it was very cold. Jan and I felt so cold that we were shivering - in July!

The play itself was performed superbly, by a fine cast of professional actors and actresses. The director has proved in previous years that he has a genius for extracting the maximum comedy from Shakespeare, and after being brought up on the 1940s Olivier film of Hamlet, it was a revelation to me to see how much humour is actually present in such a tragedy.

Our next open air event is Bryn Terfel's Faenol Festival near Bangor in North Wales. We are going to the Opera Gala on 23 August, and hoping for a warm, balmy evening to match what will undoubtedly be a spectacular event. It always is!

On to treeing matters.

Anybody who has followed my family history interests will know that the Haberdashers' Company is central to my research. John Bankes was Master of that company, and the company administers the Bankes Trust, from which many Bankes descendants have benefitted over the nearly 300 years since Bankes died. In fact, I recently found out that even today there is at least one Bankes descendant now living who is a Freeman of the company.

In 2002 the Company moved from its old Hall in Staining lane in the City of London to a newly build Hall near St Barts Hospital. Although I had visited Staining Lane on a number of occasions, and in so doing enjoyed the benefit of using the Company's archives, I have never yet managed to visit the new Hall. Hopefully I shall be able to rectify this omission on the weekend of 20-21 September, when the Company has an open weekend. I shall certainly do my best to get there, and enjoy a tour of the new hall. I can see from the pictures on the Company's website (see above link) that it is a magnificent building.

Incidentally, in case you are wondering, the Haberdashers' Company has handed over pretty well all its records to the Guildhall Library, so if you want to research them that's the place to go to.

In my last entry I told you briefly of our visit a few weeks ago to meet Hugh and Judy. What I didn't mention was the wonderful source that Hugh showed me. It is a document written by Thomas Hunt the Lawyer (c1723-1789) entitled Truth Faileth so that Equality Cannot Enter: Exemplified from a short Abstract of the Proceedings in a Cause in the High Court of Chancery.

This document is a polemic, clearly intended to expose what Hunt saw as corruption that he had encountered in representing Bankes descendants in the Court of Chancery proceedings that concerned the Bankes Trust, and showing how his attempts to obtain just settlements for the people he represented were being thwarted at a very high level.In making his case, Hunt recounts certain experiences he had when serving as a Customs Officer in London between 1748 and 1757. Evidently after serving an apprenticeship as a lawyer he became a customs officer, and he only started to practice as a lawyer after he had left the service of the customs. He claimed that whilst he was a customs officer he had uncovered irregularities in the trading activities of the East India Company, involving gross avoidance of customs duties. He had left the service with a glowing testament as to his honesty and integrity from the then commissioners.

This is fascinating stuff, and provides great scope for further research. I shall be trying to follow up on this information when I next go to The National Archives, Kew.

This is a printed document, clearly intended to show its author as an honest, upright citizen, and a number of eminent people he had encountered as corrupt. Thomas Hunt was, in the words of the old analogy, "banging his head against a brick wall" I wonder what he really hoped to gain from the exercise of printing and distributing it and, indeed , to whom it was distributed.

Having read this document, and also read the material outlined on my website relating to Thomas Hunt Baptist Minister, I think I can see certain similarities in the characters of this father and son. Both seem to have been unswerving in pursuit of what they saw as the truth, and very strong characters. Fascinating stuff.

That's it for now. Happy treeing to you all.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 10 July 2008

2008-07-09T23:42:00.000-07:00

As I write this blog entry you find me working on the next edition of the Shropshire FHS Journal - due out in September. I have to prepare each edition a couple of months before the publication date, and it usually takes me up to four weeks to put the thing together. Of course, in addition to this quarterly demand on my time there is also the day to day editorial correspondence, and the business of reading and editing material sent to me for possible inclusion in the journal. When you add to that the other business that arises from membership of the society's committee you can see that the job of editor for a family history society is quite a large one.

Why does one do it?

Good question. To a certain extent I suppose it is altruism, but I would not be telling the truth if I pretended that the wish to help others is my only motive. I have always had a love of writing, and although the editor's role mainly involves dealing with other people's writings, it does give me a certain amount of opportunity to write content myself. I also enjoy the challenge of putting together a publication, which I hope is of reasonable quality, to a deadline. In addition to these factors, I have to say that being editor of the society's journal brings me quite a number of personal advantages in my research. For instance, I develop more contacts, so when I need a bit of help or advice I have a fairly large pool of expertise available to me. I also get to hear of new developments in the world of family history a little while before people who are not serving on a committee, including the availability of new resources. Perhaps the most valuable gain to me from my role as editor is the way in which my knowledge of our hobby gets extended through contacts with other researchers. You would probably be surprised to learn how often I have gained a new insight that I can use in my research from something that has arisen through helping somebody else with their research. Believe me, this happens a lot.

Our own society is having great difficulty in filling a number of important posts at present, and I know that other societies are experiencing similar problems. I urge you to consider involving yourself in the affairs of a family history society. Believe me, the more you put into a society the more you will get out of it.

I've had an exciting time since I last updated this blog. Firstly, I have been to two superb concerts. One was at Milton Keynes, and featured the Milton Keynes City Orchestra conducted by Sian Edwards. They were a fine bunch of musicians, and the evening was enhanced by a performance of Brams' Piano Concerto No 1 by the wonderful Freddie Kempf. Superb!

The other concert was, if anything, even more enjoyable. We went to our usual venue - Symphony Hall, Birmingham, to hear the city of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven's 9th (Choral) Symphony. The orchestra was joined by solo singers and the CBSO Chorus, and the sound created was truly wonderful. This was Sakari Oramo's farewell concert as conductor of the orchestra, and he could not have had a better send off!

Last Wednesday we were on Wimbledon Centre Court to see the men's singles quarter finals. We were there to see Andy Murray's campaign come to an end against Raphael Nadal, and to see Roger Federer beat Mario Ancic. What a treat to see these wonderful exponents of the game. I was never any good at tennis myself, but that doesn't stop me admiring these people. Our next engagement is tomorrow evening, when we go to see an open air production of Shakespeare's Hamlet at Stafford Castle. The open air Shakespeare productions at Stafford are always extremely good, with excellent casts and direction. However, the weather forecast for this event is rather poor, so somebody could be in for a soaking! Not us, however, as one of the most attractive features of watching Shakespeare at Stafford Castle is that the audience is under cover but the cast is not!

On the treeing front I've been as busy as ever of late. On a very wet Saturday morning the other week Jan and I spent a few hours at Stafford Records Office, collecting another batch of Blagg entries in the Cheadle parish registers. We made great headway, and I think that one more visit will probably complete the job. Then all I will have to do is type them up and send them off to Richard. It has taken me much longer than I expected to complete this job, but we get there in the end.

On 7 June it was the Shropshire FHS Open Day at the Shirehall, Shrewsbury. I was on the Help desk, with a number of other colleagues, and we were kept busy all day, trying to help visitors to the event with their research queries. This is an annual event, and always well attended. This year we had two excellent speakers. In the morning Colin Chapman spoke on the Poor Laws over the centuries. Colin is a very well known personality in the world of family history, and is best known for being the man who created the Chapman Codes - the three letter codes that are used to denote the various counties. In the afternoon our speaker was Nick Barratt, who is best known for his work on the BBC TV programme "Who do you think you are?". He gave a lively and very interesting presentation on the background to the tv series and other related matters. Everybody I spoke to said that they thoroughly enjoyed this talk - finding it both informative and entertaining.

Ten days ago Jan and I went to visit Hugh and Judy at their farm in Lincolnshire. Hugh is a descendant of Joseph Rand, half brother to John Bankes, on the Welsh line, so he is only distantly related to me. It was a pleasure to meet Hugh and Judy, and their lovely family, and we were treated to quite wonderful hospitality. We had a fine time, chatting about Bankes and the relevant parts of the Bankes Pedigree, and came away with some more very promising research ideas.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Howard, in Australia - another Bankes descendant of the line down from Joseph Rand, half brother to Bankes. He was good enough to share the details of his family tree with me, thus further expanding the Bankes Pedigree. He also gave me the exciting news that one of his family was a Knight of the Realm. How exciting! In the words of Howard

"Sir (William) Emrys Jones (1915-2001) became chief agricultural adviser to the Minister of Agriculture from 1967 to 1973, and was knighted in 1971. An obituary in the Telegraph states 'he played a leading role in boosting post-war agricultural production and probably had a greater influence on British farming than any other individual.’"

If you are interested, you can find a more detailed obituary to Sir William Emrys Jones on the Independent newspaper website, at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000711/ai_n14328595.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 12 June 2008

2008-06-11T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

Once again I have to report on a busy few weeks. Treeing has had to take second place to decorating over the past few weeks, as our home has been spruced up! Of course, there is a knock-on effect associated with decorating, insofar as the other regular jobs - gardening, car cleaning etc, also need to be accommodated. Thus things get a bit behind. However, the good news (so far as I'm concerned) is that we can now get back to our normal routine, and the treeing can soon assume its usual place in my agenda.

Other things have been going on as well. For instance, last Saturday was the Shropshire Family History Open Day and Fair in Shrewsbury. This was a most successful day, with plenty of punters coming through the door, many of them to listen to our two high profile speakers - Colin Chapman (he of the Chapman Codes) and Nick Barratt ( he of the BBC TV programme Who Do You Think You Are?). I think I can safely say that the day was most enjoyable for all who attended.

On the treeing front, probably the most significant recent event was my visit to The National Archives, Kew. This took place a couple of weeks ago, when I joined a coach party run by the Shropshire Family History Society. I had some pretty good results from my research that day. As ever, I went to Kew clutching a long research list, but in the event it was a source that was not on the list that gave me the greatest joy.

Whilst browsing through the TNA catalogue I did what I always do in these situations and typed into the search box the words "Robert Hanham Collyer". Given the ubiquitous nature of this man, I was not too surprised when a couple of source references appeared on the screen - both references to court cases.

RHC being the type of person that he undoubtedly was - "pushy" could be considered quite a polite term - it should not surprise anybody that he was involved in litigation from time to time. We already knew that he was cited as co-respondent in an 1877 divorce case in London, for example. Well, the sources identified by this search concerned (a) the annulment of his marriage to Emily Jeans Clements in 1873 and (b) a case in 1877 when he was sued for money he was said to owe his solicitor - a certain Benjamin Humphries Van Tromp. Imagine that, being sued by your legal representative! Many people would be embarrassed by such an event, but from what I know of RHC I doubt that he was phased by it.

By the time I had identified these papers I was running a bit short of time. I managed to read them through and then photographed them, using my digital camera. Most of the photos of the divorce court papers are quite good, and when printed or viewed on screen they can be read. However, there is one rather blurred page, and sadly that is the page that bears the plaintiff's signature.I'll need to photograph that again when I next visit TNA.

The papers include the complaint by Emily, and RHC's response. He did not deny that Susannah Hawley nee McDonald, his first(?) wife, was still alive, but said that the couple had split up shortly after their marriage in 1845, and he had believed that she had died, having been informed of her death by so-called reliable source. As he could not recall the identity of this reliable source, I am more than a bit sceptical about this statement, but it seems to have been accepted by the court, and the marriage was annulled with custody of the couple's two children being awarded to Emily. I don't imagine that the court would really have been taken in by RHC's response, but they appear to have been happy to accept it. Anything for a quiet life?

The photos of the papers for the second case were rather disappointing - quite blurred (the result of hurried photography and a shaky hand). I'll re-take the photographs on my next visit to TNA, and tell you about this case then.

Incidentally, I found out during this visit that you can get quite a decent result from photographing a microfilm or microfiche image off the screen. Maybe you already knew this, but I didn't. It certainly worked well when I tried it, having been inspired to do so by observing my fellow researchers.

In the meantime the hunt for John Bankes's parentage continues. I discovered that Hertfordshire Archives have created a magnificent index - Hertfordshire Names Online. According to Ancestors magazine it "allows researchers to search the entire index of genealogical material and documents" (June 2008 issue, p 58), and certainly it encompasses a very large range of sources, including apprenticeship agreements 1599-1903. As I know that Bankes was apprenticed as a carpenter before he went to the City of London I checked his name across all the sources in this index; he wasn't there. If the index is as comprehensive as I'm led to believe I take that as fairly strong evidence that he didn't come from Hertfordshire.

As I said, the hunt continues ...

Geoffs Genealogy Update 16 May 2008

2008-05-16T12:07:00.000-07:00

These blog entries seem to be getting less frequent. This is not evidence of a declining interest in the blog, or in Geoff's Genealogy. Rather, it is evidence of how busy I've been lately. Anyway, here goes with the latest update.

A number of noteworthy developments have occurred in my treeing since my last blog entry. I've continued my correspondence with Ronnie, relating to the Collyer and Clements families, and Ronnie has very kindly sent me some of his lovely family photos, plus details of his line of descent from a sibling of Emily Jeans Clements, the young girl who married Robert Hanham Collyer (RHC) in London in 1864. In return I've sent him some information about RHC. Goodness knows, there is plenty of that.

Ronnie has kindly sent me a a couple of US census entries for the son of RHC and Emily - Robert L Collyer. Evidently he migrated to the US in the 1880s, and by 1910 was living in San Francisco. He was also there in 1920.

As well as the census entries, Ronnie found Robert on a couple of San Francisco voters lists. It seems, from what we know, that Robert L Collyer did not marry. The records that Ronnie found show him as a single man, living as a boarder. We do not know why he went to the US, and who may have travelled with him. The obvious thought is that he may have joined his father - and may even have travelled across the Atlantic with RHC, but I haven't yet found the relevant ship's passenger list.

There is much more to learn about all this. Ronnie is keeping an eye open for more records relating to RHC. The thing I'd love to find is the record of his death, which was said to have occurred c1890 in the New Orleans area. Apparently there is no trace of this in the New Orleans records.

The Drayton family appears in the Bankes pedigree in 1830, when George Box Drayton (GBD) (1784-1857) married a Bankes descendant - Martha Hunt (1796-1875). Martha was a daughter of Rev Thomas Hunt (1762-1844) and Maria Edwards (bef 1774-1848), who feature prominently on the Geoff's Genealogy website, Thomas being a Baptist minister.

GBD was a surgeon, born in Gloucester. He spent quite a lot of his life in London, and was buried in the capital, at Abney Park Cemetery. Over the years I have traced quite a bit of information about the Draytons in the form of census entries. It seems clear that they were a prosperous family, and as far as I have been able to trace, the children of George & Martha seem to have done well for themselves.

A while ago, whilst surfing around the net, I came across the website of the McGill University, Montreal, Canada, from which I learned that the university's Osler Library of Medicine holds a short written account of GBD's life, written in the early twentieth century by one of his grandsons. I readily paid the appropriate fee, and duly received the article, plus copies of two notices advertising lectures given on medical subjects by GBD in 1840, and copies of printouts which give considerable information about some of GBD's family.

What a treasure trove this is!

The piece about GBD contains some wonderful information about the life of a surgeon at the beginning of the nineteenth century - his training as an apprentice and his practice as a doctor - and pretty gory it is, too! There are quotations from the notes that GBD kept, describing his everyday experiences, and the author also drew on family correspondence in describing family events and portraying the character of some members of the Drayton family. The text is only six A4 pages long, but there is so much in those six pages!

Some members of the Drayton family became missionaries. George Drayton, son of GBD and Martha, apparently died in Tanzania in November 1867, and his wife of 17 months died in the same month, also in Tanzania. Caroline Box Drayton (1823-1902) was a daughter of GBD by his first wife - Louisa Butt. She became a missionary in the Caribbean and married George Ralph Henderson in Jamaica in 1843, a union that (I am told) produced ten children.

The two notices are quite revealing as well. I particularly liked the following line, which says a lot about class attitudes in the society of the 1840s:

The Lectures will not be Medical but as plain as the Lecturer can make them, and adapted to all Classes of Society

That's all for now.

Geoff' Genealogy Update 28 April 2008

2008-04-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

Since my last blog entry I've been as busy as ever. Lots of new information has come to light, partly through new contacts made via Geoffs Genealogy and partly through contacts made via the Genes Reunited website.

My Culshaw research has been sadly neglected for a few years now, which is a shame, because I have made some wonderful friends in Lancashire during my work on this line, and also thoroughly enjoyed carrying out the research in places like Preston, Leyland and Ormskirk.

The truth is, I'm stuck, and have been for some years!

If anybody can tell me who were the parents of John Culshaw, born c1760, probably at Burscough, I'll be very grateful. I have searched as many Lancashire Wills as I have been able to, looked at some of the estate papers for the Earl of Derby's estate, and looked at as many parish registers as seem relevant, but the problem really is that there was more than one John Culshaw who came into the world at about that time, in the Ormskirk area, and I can't say which one was my ancestor.

Anyway, I made contact with Valerie, a Culshaw researcher who is registered with Genes Reunited. It turns out that Culshaw is not her main research interest, and her Culshaws are on the line I call the "Catholic Culshaws". This is to distinguish them from my forebears, some of whom were catholics, but most of whom were not.

The "Catholic Culshaws" have long attracted our interest because their lives seem to run parallel to my forebears. On the 1841 census for Farington the two households were living very near to one another, and they continued to live close to one another for most of the nineteenth century. Our belief has always been that there is very likely to be a link between the two families, but we have not yet found it. If there was a link, it must be pre 1760.

Anyway, it was good to exchange trees with Valerie, and to make one another aware of our respective interests. Who knows, one day we may be able to link up our trees!

Another Genes Reunited contact was on the Hewitt line. In his Hawkridge tree Arthur has a certain Charlotte Hewitt, born Ardwick, Manchester in 1858. She was a sister of my great grandfather - Arthur Thomas Hewitt (1852-1915). I knew she had married a certain George Pratt in 1878 and that he had died before the date of the 1881 census, in April 1881. What I didn't know was that she then married John Frederick Hawkridge (b 1851 at Derby) with whom she produced four children. This intelligence set me off researching this clan, and I traced the births of their children and also the available relevant census entries (1891 & 1901). I also traced some army service papers re one of the sons of John and Charlotte - Thomas Hawkridge (b 1890).

Arthur lives in the USA, and has a most impressive Hawkridge pedigree.

These examples point up the benefit that can be gained from websites such as Genes Reunited. I don't keep up my membership long term, preferring to pay for a short term membership every now and again, but there is no doubt that the network of researchers on GR has grown a lot since I was last a member, a few years ago.

Among recent visitors to Geoffs Genealogy was Ronnie, my recently acquired contact in the USA. He is descended on the Clements line. Emily Jeans Clements features in the Bankes pedigree because she married Robert Hanham Collyer as a 16 year old girl in London in 1864. He was aged 50 at the time, and already married! After the couple had produced two children Emily evidently realised that her spouse's first wife was still alive, and sued for divorce - a very rare event in 1873. Anyway, the marriage was annulled in London. Robert Hanham Collyer said at the hearing that he had not heard from his wife for many years, and had believed her dead. I assume that this explanation was accepted by the court, because he was not imprisoned for bigamy. My last sighting of Emily in the records was on the 1881 census, when she was living at Camberwell, Surrey, with her two children, aged 15 & 14. I don't know what became of her after that. Her daughter, another Emily, married William Sleigh (I wrote about this marriage in this blog a year ago). I don't know what happened to the son - Robert L Collyer, who was born in France c1867.

Ronnie is descended from one of Emily's siblings, and has provided me with a wealth of material about the Clements family, including some lovely photographs. Obviously, the Clements line is not of direct relevance to the Banks pedigree, but I'm always delighted to receive information such as this, as apart from its intrinsic interest, it helps to put the characters who married into the Bankes descendants' lines into their context.

Thankyou Ronnie.

As if all that were not enough I've also had very enjoyable contact with Bankes descendants who are descended on the Welsh line from Joseph Rand, half brother of Bankes. I've long taken a great interest in the Welsh line, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Jan & I visit Carmarthenshire quite often, so are able to use the relevant local records quite easily. Secondly, this branch of the pedigree has within it a lot of very interesting people. On the whole they were quite prosperous people, so they have left behind them a decent quantity of records. Finally, my interest has been kept up by the fact that I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the people descended on the Welsh branch - and very pleasant people they have proved.

It has long been my aim to add a section on these Welsh Bankes descendants to Geoffs Genealogy, but as yet that ambition remains unfulfilled. So much to do, and so little time in which to do it. Still, hope springs eternal .....

Geoffs Genealogy Update 05 April 2008

2008-04-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit late writing this entry on my blog, so apologies for that.

Since my last entry the time has passed so quickly! We have had the earliest Easter holiday of my lifetime, which we spent decorating - a necessary evil. Just before Easter Jan & I went to Birmingham to see a Welsh National Opera performance of Verdi's Falstaff, with Bryn Terfel in the title role. What a treat this was. Terfel is the most fantastic Falstaff ever, I'm sure, and the rest of the cast were simply wonderful. The performance passed so quickly! The following week it was shown on S4C tv, who had recorded the performance in Cardiff, so we were able to enjoy it all over again. A real treat.

We are eagerly awaiting details of Bryn Terfel's Faenol Festival, to be held in North Wales in August. I keep on checking the website (every day!) but still no news!

Last week we went to Symphony Hall to hear the CBSO perform Beethoven's 5th Symphony under the baton of Louis Langree - an exhiliarating performance of a familiar but enduringly brilliant work. The programme also included a performance of Bartok's 3rd Piano Concerto, with soloist Andreas Haefliger. This, also, was wonderful.

Symphony Hall was only about half full for this performance, which was a bit surprising to me. The seats are not particularly expensive, and it seems to me sad that more people don't take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy such world class music in world class surroundings.

On the treeing front I've been as active as ever. I've had some very interesting contacts with people who have visited the Geoffs Genealogy website, and found something there that interests them. The research I've been doing over this period has mainly centred on the Heppell line, which I've mentioned several times on this blog - mainly last year.

Regular readers of this blog (yes - I assure you - there are some!) may recall that among my finds when I made my trip to London on 12 February was a probate entry relating to the estate of Anna Maria (Holt) Heppell, who died on 21 February 1866. This stated that her sole kinsman was her son, Richard William George Heppell, who lived at that time in a place called Dunkirk, Chautauqua County, New York state, USA. I thought I would see what I could find out about this man and his life in the USA, and this is what I have been doing of late - with quite good results.

First of all I found Richard and his wife on a couple of US censuses. I noted that on the 1870 US Census he was married to a lady who had, like him, been born in England. I also noted that the children of this couple had been born in New York, USA. I therefore surmised that they probably married before going to the USA.

I found Richard and his wife on the passenger list of the vessel City of London, which arrived in New York on 21 August 1866, indicating that they were, indeed, married before their emigration. This led me to trace their, marriage in the civil registration indexes - Richard William George Heppell m Harriet Sarah Houghton and the event was registered in the December quarter of 1865 in Pancras, Middlesex district registry.

I went on to look for family members on successive US census entries which are available online, which gave me a great deal of information, not only about Richard and Harriet and their ten children, but also about the families of their children. The finds I made gave me information that extends some branches of the research right through to 1930. I ascertained that Richard William George Heppell must have died between the 1900 and 1910 censuses, and also that his son - Richard H Heppell (b 1868) took part in the Alaskan gold rush which started in 1909. In 1910 he was enumerated as one of many miners in the goldrush town of East Nome.

I was very pleased with all this. I had found out so much interesting information that the fact that I had not found the deaths of many of these folk did not concern me too much. However, I decided to carry out an internet search for Heppell in New York and came up with a website that contains an index to the burials at Forest Hill cemetery, Fredonia, New York. This, I now know, was the burial place of many of the Heppell clan, and there they all were! Not only that, but the index includes some of the maiden names of some of the spouses of Heppell males, the names of the parents of many of the deceased, and the cause of death of many of the deceased. Fantastic!

All this information has been added to my records. Yes, I know, I should check the original source, but at the moment I do not have the means to do that ..... unless of course the LDS has filmed it.

Another avenue to pursue sometime. This treeing lark never stops, does it???

Geoffs Genealogy Update 07 March 2008

2008-03-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

When I signed off last time I said that in this entry I'll tell you about how Helen and I spent our afternoon in London on 12 February, so here goes ....

I have been visiting London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) at Islington for more than 15 years. and the venue has certainly seen some changes in that time. For a start, the name - when I first went there it was called the Greater London Records Office.

If you are researching family or local history in the Greater London area you are sure to need to visit LMA at some time. It holds a vast range of sources, including items as diverse as parish registers, directories, local authority records, photographs and the Middlesex Deeds Registers. At present it also holds the records usually held at the Corporation of London Records Office in the City of London, and these include the records of Freedoms of the City of London. It holds these records while the Guildhall in the City of London is undergoing some alterations, but they will be returning to their usual home in due course.

The LMA is, itself, in a period of considerable renovation at present, and in fact was closed for a period until a few weeks ago. More details about LMA can be obtained from the LMA website

When I go on a research trip I always take a long list of research jobs to do. I never manage to do anything like everything that is on the list, but I find that if I get fed up working on one area of research it is good to have a choice of other things to do. I find it good for morale to always come home with some sort of positive result - even if it is something that does not seem all that important to my research. I therefore make sure that my list includes a few "soft targets".

On this occasion I decided to look at the parish registers for Christ Church, Spitalfields, concentrating on the baptisms 1843-1875. I knew from the IGI that this record should include several entries relating to the Hazeltine and Winmill families. Adam Hazeltine was the first spouse of Mary Ann Smedley (b 1819), and George Winmill was her second husband.

Sure enough, I found the entries I expected. We should always aim to check entries found on the IGI against the original register, partly because it is always possible that the index entry contains an error, but also because the original entry may well contain information that is not shown on the IGI. In the entries I looked at I found out the father's stated occupation and the address of the household for each entry.

We also found the baptism, at St Thomas, Stepney in 1857, of William Thomas Archer, son of Samuel and (we assume) Emma Mayhew. Oddly, the mother was not named in this entry. We think that this was merely an oversight on the part of the vicar, as in the next entry the mother's name was also omitted. Very odd.

Helen and I looked for a number of other entries at LMA, without success. That was a bit disappointing, but our disappointment was tempered by the several good finds that I had made when looking at the Wills Calendars in the morning. We adjourned to Euston Station for a well earned burger meal and a punctual ride home, courtesy of Virgin Rail.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 17 February 2008

2008-02-17T08:06:00.001-08:00

Hello again.

I visited London last Tuesday, with my daughter Helen. Helen was on a business trip, and I was treeing, so we travelled down from Wolverhampton early in the morning then went our separate ways, meeting up again in the afternoon.

I had never before visited the offices of HM Courts Service at First Avenue House, Holborn, so I decided to use this occasion to rectify this omission. As is my wont, I took with me a lengthy list of items to research. I always set myself far too many tasks on these trips, but at least I never run out of things to do!

The system in operation at this venue is very simple. There are a series of racks containing quite large books. These contain the probate calendars, which list and summarise the Wills and Administrations dealt with by HMCR. They date from 1858, when the Church Courts ceased to deal with probates, to about 1995. There are a number of books for each year, and each year is split alphabetically. You simply find the book you need and look for the entry that interests you. If you find it you will probably want to annotate the details of the entry, but if you wish you can order a copy of the document. I ordered copies of three wills, which will take about a week to arrive by post, and cost me £5.00 each. It is also possible to obtain a copy will one hour after ordering it.

If you want to order a copy of a Will you need to complete a simple form and take the relevant calendar to an official, who checks that you have completed your application correctly. You then pay your money to a cashier, who takes your order for processing.

I imagine you are all agog, wanting to know whether I found anything of great interest. Well, in my three hours stay I managed to cover about 3/4 of my list. I'll mention a few.

As I expected, my poor old Smith forebears do not appear to have left wills - not even my mum's uncle Jim - James Archer Smith - who had his own businesses and was said by members of the family to have been quite prosperous.

I did have quite a number of successes, however. Ralph Hewitt (d. 1938) left a will, as did Caleb Oliver and his wife Alicia Blandina, who died in 1879 and 1897 respectively. Alicia was the daughter of Samuel William Archer (1790-1870).

I found records of the wills of Hannah Archer (1818-1904) and her brother Samuel Archer (1822-1889). I also was able to trace the probates relating to children of Thomas Hunt (1798-1897) and his wife Martha Mary Colam (1808-1861). They were Matilda Hunt (1831-1908), Esther Maria Hunt (1833-1911)

The most surprising information I found was contained in the probate calendar entry for Ann Maria (Holt) Heppell (c1817-1886), the widow of Richard Bryan Heppell (1812-1861). Her son and only next of kin was Richard William George Heppell, who was said to be living in Dunkirk, Chautauqua County, New York, USA. No wonder I had not traced his death in the UK records! I may be able to find him in the USA censuses online at Ancestry.

You can find all the above people on the tree at www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk.

Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you what the calendar entries actually tell us. Well, they follow a pretty set format, and basically tell us the name of the deceased, his or her address, the date and location of the death, the date and location of probate or admons, the name of the person to whom probate was granted and the value of the estate. In my experience, many of these entries contain as much information as the full will - but not always.

You can see these calendars on microfiche at many libraries or records offices in England and Wales, but the records at First Avenue House are more up to date, so if you want to see a record relating to more recent probate you will need to go there.

I spent the rest of the day at the revamped London Metropolitan Archives. I may tell you about that next time.

Good hunting.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 January 2008

2008-01-30T12:23:00.000-08:00

Hello again.

Since I last made an entry on this blog the focus of my activity has been preparing the March edition of the Shropshire Family History Society Journal. It is now just about completed.

I wonder how many of the people who read this blog are members of a family history society. I've mentioned this old chestnut before, in previous postings. In my opinion it is well worth joining at least one society. In addition to Shropshire FHS I also belong to East of London FHS, as I have research interests in that part of London.

SocietyMembership enables you to avail yourself of the knowledge and expertise of your fellow members in many different ways. It may also bring you in touch with other people with similar research interests to you. If you belong to a society that is local to you you will be able to attend its regular meetings (usually monthly), meet people and listen to a talk on a family history related topic. Furthermore, family history society members all over the country have produced a great many indexes to the nominal records that we use in our research, and made them available in various forms. Without them, your research would undoubtedly be much more difficult.

As if that were not sufficient, many societies run coach trips to record offices that may be difficult for you to get to under your own steam. In my case, the Shropshire FHS runs trips to The National Archives. True, you have to get up early to make the trip, but once that ordeal is behind you you can look forward to a pleasant ride to Kew, followed by about six hours of research and a sleep on the way home! What could be better?

The next such trip is in May, and I shall soon be reserving my place on it.

Apart from working on the SFHS journal, in the past couple of weeks Pat and I have carried out a bit more Guyatt research, and resolved a couple more conundrums. I've had some more contact with a lady who is a distant cousin of Jan on her Maliphant line, and exchanged a couple of emails with an researcher whose interests encompass the Collyers and Sleighs.

Both of our sons have celebrated their birthdays in the past ten days. In the case of Alex it was his 21st, so we went out to a local hotel for a lovely family meal.

As if that were not enough, on a sodden Saturday a couple of weeks ago Jan and I went to Shrewsbury Music Hall to enjoy our first concert of the year. Swansea City Opera are a small, touring company, and we've seen them perform twice previously. This time they performed Mozart's The Magic Flute, and it truly was a very good show. It always amazes me what a good sound this company's musicians produce from the half a dozen instruments that they bring on tour, and the singing was of a very good standard. All in all, a very good evening - and a packed house as well!

Our next musical outing will be in March, when we go to Birmingham to see Welsh National Opera perform Falstaff. Bryn Terfel is scheduled to perform the title role, and as both Jan and I love all things Terfel we simply can't wait for this outing! We pray that the great man doesn't lose his voice on the day!

That's about all I've got to say tonight, so I'll sign off for another couple of weeks.

Happy hunting to you all!

Geoffs Genealogy Website Updates - 13 January 2008

2008-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday Helen and I put a series of updates on to the Geoffs Genealogy website, as the latest stage of our ongoing updating process. Over the past few weeks I have been through all the pages of text on the site and amended them so that they are up to date as of now. In most cases this has involved the correction of a few errors (typos mainly), the addition of an odd sentence or paragraph of text, the changing or addition of a date here and there, and appropriate additions to the references pages.

In the case of the webpage Arthur Ackland Hunt - Artist the changes made are quite significant. Firstly, courtesy of Richard Bradley, I am able to share with you two wonderful photographs - of Arthur Ackland Hunt and his wife - Emma Sarah Blagg.In addition to this, I have added a newspaper report of the marriage of Arthur and Emma in 1879, an image of one of the Blagg family homes in Cheadle, and a short section of information about the Blagg family.

As readers of this blog will know, I am in the process of gleaning information about the Blaggs from the Cheadle parish registers, and I hope that eventually I shall be able to expand my coverage of this family.

On the Thomas Hunt, Doctor page the main addition is a superb image of the doctor himself, which I only received last week. Again, my thanks to Richard Bradley for allowing me to share this picture with you.

I have added quite a large number of websites to the Geoffs Genealogy Links page, and hope that you will find them to be useful and informative. I try to include a wide variety of relevant links - some well known and others not so well known - and also confine myself to sites that I consider to be reliable sources of information.

I have tried to bring the Geoffs Genealogy tree completely up to date, but not quite made it, I'm afraid. If you have sent me some material and you can't find it there I apologise. I shall be beavering away over the next few months, trying to correct any such omissions. I have to say, however, that I have added a great deal of information to the tree, and I hope that visitors to the site will find it even more interesting than previously.

Among the areas of the Geoffs Genealogy Tree that I have expanded significantly in the last year are the following:

Archer
My thanks to Brenda for sharing her information with me. Thanks to her the Archer section of the tree is greatly expanded, and includes information on the line down from Thomas Archer (1786-c1866) the brother of Nathan Archer, my ancestor.

Heppell
Charles Heppell married my great aunt - Alice Victoria Smith - in 1891 at Shoreditch, and thus the Heppells became part of my family tree. I was greatly surprised when I started to look into the Heppell family history and found that they came from Sunderland in the North East of England. There is much still to be discovered on this line of research, but I have made a fair start, I think.

Smith
My mother's uncle Jim was James Archer Smith (1877-1957), who I knew had married a lady named Ophelia. That was as much as I knew up to a year ago, but after digging into Ophelia's life story I find that she was born Ophelia Eliza Florence Worthy in 1865. She married a certain William Henry Kerr in 1882 at Bethnal Green, had seven Kerr children, and was widowed sometime between 1896 and 1901. She then married mum's uncle Jim and died in 1928 at Hoxton. I have no idea whether or not mum knew all that; I found the reserach quite fascinating, and wrote about it on my blog during the period February - March 2007.

Next I need to inveestigate James Archer Smith's second marriage, but for now I've added theinformation about Ophelia to the tree.

Culshaw
My thanks to Chris Marshall for sharing with me her information about her line of descent from Benjamin Culshaw (b 1828) and his spouse Barbara Blackwell (b 1828). This has added a great deal to my Culshaw family tree. I still have more of Chris's information to add, as she has sent me some material relating to her Heaps ancestors. Hopefully I'll manage this during 2008.

Sleigh
Early in 2007 I was contacted by a Sleigh descendant of Robert Hanham Collyer(1814-1891) and his wife Emily Jeans Clements (born c1847), and the tree now includes some information on this line.

Da Costa
I spent some time during 2007 researching the Da Costa family, using civil registration indexes and censuses. I made great progress, and have therefore been able to add quite a lot of information to this brance of the pedigree. In case you are wondering, around the turn of the 18th-19th centuries two of the daughters of William Hunt (b 1763) married two Da Costa brothers. I now know that one of them - Antonio Da Costa - was the Brazilian Vice Consul during the mid nineteenth century.

Benzoni
Thanks to Ted George in Australia I have been able to add quite a lot to our knowledge of this clan, and that is reflected in the tree. Ted's forebear - Albert George Benzoni -
dropped the "Benzoni" and adopted "George" as the family surname, hence Ted's surname. I mention this in case you wonder why I show the surname of some of the people on the tree as "Benzoni/George".

Guyatt
This was my genealogical highlight of 2007, and was the subject of a number of entries on my blog. This time last year I was completely stuck on my Guyatt research, and had been so stuck for about ten years. Now I'm again stuck - but not at the same point! I'm eagerly seeking the next breakthrough, and hoping that it is not another ten years away! Visitors to the Guyatt section of the tree will find much that is new there. What I now need to know is the birthplace of my John Guyatt, born about 1784 and maried to Hannah Wright in 1817 at High Wycombe. Any offers?

My grateful thanks to my cousin, Pat, for all her help in sorting out the various conundrums that came to light in researching William Freeman Guyatt and his family. We finally got to the bottom of it all, and uncovered some wonderful material. I shall be working towards incorporating it into Geoffs Genealogy as soon as I can.

Whilst researching the Guyatts I was also able to develop the Smedley family history a little. Much remains to be done on this, but the new information is included in the tree, and I hope that we shall learn more before too long.

And more besides
In addition to the above I have added much to many other areas of the Bankes pedigree, using online records - mainly census returns and civil registration indexes. This is a stage in my ongoing effort to "dot the Is and cross the Ts" as much as possible, and I shall continue with this work during 2008. My approach to this is a bit random - I just tend to pick on an individual on the tree and see what I can find.

I think that more or less covers the latest batch of updates. I hope you will find something of interest in Geoffs Genealogy. If so, please let me know, and if you think you may be able to help
add to our knowledge I shall be highly delighted to hear from you.

Geoff's Genealogy Update 30 December 2007

2007-12-30T08:36:00.000-08:00

Another Christmas has come and gone. All that planning and it's over in a trice! I hope you had a good time, and will enjoy a happy new year.

2007 has been a good year for Geoffs Genealogy. Lots of new contacts made and new information discovered. My sincere thanks to everybody who has played a part in the successes of this year; I'm sure there will be more in 2008.

I've started preparing material to update http://www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk/. So far I've re-vamped the Arthur Ackland Hunt page to take account of material received since it was set up, two years ago. I've also updated the page on Thomas Hunt, Doctor, although in that case there is not as much new material to take account of. I have decided that I shall upload all the new and updated pages together, so there is nothing new to see at the moment. Progress will be delayed over the coming weeks as I have to work on the next edition of the Shropshire FHS journal, but I'll get the job done as soon as I can.

Whilst I've been reviewing the new material re Arthur Ackland Hunt I reprised the marriage of his daughter - Amy Winifred Hunt - to Rev William Starkie Shuttleworth. This marriage took place in 1911 at Salisbury Cathedral. Although Amy's groom was not a Bankes descendant in the strict sense, I think it good to have a look at his background and thus get a feel for the social circles in which the Hunts moved. As William was a clergyman in the Church of England I was able to learn quite a lot about him by consulting an appropriate issue of Crockford's Clerical Directory. This told me of his graduation from Cambridge University as an MA, his entry into the ministry, and his various postings. Furthermore, as he graduated from Cambridge I was able to look him up in another invaluable volume - Alumni Cantabrigienses compiled by JA Venn, Cambridge (1953). This repeated much of the material found in Crockford, but added information re William's parentage, his marriage to Amy, their address in Salisbury, and the date of his death.

Using the information I had gained from Crockford, I was able to trace William Starkie Shuttleworth on some censuses. I also traced his first marriage and the death of his first wife, which occurred in 1904.

Finally, I found an entry on a Rootsweb mailing list at http://archiver.rootsweb.com/ which was posted in 2000 by a certain Murray Shuttleworth. This includes a list of Shuttleworths who were descended from Henry de Shuttleworth (born about 1300 at Shuttleworth Hall, Hapton, Lancashire). You will not be surprised to learn that the list includes our man - William Starkie Shuttleworth, born 1839.

Of course, I would want to research Murray Shuttleworth's information before assuming that it is correct, but it does seem quite possible that Amy Hunt's spouse was a member of a very notable family.

You never know where this treeing lark will take you, do you?

Geoffs Genealogy Update 12 December 2007

2007-12-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

Blog time again.

Christmas is now less than a couple of weeks away, and I think I'm more or less up to speed with that. The main mailing of cards have been sent, and the pressies have been bought. In the next few days the Christmas Tree will be set up at chez-Culshaw and we will then really know that yule time is with us. I'm looking forward to seeing my brother again, as I don't see him very often. It will be good to be able to relax for a few days with the family.

We are well into the UK winter now. Personally, I can't wait for the longer daylight hours to return. There are aspects of winter that I like - football, for instance, but for me the worst aspect of that season is the shortening of the daylight hours. I cannot wait for 21 December to pass, so that we can start moving towards the Spring.

You will not be too surprised, I'm sure, to learn that during the past couple of weeks I've been busy on the treeing front. I think I mentioned in my last notes that I was recently contacted by an Australian member of the Benzoni clan, and this has led me to spend some time working on this branch of the Bankes pedigree. The Benzonis hailed from Italy. Some time in the first part of the nineteenth century they made their way from Italy to London, and Charles Benzoni (b Como, c1811) married a Bankes descendant - Eleanor (Brannon) Crow (b London c1809). Eleanor was descended from Ann Deane, half-sister to John Bankes. They went on to have four children, and Ted in Australia has kindly sent me details of his descent from these people. Ted, if you are reading this, I am working on the printouts you sent me and will contact you again when I've updated my records.

Last week we also exchanged emails with a South American Sayer researcher who lives in Colombia. The Sayers are on Jan's part of the tree. Samuel Sayer (circa1799-1866) and his wife Elizabeth Utting (b circa 1803) emigrated from East Anglia to Colombia in the nineteenth century and many of his descendants are avid family history researchers. It is always a pleasure to hear from them, and we were delighted to add a new contact.

I have also been delighted to hear recently from a Culshaw researcher. Alas, her research was not on my line, but I was delighted to be able to put her in contact with a very long-standing friend and fellow Culshaw researcher, whose research does link to hers.

I still have a lot of material to work through that was sent to me by Chris a few weeks ago. I've mentioned Chris before. She is another Culshaw researcher, whose research does link to mine. She sent me "Heaps" of material about the Heaps branch of her family, and I'm looking forward to working my way through it.

On the Guyatt front Pat has done some really great research, which has resulted in us obtaining some fantastic information about the branch of the clan that spent some time in Plymouth and served in the British army. I am looking forward to studying the latest material in the next few days. I have mentioned this research avenue before, but not elaborated. I'm doing the same again - not that I want to tease you; rather because it would take a long time for me to explain this research properly, and a blog does not seem the appropriate place to do that. If any of you would like to know more about this research please contact me through the link on http://www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk/ and I'll be pleased to tell you about it.

I also have a number of other items of research that I need to get to in the new year, so there's no sign of the pace slowing in the near future.

At this time of year I am usually beavering away, preparing the next lot of updates to the website. Alas, this year I am all behind. I haven't started yet!

I have plans for some new pages,and some significant amendments to existing pages, but at present I can't say when they will enter cyberspace.Sorry about that. It's going to be a case of "watch this space", I'm afraid. Hopefully we may be able to get an updated tree in place on the site before too long, however.

That's it for now. See you in another couple of weeks.

Have a very happy Christmas and a happy & healthy new year.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 28 November 2007

2007-11-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

The pace of research doesn't show any sign of slowing. In the past couple of weeks I've had the good fortune to receive a lot of information to add to our ever-expanding archive. I'll briefly describe it now.

Firstly, from a Bankes descendant in Australia I received some information on the Benzonis, which brings one branch of that line that line down to the present day. It appears that this particular strand of the Benzoni clan changed their surname to George at sometime between 1912 and 1930. Neither I or my correspondent know why this was done. Possibly something to do with wanting/needing to adopt a more British persona. Who knows? Any suggestions would be very welcome.

I've mentioned previously that I have been in frequent contact over the past few months with a descendant of Arthur Ackland Hunt (1841-1914) and his wife, Emma Sarah Blagg (1838-1896). A couple of weeks ago I visited Stafford Records Office to take down the first tranche of Blagg data from the parish registers for Cheadle, Staffs. This covered approximately 1780 to 1840 and whilst it did not bring to light much in the way of new information, it confirmed data we had already ascertained from the IGI. It is always advisable to check events that appear in indexes in the parish registers. We are all prone to error, and indexers are no exception to that rule. Thus a check of the register may bring to light an mistake. Also, sometimes parish registers contain additional facts that add to your knowledge, but cannot be indexed.

It will take a number of visits to the records office for me to complete the collection of Blagg entries in the Cheadle records, and as I don't go to Stafford all that often this work will probably be ongoing for some while.

As I was concentrating my attention on this, an email dropped into my inbox which came from my Hunt correspondent, and contained what to me was great treasure. I received two beautiful photographs - one of Arthur Ackland Hunt and the other of his spouse. They are truly wonderful pictures, and I am absolutely thrilled to receive them. I've said this before, I know, but I'll say again how wonderful it is to see photos of people who previously only appeared as names on a pedigree. The ability to "put a face to a name" certainly personalises our research no end - and brings it to life. Thankyou, Richard.

During the past couple of weeks the ongoing Guyatt work has prospered - thanks almost entirely to the efforts of my cousin, Pat. She has established that the branch of the clan that were enumerated in Devon on the 1881 census served in the army. William Freeman Guyatt (b 1847) was a Gun Maker by trade, and appears to have signed up with the Welsh Fusiliers as an Armourer in the late 1870s. It appears that after his death (sometime between 1881 and 1891) and his wife's death (in 1890) his sons were taken into the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea, and they subsequently served in the army.

There is much still to learn about these Guyatts, but the information that Pat has already uncovered in the past few weeks has proved extremely interesting.

Last week Jan and I went to Symphony Hall in Birmingham to attend a CBSO concert. The weather was atrocious - heavy rain and wind etc - and the traffic jams on the way made us wonder whether our journey was really worthwhile. We needn't have worried. We were treated to a fantastic concert. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto was performed with consumate skill and gusto by Christian Tetzlaff, and the orchestra - brilliantly conducted by Edward Gardner - gave superb performances of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and Mahler's 1st Symphony. What more could we ask for? What a shame the hall was 1/3 empty.

We are so lucky to have an orchestra of the quality of the CBSO available to us, and a fantastic venue like Symphony Hall. Here's to the next time!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 14 November 2007

2007-11-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again. Here in the UK the nights have well and truly drawn in; the weather is colder the clocks have been turned back an hour and the garden has been tidied up. Christmas looms on the horizon and the shops are getting busier. I think there is a good case to be made in favour of hibernation - in fact I've probably just made it! Still, these colder, darker evenings are the perfect time for a bit of family history research on your computer.

In the last couple of weeks I've completed (for now) the Archer research I've been doing over the past couple of months. When stuck together the resulting family tree extended pretty well across our lounge - a most impressive spectacle! I hope that Brenda was pleased with it - I certainly enjoyed working on it.

I had a nasty shock on Sunday, when I realised that my memory stick must have been in my shirt pocket when that garment was consigned to our washing machine! Oh my goodness; I had done a lot of work on a local history project and not saved it to my computer. I cursed my stupidity and prayed!

The memory stick was found in the washing machine and with bated breath I slotted it into my computer. Nothing. The computer did not register its presence in the usb port. Oh dear - all that work lost due to my failure to make sure the data was secure!

But salvation was at hand in the form of my resident genius, aka younger son. He told me that when the memory stick dries out properly it may prove to be ok, and sure enough, that was the case! Last evening I was able to see all my precious data on the computer screen. Thank goodness! Much as I enjoy local history research I did not really want to reprise a couple of months' work.

The moral of this tale is that we should always back up our data. I hope that this near escape has taught me a lesson, but knowing me I'll probably regress again at some time.

Thanks to some help from my cousin Pat we've partly cracked the problem of the Devon Guyatts. I'm not sure whether or not I've mentioned this particular problem before, but in case not it concerns the existence on the 1901 census of a youth named Alfred Guyatt in the household of Rowland Simmonds and his wife, Caroline nee Guyatt. Who was he?

Well, we think we have found the answer, but have a little more work to do to clear the matter up beyond all doubt. I won't go through it in detail here, but if any of you are interested in this poser please feel free to drop me an email and I'll explain it to you.

More developments. Thanks to a contact made via the website http://www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk/ Jan has made contact with a distant cousin on her Carmarthenshire Richards line. The gent in question still lives in the area inhabited by his forebears in the nineteenth century; lucky fellow. Carmarthenshire is a truly beautiful part of the UK.

I've booked a microfiche reader at Stafford Records Office for a couple of hours this coming Saturday, so that I can check the Cheadle, Staffs registers for Blagg events. I mentioned the Blaggs in previous posts a while ago. They were a prosperous midlands family, one of whom married into the Hunt family and lived the rest of her days in Kidbrooke, now in south east London but then in Kent.

Finally for today, have you noticed that the non-conformist non-parochial records held by The National Archives in classes RG4 and RG5 have now appeared on the web? They can be seen at http://www.bmdregisters.co.uk/. I have already used these records extensively at the Family Records Centre, as quite a number of Bankes descendants were non-conformists, but I shall certainly be making good use of this resource in the future.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 29 October 2007

2007-10-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know I'm late with this post. I'm sorry to have disappointed my avid readers over the past few weeks, but I simply have not found time to post until now. How hectic life is for a treer!

What have I been doing since I last posted to this blog?

Well, I've attended two family history fairs- at Shrewsbury and Telford - and I've been editing the next edition of the Shropshire FHS Journal - due out in December. On top of that I've been obeying the edict of Voltaire and concentrating on my garden. There is so much to do in the garden in the autumn, and I've been assiduously tidying things up for the year. In fact the weather in the UK is quite warm for the time of year, so my plants have gone on flowering through the autumn. A lovely show. All ripped out now, though.

On top of all that I have been working hard on my family history records. I have had great fun these past few weeks on a number of activities. Firstly I updated all my Culshaw information, and then had the delight of receiving some lovely Culshaw photos from Chris. Wonderful! I've mentioned previously how much delight I get from seeing photos of people whose names appear on my family tree and this was joy unabated! I'm sorry to say that photographs are an area where my records are severely lacking - my family simply don't seem to have kept any. Most disappointing, but I truly treasure the pics that I have.

I've spent much time working on the Archer records. It had been my hope that by the time Brenda returns from Canada I would have completed this work and sent her my tree, but I'm afraid I have failed to meet this deadline. However, I'm not too far away from completing the task, so I hope it won't be many more days before I can commit a package to the post. Sorry Brenda, if you are reading this.

I think I mentioned , a few weeks ago, that we were planning to visit London and enjoy a tour of the new Haberdashers' Hall. Well, Helen and I did, indeed, go to London a week ago but, alas, were not able to go to the Hall. This was because the Haberdashers' Company received a late booking for the hall, and it was being used for a function on the day. This was a big disappointment for us, but we hope to be able to go to the metropolis next Spring, and maybe then we shall be able to visit Haberdashers' Hall.

Having got over that disappointment we put our time in London to very good use. We went to Guildhall Library and consulted some parish registers and probate records, gathering a clutch of Archer entries which in part confirmed Brenda's work, and in part added new information. Having enjoyed success at Guildhall Library, we hurried off on the tube to Islington and visited London Metropolitan Archives, where we enjoyed further success. I was able to see a couple of entries in the Middlesex Deeds Registers that related to the property transactions of John Bankes. Neither of these gave me any more genealogical information, but were further grist to the mill. We also found a number of parish register entries relating to our research on the Collyer, Smedley, Heppell and Hunt lines and the apprenticeship indenture of Samuel William Archer (1790 - 1870). This last record held a bit of a surprise insofar as Samuel, who was a Watch Maker, was a Freeman of the Baker's Company. I realise that Freemen did not necessarily have to be free of the Company strictly related to their trade - after all, John Bankes - a Carpenter and property dealer - was a Freeman of the Haberdashers' Company - but it certainly seems a trifle odd to me that a man who served his time as an apprentice watchmaker became a Freeman of the Bakers' Company. This situation seems to have arisen because Thomas Ward, Samuel's Master, was himself Free of the Bakers' Company, so presumably the same applied to all his apprentices.

It all goes to show that we never know what the next treeing discovery will bring. Life truly is full of surprises!

After a burger on Euston station we made the journey back to the midlands, arriving at home a bit tired, but thoroughly satisfied with our efforts for the day.

I think that is an appropriate point at which to close for tonight. Happy hunting to you all!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 8 October 2007

2007-10-08T05:27:00.000-07:00

Time for another post.

I'm glad to say that my treeing activities are as busy as ever - busier maybe! The problem is how to keep up with it all!

In the past couple of weeks I've done some more work on the Culshaw material that I mentioned in my last entry. You will be able to see the additional content when I next update my website www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk. I'm hoping that I shall be able to do this just after the new year, but am struggling to get all the material ready in time.

I've had some more information from Brenda on the Archer line, and am working my way through that at present. I find this line very interesting - many of the Archers were watchmakers, and I am having great fun trying to trace them on censuses. I think I've added one or two extra names to the tree, and I've certainly learned a lot about the family.

Brenda has also sent me some lovely photos, which I am delighted to receive. It is always wonderful to see a photo of somebody whose name appears in our records. It brings history to life!

I have had a look at the online index to Abney Park Cemetery, and am pretty confident that I've identified the burials of some of the Archers there. Another lead to investigate.

I think it may be possible to add to our knowledge of the Archers by looking in the Clockmaker Company records at Guildhall Library, London, or London Metropolitan Archives, and I hope that I may be able to have ago at this in the next few weeks. Livery company records have proved very useful to me in the past. Apprenticeship records can tell us the identity of the father of an individual, and his (or her) age at a given date. Additionally, if the person we are researching played a part in the activities of a livery company he or she may well feature quite often in the company records. For instance, this was true of John Bankes, who served on the Court of Assistants of the Haberdashers' Company.

My cousin Pat in Wales has done some research into the Devon Guyatts, and may well have found the answer to an outstanding conundrum, so I'm very grateful to her. She has also responded to my question in my last blog entry, and sent me some information relating to the Simpsons of Carmarthenshire, which is great. Thanks very much Pat, if you are reading this.

In a couple of weeks time I am hoping to make my first ever visit to the new Haberdashers' Hall in London, along with Jan and Helen. We are really looking forward to this trip, so hope that there are no last minute snags to prevent us going. I'll let you know how we get on.

Finally, I would just like to express my disgust at the impending closure of the Family Records Centre in London. This is going to make life much harder for most people travelling to London to carry out their research. The extra journey out of London to Kew will reduce the amount of time people have in which to do their research, and also add to their costs. Not only that, but we shall lose the ONS facility for ordering certificates in person. Unfortunately family historians are not a powerful lobby group, so have no influence on this particular Government cutback, but we do have our votes, to use when the opportunity arises!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 23 September 2007

2007-09-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

Hello again

It's been about ten days since my last post. In that time I have been working mainly on my Culshaw line - the first time I've done so for quite a time.

Last January I received a really great family tree from a Culshaw researcher. It adds a new chunk to my existing tree - showing the line down from Benjamin Culshaw (c1828-aft 1900) and his wife Barbara Blackwell (C1828-Aft 1891). Benjamin was a son of Thomas Culshaw (c1788-1864) and his wife Margery Cheetham (c1789-1876). He was also a brother of my direct ancestor - James Culshaw (c1834-1923).

I have had great fun studying the new information, looking for more information about the people concerned, and adding the new data to my tree. I've not finished the job yet, but will hopefully be able to do so in the forthcoming days.

My Culshaw research has been stuck at the same point for the best part of 20 years. I know that John Culshaw was born c1760 in the Ormskirk area of Lancashire, that he married Ellen Hesketh at Ormskirk in 1787 and that the couple had at least five children between 1788 and 1798. The family moved to Leyland some time before 1820, and later my direct forebears moved the short distance to Farington.

My problem lies in identifying the parents of John Culshaw (b c1760). There were quite a number of Culshaws in the Ormskirk area at the time, and generally speaking they were quite humble folk. I have not yet been able to find any records that enable me to identify the next generation of my ancastors. I have tried a search of the Culshaw wills, but that did not yield any useful information.

A further development this week was a contact from a Richards researcher who may well prove to be a cousin of my wife - Jan. This research is centred on Carmarthenshire. The omens are looking quite promising that her Margaret Richards who married David Simpson and lived at Glantowy, Llanegwad before dying in the 1840s may well be connected to our Richards clan, which also had associations with Glantowy, Llanegwad in about the same period.

If, by any chance, you think that you may be able to help us solve this conundrums, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 11 September 2007

2007-09-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went for a short break in Carmarthenshire. We were encouraged to do this by the prospect of going to the Proms in the Park concert in Singleton park, Swansea on Saturday (8th September), but we also took the opportunity to visit my cousin - Pat, and her husband John. We stayed at our favourite B & B, enjoyed fantastic breakfasts and some lovely weather. Went to a couple of places we had not previously visited, and spent a fascinating couple of hours looking at antiques. Do you think we were able to resist temptation in the antiques shop? Of course not!

The concert was great. Aled Jones was the compere, and the performers included two fine sopranos - Natasha Marsh and Rosemary Joshua - as well as that fine euphonium player David Childs (and his dad). We had a smashing time - lots of great music played by the BBC Welsh National Orchestra, and lots of audience participation. There's something about a crowd of Welsh folk in full voice!

There were many thousands of people at the concert on what was a lovely day. Absolutely excellent, and we hope that we may be able to repeat the experience (including the weather!) sometime in the future.

On the treeing frontI have received a lovely family tree from my newly found Archer cousin. I haven't yet had time to study it in depth, but it is apparent that it will add considerably to my knowledge, as I had no previous knowledge of this particular line.

Our Archers are an interesting family. My Nathan was a printer in London (1793-1845). He appears to have died a most unpleasant death - I certainly won't share the details of it with you - leaving behind a widow - Mary Ann (Stephens) Archer (1792-1885) and a daughter - Mary Ann Archer (b 1830). Mary Ann married a certain John Brown Smith. I have traced her on the 1881 census, living as a widow in Hackney, Middlesex, but have not yet managed to find out when and where she died.

Nathan's parents were Thomas Archer (c1752-c1810) and Hannah Bide (c1760 - aft 1809). Thomas was a watch finisher. I have a note of his apprenticeship (1763) but - wouldn't you know it? - it does not state his parents' names. Hopefully we may be able to extend the line back in time a bit sometime soon.

Nathan had a number of siblings, and my new found cousin is descended from one of them - Thomas Archer (1786-bef 1870).

I'll let you know how this research develops. As the records we need are likely to be held in London it is likely to be a fairly long term project for me.

Other than that I've reprised my Guyatt research and added a little more information. I had previously failed to find William Guyatt (bn c1823 at High Wycombe) and his family on the 1871 census. Now I know why. His surname was indexed on Ancestry as Geogatt. When I found him he was listed as a patient in St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Where were his children? I thought. Well, they were indexed as Guryutt and living together in a household in Hackney. Trust me, the census entries do not look anything like the names in the index. It just goes to show, once again, that we need to think laterally and try every search method we can think of when we search for our forebears in indexes.

Farewell for now - and happy hunting!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 29 August 2007

2007-08-29T04:05:00.000-07:00

I've spent quite a bit of time this week looking at the Blagg family of Cheadle, Staffordshire. Although they were (are) not Bankes descendants in the strict sense, one of their number married Arthur Ackland Hunt in 1879, and therefore the family feature on the pedigree. I had carried out some research into the Blaggs some time ago, and my interest in them has now been stirred again by the new contact I referred to last week, who is descended from Arthur Ackland Hunt.

The Blaggs were very prosperous people. They lived in Cheadle for most of the nineteenth century, and appear to have links to the Nottinghamshire Blaggs, who lived in the Mansfield area. Among the items I have managed to obtain are:

Transcriptive summaries of a number of legal documents relating to these people,
Census entries
Gravestone inscriptions
Biographical notes relating to a family member who was particularly well known.
A photograph of a sampler made by a family member in the nineteenth century
A photograph of the family home in Cheadle - sadly since demolished.

All this without leaving my keyboard. Amazing! You can see why I missed my internet access so much when it was denied to me for a few weeks.

The internet is a truly remarkable means to family history research, and we should all feel very grateful that we live in the internet age. It is important, however, that we treat the information we obtain with a degree of circumspection. The material I describe above comes from what I would consider to be reliable websites - Ancestry.co.uk, Nottingham University etc. I therefore feel pretty confident that it is accurate. However, not all websites are that reliable in terms of the quality of the information they display, so we shouldn't view them uncritically. This applies equally to my site - www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk . Although I try to be as accurate as I can in compiling the information that goes online I am as prone to error as the next person! If you spot any errors on the website I'd be grateful if you would let me know.

Further excitement this week - I've been contacted by a lady who visited the website and is descended from our common ancestors Thomas Archer and Hannah Bide, who married in London in 1794. She is therefore my cousin, and I'm very glad to hear from her. I look forward to exchanging information with her and furthering our research. I'm sure that we shall be able to help one another very much.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 20 August 2007

2007-08-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

I'm back!

At last I am able to resume posting to this blog!

If you have missed me over past four weeks, during which my internet services were not working, I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. I won't even try to explain why I was not able to receive internet & email services over this period. Suffice to say that although internet service providers are no doubt very good at what they do in normal circumstances, my experience is that they do not cope at all well when something unexpected happens.

Anyway, I'm back with a new ISP, so here goes ...

I spent ten days of the past four weeks on holiday. We went to Lake Garda in Northern Italy, and had a really super time. Jan and I were on the go for pretty much all of our sojourn in Italy - visiting places of great beauty and interest. Among our treats were visits to Verona and Venice - both quite superb cities. I'd love to go there again some time, but for now am grateful to have been to both places just for one day.

The main reason why we went to Northern Italy was to enable us to visit the ampitheatre in Verona and see an opera performed there. We did just that. We saw a fine performance of Verdi's Aida - lavishly produced and superbly performed. The only downer was the discomfort we - and the other punters - felt from sitting on the stone steps of the ampitheatre for five hours! Even the seat pad that we hired could not save our backsides from a quite uncomfortable experience. Next time we go we shall book reserved seats!

Also, since I last made an entry on this blog, the English football season has started. I'm back to my usual seat, supporting my local club, and enjoying that greatly.

I expect you are wondering whether we have had any interesting treeing developments these past few weeks. Well, as I have not been able to use the internet, and I haven't visited any records offices, you will understand that progress has been limited of late. However, there are a few items that I shall mention.

Over the past few weeks I have taken the opportunity to enter more records on to my family history software, and thus bring my records a bit more up to date. This has not generated any new information to speak of, but does mean that when we next update the geoffsgenealogy website there will be more information available to view on the family tree.

I had a letter from my cousin Pat, in Carmarthenshire. She told me off for not visiting her when we were down in her neck of the woods in May, and also sent me some very interesting material that she has gathered to add to the Guyatt research I have described in earlier postings on this blog. I shall be reverting to the Guyatts in the near future, and will certainly write to Pat very soon.

One of the joys of family history research is the contacts we get with fellow researchers who are interested in our lines of research. I have enjoyed two such contacts in the past few weeks. One was from a lady who is descended from Anne Deane, half sister to John Bankes, on the Fiveash line. We enjoyed an exchange of information which, I think, was of value to both of us. The other contact has occurred in the last few days. I have been contacted by a Bankes Descendant on the Hunt line. This person is descended from Arthur Ackland Hunt, the artist who features on my website. The Hunts are fairly closely related to my family, and I am delighted to have made contact with a member of that clan. We have already helped one another by exchanging information, and hopefully we shall be able to build on that in the future.

I'll keep you posted on these, and other developments as we go along. For now it is time for me to go to work, so I'll sign off until next week.

Geoff's Genealogy Update 30 July 07

2007-07-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, due to a technical problem, there will be no blog updates for the next few days. But all being well the blog will be back soon! Watch this space...

Geodffs Genealogy Update 19 July 2007

2007-07-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

Well, we were lucky! The open air performance of Much Ado about Nothing that we went to see last week passed off without there being a single drop of rain. I think we were so very fortunate. The next night it poured down!

The show was superb. Very well acted by a professional cast, and a good few laughs in there. Not as good as last year's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but by any other standards first class. Next year it will be a change from comedy to tragedy - Hamlet. I'm looking forward to it already.

The good news is that I have re-engaged my email from the Geoffs Genealogy website, so if you want to contact me you can. I will need to make some further changes to my email arrangements to try to prevent a similar ocurrance in future, but they will become apparent as they happen.

Not much has happened in the way of new treeing discoveries this week, but there is just one item worthy of mention. I have long yearned to find a family history event on the Bankes Pedigree that took place in Shropshire - my county of residence. Up to now I have drawn a blank on this, but last night - bingo! My wish came true.

On the Welsh line of the Bankes Pedigree (descended from Deborah Rand & John Price) we find a certain John Bankes Price (c1826-1897). A census entry had told me that that his spouse - Lucy Elizabeth - was born at Clun in South Shropshire, but up to last night I did not know her maiden name or the date and location of their marriage. Well, last night, courtesy of the Free BMD website, these pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. The lady's maiden name was Price - so her marriage involved no change of name - and the marriage took place in the December quarter of 1860 at ..... Clun! At last I have a reason to visit the excellent Shropshire Archives to add to my tree, and I shall do so as soon as possible. Of course, it has to be said that the Price clan were (are) only distantly related to my family, but nevertheless I'm quite pleased with this discovery.

That's it for now. Now back to that pile of data entry .....

Geoffs Genealogy Update 12 July 2007

2007-07-11T23:41:00.000-07:00

First the bad news. We have had to disable the email links on the Geoffs Genealogy website, so unfortunately if you send me a message via one of those links it will not reach me. The reason for this is that last Sunday some immensely clever person managed to send me 1800 returned mail messages. I know that once this has happened the volume of such spam is only likely to grow, so had no choice but to disable the address. This, I'm afraid, is the price you pay for using an email address on the web.

When we have time we will, no doubt, set up an alternative means of contact for visitors to the site to use, but that won't happen immediately. I'll keep you posted.

Of course, you can always contact me via this blog.

On the treeing front, not much to report this week. I completed my viewing of the High Wycombe baptisms at my local LDS Family History Center - noting all Wright entries back to 1750. To advance this research I need to look at some more films - marriages particularly. I'll get to that eventually, all being well. For now, I'm giving myself a few weeks off from visiting the LDS Family History Center. My search of this film confirmed, again, that my Guyatts were only at High Wycombe for a short time. I wonder where they were previously?

Most of my time these past few days has been spent working on the next edition of the Shropshire FHS Journal, which will be with the members in September. It's almost finished, and contains some good stuff.

I've also carried on updating my family history records with all the material we've discovered recently. The latest additions are the items I found when we visited The National Archives in May. Entries from the Calendar of Wills proved in the Principal Probate Registry.

Tonight we are off to see the open air production of Much Ado about Nothing at Stafford Castle. The weather doesn't look too great, but fingers crossed! At least the audience are under cover!

Have a good week.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 03 July 2007

2007-07-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

This has been a fairly quiet week on the treeing front. My only excursion was to the LDS Family History Center at Telford last Thursday, where I continued my progress working on the baptisms registers of High Wycombe.

I took the precaution of re-searching the entries dated from 1820 onwards, looking for Guyatt entries. I had already looked at this period during my visit to Aylesbury in April, but reprised it in case I had missed anything. Sure enough, there was one entry that had escaped my eagle eye the first time. It was the baptism of the first child of James Guyatt and his wife, Elizabeth. Caroline Matilda Guyatt was baptised on 14 September 1845, and was duly noted.

I am now as confident as I can be that I have recorded all the Guyatt entries from this record.

I then started looking for Wright entries prior to 1782, when Joseph Wright was born. So far I've got back to 1770, and noted twelve entries. Of course, it is unlikely that all the entries are relevant to my research, but if I note them all now some of them will probably fall into place when I get more information to link up with them. It seems likely that my ancestor was Joseph Wright, who married Elizabeth Atkins in 1782. I am therefore noting Atkins entries as well.

For my purposes it is encouraging that there appear to have been few people named Wright and Atkins in the registers at High Wycombe at the time I am interested in. Hopefully this will be an advantage in trying to trace my line.

That's all for now.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 26 June 2007

2007-06-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

The past week has provided much of interest.

Last Tuesday I was at a monthly meeting of the Shropshire Family History Society at the shirehall, Shrewsbury. While we were hearing a talk about the history of Shrewsbury Town Football Club and their now defunct ground - the Gay Meadow - all hell let loose outside! Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, and the rain came down with such force as is rarely seen in this part of the world. The lights went out for a short while, but our speaker manfully carried on!

By the time I left for home the rain had eased a little - it was by then only thrashing it down! The M54 motorway was awash, as were parts of Newport town centre. Not a good night to be driving! I was glad to get home.

On Thursday last I was booked in for a session at the LDS Family History Center. The usual venue is having some work done to its roof, so the Family History Center has been temporarily relocated in the new LDS temple at Lawley. What a magnificent edifice that is! It really stands out - being visible from quite a way off. A white building, built in what I would describe as a colonial style. The inside is also impressive.

The object of my research this time was the Wright family of High Wycombe. I had arranged the loan of a microfilm containing baptisms at High Wycombe 1782-1810, but in fact the film contains records from a greater time frame than that. I found the baptisms of the children of Joseph & Elizabeth Wright - nine of them between 1782 and 1802 - and then another, dated 1810. My ancestor - Hannah - was baptised in 1789. There seems little doubt that this is "my" family, as there were no other Wrights bearing the names Joseph and Elizabeth.

I shall return to the Family History Center this Thursday, and research this film further. I'm looking for any further Wright entries, as they may prove to be relevant to my research.

Last Friday evening Jan and I were looking after our grandchildren, and I passed away the hours by doing a bit of internet research, mainly on Ancestry.com. I looked at a couple of lines, but had the most success with the Heppells. I am quite amazed at the success I've had with this line of research since I started looking at it last Autumn.

On this occasion my main sighting was Richard Bryan Heppell (born 1812 in Sunderland). On the 1851 census I found him living with his spouse and two sons at Mile End Old Town, Middlesex. I then looked at the Civil Registration index and found his marriage, which took place in December 1837. His wife was Ann Maria Holt, born c1817 in Somerstown, Middlesex, and their marriage took place in St Pancras registration district. Furthermore, I traced both his sons in the births index, born 1838 and 1840 in Islington registration district.I then looked for the deaths of Richard and Ann. Free BMD told me that there were two entries for the name Richard Bryan Heppell, one in Sunderland in 1854 and one in Stepney in 1861. I pretty well knew that the 1861 entry would be my man, but needed to prove it to myself - after all, he could have moved back to Sunderland and died there. I therefore sought him on the 1861 census in Stepney, and I found him - albeit indexed as Keppell! There is no doubt that the man who died in September 1861 was the man I was interested in - the son of George Bryan Heppell (1777-1832). I wonder who the man who died in Sunderland in 1854 was. Probably a relation, I would imagine, as the Bryan name appears a number of times in "my" Heppells. I shall have to look into that.

All this leads to further questions (wouldn't you know it!). What became of the two boys, and when did Ann Maria (Holt) Heppell die? I haven't yet started to investigate the boys, but I have found a death in March quarter 1886 that may well relate to Ann. The age ties up, and the location was Stepney. However, I need to prove it, and if this was her it begs the question of where Ann was in the period 1861-1886? I haven't yet found her on the censuses.

Incidentally "my" Richard Bryan Heppell had a most interesting occupation. He was a Coal Meter. I had never before heard of such an occupation, so I looked it up on an online dictionary at www.thefreedictionary.com/Coal-meter. This told me that a Coal Meter was 'A licensed or official coal measurer in London'. Further information on Richard's occupation came from 'Coal Trade: Introduction' the Journal of the House of Lords: volume 62: 1830, pp. 1435-437. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=16568, which told me that:

'The Coal is heaved out of the Hold of the Ship into the Lighter under the Inspection of a Meter appointed by the Corporation of the City of London. He is entitled to have an Assistant. The Meter is paid Three Shillings a Day, and Three and Sixpence in lieu of Eating and Drinking, although generally the Captain invites him to Dinner.These Payments are in addition to Four-pence per Chaldron Metage, paid to the Corporation of London, out of which they allow One Penny per Chaldron to the Working Meter, and provide the Vats, leaving a Clear Annual Surplus of about £16,000, which is applied to the general Purposes of the Corporation, and to One Halfpenny per Chaldron paid the Meter by Government.

Evidently Richard had a very responsible job. I shall have to check whether there are any records of his employment in the Corporation of London archives.

That's about all for now, until next week.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 15 June 2007

2007-06-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

The fact that this is my first posting since 5 June is indicitave of the fact that I have been quite busy these past ten days. During this period I have made progress on several lines of research.

Firstly, on 7 June I went to the LDS Family History Center to complete my research into the Baptisms at Monkwearmouth, Co Durham, 1716-1823. I searched the last part of the microfilm, and found records of the baptisms of three of the children of George Bryan Heppell and his wife, Ann nee Liddle. These entries went beyond the basic information to record the birth dates of the children and their mother's maiden name. Very valuable information.

Having completed this research, I made a start on my next research enterprise - searching the records of baptisms at Newington, Surrey, for entries relating to my Smedley clan. I had already searched the IGI for these entries, and knew that the film should contain records of the baptisms of six daughters of William and Mary Smedley, so the discovery of these records was no surprise to me. What was a surprise, however, was an 'extra' Smedley baptism - their son, William, baptised on 20 January 1828. This came near the end of the register, after the girls' entries, and its discovery was quite a thrill. Once again, this register contained the birth dates of the children, and in the case of the entry relating to William, it included the annotation "Father deceased". I had surmised that William had probably died before the date of the 1841 Census, but here was a piece of information that narrowed down the date of his demise to within nine months! Especially valuable because up to the date of the introduction of Civil Registration in 1837 such events are often difficult to trace.

In addition to the above gleanings, I had some success on the Guyatt front. I mentioned, a few weeks ago, that I knew of a marriage at Eton in January 1844 between a certain James Guyatt and Elizabeth Holden. I believed that this James may have been the brother of "my" John Guyatt (bap 1827 at High Wycombe), but was surprised to see that he had strayed to Eton. Well, I ordered the relevant marriage certificate, which duly arrived the other day. As I had hoped, it showed that James was a hairdresser, and his father was John Guyatt, Carpenter. This fitted my man, but was not conclusive proof of his identity. However, the clinching evidence was the fact that the witnesses to the marriage were William Guyatt and Amelia Harding. Knowing that "my" James had a brother named William who married a lady named Amelia, I thought that this was probably the proof I sought. Sure enough, when I checked the Civil Registration Indexes online at Ancestry.com I found that in 1846 William Guyatt married Amelia Harding in London. Hey presto, two genealogical problems were solved by one document!

My research is "on a roll" at the moment! Hopefully, when I next update the blog I will have yet more progress to report.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 5 June 2007

2007-06-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

As the three microfilms that I had ordered from the LDS all arrived together last week I thought I'd better get stuck into loking at them, so last Tuesday I went to my local Mormons' Family History Center.

I decided to start with the film that contains late c18 to early c19 baptisms at St Peter Monkwearmouth, searching for Heppell events. See my previous posts re my Heppell research if you wonder what on earth I'm on about!

As I started searching I noted that the events were listed as births, rather than baptisms, and were grouped by family. In other words, you saw all the births for one family, all recorded together, then all the events for another family and so on. Thus, the events relating to "my" Heppells were all recorded in a cluster. In twenty years of treeing I've never seen baptisms/births recorded in this way. After a while the reason for this became clear.

The parish register for contains an annotation written by the vicar, which states that on 16 October 1785 there was a fire at the clergyman’s home, which destroyed the previous original registers. The records that had been lost were listed as follows:

Marriages up to 16 October 1785
Baptisms up to 2 September 1779
Burials up to 3 January 1768

The register of births (sic) was reconstructed by advertising for people who had been involved in baptisms at the church to bring the relevant documentation to the church, where it was re-recorded. Thus, births were listed by family. This certainly makes it easier to search the register, as once you find the first entry you find the lot. Anyway, after each family’s entries the informant signed a declaration as follows:

“The above details taken from a copy in my possession so witness my hand this 27 Day of June 1791 (signed) John Heppell"

John Heppell was the ancestor of my mother's cousin - Alice (Heppell) Wren, and he had a very fine signature indeed. If you can judge from the signature he must have been quite well educated. I discovered that he earned his living as a coal fitter, and, curious to find out what this term meant, I googled it. I discovered that a coal fitter was a “middle man” who arranged the sale of coal between the coal mine owners and the purchasers. As such, he was probably a bit above the ordinary working man.

I think I have now pushed my Heppell research back to the marriage of John Heppell to Mary Abbs at Monkwearmouth St Peter’s on 19 December 1768. Although I have only seen this record on the IGI I feel confident that this is the correct entry, because "my lot" seem to have been the only Heppells in the parish. Naturally, I looked on the IGI for a baptism of John Heppell, and here things became a bit trickier, as there were a number of candidates, none of whom were baptised at Monkwearmouth. My favourite would be John Heppell, baptised 28 Feb 1737 at Chester le Street – about 20 miles from Monkwearmouth, but I am probably wrong. The reasons why I favour this man are twofold, and highly suspect. Firstly, I note that John Heppell's son George Bryan Heppell’s first wife – Mary Fish – came from Chester le Street, and their marriage took place there. Secondly, of all the candidates listed on the IGI, the date of this man’s baptism best fits my idea of when I would expect our man to have been born.

I’m not sure how much further I shall pursue these Heppells. I’m very pleased with what I have achieved, and may decide to call it a day at this point. However, Durham is a beautiful county, and if Jan and I should once again go there for a holiday I would certainly not rule out a visit to the repository that holds the records for the county.

I shall return to the Family History Library on 7 June, to continue looking at these microfilms.

See you next week.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 28 May 2007

2007-05-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday (24 may) I went on a Shropshire Family History Sovciety coach trip to The National Archives, Kew. I always look forward to the society's coach trips as they present me with a valuable opportunity to enrich my family history research by dipping into the vast treasure of sources that are held at this repository. Over the years I have made some really important discoveries at TNA.

We had a good journey, and arrived at about 11 am. The first item on my list was a search for the World War One army service record of Walter Sidney Rook (1882-1918). Walter was the first husband of my mother's aunt - Phoebe Emily Charlotte nee Smith, and was killed in action in March 1918 at the Somme. He was a Sergeant, in12 Battalion, Rifle Brigade, and a recipient of the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM).

About 60% of the WW1 army service records were destroyed by Hitler's bombers during WW2, so I was not surprised to find that Walter's record was not on the microfilm I searched. This means that I shall not be able to develop this line of research in future - a great shame.

I had set out with another piece of research in mind which entailed using the records of HM Customs & Excise. These are held on microfilm, and if you can find your man's records you can find out an enormous amount of information about him. However, my reading of the instructions for this research led me to conclude that I would probably have had to devote the rest of my day to this work and I did not want to do that. I therefore shelved this work for a future date.

I decided to devote what little time I had left in the morning to searching the Probate Calendars 1858 onwards, looking for Bankes descendants. I concentrated on the Welsh Bankes descendants, all descecnded from John Price (c1720-1756) and his spouse Deborah nee Rand (c1721-1765). I won't subject you to a detailed account of this work. Suffice to say that Jan and I found nine relevant entries in the time available to us. Some of these people were seriously well off! One of them left an estate worth around £70,000 in 1847!

After a very pleasant lunch I went to the Maps Room to look at a Court of Chancery document I had ordered in advance of my visit. It was a Bill of Complaint issued in 1734 by George Bagnall, who was the Administrator of the estate of John Hales, one of the executors of the will of John Bankes (prob 1719). He was claiming against the Haberdashers' Company in London for monies that he said were owed by Bankes's estate to Hales and Sophia, Baroness Dowager of Lempster. Both Hales and the Baroness had made mortgage advances to Bankes.

Such sources require great concentration in reading them, as they are very large and contain a lot of "legal language". Although I had a couple of hours in which to look at this document and the reply by the Haberdashers Company, I only had time to jot down a few notes outlining its content. I shall spare you an explanation of the document. Suffice to say that it contained an outline description of Bankes's property at Nine Elms, Battersea, and told me that the property was known as "The Lottery". This may seem to you to be fairly inconsequential information, but I value it greatly. Apart from anything else, it may give me a lead towards finding out, at some future date, exactly where the property was.

I returned home in the evening feeling a little disappointed with the results of my day's work, as I had hoped for more. However, hope springs eternel, and I'll be back at Kew as soon as possible for more research.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 21 May 2007

2007-05-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday last, 14 May, I attended a monthly meeting of the Shropshire Family History Society at Shrewsbury, as I usually do on the third Tuesday of the month. The speaker gave a most interesting talk about Rev Robert Foulkes, a Shropshire parish priest who was executed for murder at Tyburn in London in 1679, after a trial at the Old Bailey. This tale has everything - sex, violence and hypocrisy - all the ingredients for an attractive tale! Added to that, the speaker gave us an outline of the main source he had used - the records of the seventeenth century ecclesiastical courts. These records contain witness statements by people who took part in legal proceedings, and provide a rare opportunity to hear the account of the ordinary man in the street (albeit after some amendment by the lawyers). Fascinating.

As a matter of interest if you want to read a transcription of the trial of Foulkes you can do so at www.oldbaileyonline.org. This is a site that I have used a number of times in researching my Jacobsons and Collyers, some of whom played a part in trials at the Old Bailey (as witnesses, you understand!).

As ever, I've been busily entering details of Bankes descendants into my database. I've just about completed work on the Guyatt and Smedley lines for now. Through the LDS I have ordered a microfilm of the parish register at Newington, Surrey, which will enable me to check out the entries I recently found on the IGI. These entries appear to record the early nineteenth century baptisms of the siblings of "my" Caroline Smedley.

On Thursday I am going on a coach trip organised by the Shropshire Family History Society to visit the National Archives at Kew, London. I have a great long list of items to search at Kew but, as ever, will not have time to acomplish more than a small proportion of them. Ce'st la vie!

I'll let you know how I get on next week.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 14 May 2007

2007-05-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

Once again I have spent most of my available time this week adding information to my family history database. I've been concentrating on adding the recently discovered Guyatt material, and have made good progress.

As a consequence of our recent visit to Buckinghamshire Records Office at Aylesbury I have obtained some more potentially exciting information regarding the family of Hannah Wright (c1789 - >1841), who married "my" John Guyatt at High Wycombe in 1817. The Bucks Family History Society has compiled a name index for the county. They have obviously carried out a very thorough trawl through the county's records, and against the name of each individual appearing in the archives they have logged the detail gleaned from each record. The result is a fantastic research tool; with luck, you can go directly to the information you want.

I should add that this index is not complete yet, but it is very extensive and if you have Buckinghamshire ancestry you really must make use of it.

Anyway, from this index I have gained a series or references relating to what seems to be "my" Wright family. From this I learn that Hannah's parents were probably Joseph Wright and Elizabeth Atkins, who married at West Wycombe on 8 July 1782. I have a list of what appear to have been Hannah's siblings. there were nine of them, born between 1782 and 1810.

This brings me to one of my favourite "hobby horses" (sorry!). If you are interested in family history you really must make use of family history societies. Join them, and avail yourself of the wonderful finding aids that they have produced. Typically, you may find that the society local to your research has produced census indexes, parish register indexes, indexes to quarter sessions records etc. All societies that I know of have members' interests database, and offer the opportunity for you to have your interests published in print or on the web - or both. Not only that, members will receive a society journal several times a year. This will contain a wealth of information - members' articles about their research, notices, members' interests and the like. As if that wasn't enough, you also get the opportunity to attend meetings of the society (usually held monthly) where you can meet other members and exchange experiences and ideas.

I have visited my local LDS Family History Center, and ordered the parish registers for High Wycombe on three months loan. The film may take a while to come, but when it arrives I should be able to view the actual records relating to the baptisms of Hannah Wright and her siblings, and thus add still more information to my records.

That's another facility you should make use of - your local LDS Family History Center. Your family history society will be able to tell you where your nearest one is, and how you can make use of it!

Geoffs Genealogy Update 8 May 2007

2007-05-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm a bit late in making this post. A number of events have conspired to bring this about.

Firstly there was a vital football match to go to on Saturday (5 May) - my team won, and gained promotion for the second time in three years! Brilliant. Non league football is so much more exciting that that Premiership stuff!

Then there was a very pleasant couple of days spent with my dearly beloved in Carmarthenshire. The weather finally gave out after a fantastic few weeks of summer-like conditions, but it was not too bad, and we have alovely time.

Whilst in Wales Jan and I passed through Lampeter, in Cardiganshire. As I'm sure you will understand, a treeing addict like me could not resist calling on some Bankes descendants who are buried in the churchyard at Lampeter. We spent an interesting hour checking on gravestones, and collected some promising looking monumental inscriptions, viz:

John Price (c1796-1851) of Lampeter and his wife Mary (nee Price) (c1804-1869) were in one grave, with several of their children. In another grave was one of their sons - David Price (1831-1911), his second wife Anne (nee Jones) (c1838-1921) and their daughter Mary Ann (nee Price) Evans (c1882-1966).

Further over was the grave of Hugh Bankes Price (1865-1933) and his spouse Elizabeth Mary (nee Hayden) (d 1959). Sadly, this grave was in a very bad state of repair.

The last grave we found was that of a certain Marian Bankes Davies (1869-1940) and her spouse John Davies (1868-1951). They had at one time been resident at Cruc-y-Bar. To judge from the use of the Bankes name it seems likely that Marian featured on the Bankes pedigree, but at present I can't fit her in. If anybody reading this knows who this lady was I'd appreciate an email via my website www.geoffsgenealogy.co.uk

I know it's a bit of a long shot, but in this fascinating hobby you never know where the next bit of information is coming from.

I'll now revert to entering all that Guyatt data into my computer. See you next week.

Geoffs Genealogy Update 30 April 2007

2007-04-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm pleased to say I was right!

Last week I told you that I believed I had cracked the problem of pushing the Guyatt family history a bit further back in time. If you recall, I had sent for a birth certificate that I believed would prove that Rosa Hannah Guyatt (b 10 Dec 1849) was the daughter of John Guyatt and his wife Caroline (nee Smedley). I'm pleased to report that the document fulfilled my expectations! This being so, we had established that "our" John was born c1826 at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. His spouse was born c1822 at Walworth, Surrey.

Armed with this information I have obtained a veritable plethora of Guyatt and Guyatt related census entries, which I am sorting through slowly but surely. I have also noted a number of Smedley baptism entries, all from the parish of St Mary, Newington, Surrey, which appear to relate to siblings of "our" Caroline Smedley. Obviously, I need to look at the relevant parish register to begin to substantiate this, and it may be a while before I can do this.

The censuses tend to show that the Guyatts moved out of High Wycombe after the mid nineteenth century. By using Ancestry.com I have tracked a number of them to London. In one case the family arrived in the capital via Norwich!

Boosted up by this success Helen (my daughter) and I made the journey to Bucks Record Office at Aylesbury on Friday. We were able to find the baptisms of John (in 1827) and his many siblings in the parish register. The same source yielded up the burials of several of the children, and also of their father - another John Guyatt. He was buried in 1837, aged 53, so was born c1784. Unfortunately we do not know where he was born, and as he died before the date of the 1841 census we cannot ascertain whether he was born in Buckinghamshire or not.

One strange thing was that although we were able to find the baptism of John (b c1826)'s brother, James Guyatt, we could not find this marriage, or the baptisms of any of his children. Very odd. Maybe he was a non-conformist? We have traced the family in census records, so we know that they existed!

Helen and I had a good day at Aylesbury, looking at a great variety of records and receiving great help from the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies staff. The unfortunate thing was that we were unable to track down any more generations of our Guyatts. It seems likely to us that they were only resident in High Wycombe for a short period.

Once again, this research has proved that our forebears were a very mobile lot! I know that many people assume that our forebears did not move around much, but our Guyatts well and truly dispel that notion.

See you next week.