Proving 4x great grandparents

I spent yesterday proving two of my 4x great grandparents. I had so much information on John Pincombe that it took me ages to enter all of it in to his Legacy file. Not so much on his wife Mary Charley (Charlie). Unfortunately the priest at that time had women sign with their new married name so I have no idea on how Mary would have signed her surname. The Charley family was located at Arlington, Kentisbury near Barnstaple and Combe Martin in this time period. The Hugh Charley at Arlington (wife Mary) is the father of the Mary Charley baptized 21 Sep 1735 and this would be a reasonable age for Mary. I do not yet know the connection between this Hugh Charley and the Charley families at Kentisbury and Combe Martin but they are all less than 10 miles from Barnstaple (Arlington is 6 miles, Kentisbury is 8 miles and Combe Martin is 9 miles). They are all in a northeasterly direction from Barnstaple (Bishops Nympton is 14 miles from Bishops Nympton). I have not yet found a Charley family living closer but the priest records that Mary Charley is of the parish (perhaps she was living/staying with a relative). John was 39 when he married and Mary possibly 32 in 1767. They had six children though between 1768 and 1778.

I need to look through all the parish registers to see if I can discover any more information on Mary Charley. She has been my brick wall almost from the very beginning as my mother knew her name from her father. She was my grandfather's grandfather's grandmother. By the time my 2x great grandfather was born both Mary and John had died. His father Robert was 28 when he married and my 2x great grandfather John was 26 when he married. Then my grandfather was 41 when he married thus making quite long generations.

As it turns out all of my grandparents were born in the 1800s - 1872, 1875, 1876 and 1886. My great grandparents were born in 1837, 1839, 1845, 1850, 1850, 1853, 1859, and 1859. My 2x great grandparents were born in 1799, 1801, 1804, 1804, 1805, 1808, 1810, 1820, 1824, 1825, 1825, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1830, and 1841. My husband has a 2x great grandparent born in 1764. The bonus is that we are not looking for information that is still private as we know the birth/marriage and death dates of our parents.

I carried on with my proving of 4x great grandparents and started pulling out material on Philip Rowcliffe and Martha Pearse. I have quite a bit on Philip as well with land records but I do not have the marriage lines for Philip and Martha because my South Molton fiche do not do the period past 1754 and they married in 1760 so I will need to locate that record at Salt Lake City. I will complete them today and hopefully move on to John Rew, Sarah Moggridge, Robert Siderfin and Grace Kent. I was trying to do four per day!

This is the day that my daughter gets her first fitting on her wedding dress. The dress is quite lovely and will suit her. My own dress is now complete - I have added carriers for the black velvet ribbon and we will see if she likes the 3 metres or reduce to whatever she does like. I just need to hem it and add a couple of tabs to the neckline and a hook and eye. I am letting it hang though to let the natural folds of the fabric express themselves. I will need to stem out one fold line although it is barely visible now.

I want to sew my new nightdress as well in the next little while. If I am happy with it I will buy another piece of flanellette and do a second one. I am also going to buy a pattern for an 1800s dress of a Scot woman for my Routledge ancestry. I will represent that line when we go to functions that need a costume. I want to make a new costume for my husband as well since I made the other one when I was working and I was not overly pleased with it. I have more time to do a proper job of finishing it.

Back to proving ancestors. This is the slow methodical part as one works their way back in each line. I have no idea how far back I can get except in some of the lines that readily go back into the 1400s others are hopefully stuck in the mid 1700s or even one line (one of my great grandmothers and my mtDNA line!) that is family lore only from the mid 1800s back. My mtDNA matches are from Argyll Scotland though which is very interesting. Hence my interest in doing a dress of a Scot woman which would represent my Routledge ancestry and perhaps others to be found over time.