Siderfin Family

Recently Mark Siderfin has taken over the Siderfin family one name study that I was leading. He is ideally located to do the study in far more depth than I could and I was very happy for him to take it on. I have finally begun the task of putting together the material that I have accumulated to submit to the Guild Archive and to send to Mark in case there is anything that I accumulated that he does not yet have. I still need to go through my Siderfin binder and scan any material that I have not yet scanned and then I will be ready to burn everything to a disc and send it off. I need to see if I can find a "Gold" DVD/CD as that is the standard that is desired for Guild archiving. That slowed me down earlier and I haven't had a chance to think about where I might locate such a disc. I shall concentrate on that and getting it all put together by the end of the month and mailed.

My Siderfin family ancestor was Elizabeth (baptized Betty but known as Elizabeth in her adult life) Siderfin (baptized 19 Jun 1759 at Wootton Courtney) and she married John Rew 30 Jan 1792 at Selworthy Somerset. She was buried 20 Dec 1828 at Selworthy Parish Church (in the burial register and her husband asked to be buried near her in his will of 1848). Her daughter Elizabeth Rew was married to John Pincombe and they were my emigrant ancestors to Canada in 1850/51. They left from Plymouth 20 Nov 1850 and arrived at the Port of New York 7 January 1851. Tales of their journey passed down through the family but I suspect they were greatly embellished possibly because of the death at sea of Thomas Pincombe and his entire family when they were coming to join them in 1855. Apparently food supplies ran low by the time they arrived and indeed their journey was a long one for the mid 1800s (48 days) given their point of debarkation was Plymouth so they were practically on the open ocean already. It was sufficiently harrowing that even with the opportunity Elizabeth could not be persuaded to return to England for a holiday. Her sons though returned to England bringing back the Red Devon cows for their farms.

Elizabeth Siderfin's parents were Robert Siderfin and Grace Kent who married 5 Feb 1752 at Selworthy with Robert baptized 23 Jun 1726 at Cutcombe and Grace baptized 25 Apr 1731 at Selworthy. It was the place of baptisms for both Robert and Elizabeth that eventually led to my disagreeing with the published book on the Siderfin family which linked my Robert back to the rather elderly Robert Siderfin baptized 9 Mar 1685 at Selworthy. Indeed, my Robert was the son of Augustine Siderfin who married Mary Davies at Cutcombe 29 Apr 1720 and taught school there for many years. Augustine was buried at Wootton Courtney 1 Mar 1762 which is more than enough reason for Elizabeth to be baptized at Wootton Courtney. Augustine in turn was the son of Robert Siderfin baptized 23 Aug 1658 at Selworthy and married to Elizabeth Question (marriage not yet located but proven by the will of her father Augustine Question where he mentions his daughter Elizabeth married to Robert Siderfin and his grandson Augustine Siderfin). This was another error in the book as Sanders' book has Robert married to Elizabeth Blackford. (History of the Siderfin Family of West Somerset by James Sanders, published 1910 private). A copy of this book can be found on my website.

My trek down memory lane has been an interesting one. I have kept fairly close tabs on my Siderfin family because of the study and will leave any further querying to the special day for the Siderfin family to come in my calendar of review.

Over 300 MB of data on just this one family line and I have it ready now to burn to a CD to submit to the Guild of One Name Studies and the new manager of the Siderfin One Name Study.

That used up a good deal of my day and I didn't accomplish a lot more.