Newfoundland and Dorset/Devon

My siblings and myself (5 in total thus far) have quite a few matches with people whose families emigrated to Newfoundland in the past 300 years from Dorset and Devon. Some of these matches end up looking like 2nd to 4th cousin but in reality are more distant than that since I can not match them up with my known lines. As it turns out, I know my lines in Dorset and Devon back at least to my 4x and 5x great grandparents and further in quite a few of these lines.

Some of these surnames Butt, Jeanes and others are showing up on a regular basis. The Butt line I find especially interesting as a Butt researcher (research below attributed to this researcher for the most part) has traced our mutual lines back to Robert Butt who married Susan Cantrell (baptized 18 Aug 1585 at Winterborne Stickland) 13 Apr 1607 at Winterbourne Stickland, Dorset. This couple baptized eight children at Winterborne Stickland or other as mentioned below:

William Butt baptized Sep 1610
Jane Butt baptized 17 Dec 1611
Francis Butt baptized 27 Feb 1613 and buried 13 June 1623 at Winterborne Stickland
Robert Butt baptized 22 Sep 1616
Simon Butt baptized 27 Jun 1619
Thomas Butt baptized 31 Mar 1622 at Winterborne Houghton
John Butt baptized 28 Nov 1624
Francis Butt baptized 18 Feb 1626

Thomas Butt appears to be my ancestor and he married Elizabeth (unknown). Thomas was buried 16 Jun 1668 at Winterborne Stickland and his wife was buried 15 May 1687 at Winterborne Stickland. They baptized two sons at Winterborne Stickland:

William baptized 24 Aug 1665
Thomas baptized 10 Dec 1667

William, my likely ancestor, married Elizabeth Lemon 27 Jul 1696 at Winterborne Houghton and they baptized five children at Winterborne Houghton:

William Butt baptized 28 May 1697
Mary Butt baptized 15 Nov 1700
Elizabeth Butt baptized 3 Jun 1702 and buried 3 Jun 1702 at Winterborne Houghton
Thomas Butt baptized 5 Nov 1704 and buried 6 Nov 1704 at Winterborne Houghton
 John Butt baptized 14 Apr 1707

My likely ancestor William married Susanna Foster (baptized 10 Dec 1696 at Winterborne Stickland) 31 Jan 1729 at Winterborne Stickland. William Butt was buried 29 Jun 1774 at Winterborne Stickland and Susanna (Foster) Butt was buried 17 Feb 1775 at Winterborne Stickland. They baptized five children at Winterborne Stickland:

Robert Butt baptized 15 Feb 1731 and buried 3 Mar 1731 at Winterborne Stickland
William Butt baptized 6 Jan 1732
Susanna Butt baptized 6 Sep 1734
John Butt baptized 6 May 1736
Martha Butt baptized 16 Jun 1738

My likely ancestor John Butt married Mary Rolles (baptized 15 Apr 1740 at Wimbourne Minster) 9 Aug 1762 at Winterborne Clenstone. John Butt was buried 6 Jan 1820 at Winterborne Stickland and Mary (Rolles) Butt was buried 4 Mar 1811 at Winterborne Stickland. They baptized six children at Winterborne Stickland or other as mentioned below:

Sarah Butt baptized 19 Nov 1765
Joseph Butt baptized 24 Jun 1766
John Butt was baptized 11 Dec 1771 and buried 15 Sep 1772 at Winterborne Stickland
John Butt baptized 10 May 1776 at Winterborne Clenstone
Deborah Butt baptized 8 Jun 1783
William Butt baptized 18 Nov 1786

At this point my research is added into the research of this earlier researcher (and indeed I have verified all the dates above in the records now available online). My ancestor John Butt (baptized 10 May 1776) married Jean O'Ford (baptized 27 Jun 1773 at Milton Abbas) 14 Oct 1800 at Winterborne Stickland. John Butt was buried 6 Jan 1850 at Winterborne Stickland and Jean (O'Ford) Butt was buried 3 Feb 1848 at Winterborne Stickland. They baptized seven children at Winterborne Stickland or other as noted below:

Charles Butt baptized 25 Dec 1801
George Butt baptized 16 Oct 1803
Joseph Butt baptized 11 Aug 1805 at Winterborne Clenstone
Robert Butt baptism not located
Maria Butt baptized 18 Feb 1810 at Winterborne Clenstone
Bethaniah Butt baptized 5 Apr 1811 and buried 26 Nov 1811 at Winterborne Stickland
Stephen Butt baptized 12 Oct 1815

All of the lines of these siblings have been traced down by me mostly well into the 1900s thus leading me to deduce that the Butt family which we (my siblings and I) match in Newfoundland must be descended from the earlier branches of this family.

The Winterborne villages in Dorset all lie within a few kilometres of each other. It is a very quiet beautiful piece of Dorset and when we visited there was a low hanging haze over the valley looking down from the Church of St Nicholas at Winterborne Clenstone. Rolling fields stretched away in all directions from this high point. Has it changed very much? I suspect a good deal in some ways as there were more people in this area when my ancestors were there in the 1700s and 1800s and into the early 1900s. The wars perhaps changed that a lot but along with that the mechanization of agriculture rendered all those workers to be no longer needed in the agricultural industries of this area.

Maybe one of these days I will be able to discover our matches with the many Newfoundland families in our kits. Endogamy probably plays a part making the matches seem closer.

Charles Butt was a Methodist Preacher along with his agricultural duties. My grandfather knew this great grandfather of his but mostly from a distance as Charles lived at Turnworth near the end of his life. He did however spend some time with his then over 80 year old great grandfather and shared with me a little of this man who was born in 1801. Amazing the span of years that represents. My grandfather was born in 1875 and I was born in 1945 so I had the opportunity as a child of 8 years of age (the year my grandfather passed away) to listen to stories of a man who lived at the beginning of the 1800s (144 years before I was born). My grandfather liked to talk about how life had changed from then to when he died in 1953.