Welch family and Family History Library

I had a query on the Thomas Welch family in Birmingham. Thomas (b 1826 Rugeley Staffordshire) was a wheelwright and married to Ann (b 1834 Worcester) and they appear on the 1861 census with two children: John b 1856 and Martha b 1860. This is all the information that I have on Thomas - he is my first cousin 4 x removed. I haven't investigated him at all other than that information which I passed back to the individual who contacted me on Genes Reunited. I did take another look and found two marriages to Ann Williams Dec quarter 1852 and Dec quarter 1852. The first at Kings Norton and the second at Birmingham. Ann would have only been 17 in 1851 and 18 in 1852. Perhaps she married under age without permission and then married a second time with permission. There are too many births at Birmingham with surname Welch to determine if there were other children but there is an Emily born December quarter 1854 which would likely be the inquirer's ancestor (2x great grandmother). She is waiting for the birth certificate of Emily to determine the mother's maiden name. I wonder how many wheelwrights there would have been in Birmingham with the name Thomas Welch!

Off to the family history library soon and our research there. The days pass quickly for us with so many lines to look at. My husband will continue to draw out information on his Niemann ancestors at Staven and his Schulz/Passow ancestors at Brohm. He is putting together charts for the family reunion of the Schulz family in September. We have learned so much since the last reunion that it will be very interesting. We are a small group but very interlinked as Ada (my husband's grandmother) married William Henry Kipp and Charles (Ada's brother) married Elizabeth Kipp. Both of the Kipp lines are descended from Benjamin Kipp and Elizabeth Force although coming down from different lines with William Henry being the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth and Elizabeth the daughter of William Henry's brother Alfred. We have pictures of Benjamin and Elizabeth that we can bring with us in a Legacy file and pictures of the parents of Charles and Ada.

I spent some time on my lecture yesterday which I quite missed in my blog! It is ready to go but I will update some of the statistics before the lecture. It is interesting to me because it is my family and I hope that the audience enjoys it. The applicability is that this is a British Isles Family History group and all of my ancestry is British with this exciting deep ancestry created by my mtDNA which points to Scotland and the Scot/Irish in Ireland. Looking at my paternal ancestry involves a surname which is found in many parts of Ireland and in England. I end with the interesting mtDNA case history of my husband's 3x great grandmother - a young orphaned Irish girl (from Dublin) who came to Halifax as a young child. It will be my last lecture as I have decided not to do public speaking anymore. I find it very time consuming and I would like to dedicate my time to publishing some of the interesting items that I have discovered as I have moved back in time transcribing a lot of records on the way back.

The Family History Library ended up being an all day research as I decided to stay on for the afternoon session. I only took 113 images today because I was reading the Register searching out entries that I had missed in my first go through. I made a rather interesting discovery though. Richard Sproxton (bap 2 Oct 1691 Hutton Cranswick) did not marry Grace Wiles 19 Jan 1720. This was his father Richard's second marriage (Richard was baptized 2 Aug 1663 at Hutton Cranswick and had married Margaret Garrit 30 Sep 1688 at Hutton Cranswick). Margaret was buried 20 Sep 1720 and although the time interval is very short I none the less believe that this was his marriage. I suspect she was probably a widow and I am looking again at the marriages in the Wiles family at Hutton Cranswick. Richard (b 1688) was buried 3 Jan 1744 at Hutton Cranswick and Grace was buried 2 Jun 1753 also at Hutton Cranswick. There was such a large gap between the children of Richard and Margaret and the baptism of Elizabeth and Dorothy (children of Richard Sproxton and Dorothy English) and the burials of the other two provide the evidence that Richard Sproxton (bap 2 Oct 1691) married Dorothy English 15 Nov 1716 at Hutton Cranswick. Grace is listed as a widow when she was buried in 1753 and Richard Sproxton (bap 1691) was not buried until 9 Jun 1768. Dorothy (English) Sproxton was buried as a widow 19 Jan 1772 at Hutton Cranswick. It will take me a few days to fill in all the information on my Legacy file. I have found the evidence for the first marriage of John Sproxton (the elder) to Isobel with her burial 22 Aug 1650 and the subsequent second marriage of John Sproxton (the elder) to Anne Husen 25 Aug 1659 (mentioned as a widow). His son referred to as John Sproxton (the younger) married Ann Simpson of Beverley 5 Jan 1659 and he was the father of Richard (bap 1663). So all in all a very productive day and I would like to see the Protestation Returns if they exist for East Riding of Yorkshire. Along with subsidies that will likely be the only way to determine a linkage back in this family.

A new term for me is Grassman and I am assuming that is like a yeoman farmer. I shall have to join the Yorkshire list - something I have been meaning to do - to learn more about some of the terminology used in this county.

Tomorrow I will continue sorting and entering my results from today into Legacy. As well, I will continue working on the Hinxman will.

Long Island and return

We just arrived back from Long Island having successfully seen all of our daughter's belongings loaded onto a North American Van Lines truck headed for her new teaching post. She doesn't have a lot so will not be too enormous a job to unpack it all when she heads for her new position. We had packed about 80% of her belongings before we left in mid-May. However, it still took a full day of packing to complete the preparation. It was very warm there and working (even with the airconditioning running full blast) was very difficult. We went to Jones Beach in the evening and had a lovely walk along the ocean beach.

The traffic going down to Long Island was really heavy last Sunday and we waited two hours to cross on the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan Island with a much shorter wait to take Throgs Neck Bridge onto Long Island. The four days passed quickly with last minute packing and a trip into New York City to see the Museum of Art - always a really pleasant visit although we were noticing that it was similar to ROM although on a larger scale. Last ride back on the Long Island Railway for a while I expect. I do not think we would have ever spent so much time in New York City or on Long Island if she hadn't been there. It gave my husband the opportunity to really look at all the places where his ancestors lived - he has over 70 early Dutch/French/Belgium ancestors who lived at New Amsterdam (now New York) and about the same number or perhaps slightly greater who lived on Long Island. We have now visited a number of the areas where his ancestors lived in the 1600s (up to the 1800s) including Block Island, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Dutchess County, New York. We will need to have a longer look at New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Once I feel like being in a car for longer than 20 minutes!

No research at all. I completed reading the book :The Tribes of Britain: Who are we? and where do we come from? by David Miles. A really interesting read although very heavy. Length is 500 pages but that wasn't the weight. Rather the detail that he provides necessitates one spending quite a bit of time either remembering the history of the time period or looking up all of his references.

Our films have arrived at the Family History Library - I ordered Hutton Cranswick (Yorkshire), Driffield (Yorkshire) and Bradfield (Berkshire). My husband ordered two Mecklenberg films (Brohm and Staven). We anticipate spending at least two weeks going 4 or 5 times in the week to work our way through the films. I am looking for the Sproxton and Wiles family at Hutton Cranswick and the Harland, Cooper, Sproxton, and Wilkinson families at Great Driffield. At Bradfield I am hoping to learn more about Nathanael Lambden who was baptized there in 1724 - the son of John Lambden and Joan Caruthue. I have not been able to find the marriage of Nathanael Lambden and Sarah around 1851.

My husband is looking at his Schulz, Passow and Naumann families. We already know that the Schulz and Passow families are in the Brohm register but would like to have a longer look at this parish. We recently discovered Staven as a possible place of baptism for his great grandmother Rachel Naumann.

Finding an apartment

We, my daughter and I, spent yesterday looking at apartments via the internet. We found two very interesting ones and just have to wait now and see if they are available. It is fascinating hunting for an apartment one thousand miles away from your location on the web. You can go into Google Maps and trace the streets to locations and see the store fronts, the library and where you are going to work. The only thing you do not get is the real feel for distance although you can estimate just from the size of the houses/apartment buildings/etc.

We also went out shopping and found yet another pot of flowers (on sale) that will look great on the porch. We are going to have the engagement party for our daughter and future son in law in August and I want some plant pots to put around the back yard (hoping for a non rainy day!) since we will have a "tea" in the backyard for the announcement. We will be about 30 people so should be able to manage that fairly well plus there will be people dropping in probably during the two hours. Our gardens will just be at their best by August so should be quite lovely. Ed has put in a lot of bedding plants as per usual and more flowers this year than vegetables. We need fewer and fewer vegetables for just the two of us.

Hence I did not touch the Timberscombe Bishop Transcripts. I shall try to get in some time on them today but it looks to be another busy one so may not put in a lot of hours. I did spend some time looking at the Mecklenburg 1819 census for my husband's Schulz/Passow/Naumann ancestors. These records are totally in German but actually are fairly searchable on Ancestry. We know the birthplace for his great grandparents - Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz was born at Brohm and Fredericka Rachell Naumann was born at Staven. We have parents for both and I hunted for them on the 1819 census but it will require extracting all the Schulz entries in the area and translating the entries to determine which one since there are many many Johann Schulz and also the second and third name entries. The same with the entries for Charles Naumann. He and Sophia may or may not have been married and it would be neat to determine that. We need to borrow the parish registers from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

An online friend has kindly said that he will check the Little Cheverell registers for a marriage between John Tanner and Ann Stratton which I have from the IGI 27 Jan 1752 at Little Cheverell. Although they marry at Little Cheverell both of their children Sarah (baptized 31 Dec 1758) and John (baptized 10 Mar 1756) were baptized at Tilshead where they appeared to have lived and I found a burial for Ann Stratton Tanner 2 Oct 1779 at Tilshead but no burial for John. I checked these records when we were at Salt Lake City in the Tilshead parish registers where I also found the gratifying confirmation that Jeremiah Rawlings who married Sarah Tanner at Tilshead 1 Nov 1780 was indeed Jeremiah Rawlings from Enford (hence my ancestor). Jeremiah and Sarah Rawlings were my four x great grandparents. Since it is 1752 I do not expect to find a lot in the entry but I may be lucky with the priest recording home parish if not Little Cheverell.

Tomorrow I want to work on the Bishop Transcripts as the day doesn't have anything scheduled yet!It will be nice when I am caught up to the Parish Register fiche so that I have that second check on the transcripts. They are a derived document from the original registers which, in this case, are missing for the 1600s up to 1656 although these Bishop Transcripts exist from 1599 to 1655 but have breaks (I am moving from 1611 to 1621 in this first large break).