Family tree research knowledge

After 24 years of family tree research, it seems my experience is worth something! Today I undertook a consumer workshop for a website design company employed by a history website, the aim of which was to iron out issues with a proposed redesign. It was fun and also interesting to hear my own answers to questions about my research methods, interests and needs.

Real life gets in the way

Real life gets in the way of my hobby, hence not having done much family tree since April or May. My excuse is that I spent quite a lot of the summer on the world's most remote inhabited island, Tristan da Cunha. A British Overseas Territory, there are 262 islanders - and only seven surnames. The musuem features and 'island family tree' on its wall, showing how all the islanders are related, right back to the founding father, William Glass, who settled there in 1815.

I certainly got my family tree fix on that trip!

Bates

Most people know at least one person with my surname - in my life, I've gone to school with, lived next door to and worked with people called Bates. Movie stars and authors boast the name. At least two of my close friends have Bates ancestors (I've done their trees). But none of us is related.

I know this because I have traced my Bates line back nine generations to Joseph Bates who lived in Great Witchingham, Norfolk. To find a possible link to any other living Bates* I have to go back five generations: my great x 3 grandfather William had two older brothers, and the male offspring of the elder brother were producing male Bateses into the 20th century.

Since I started researching my family history way back in 1987, it was clear that Joseph Bates was at the top of the tree - in 24 years I've not been able to establish where he came from. Until today! I need to check the registers as the information has been gleaned from Archdeacons Transcripts (ATs) available free online at FamilySearch.org but the information makes sense...

Tree-topping 'Joseph Beates' married Hannah Miller at a central Norwich church in 1736, both parties noted as 'of Great Witchingham', and their only child John Bates was baptised in Great Witchingham in 1738. Hannah died when her son was very small as Joseph took a second wife, Sarah Fuller, at Great Witchingham in 1739, going on to have eight children with her. Joseph died in 1766, Sarah in 1769.

It appears that the tree-topper was baptised at Felthorpe, Norfolk on 10 January 1707/08, the son of Joseph and Mary Bates. Felthorpe is close to Great Witchingham and the age would fit. Also, John (born 1738) is documented in various sources as owning property and land in Felthorpe, assets that he could have inherited (wills and court rolls need to be checked).

The ATs also reveal that Joseph's father was dead by the time he was born: Joseph Bates was buried on 28 August 1707 - four and a half months before his son's baptism.

Checking FreeREG, there is a possible marriage of Joseph's parents: Joseph Beates married Mary Parker of Swannington in 1705 at Wood Dalling. Both villages are neighbours of both Great Witchingham and Felthorpe. The Parkers of Swannington can be traced back to the 1640s.

So, I now have a different Joseph Bates atop my family tree!

*Strictly, there is one in addition to me and my dad: the unmarried granddaughter of my great grandfather's brother is called Bates and lives in Nova Scotia.

Liverpool leads

I'm not a Scouser. I sometimes describe myself as a Brummy, but then I did spend almost ten years in the city as a child and teenager and my parents still live there. But I am definately not a Scouser.

However, since being a very small child I've known that my maternal grandmother's father was born in Toxteth Park - making him a Liverpudlian by birth. In a family of secrets, this was one fact (about the only one) that was common knowledge. Even before I became interested (ok, obsessed) with my family history, I had researched enough to know that Toxteth Park was a rather rough and ready district, down by the docks.

My great grandfather Tommy Meehan was born in 1884 in Toxteth Park. Two years later his sister Annie followed. Before Tommy and after Annie, all the children in this Irish Catholic family were born in Bolton - where their parents had married in 1872. So why the move to Liverpool for a few years? I'd always assumed it was an economic move: 'let's try life in the big city, can't be worse than this mill town!'. But then they went back to Bolton, so maybe it was that bad after all.

Or were there other reasons for the family move? Recent Catholic church records published by Ancestry.co.uk reveal that Tommy and Annie were both christened in Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Toxteth; they were born at different addresses (which supports the evidence that the family moved regularly - moonlight flits, maybe?); and best of all - their godmothers were Meehans, too.

Until this point, I had no information about Meehans in England prior to the 1872 wedding and that great grandfather Tommy was named after his father and grandfather (gleaned from certificates).

The records reveal that my great grandfather's godparents were Mary Meehan and Patrick McMara; Annie's godparents were Esther Meehan and Bernard Caufield.

So - two new Meehans!

Initial research suggests there are two Esther Meehans to consider: firstly, the wife of John Meehan (born Esther Hatch), and secondly, the wife of another Thomas Meehan. The latter had two children in the same years as my Tommy and Annie and on both occasions recorded an address within three doors of my Meehan family. Were there cousins called Thomas Meehan, both in Liverpool in the mid-1880s, and is that why my great grandfather's parents moved to Liverpool, to join their extended family?

As always, one genealogical answer throws up many further questions!

Norfolk news - an Indian connection!

Just back from four glorious days in Norfolk exploring the churches, attractions, pubs and railways that make the county such an idyllic English getaway.

On a visit to Great Witchingham church, more of a pilgrimage to see the Bates family graves we first discovered 24 years ago - and carefully transcribed and photographed then - we got a shock.

Re-reading one of the tombstones, it struck me that the death place of the deceased (Thomas Bates, brother of my great x 3 grandfather) was noted as Ranpore in India. I gawped! Inside the church we found a transcription of the memorials (newly placed since our last visit in April 2010) that duly noted the Indian connection.

Thomas was a carpenter in his early 70s in Lenwade in the 1871 census, living with his spinster daughter. His wife had died a few months before. With 15 months of the census, he has travelled to and died at Ranpore in India.

How on earth can I explian that!

Birthday

Happy Birthday to me. And today I remember my great aunt Freda, my lovely Aunty Freda, who told me wonderful stories, was great company and provided a link to my ancestors.

When I held her hand I knew that hand had once ben held by people born in the 1820s. Amazing.

So here is Freda as a young woman (top) and on her 1930 wedding day with my grandparents and great grandparents (mad hat alert).

Wedding Wall

The whole country has gone mad for the latest Royal Wedding, between Prince William and Kate...sorry, Catherine Middleton (what would be wrong with Queen Kate? It's not exactly as if the previous Queen Catherines had a lot of fun!).


So here are some happy nuptials from my family tree, my own Wedding Wall.


First, the happy day in 1970 when my own wonderful parents tied the knot on a gusty August day in Blackburn. I have always marvelled that they married so young - my mother was 21.5 years old! Most of the people in the picture are now dead, the church is long gone and the town itself...well, if you've ever been to Blackburn no more needs to be said.

Back to Farnworth in 1920 and my great grandmother Bertha looks ever so slightly delirious with delight in her floppy hat and white dress. Great granddad Tommy Meehan had fought throughout WW1, ending up being rsponsible for the well-being of thousands of Chinese labourers brought over (enslaved) to dig trenches.


The others in the picture are two of his sisters, Polly Critchely and Rose Littler (left), and brother in law James Littler. Shortly after this, Rose emigrated to Canada while Tommy & Bertha named their first daughter (my grandma) after her.




Summer 1935 in Whaplode, Lincolnshire and the wedding day of my grandparents Geoff and Ruby. Gathered here we have a jolly little band of (left to right): Desmond, Tony & Richard Warner (my gran's half brothers); Denzyl Cartledge (my father's cousin) and Nancy Hewson (my gran's cousin).


The happy couple honeymooned in Wales and lived in Whaplode for a few years before moving to Spalding, where my dad came along. He stayed in contact with Nancy, and her daughter Diane can be seen on the church steps in the top photo.