The Nosey Genealogist

Did you get to see the first programme in the BBC’s latest series of Who Do You Think You Are? If you did you were in the company of 6.4 million views, including me.

The celebrity, whose family tree was investigated, was Davin McCall and she certain had some interesting ancestors. There was James Bedborough, who from being a stonemason rose to be a property developer in 1850’s Windsor and mayor. He had, at one time, been King George IV’s Master Mason and responsible for much of Windsor Castle’s redevelopment so that it looks as it does to this day. It was said that he was an ancestor to be proud of for the ambition that had driven him on. Putting aside the sad death of his two sons, seemingly a muddle of a will contributing to their suicides after their father’s death in the middle of an ambitious plan to build Upton Park. Bedborough senior had borrowed heavily to finance the enterprise to the equivalent of £2 million in today’s money, but not sufficient houses had been completed before his demise.

James Bedborough would indeed seem to have been an ancestor that most of us would be pleased to have discovered in our tree, but then the show takes us to France where her mother’s side provided us with another forbear for Ms McCall to be proud of. Not just one then but two heroes in one programme!

The second was called Célestin Hennion, a man of huge principles and integrity. Hennion was Chief of French Police, having risen from being the son of a farm labourer. We saw that he was unafraid of the military establishment taking the stand as a defence witness in a notorious trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French Army office accused of passing state secrets to the Germans.

Davina McCall was obviously proud and bowled over to have found out about her maternal French ancestor.

“He had all the qualities that you would want your perfect man to have,” she says, “loyalty, courage, integrity, ambition, strength of character, good looking” she said of him. But, to me, the most interesting thing that the star said was that to meet with her ancestors, to find out what made them tick, why they were successful and to realise that she shared DNA with them, that they were part of her family, this she told us was what she found invigorating.

And this, I can completely understand. I too have some ancestors that I fell proud of. The sentiments she expressed about her forbears are what makes family history so interesting, especially when applied to one’s own.

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I had got nowhere with this ancestor’s birth, marriage or death - on or off-line - then a chance revisit of a fhs website and an hour or two looking at the transcripts and a brickwall in my family history research came tumbling down! Together, this and the thinking of spelling variations of names opened up a new line to me.

My paternal line in Dartmouth, Devon, UK has always been a bit frustrating once the census records ran out (1841 being the earliest on line) and I had to start looking at parish records and so on. I had worked out that my three times great-grandfather was called John Thorn and from the information given in the census collections I knew that he had been born in about 1795. His wife and my three time great-grandmother, Elizabeth, was born in about 1799 or 1800.

I don’t have the luxury of living near Dartmouth, or even visiting the area that much, so I am somewhat hampered in researching these ancestors in their own locality. I had decided that a trip to the Devon Record Office, in Exeter, was probably going to be necessary. As my family have migrated away from Devon, however, while relations that still lived in the county when I was a child have since died, most of my UK breaks take me much further north to the East Midlands.

A recent trip to London gave me the opportunity to go to The Society of Genealogists in Goswell Road, EC1. As a member I am well aware that they had a good collection of Parish Records on microfiche on the lower floor and also some transcripts in one of the other reading rooms, on the middle floor.  Unfortunately for me, on this visit, there was nothing in the microfiche collections of parish records for Dartmouth. There was, however in the Middle Library, a selection of Devon Family History Society booklets of the marriages of some of the churches in the town, including St. Saviour’s Dartmouth.

Perusing this book for any likely Thornes, or Thorns, I noted down that on the 13th day of April 1817 a John Thorn married an Elizabeth Sissell.

When I returned home with this tentative lead, I hit the Internet. I was looking for any evidence that may indicate if this was the marriage of my ancestors. I went to the website of The Dartmouth Archives,  www.dartmouth-history.org.uk and found that this voluntary organisation dedicated to the research and recording of the town’s history, had a very comprehensive family history section. Included were transcribed baptisms, burials, marriages and census records. I discovered that I could find the very same details, as I had seen in London, on this really useful niche site. The page I had found began in 1586 and ran to 1850!

There again was the marriage of John to Elizabeth and this time I noticed that the witness were given as John Adams and Sunass (sic) Sissell. I assumed that this last person was a member of the bride’s family and perhaps was her father, but the name Sunass caused me concern.

I am, after doing this family history thing for a few years now, aware that names can be transcribed incorrectly. They will have been written down as the transcriber had seen it and not changed by them to conveniently fit in with what they would consider to be correct. I also wondered if both the first name and the second had been written down not by the person in question, as they may well have been illiterate. When you come to do your own research you should bear in mind this point. The minister may have interpreted the name as he had heard it spoken to him and so in this case “Sissell” could possibly been “Cecil” or something else entirely. As for Sunass? I hadn’t got a clue what that could have been!

While I was on the page of weddings I did a search to see if I could find any other Sissells, the result was a disappointing zero, especially as Elizabeth was born in Dartmouth according to all the census data. Thorns gave me a handful of results, but I have yet to work out any relationships with these names. There were no early enough christening records for John and Elizabeth on the Dartmouth Archives website, but I opened another browser and navigated to the Latter Day Saints (LDS) website or FamilySearch.org and here I did a search for Elizabeth’s christening.

This gave me a lead to a baptism that took place in one of the other churches, St Petrox, in Dartmouth on the 16 of September 1878. The daughter of James and Sarah Sissill was one Elizabeth Gardener Sissill - and here you should note the spelling has changed to Sissil with an “i” and not an “e”. This made me wonder if the witness to Elizabeth’s marriage could have been her father “James” and this has been interpreted as “Sunnas” because a flowing “J” for James had looked like an “S” and the other letters had been misread as well, the “a” as a “u” and the “m” as double “n”.

Now, while still on the LDS site I did a search for James Sissill. The only promising result was for a marriage of a James to a Sarah Gardiner 17 April 1780, not in Devon, but at St Nicholas’ in Gloucester. This time the surname: Sissill was spelt S-y-s-a-l and Gardener was G-a-r-d-i-n-e-r!

So what I am emphasising here is to be wary of names and the way they were spelt. Before more general levels of literacy among the public became the norm, our ancestors relied heavily on a clergyman writing down their names as they sounded. A further search of the LDS site for Sysal or Sissill has not given me James’s baptisim details and so I don’t know where he came from or, indeed, where he died.

I closed the browser open at FamilySearch.org and returned to the Dartmouth Archives site and did a search of the burial indexes that they have uploaded for us to view. In the St. Saviour’s internment area at the Long Cross extension, north of the town, I found Elizabeth Gardner Thorn, a 69 year old widow buried on 25 July 1868 in plot 59 in a walled grave (re-opened) . Also in 59 was John Branton Thorn, a boatman who was 73 years of age when buried on the 15 September 1866.

In the next plot, number 60, I find Henry Thomas Thorne and his wife Ellen who are my two times great-grandparents and who both died in 1908. Can I assume John and Henry to be father and son? More work is required, but at least I now have a lead.

This is all down to finding that the town of Dartmouth has an active family history website and then using the indexes in conjunction with other Internet resources, such as the LDS site. I can now take the names and details further by looking for death certificates for John Branton Thorn and his wife Elizabeth Gardener Thorn, as they died after civil registration of deaths took place in 1837 and trying to get to see more parish records with a physical visit to the Devon Record Office.

The first lesson is that you should always look to see what other research may have been done for the area your ancestors came from and which has been published on the Internet. If you find a family history society, or local interest group with a website, can any of their publications or website pages help you with your quest?

Secondly, be aware of the misspelling of names and keep your mind open to possibilities. In my case I need to think of other spellings for the Sissells or names that may have sounded like Sissell in order that I may trace this line back further.

Nick Thorne

I just love how the world wide web helps me with my family history research. Apart from the obvious benefit of being able to use the various genealogical sites such as Ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com, The Genealogist, Genes Reunited, the Origins Network, to name but a few, the other great benefit of living in todays technologically linked world is that by publishing my own family tree research within my website www.nicholasthorne.com (to which this blog is linked) I have had the delight of being contacted by people who are either distantly related to me or who are able to fill in blanks in my own research!

I’ve had people who have researched a line way back into the misty pasts, contact me with fascinating documents showing links to Scottish and European Royalty. People who are more closely related as “cousins” several times removed and even people who, coming further up to date, are the present occupants of the building where, back in the 1970’s, my parent’s once had a boat built. I consider this latter information to fall into my own family history as it concerned a chapter in both my parent’s and my own life even if only 30 odd years have passed and in this time the boatyard has gone out of business and the yacht has been sold on twice.

It is all part of the exciting possibility to draw like minded people together that Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention provides. So I recommend that once you have some family history facts that you have checked, or if you have some questions that you need answering, a simple web presence will do wonders for you. It doesn’t mean that you will gain hundreds of contacts over night. But I’ve found that over time, however, I’ve had some interesting contacts that I would never have had otherwise.

I love the world wide web!

So, like thousands of other family historians, I’ve had a look around the 1911 census records for my ancestors. I’ve seen the crystal clear images that for the first time show the actual schedule, rather than the enumerator’s book as all the previously digitally published census had been.

With the 1911 we are able to see the household filled out in our ancestor’s own hand. Or in the case of my great-great-grandfather’s household in Paignton Devon, in my great-aunt’s hand.

It would seem that, in the Thorne household, Great-Aunty Winnie was chosen by the family to fill out the official form, rather than it being done by her Father, the head of the household. I am speculating a bit here, but I wonder if this decision may have been taken on the grounds that her employment made her ideal, in the eyes of the family, to complete the document to the authorities satisfaction. She would be more used to official documents than her parents and her brothers as Eveline Winifred Thorne, 18, has listed herself as a Seasonal Assistant in the Post Office. This was the start of a career that I believe would take her on to become a Post Mistress, in time.

My Grandfather, 16, was a public librarian in 1911; which I never knew and may explain why I have loved books so much that I have spent 20 years as a partner in owning a bookshop!

The 1911 census, available at www.1911census.co.uk is a fascinating set of documents. It was taken at a time when life expectancy for women was a mere 54, as opposed to 82 today and was only 50 for men, compared with 74 nowadays! The richest 1% of the population held 70% of the nation’s wealth while today a quarter of the population account for the same share. Domestic Service was the biggest employer, followed by Agriculture and then Coal mining. More people were to be found in houses than today as lodgers and visitors swelled the occupation of homes revealing a different society to today’s.

At The National Archives the 1911 census is said to take up 2.5 kilometres of shelf space and is larger than those that went before. Its release early (98 years after it was taken instead of the usual 100years) is down to a freedom of information ruling that, as long as the sensitive data relating to mental state was blanked out until 2012, it could be published early as it is not protected by the Census Act.

I am going back to look for other branches of the family now.

20th December 2008

The 1911 census is going to be made available on-line in 2009, earlier than the 100 year rule would normally have allowed. Under the Freedom of Information the government is allowing it to be released early, but with the sensitive data about mental condition blanked out. Already, as an early Christmas 2008 present, some people are being invited to test the beta version of the 1911 census site to give feedback on how it works.

The exciting thing with this census is that we will be able to see the actual return written in the handwriting of one of the household members!

I can hardly wait to get a look.

While I was at the Society of Genealogists recently, you may know from my last posting, that I read a book on the Hays of Hopes. This was my maternal grandmother’s line. In this publication it gave me the detail that my great-grandfather was “at one time Lieutenant in the 17th Leicestershire Regiment”. This revealed the exact name of the regiment and tied in nicely with snippets of information I was beginning to acquire from elsewhere on this gentleman who had been born in 1845 in Tours, France to Scottish parents and died in 1909 in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

His parent’s Janette and Charles Crosland Hay seem to reside in various parts of Britain, mostly south of the border, until they settled in Cheltenham where their children went to school. In “Victorian Legacy”, a book published in 1998 by the Revd Stanley Rudman on the wall memorials in Christ Church Cheltenham, my great-grandfather Edward is mentioned in the write up of his parent’s memorial, along with his brothers. The Revd Rudman attempted, in his publication, to fill in the background to the families of those commemorated in the church and he mentions that Charles and Janette had 5 sons, 4 of whom were attending Cheltenham College when their mother died. For Edward Adolphe Massy Hay, Rudman says that “He became a Lieut. in 17th Regt and subsequently a tea planter in Ceylon wher he died at Kandy in 1909.”

When I had read this, in 2006, I had wondered which 17th Regiment he had joined as one of his brothers, William Wemyss Frewen Hay, had joined the 17th Bengal Native Infantry. Naturally, I had wondered if Edward had joined then as well. This shows how to beware of jumping to conclusions in family history research and to go to the source if at all possible.

I next found mention of Edward in The United Service Magazine, Published by H. Colburn, 1864 Item notes: 1864 pt.2 page 460 showing that he purchased his commission in the 17th Foot. So not the 17th Bengal NI then!

On a visit to The National Archives I spent some time looking at their copies of Hart’s Army Lists and found the 1866 edition. Flicking through the pages to the 17th Foot, The Leicestershire Regiment I found the entry that proved Ensign [2 Ed A Massy Hay, d 31 May 64.

I am yet to understand all but wonder if the “[2″ refers to the 2nd battalion but I believe the “d” may refer to him being posted to the depot in Chatham and not abroad. I excitedly went to Hart’s Army Lists 1867 and turned to the 17th Leicestershire Regt. but alas Edward was not there! Had he left the army by then? If so when had he become a Lieutenant as he is referred to in both the Revd Rudman’s publication and that other book on the Hay’s of Hopes?

Seems my research much go on into this man, as all is not clear!

I next visited the Royal Leicestershire Regimental Museum in Newarke house. I saw here an officer’s uniform that was contemporary to my great-grandfather’s time. As to be expected for the times, the regiment wore a Red coat.

As an aside; In the Hart’s Army List for 1866 the price to purchase a commission as Ensign cost £1200. Using the website Measuring Worth I found that, using the retail prices index, £1200 is worth £78,890.29 in current money. That is some investment great-grandfather Hay!

On my mother’s side I have some Scottish blood, being descended from a branch of the Hay’s of Hopes. This family line goes back to one Edmond Hay, said to be born before 1636 and who became Laird of Hopes in Haddingtonshire, now in East Lothian.

Since finding his marriage on Scotlandspeople to Isobell Adinstoun on the 4th August 1664 in Cannongate, Edinburgh (within Hollyrood Palace) I have speculated that he may have been the son of the Lord of the neighbouring estate, Yester. This because the Lord of Yester was another “Hay”, John Hay 1st Earl of Tweeddale and Lord of Yester.

I have, however, received emails telling me that John Hay, Earl of Tweeddale had no such son. I have found mention that he was the “natural born” son and elsewhere in my research that he was not related to the neighbouring noble Hay’s of Yester at all!

While I was in London recently I made my first visit to The Society of Genealogists at 14 Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA. I went there with the purpose of looking at the parish records collections to see if I could trace my Devon “Thorn ancestors” back further than the early 1800s. While I found paper transcriptions of records for St. Saviour’s church in Dartmouth and so had some success, I was to be disappointed that the parish records for Dartmouth were not on micro-film, especially when they have such a rich resource of other parish records in their library.

Going up to the top floor of the Library I found a collection of family histories and imagine my delight to find one entitled: A Collection of Notes on the Family of the Hay of Hopes, Haddingtonshire. Begun by Charles Crosland Hay and added to by John Yalden Hay .

My surprise at finding this was compounded as Charles Crosland Hay was my great-great-grandfather.

The book was a mine of information about many of the descendants of Edmond Hay that will keep me occupied for ages, but apart from the reproduction of a portrait of Edmond Hay and another of the First Earl of Tweeddale, the greatest find for me, within its covers, was the transcription of the Sasine of Easthopes from 28th November 1653 (Reg of Sasines, Edin Vol 1 fo 99) that shows that the estate and lands of Easthopes were given to Edmond Hay by the Earl of Tweeddale .

The book seeks to add weight to the belief, in the Hay of Hopes family, that Edmond was acknowledged by his father to be his son. There are examples given, from the Parish Records in Yester, of the Earl’s legitimate children being witness to the christenings of Edmond’s children and of Edmond being witness at the baptism of Jean, daughter of John, Lord Yester, on 9th August 1674.

The weight of evidence is growing in favour of the argument that my mother’s side are descended from the noble line of the Tweeddale Hays, albeit from a possible illegitimate son of the 1st Earl.

I was re-reading the first chapter of The book on British Genealogy and Family History yesterday. I am talking about Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails.

It has a great section on understanding relationships. No I don’t mean its a help for couples going through tough times, more what the terms stepfather, half-brother and so on means! It explains simply that “step” indicates that there is no blood relationship between parties and only a relationship through marriage. “Half” is something different and is where the parties only have one parent in common.

Now I was very aware of this terminology myself as, in my family, I have a stepmother and a half-sister and had a step-grandfather. So, while these relationships are actual fact, somehow to me when I see these cold terms used to describe people that I am extremely fond it appears to me as if I am trying to distance myself from them in some way. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that this is just not true. But in Family history research we sometimes have to be precise in relationships and detail exactly where and how people fit into our family tree. None more so when we have to deal with illegitimacy.

Where as today, being born to parents that are not married carries little stigma, in the past it was a different story and so it needs to be dealt with sensitively when dealing with relatives of a different generation.

Staying with this chapter from Mark Herber’s book I was amused to realise that when, at a family wedding, my first cousin once removed, introduced me to one of her friends of her own generation as being “Mum’s cousin” she was in fact being completely correct in her description. As Herber says: “Relationships between cousins are more complex. Cousins are people who share a common ancestor…The children of two siblings are “first” cousins of each other. The children of two first cousins are “second” cousins of each other and so on.”

OK so far, but then we move on to different generations. The word we use to denote this is “removed” so my first cousin’s daughter is my cousin once removed. When she has a child it will be my first cousin twice removed. We have to work out the number of intervening generations between ourselves and the common ancestor and use that number before the word “removed”. Now here comes the bit that I had forgotten!

“The word “removed” is generally only used to express relationships down a family tree.” So this was why Jenny, my first cousin once removed, being the daughter of my first cousin Julie was correct when she referred to me as her “mum’s cousin”

Here ends the pedant’s lesson for today!

Mark Herber’s book Ancestral Trails available from all good bookshops.

Isn’t the new series of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ great?

Last week with Patsy Kensit delving into her father and grandfather’s criminal records and going on to discover her ‘honest upright’ folk from Kent that finished walking sticks for a living until the trade disappeared.

Then there was her ancestor the Rev James Mayne, a noble and tireless Victorian curate of St Matthew’s Church in Bethnal Green honoured with a ‘Lambeth MA’; a degree that the programme taught me the existence of for the first time. But what I empathised with here was the Catholic Kensit discovering her Protestant churchman ancestor. I have similarly been intrigued to find that my Catholic maternal grandmother was descended, on her Scottish fathers’ side, from an Episcopalian Bishop! We have to go all the way back to the 1680’s for his birth and to 1727 for the period when he was Bishop of Brechin, then Dunkeld in Scotland, but all the same…a Bishop! Not just a Bishop, but from 1739 to 1743 the Primus of Scotland and all the while the 20th laird of Craighall-Rattray with a castle in Perthshire.

This then echoes some of the second episode featuring Boris Johnson. In his travels he finds he is descended from a German Baron, who’s wife was illegitimate daughter of a Prince with a fabulous castle. In my travels I found that my Scottish ancestors, unlike my English ones, were almost all gentry with the daughter of the Bishop marring a Baronet. I too found other castles in the family, although not of the magnificence of the one Mr Johnson found, but all the same thrilling to me.

I love this family history experience!

One of the great things about this Family Tree thing is being contacted by others who are descended from common ancestors.

Once I published my first website www.nicholasthorne.info I started to get hits from all over and some of them were ‘cousins’ many times removed.

From my Devon ancestors I exchanged photographs of Captain Henry Thomas Thorne and got to read a typescript of a newspaper article.

From my Scottish ones I have had emails that disputed some of the lines and others that were supportive of the research. But the most fun were the ones that, with a proviso that the further back we went that some error may have crept in, seem to show that we were descended from various European royals and back to Adam and Eve!

Recently I have had pedigrees and photographs of Castles in the Hay Clan all of which is thrilling for somone who lives modestly in a cottage by the sea!

To anyone who is just thinking about setting out on this journey I would echo what Mark Herber in his book ‘Ancestral Trails’ says, don’t be put off by the fact that you think your family may be modest, you just never know what you are going to find.

Mark Herber’s book is available from all good bookshops: http://www.jerseybookshop.co.uk/promotions.htm