On Remembrance Day
we remember those who have fought
in our more recent wars. It is good to honour
them for their service but it must be remembered that
war affects more than those in the various military services.
War can and does affect also those who live through the conflict
as well as those who come later.
I get reminder emails about watching Ask the Experts, a series of interviews that Diahan Southard does with various experts in the genetic genealogy community. They take place on Your DNA Guide's YouTube channel. The one this past week snuck up on me but I tuned in on time to see it live. Her guest was Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist. The discussion was interesting and one of the things that Judy said really rang true for me.
I can't remember her exact words, but Judy talked about how knowing one's family stores gives people, particularly young people, strength and resilience. She cited the men and women who made the trek west by wagon train to claim new land. My thoughts didn't stray back that far but I can attest to this. When I was going through a particularly trying time in my life, I found strength by invoking memories of my grandmothers. They both lived in London at the time of the blitz in WWII. The thought of them coping with the disruption and fear that the constant bombing brought gave me the fortitude to get through my day to day life in trying circumstances. Knowing they had been able to carry on told me that I could too.
Images:
Battle of Britain- Blitz, Dawn
image: a view from the north bank of the River Thames in London over towards
the Shot Tower on the south bank. A few civilians are walking on the pavement
in the foreground. Clouds of smoke, showing evidence of fires caused by German
air raids, are visible on the horizon.
I like to keep busy but sometimes I think I overdo it. Maybe I have too many irons in the fire. The writerly part of my soul is busy this weekend learning more about the craft of writing at the Surrey International Writers Conference. But at the beginning of this week, a friend reminded me that she had asked me earlier about going back to Salt Lake City and the genealogist in me took over.
So that's just two things, right? Well maybe but research trips to the FamilySearch Library take more time planning for than the actual hours spent on the ground in the genealogist's mecca. And then there's writing. It's great to learn new stuff at the conference but then the best thing to do is to apply the most promising techniques before forgetting the reasons behind them.
In the meantime, I have some other deadlines to meet this coming week. I guess I better get writing but maybe I should plan which subjects to concentrate on first.
Periodically Ancestry updates what they used to call their ethnicity results which are now found under Origins. It's always interesting to see how things have changed but this latest iteration of my results has me scratching my head. After past updates I've heard complaints about how Ancestry had amped up testers' Scottish origins when they didn't feel that was right. Now I have a similar complaint but in another direction.
As someone with an Irish surname at birth, I'd previously found Ancestry's estimate of my Irish background on the low side. It made me question how my family name had been bestowed back when my lot first ended up in London. But the other DNA sites where I'd tested made me feel better about the origins of my family line: FTDNA's result showed 13% Ireland while Living DNA showed 7% Ireland. Now with the change in their estimates, Ancestry has whittled down my Irish origins to 1% and, as a new wrinkle, they've added 2% from Cornwall. I'm not sure where the Cornish bit comes from, nothing that shows up in my genealogy, that's for sure.
Once I'd finished shaking my head over my new results, I checked those for my son whose Ancestry kit I manage. His Ireland region has a value of 13%, of which 6% is from his father and 7% is from his mother. Wait a minute, if my DNA is only 1% from Ireland how could I have passed on 7% to my child? That's almost as baffling as the Virginia & Eastern Kentucky Settlers that Ancestry linked me to in one of their previous updates.
Although still in her early 40s at the time of her husband's death, Sarah Minister Cavanagh didn't remarry. The 1861 census found her at yet another address from the ill-fated one at 31 Devonshire Street which had seen the death of two of her children as well as her husband, Benjamin. According to the census, sharing the accommodation with Sarah were her son, Henry, and daughters, Maria and Emma. Henry was 16 and employed as a shoe black. As a widow Sarah's occupation was also listed. She was a washerwoman. In 1871 this changed to charwoman only to change back again to washerwoman in the 1881 census.
A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations, defines a washerwoman as: "A person who 'took in' other people's washing into her own home for a fixed fee. As opposed to a laundry woman who did the same job in a commercial establishment." Whatever her employment, it was manual labour which makes me question if she had book learning. If she was self-employed she must have been able to keep a tally. Beyond the sheer physicality of the work gave me respect for her stamina. It wasn't as though there was running water readily available or washing machines when it comes to that. She was still performing this work after the age of 65. But in those days the choices were supporting yourself or resorting to the workhouse. Not a decision to be taken lightly.
Sources:
Ancestry.com census returns
Waters, Colin A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations, Countryside Books, Berkshire, 2002
Image:
Washerwoman pic
By Giovanni Boldini - https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/tableaux-omp-19me-sculpture-pf1809/lot.188.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85308359
Sarah Minister/Cavanagh and her family rarely stayed in one place for long while living in London and, while I have lots of addresses for them, it was had to pinpoint the actual places they were living in on Charles Booth's Poverty Map (1886-1903). Most of the addresses were for places, courts or yards. Those designations sound like smaller geographical areas than streets so were probably less likely to be written on the map. The actually poverty legend that Booth's maps were noted for was very patchy throughout the areas I was looking at; Whitechapel, Finsbury, Stepney and St George's in the East. The map didn't add much to my knowledge of the family's circumstances.
While Benjamin was alive he worked at various jobs in the building trade. It is hard to say if Sarah also worked for a wage. Did her husband support her and the nine children they had together? Not that the children stayed home for long. The only census which showed most of the family together was the 1851 census, the last one in which father Benjamin was still the head of the household. Even that showed only 7 of the 9 children as Emma was not yet born and Matilda was absent. Perhaps Matilda was in the infirmary as she died in 1853.
The deaths in the family give credence to the idea that they were not living in the healthiest of situations so perhaps they were among the less well off in whichever area of the city they were in. Even after the death of her husband, Sarah continued to move from place to place in London. Maybe that was how it was done in the East End.
Sources:
Charles Booth’s Poverty Map (1886-1903) https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map
Many of my ancestors ended up in London. The city was a draw for people from all over the country. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least three places that I've been able to document that my ancestors hailed from: Dorset, Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk - oops that looks like four that automatically came to mind. Because of this, I've amassed books on London, its history and social issues. Among the collection are also London atlases from various time periods as well as the Poverty Maps that Charles Booth drew up in 1889. While Sarah died a few years before that date, I think that those maps will be a good indicator for the state of the areas she lived in even if that happened to be decades earlier. I don't think there was much reform prior to Booth bringing the state of London's areas to public notice.
I have amassed a list of addresses for Sarah from official government documents such as marriages and deaths as well as census information. Also helpful for tracking down the family's moves were baptismal records. I wasn't able to find those for all 9 of the children and, in the case of 3 of the offspring, they were all baptized in the same month and year, so that source wasn't as helpful as hoped but there are still a lot of moves and changes of abode to cover. Now to track the places on a map if I can find them all.
Sources:
GRO certificates for marriage and deaths obtained from the General Register Office in the UK
Parish records accessed through Ancestry and FindMyPast
Even though I feel I neglected Sarah Minister, the notes and documentation on hand have a lot of information about her. It isn't complete though and, if DNA matching might potentially help, I will need to find out about both her children and any siblings she might have had. There are similarities between her experiences and those of my other 2 x great grandmother, Mary Rideout nee Maidment. They both became widows at a young age. I wonder if Sarah, like Mary, had a child after her husband was no longer around.
Unlike Mary, Sarah moved a lot as was common for the city dwellers of London at the time. She would have lived in the Big Smoke from the time of her marriage to Benjamin Cavanaugh on September 11, 1838 until her death in 1885. As you can see from the photo of their death certificates above, Benjamin died in 1855 so that meant she was a widow for 30 years. Even so, her occupation on her death certificate was listed as being the widow of Benjamin Cavanagh, as though that was what had supported her for three decades.
At this point, I need to go through the information I have and come up with a plan of action to fill in the gaps of Sarah's story and determine what happened to her children. I also hope to take the search back to Sarah's origins in Great Yarmouth and see if there are any other related Ministers I can follow up on.
Sources:
General Register Office Death
Certificate:
·
Benjamin
Cavanagh 25 March 1855 31 Devonshire Street age 39 Painter Journeyman Phthisis
3 years Pericarditis informant Mary [Ind] present at the death registered 27
March 1855
·
Sarah
Cavanagh 10 August 1885 Infirmary Bakers Row age 70 Widow of Benjamin Cavanagh
a plumber 6 Charlotte Place Apoplexy informant JJ Ilott medical superintendent
Infirmary Bakers Row registered 12 August 1885
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_5950436.jpg)
Some of my latest posts have been about the Maidment family as finding the parents of my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment, had been a long time quest. But you know, another 2 x great grandmother was also missing parental information and she rarely came to mind. Her name was Sarah Minister and she came from Great Yarmouth. I know very little about her story.
A recent episode of Walking Wartime Britain made me think of her and her ancestors as the show host was in East Anglia. Before the program I didn't know exactly where East Anglia was but apparently it takes in Great Yarmouth, which is a port city and would have been the area where the Nazis landed if they had invaded Britain. Precautions were taken at the time, of course, especially along the coastline but Great Yarmouth would have been hard to defend. The viewers were taken on a brief tour of an area of the town called The Rows, where the roads are narrow paths between the buildings. It made me wonder if that was where Sarah had grown up.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I will be able to determine that as both of Sarah's parents appear to have died prior to 1841 and the earliest Great Yarmouth directory seems to be from 1839. Sarah herself was no longer in Norfolk by that time as she was married in Hoxton, Middlesex in 1838. When had she moved from Great Yarmouth and had she done it on her own? It looks like there is more to find out about her story.
Sources:
GRO
certificate of marriage between Benjamin Cavanagh and Sarah Minister 11
September, 1838, District of St John the Baptist, Hoxton, County of Middlesex,
(Registration District of Shoreditch)
University of Leicester, Special Collections Online – Historical Directories of England and Wales https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/search/searchterm/1820-1829!1830-1839/field/period!period/mode/exact!exact/conn/and!and
Images:
By Great Yarmouth's Rows - Row 95 (Kittywitches Row) by Evelyn Simak, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142379971
This week I watched as the kids went back to school and it felt like things were getting back into the normal grove after being relaxed for so long. In my case, I don't have to go back to work or school but I am affected by school traffic as I live adjacent to a school so have to time my activities to avoid high traffic hours when school lets out. It also left me with a feeling that I should be getting back to something too. And, you know, I probably should figure out where to focus my time. So I thought, why not resolutions in September.
January resolutions are traditional, I know. But September feels like the start of the year in a lot of ways. Besides, January could get in on the deal as well. It would be a great time to look over my list of resolutions and see which ones are doing fine and which might need more work or maybe some tweaking.
I foresee the compilation of a comprehensive list to get myself back on track only part of which would be about family history. I'll start with my genealogy resolutions though and they are:
That should keep me going for awhile!
I was able to attend a meeting of the PoCo Genealogy Group this past week, something I am rarely able to do as it is usually held on the first Wednesday of the month which conflicts with another meeting I attend. Before the presentation about the latest Ancestry updates started, one of the other attendees asked me, "Are you getting much genealogy done?" I nodded yes. Her answer to that was "I'm not." When I looked around the table there were fewer attendees that usual. I don't know if that was because of the change from the meeting's usual date or if the missing people had also been sidelined by the dog days of summer.
It has been hard to get into research lately as life speeds up as we head towards the start of September which is often a cue to start the usual work and school days up again. I'm hoping that some of my latest activity will bring me some inspiration on the family history front. The walls of my living space were mostly bare but recently a friend helped me to hang some of the many paintings and framed photos in my possession. Since I am related to not only the people in the photos but also to the artists whose paintings I have hung, I'm hoping that being surrounded by their works brings me insights into the past.
I'm always interested in learning new things related to genealogy and, with the advent of DNA testing and the various ways it can further research, I've added genetic genealogy education to my repertoire. Last year I signed up for the Study Group at Your DNA Guide where they talked a lot about their DNA Skills course. The study group members in the skills course seemed so much further ahead, so I signed up for that as well figuring that I'd have time to take the course since the yearlong Study Group would be over. Then, of course, they offered a special deal to join the second year of Study Group. So I signed up for that too.
Its has been interesting and, at times, overwhelming especially when the DNA Skills course was still happening but that's over now - well, sort of, I still haven't reached the end of the lessons. I kind of got distracted by my research goal which was to find the father of Mary Maidment, my 3 x great grandmother. Finding that link led to my interest in gamekeepers.
When looking for my Maidment links, I headed off in the wrong direction at first, adding many links to my new family tree software. Those incorrect links have been deleted and my tree on my version of Family Historian is looking sparse. I really should enter more family there but I've been offered another distraction. The latest session of Your DNA Guide Study Group was a session about WikiTree.
I'd heard about WikiTree before and have listened to well-known genealogists extoll its virtues but I wasn't sold on being part of a community that was working on a single family tree. that could be a holdover from listening to people's complaints about the single family tree on FamilySearch. But, after watching Connie Davis and Greg Clarke explain how the WikiTree site works, I signed up. So it looks like I will be filling in my family tree on that site as well as on my own software. It looks like there is a social side to WikiTree too as I've received emails welcoming me. Nice, except that I can't keep up with my emails as it is!
Sources:
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I sent a message off to someone on Ancestry thinking I might get a reply. That came about due to a prompt from an email from My Heritage which I couldn't fully access because I currently don't have a subscription. As I had no access to the family trees referenced by the email, I thought the same people might have trees on Ancestry where I do have a subscription. Of course, the email was about a line unrelated to my gamekeeper research but I didn't expect a quick reply. I mean, sending messages on Ancestry is like consigning them to the ether.
The person I messaged replied within a day! They had questions and the clarification they were looking for was about a line I'd done extensive research on, the Arments. They were a family who showed up on many records in many cases because of their brushes with the law.
As I leafed through my Arment research to answer the questions I'd been asked, I looked at the information I had with new eyes. Given my recent foray into working with my DNA, perhaps there was a genetic research question I could tackle. There was also another story that I hadn't looked into further, that of the death of George Arment, who would have been my 3 x great uncle. He was a carman or carter who met his end by being crushed between two hogsheads of lager. That looks like it deserves a newspaper search!
Images:
By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14579853990/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/wandererinlondon00luca/wandererinlondon00luca#page/n252/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43453370
When tracking ancestors back in history, research usually takes in the census as well as birth, marriage and death records. Sometimes when the object of interest lives in a town, directories can fill in some details which can be handy in the years between censuses but beware, the information on the directory entries was gathered beforehand. I've found recently dead people listed.
I haven't yet look at directories for my Maidment gamekeepers but, since their profession often saw them in court with poachers and the like, I decided a perusal of historic newspapers was in order so my subscription to Find My Past is coming in handy. I've just begun to look up the names of Elias and his sons and I've already hit pay dirt. There have been the reported on court cases where the Maidment in question had to give testimony about a person caught red-handed with game. Also of interest were some ads placed by one of the men looking for a new position, an ad that gave specifics of height and age and trustworthiness. I also came across the report of an inquest into the death of one of the Maidment men's wife. That's one I need to look into further!
Because I've been so successful in my search for the gamekeepers I'm interested in, I've started to wonder if I should perhaps try newspaper searches for those in other professions, like shopkeepers and publicans - I have a few of those I'd like to know more about.
Sources:
FindMyPast newspaper search https://www.findmypast.com
Image:
By Gamekeepers Cottages. by Mick Malpass, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108140086
When I delved into the study of how to use genetic genealogy, I was interested in learning more about the inheritance of X-DNA. Its inheritance is harder to track that that of mitochondrial DNA in that it isn't just handed on from female to female. Fathers of girls also hand down an x chromosome to their daughters as do their mothers giving the majority of females two x chromosomes. There are handy dandy charts to figure out the X-DNA pattern. Two possible sources are in the links under Sources at the end of this blog post.
As I filled out the name for my own chart, I realized that this different way of arranging the information from my family tree was useful in other ways as well. It was a visual of the lines I haven't been able to extend back very far. Many of those lines stop at females and I think that has a lot to do with the difficulty of ascertaining birth surnames for women whose identities were often swallowed up by the family they married into.
When I look at the names I've been able to fill out it appears that breaks in the line are frequently found after the 2 x great grandparent level. I should be able to update the chart a bit though now that I'm confident about who Mary Maidment's father was. Now I just need to confirm who her mother was and then try to extend both of those lineages back further.
Sources:
https://dna-explained.com/2012/09/27/x-marks-the-spot/
https://familylocket.com/x-dna-inheritance-and-recombination/
My search for gamekeepers among the Maidments is proving a longer task than I anticipated. With the documents that I've accessed so far, it seems like my 3 x great grandfather Elias was the first in the family to become a gamekeeper and many of his sons took up the occupation too. He had quite a few sons, many of whom were born in different places. From the information I've seen so far, these sons also moved across England. I suppose that makes sense because gamekeepers were hired by large landed estates and there would only be so many of those around so any aspirants to the profession would have to go to where there were vacancies.
The son I've found the most varied information sources for so far is Jasper who was baptized in Enford, Wiltshire in 1814. When trawling through information on the National Archives, I came up with a catalogue entry of the Appointment of gamekeeper: Jasper Maidment held by the Nottinghamshire Archives. Strange, as none of the information I have on him so far has a connection to Nottinghamshire. Ancestry also pointed me towards his very informative gravestone which gives the date and location of death as well as naming his longtime employer, George Spofforth Lister. I hope to parlay that tidbit into more records about Jasper's employment. Fingers crossed for similar luck with my continued searches. I wonder what treasures I'll be able to discover about the other Maidments.
Sources:
Ancestry –
Wiltshire, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1922 for Jasper
Maidment
Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135991997/jaspar-maidment
Images:
By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14593150360/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/withnatureandcam00kear/withnatureandcam00kear#page/n350/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43736289
Real life has cut into my research time lately, so I haven't gotten very far with researching the gamekeeping Maidments. The family's time in the game, so to speak, began with the patriarch Elias who lived from 1773 to 1825. I haven't yet found records that can confirm how early Elias took up the profession and it looks like he didn't keep up the work in his older years. As for his sons, I'm currently tracking the censuses in with they were listed as gamekeepers and the places they were living at the time.
Knowing that gamekeepers were employed by large estates, I'm also hunting for resources about large English estates. I'm should to be able to dedicate more time to this quest soon and hope my next blog post will be about the steady progress I've been able to make. A breakthrough would be nice but for now I'll keep following up possible sources.
I'm still looking into my Maidment family links and, as many of the men were gamekeepers, I'm looking into that occupation further. According to the information in the Heritage Production book on English Occupations, the gamekeeper was considered part of the village hierarchy giving him status. That makes me think of someone rather settled with a respected place in village life, a life that I used to believe changed little from decade to decade with little movement from place to place.
Only the Maidments moved from place to place, sometimes showing up as labourers and on many occasions their occupation was listed as gamekeeper. Could be the moves were to more lucrative posts or maybe the estates they were employed by no longer needed their services. Then too, it could be that their employers owned more than one estate so moved employees around. It could also be because the man acting as gamekeeper had worn out his welcome.
An extract of an article on Cambridge Core, painted a far different picture of the gamekeepers status. Not only could he bring the law down on poachers and the like, but his peers and those above him in the hierarchy didn't put much stock in his honesty. All this makes me wonder how the Maidments were perceived and if maybe that led to them moving time and time again.
My research is still ongoing and I hope to be able to find out more. According to the Heritage Production book, the Quarter Session records should have information about gamekeepers. Now I just have to consult various sources to find out when and where they lived to figure out which of those records I should delve into.
Sources:
Christensen,
Dr. Penny Researching English Occupations
– Professions & Trades. Heritage Productions, Toronto, Ontario, 2003
Extract from The Gamekeeper and English Rural Society, 1660-1830 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/gamekeeper-and-english-rural-society-16601830/664EDA50F7F0A3F663233CEBD09D159B
Waters,
Colin A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles
and Occupations. Countryside Books, Newbury, Berkshire, 2002
Images:
By Internet Archive Book Images - https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14593150360/Source book page:https://archive.org/stream/withnatureandcam00kear/withnatureandcam00kear#page/n350/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43736289
I've been doing genealogy research for a long time and have amassed a fair number of books on various subjects related to my research. My recent findings had me pulling two books about occupations off the shelves. It all had to do with my 3 x great grandfather who I've finally determined to be Elias Maidment. It took me a while and a few false trails before I was satisfied that he was the man; the target of my DNA search to determine who the father of my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Rideout nee Maidment, was.
Once I settled on Elias, some of the questions I had about Mary began to make sense. I had often wondered why the censuses had given her birthplace as Gloucestershire when, from what I could determine, she had spent most of her life in Dorset. When I filled in Elias' children I noticed their birthplaces changed a lot, as though he had a profession that required him to move from place to place. Baptismal records didn't list his profession until 1814 when his son Jasper was christened in Enford, Wiltshire. That record showed that Elias was a gamekeeper. As he retained this profession when he later moved to Sixpenny Handley, Dorset it seems likely that his earlier moves might also have been due to his trade.
In these days of virtual conferences, it seemed strange and extravagant to be registering to show up in-person at this year's Ontario Ancestors conference. It was to be their first foray into the non-virtual world of conferencing post pandemic. In my case, not only would there be a hotel room to pay for but also airfare. Would being there rather than sitting in front of my own computer be worth the extra time and expense?
It was! There is something about being in the same room as fellow genealogists that can't be replicated. Not to mention the shared meals and the temptations of the marketplace. On one night there was also a Burns Dinner enactment in which some of us took part. Unfortunately there was no whisky in the classes we toasted with.
It was great to connect with new acquaintances and I was also surprised to find some familiar faces in the marketplace among the vendors. Some of the gals I knew from the Family History Writing Retreat which I attended last year were there as well as someone from BCGS who had taken the opportunity to explore connections in the general area before setting up her stall at the conference.
I enjoyed my time at the conference and learned much more than if I had stayed home and tuned in on my computer. Not only do I find I retain more when seeing things in-person but I also pick up things from the side conversations and chance encounters.
I recently took a genealogical journey. One of my stops along the way was in Saskatchewan, a province I hadn't yet stopped to visit. The place was of interest because I'd tracked my maternal grandparents back to Regina where they met and married. I have the marriage certificate to prove it. The certificate was enclosed in a booklet with scriptures, prayer and vows along with the signatures of the guests. But I wanted more.
How did this Englishman and my Canadian born grandmother of Scottish extraction ever meet? I thought maybe it had happened as a result of the Regina Cyclones of 1912. I ascertained that they were both within the affected zone or at least close to the scene of destruction at the time. It could have happened then but as I tracked down their various addresses during both of their stays in the Queen City, it seemed that a better bet was when they lived within 3 blocks of each other in 1914.
I found out more about the cyclone by checking copies of the Regina Leader Post at the Saskatchewan Archive. A visit to the Prairie History Room at the Regina Public Library gave me access to the Henderson Directories for Regina so I could track down my relatives' addresses through the years. They moved around a lot but in 1914 my grandfather Harold was living at 2301 Rae and my grandmother May was living at 2048 Rae. I finally found the right area of town after my mapping app sent me way on the other side of town. I found the correct area of town while looking for bookstores. In a walk down 13th Avenue which was in close proximity to my hotel, I stumbled across the Rae Street I wanted to find and realized there were only three blocks between where Harold and May had lived making me think that they likely came into contact then. Sometimes just walking the streets in an ancestral place brings more understanding.
It never fails, I feel like I'm getting somewhere with my DNA studies and following the Maidment line but now I need to shift focus. It's time to get my research ready for a genealogy trip. Unfortunately, I won't be jetting off to Dorset to find out more about my family there. On this trip my concentration will be on Canadian records. Strangely, when I was busy filling out the wrong line of Maidment descendants, a shoot from that line took me off to Canada as well. As yet, my now and, I hope, correct line of Maidments hasn't taken me in that direction. There's still a chance though as other things have gotten in my way so that research hasn't born much fruit yet. Who knows where the correct Maidment line will take me. I have a suspicion that some of the Maidment descendants ended up in Australia.
For now, I need to concentrate on my Canadian lines. I've done a fair amount of research over the years. So much that I often come across notes that I've made but have totally forgotten about. I was surprised to find a book containing notes that I took from a book that gave me clues on my Matheson family. The book was Angie Littlefield's The Thomsons of Durham. There were interesting details in it about a marriage and death the records for which I've been searching for a long long time. I need to see the records with my own eyes, though, especially as I've found some details in the book that I can dispute. I hope to be a bit further ahead in my research once my trip is done.
Sometimes genealogical research can lead down a plausible trail that looks okay but, when other information comes to light, things don't look so good. That's what happened to me when working on my Maidment line. The 1841 census had shown a Harriet Maidment living with Thomas Rideout and his wife Mary Rideout nee Maidment. With Harriet was a 1 month old son, Henry Maidment. When I found a Harriet Maidment of the same age having other children out of wedlock before finally marrying and changing her name, I assumed it was the Harriet I was looking for. No matter that Henry was no longer with her. Children often died in the first years of life back then.
When I found a second Harriet Maidment in the 1841 census of the same age as Mary Rideout's sister I knew I had to do more research. The second Harriet I'd found was living with William Maidment who looked to be her father. With the Harriet I'd been researching, on her marriage certificate she named her father as William. Besides that marriage took place in East Stour the 1841 census place for William Maidment and his daughter, Harriet. It looked like it was time to scrap all the work I'd already done.
So, I decided to look for Harriet's son, Henry Maidment in the 1851 census. I remember searching for Harriet Maidment in the same census with no luck but searching for females of marriageable age can be problematic. Maybe being male Henry had kept his last name even if he had ended up with a new family.
I found a likely candidate, a Henry Maidment listed as a nephew with birth year about 1842, living in Sixpenny Handley, Dorset - right county, right age. A check of the listing showed Jasper Maidment as the head. I'm sure the name Jasper had come up with checking Ancestry's ThruLines. With Jasper were his wife Mary A, children: Joseph, Mary A, John, George, sister Jane and nephew Henry. What was more Mary A., Jasper's wife, was born in Ashmore, where Thomas and Mary Rideout lived. Maybe I was on the right track at last.
Back in my April 20th blog post, I wrote about my quest to find the parents of my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment. She and her husband, Thomas Rideout, had married in 1833, before civil registration in England, so the record of their marriage didn't include the names of the parents of the happy couple. So I needed to find another way to identify Mary's origins. A major clue that I was following was the entry for Mary and her husband and family in the 1841 census. They were listed with their children and also included in the entry were Harriet Maidment and one month old Henry who had the same last name as his mother. My theory was that Harriet was Mary's sister but the 1841 census didn't list relationships.
I had been digging into this research over the years and, at one point in time, I had found Harriet Maidment marrying a George Roberts. I had even ordered the marriage certificate for this couple which gave the name of Harriet's father as William Maidment. Further digging showed this Harriet also had other children out of wedlock before she married George Roberts. That sounded familiar even if none of the children was named Henry. After all, infants did die, especially male children.
Many hours were spent following up on the descendants of Harriet Maidment/Roberts. Those offspring travelled far afield and I wondered if any of their descendants would show up in my DNA match lists as I gleefully added those branches to my Ancestry family tree. But one day I checked the 1841 census for William Maidment, the father that Harriet named on her marriage certificate. There was one in East Stour, Dorset where Harriet Maidment/Roberts got married in 1844. But following William Maidment's name on the 1841 census was a Harriet Maidment aged 20, the same age as the Harriet Maidment listed with Thomas Rideout and family on the 1841 census for Ashmore, Dorset. Had the same person been listed in two places or had I made a mistake and followed the wrong Harriet Maidment?
I signed up for two DNA courses on the Your DNA Guide site. They both started at the same time so it is hard going at the beginning. One of them is only for 10 weeks and the other is the Study Group which runs for a year. The shorter one, the DNA Skills Course, actually gets the participant to use their own DNA information to find out more about their own family lines through the use of genetic genealogy.
When I signed up for the more intense course, I planned on having my family tree DNA ready by filling in the collateral lines before I started. Funny how it seems there's lots of time before something starts and then it's a scramble to get even some of it done. So now part of my time is spent getting my tree in order and the other, trying to keep up with the lessons in both courses. I seem to be perpetually behind.
A bit of knowledge is rubbing off though as I look through my matches. I've decided to concentrate on my Ancestry match list to make life simpler. I just hope I've set a research question that can be answered with the use of DNA. The actual question is not in doubt, it's whether or not I have matches which can provide the answer. I hope that I do but I'm working on an English line and DNA testing in that country is not as widespread as it is in the US. I'll see how this goes but even if I don't come up with an answer I'll have learned the technique which I can use on other family lines.
My grandfather is the gentleman on the left and my grandmother the woman in black
It was an interesting question. One used as a prompt for a short presentation at a meeting of my genealogy society. There were only two of us presenting and the person who went before me had a wonderful story full of information that her ancestor had left and that she had subsequently found. I love stories like that. They serve as inspiration for us who are searching.
My presentation had less of a story behind it and I'm more of a writer than a speaker but I think it went over well. The ancestor I focused on was my paternal grandfather, Charles Edwin Cavanagh. He died a few years before I was born, the same year my father married my mother.
My grandfather was single until 1915 when he married Ellen Myra Booth, a widow with 4 children then living (one had died), the oldest of which was 15, the youngest 4. Her husband, Henry Booth had died in March of 1913 of cirrhosis of the liver. Henry had been a beer house keeper and Ellen Myra kept the business going.
His circumstances changed drastically when he wed as he married into a ready-made family and a business. He and Ellen Myra had three children together, 3 boys of which my Dad was the eldest. It was at his father's insistence that he be given the name Booth as one of his middle names showing the importance of the family as a whole to his father. One of my cousins also told me that the older children liked their stepfather better that their own father. He certainly seems to have been a family oriented man.
Remember those days hunched over a microfilm reader in a Family History Centre searching for that elusive record that would give you the next branch in your family tree or the census entry for the next ten years of your ancestors' lives? Present day researchers may not have memories of those times but I do. The work was painstaking but there was something about being with fellow researchers that made it more doable somehow. The majority of that kind of research has passed with genealogy databases giving us access to more and more information digitally.
It turns out that even accessing digital information goes better in company with fellow genealogists. Last weekend from Friday to Sunday, I got together with a group of researchers as we pursued out self-appointed research tasks. Mine was to add more branches to my Maidment/Rideout tree. It may be easier to find each individual census entry these days but it was still painstaking. Who knew there were so many children to follow up on? I stuck to my task for all three days. Even with indexes and digital records it took time to get those branches for the family tree.
I went old school, though, and wrote all the entries in a notebook. At this point I don't know what affect adding the new branches will have on my DNA matches, if any. Then again, my supposition that Harriet Maidment was Mary Rideout nee Maidment's sister might be incorrect. It remains to be seen if DNA can prove or disprove anything about the relationship of these two women.
I'm still working on filling in the collateral lines of one particular line of my family tree. That's the Rideout/Maidment line that I wrote about last time. The reason I'm concentrating on this particular branch of my family tree is because I'm using it as a means to learn more about what DNA can reveal about my family's past. I'm taking a course to help me figure out how to use genetic genealogy to expand my research into my family and some of the advice given for beginners in this endeavour is to have a bushy tree, one that includes collateral lines. With those extra twigs included it becomes easier to see connections with DNA matches.
Following the censuses every 10 years is a good way to find any children that have been born as well as the new couples that have formed their own families. A lot of the clan stayed around the area of Ashmore in Dorset but the ones that left often bounced around from place to place. It doesn't help that there is a huge gap in what is available between the 1911 English census and the 1939 England and Wales Register. The lines blacked out as official closed records on the latter aren't helpful for my quest either. Neither is the fact that one part of the family strayed into Scotland and then there is the 1921 census which still costs extra to view. I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet on that one, though. Searches on FindMyPast have hinted at matches in that census for the names I've entered and added lines that look like possible children as well. I'll let you know how my quest goes and if I succumb to the lure of possibilities in the 1921 census.
Resources usually get fewer and farther between when you reach beyond the 2 X great grandparent level. So it was for my 2 x great grandmother, Mary Maidment. I know that she married Thomas Rideout but that was before civil registration so the marriage entry in the parish register didn't contain any information about her parentage. Interestingly, one of the witnesses to the marriage was a Harriet Maidment. How did she fit in?
I puzzled over Harriet and her origins for a long time especially as I found her living with Mary and Thomas Rideout and their children in the 1841 census. Harriet had a child of her own but she still went by the last name of Maidment. I had followed up on these clues years ago then put the problem aside.
I would go back to the puzzle every once in a while. Mary Maidment has intrigued me since I found her especially as her husband, Thomas Rideout, died in 1842 and her last child was born in 1845. This child also had the last name Rideout although Mary had not remarried and no record of his birth contained the name of a father. Hints about Mary's own father started appearing on my Ancestry family tree giving the name of her likely father as Elias Maidment. In weak moments, I was tempted just to add Elias to my own Ancestry tree but life has taught me to be skeptical.
Along came a DNA course and a chance to look further into the puzzle of Mary Maidment and her connection, Harriet. While going through my paper records, I came across a marriage certificate for Harriet Maidment. I didn't remember ordering that. The listed groom was George Roberts and, of course, the bride was Harriet Maidment who named her father as William Maidment, a labourer. But Harriet Maidment was not an uncommon name in Dorset in this time period. Plus the marriage was in 1844 and the Roberts family in the 1851 census for East Stower showed the oldest child of the couple as Catherine aged 9. That didn't compute.
My next step was to look for Catherine Roberts' baptism in East Stower. What came up on the Ancestry search was an 1868 marriage for Catherine Maidment whose father was named as George Roberts. Looks like that 1844 marriage for George Roberts and Harriet Maidment was the one I was looking for. The later 1868 marriage certificate had proved it. The 1844 certificate named Harriet's father as William Maidment, labourer not Elias as the hints on my tree had suggested. Only now that I look closely as the certificate, George Roberts' father was named William as well. So could the second name of William be a clerical error or perhaps Harriet had misremembered. Looks like more genealogical research will be needed because DNA can point us to genetic relatives but it can't prove the validity of their family trees.
