Following Sarah Minister/Cavanagh's moves through London

 

                                    A copy of one of Charles Booth's London Poverty maps in my collection

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

 

First steps to uncover a family story

 

                                                 The GRO death certificates for Benjamin and Sarah Cavanagh

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

A forgotten family branch

 

                                                                        A street in The Rows, Great Yarmouth

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 

September resolutions?

 

                                                    Just some of the genealogy magazines I haven't yet gone through

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!