The frustrations of family trees
I’ve uncovered real mystery and curiosity-inducing snippets when doing a spot of casual data-mining for information on my family tree. While my father’s family name heavily populates the 1901 census in both SE and NW England, and features as witnesses and defendants in the public Old Bailey records from 1674 to 1913, my mother’s family name is a different story altogether, and appears comparatively few times in census records and not at all in Old Bailey records. What I have found perplexes me.
We don’t know any of those who appear in the Old Bailey records, although those convicted of crimes in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were often poor—done for stealing loaves of bread, for example. This is no surprise: most of us have peasantry in our bloodlines, unless we’re from families of inherited wealth dating back a long time or from royalty.
Plus, my father’s name is very common and I’d have to do real digging to discover what, if any, direct ancestral links there might be among the criminals and witnesses. There might be none. Certainly my father’s immediate ancestors going back a few generations were all based in Lancashire, though his grandmother came from Ireland. We know of one male, however, who did move to London to work on the railways down there. But whether he moved back to Lancashire or stayed, I can’t say, or whether he’s got much if any of a family link through to us.
My mother’s family name is much harder to find traces of, even allowing for contractions and misspellings of the name.
A Wikipedia search found my mother’s surname popping up just once, in the British West Indies: St Michael, Barbados. This struck a chord as I’d already discovered a reference to the name in St Vincent, Barbados. A search on Ancestry.com (which a friend tells me for some reason isn’t to be relied upon) revealed the 1891 distribution of my mother’s surname in England, in just two counties—Staffordshire and Cheshire, the latter being right next door to my birth county of Lancashire.
But there were only 19 people with that surname in Staffordshire, and 6 in Cheshire. Census records going from the 1830s up to 1901 show the numbers of recorded instances of the name rising from just five through to 26. I’d have thought you needed more than that to keep a name alive, and I’m still no wiser to the origins of the name or how far back it goes, or even if the data is reliable (there are misspellings and contractions to consider, of course, but contractions rarely travel forward through time and wind up expanded back again, and something similar surely applies to misspellings).
I have also found five slaves in districts of Kingston, Jamaica registered from the 1820s-40s to owners bearing the name, and evidence that a contraction of it survives to the present day there. And there are other online records indicating appearances of the name in other British counties, and Birmingham. But always very few. Still, I found in my idle hour plenty to think about, and consider pursuing.
I see now why researching your family tree is said to be addictive, although I can also understand why a friend told me it’s a hobby that is a road to madness and frustration. Contradictory data is everywhere! But with so very few instances of my mother’s family name appearing in records, I can surely assume that all of them (except the slaves) are going to be related in some way? Maybe not. But I’d love to know, even if it turned out there were plantation owners or slave traders in the family line. When I told my mum about all this yesterday, she said the possibility of that might account for the family having been very wealthy in the 1800s, a remnant of the wealth being evident in her grandparents being able to afford servants and luxury goods of the day. But, again, the money could have come from any successful business at all.
tags: ancestors, census, family tree, mystery, Old Bailey, research
1 comment on “The frustrations of family trees”
May 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Fascinating stuff eh! And yes it can be very addictive
We are still working on both sides of the family trees, and were fortunate in finding a diary from Victorian times, and a couple of very unique sort of people (odd professions) on Matthew’s side. You are lucky in that records are very well kept in the UK, on my Ukrainian side all is lost past three generations. Best wishes with your research, sounds like you have some intriguing family history to discover. 
have your say
You must be logged in to post a comment. Registration is free, and easy.