For those of a certain vintage the most recent claim to fame of Buckler’s hard was that it was the place where Sir Francis Chichester began and completed his single handed round the world voyage in his yacht – Gipsy Moth IV – in 1966/7, but before that it had a very distinguished history as a shipbuilding village. The first royal naval vessel to be built there was built in the 1680s, and during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were very many vessels built in this small hamlet, among them HMS Euryalus, HMS Swiftsure and HMS Agamemnon, all of which fought at Trafalgar in 1805. Nelson commanded HMS Agamemnon for several years in the 1790s, and let it be known that she was his favourite vessel.

With the arrival of steam warships in the nineteenth century the construction of naval vessels at Buckler’s Hard declined, but the hamlet still had a major part to play in this country’s history, as it was here that segments of the Mulberry Harbour, which were towed across the English Channel in readiness for the 1944 D Day landings, were built.

To the modern eye this is a very picturesque and tranquil place. The Georgian cottages, where once lived the tradesmen involved in the building of these wonderful ships, bear witness to the events of the past, and we were able to visit the Shipwright’s Cottage and see the conditions in which these craftsmen lived. Very comfortable for the time, I must say.

We could also see the slipways where these great vessels were launched. All absolutely fascinating, and it made me think of a couple of Bankes descendants who served in the British Navy, either as craftsmen or as crew members.

Although it is fair to say that my knowledge of my Jacobson forebears is a bit sketchy, it seems clear that  Esco Jacobson (c1655-1728) was probably involved in either the building of naval vessels, or their maintenance, being variously described as a shipwright and a carpenter, resident in Stepney. It seems likely that he was working in the East London naval dockyards.

Then there was Bankes Mitchell (c1720-1763), son of Robert Mitchell and Elizabeth, nee Russell. Bankes was a watchmaker of London, and came from what appears to have been a very prosperous family. He was married to Hannah Attwood in 1754, but the available evidence indicates that she had died before 1763. By 1763 he was serving as an Able Seaman on the Royal Navy vessel Alcides, having previously served on the Temeraire. By March of that year he was serving on the Hampton Court, serving in the Caribbean in the Seven Years War. Sadly, on the voyage home Bankes Mitchell became ill and died on 18 August 1763, being buried at sea. I wonder why a gentleman such as Bankes Mitchell became an able seaman in the navy. It seems a very odd career move, and I wonder whether he had fallen on hard times and this had led him to join the British Navy. Alternatively he may have been press-ganged, but this may be unlikely, as I understand that in fact few people were press-ganged into the navy.

I’d love to know more about these people, and hope that I may accomplish this some day.

I have been researching the Bankes Pedigree with very few breaks since about 1991, and have decided that as there are other things that I would like to do, it is now time for me to take a break from this research. This means that my posts to this blog will not be as regular as they have been in the past, and such research as I do will probbaly relate to my direct lines of ancestry, rather than the Bankes Pedigree in general. I shall still be delighted to hear from anybody interested in the Bankes Pedigree or my other direct ancestral lines who would like to contact me, and will respond to any queries as I always have done, so please feel free to contact me.

The post Geffs Genealogy Update 12 June 2016 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

Doing this work brought to mind that it is some time since I updated the content on my website, so this will be the next maintenance job I shall be working on to bring Geoffs Genealogy up to date, although I can’t say when I shall get around to doing this, especially with holidays approaching and a garden to work in. I’ll update you re this through this blog.

In my February blog entry I mentioned some work I had done, looking into the life of John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher of London (c1650-1719/20), and this month I have looked at a matter relating to our family’s benefactor that you may find interesting.

I mentioned previously that I had traced a list of apprentices to Bankes, and it occurred to me that it may be interesting to look at the lives of some of these people, to see what I can find out about them, in the hope that this may cast some light on Bankes’s life or family. I looked first at Nathan Crow, who, as I mentioned in February, was apprenticed to Bankes on 9 April 1714, and was still an apprentice at the time of his master’s death in 1719/20.  I knew, from the apprenticeship record, that Nathan was the son of David Crow, a Maltster of Cumberland, and that he received his freedom on 21 April 1721. It may be worth mentioning in passing that although I traced his freedom in the Haberdashers’ Company records, I could not find it in the City of London freedom records that can be viewed on the Ancestry.co.uk website, so it can pay to check more than one source.

A search of the indexes on the Family Search website suggests that Nathan Crow, son of David Crow, was baptised at Lanercost, Cumberland on 7 August 1695. His mother’s name is not stated.

Lanercost is a small village, located just south of Hadran’s Wall, near the River Irthing and about twelve miles to the east of Carlisle. It is about 325 miles north of London, and it seems reasonable to assume that it was as small a place in Nathan’s time as it is today.

When people tell you that our forebears didn’t travel far, just remember Nathan. Fancy travelling all the way from Cumberland to London in 1714! This was in the days before the great improvements in transport that were occurring in England by 1800. In Nathan’s time travel was notoriously slow and dangerous, although unfortunately I have been unable to ascertain how long his journey from Cumberland to London would have taken him.

One wonders whether Nathan Crow undertook his journey alone, or with a fellow traveller. He was about 19 years of age when his apprenticeship to Bankes was transacted,  so would most likely have been capable of travelling alone. Maybe he was with his father, and maybe the whole nuclear family moved to the capital together. That said, I haven’t managed to trace David Crow, Maltster in the London records. Maybe Nathan’s parents had died in Cumberland, and he had made his way to London alone or with siblings?

Another question. What was the process by which Nathan Crow became apprenticed to John Bankes? Would he or (more likely, perhaps) his father have become aware of Bankes whilst living in Cumberland? Or would he have treavelled to London in search of an apprenticeship, and become aware of Bankes whilst in the capital?

So many thought provoking questions, but at the moment I have no answers to any of them.

As Nathan was apprenticed to John Bankes I would expect that his trade once a freeman would have been that of a carpenter, or something else in the building trade.  However, to date I have been unable to trace him active in these trades in London at that time. Maybe he died young, or moved back to Cumberland once a freeman? That last option seems less than likely to me.

One thing I do know about him is that, in the aftermath of his Bankes’s death he worked for a time for his Master’s widow:

John Cartlitch told the Court of Chancery that the said Mrs Banks [Elizabeth Bankes, widow of John] at first employed Nathan Crow the Testator’s servant to assist her in selling and disposing of the Testator’s goods and stocks at his Wharf and to receive and gett (sic) in some of his rents and debts. (Source: The National Archives, Kew, Source Ref C11/2792/9, Elizabeth Banks v Z Foxall).

Bankes died in March 1719/20, and Thomas Crow received his Freedom thirteen months later, so presumably this emloyment would have come to an end by then. The above source tells us that later Mrs Banks employed a certain Thomas Russell to do the work that Nathan had done for her. Presumably Thomas was a relative of Elizabeth Banks from a previous marriage to Thomas Russell of Bermondsey.

My searches of the online London records have not yet enabled me to find out what became of Nathan. I have traced one or two people bearing that name at the relevant time, but am not confident that I have found the right man, so I’ll try to keep all this in mind for future reference. Who knows, one day I may find out what became of Nathan Crow, Citizen & Haberdasher of London.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 8 May 2016 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

You can sometimes find family trees on the internet that include some of the people we know to be on Jan’s tree, and sometimes these trees can lead us to new information or to confirm existing information, but in my experience many of these trees contain errors, so often what we think may be a breakthrough for us proves not to be the case.

I have been trying to fill in some of the missing details on Jan’s tree relating to both the forebears we have already identified, and to more recent forebears, and concentrating on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I am particularly interested in trying to trace some lines down to the present day, in the hope of identifying living cousin. Not so long ago it was an extremely difficult  to do this sort of research, as there were few twentieth centuyry sources readily available to us. Whilst I’m not saying that this work is now easy, thanks to the many genealogy websites that are available to us today, with a bit of luck we stand a fair chance of successfully identifying cousins. The main standard tools I use in this work are (in no particular order):

• Civil Registration Indexes
• Trade Directories
• Electoral Registers
• Telephone Directories
• The 1939 Register

The upshot of this effort is that I have succeeded in identifying two people who I believe to be living and who are second cousins to Jan. I’m not sure whether or not we shall be contacting these people, that will be Jan’s decision, but it is good to have had a successful outcome to this research.

A while ago Helen passed me some newspaper items that she had gleaned whilst searching the British Newspapers collection on the Find My Past website. They related to a gentleman named Reginald Gregory Charman Haines (1913-1981), a Royal Navy officer who married Eugenie Marion Reynell (b 1918). Eugenie was the daughter of Harold Essex Reynell (1887-1972) and Georgiana Catherine Liddell (1898-1981), and was descended from Joseph Rand (b abt 1665, died bef 1708), a half brother of John Bankes (c1650-1719).  She was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1918. Although born abroad, her family apparently moved to London when she was a few months old, and she appears to have lived in the capital for much of her life. She married Reginald in Westminster in 1939.

The newspaper items that I have just been dealing with concern a variety of events in Reginald’s life. The most pleasant of these was the announcement of his engagement to Eugenie, which appeared in the Gloucester Citizen newspaper on 21 September 1939. We learn that Reginald was said to be living in Petersfield, Hampshire, and was the “elder son of the late Dr C R Haines, DD, MA, FSA and Mrs Haines, Meadowfield, Petersfield”, and the parents of his bride to be were Mr & Mrs Harold Reynell, of Shanghai”. In fact, we know from other sources that her parents had very strong ties to the far east; her father had been born in Japan and her mother was born in Shanghai, China.

Alas, the other newspaper articles we have deal with events in Reginald’s life that were far less pleasant. The Portsmouth Evening News of 15 August 1934 reports on a court case in which he was convicted of driving a motor car in Petersfield without due care and attention, having nearly run over a lady who was crossing the road whilst pushing a pram with a baby in it. He was fined £2 10s with £2 10s costs.

The Western Evening News of 23 February 1935 reports a civil suit which related to a compensation claim against Reginald by a Plymouth man who had been injured in a motor accident in Portsmouth which  involved Reginald Haines. The amount of damages agreed in the settlement of this matter amounted to £3,150 – a very large sum of money in those days.

The last of these articles comes from the Gloucester Citizen of 25 March 1948. Reginald had been serving in the Royal Navy in Washington DC, and had been involved in a fatal accident near Washington, resulting in a charge of manslaughter against him. The verdict of not guilty must have been an enormous relief to him, but he was fined a total of US$125 for leaving the scene of an accident and reckless driving.

All in all, it seems that motor vehicles and Reginald did not really go together very well. An interesting insight into his character and some of the events in his life.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 4 April 2016 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

The people at Ancestry would probably like me to mention that they also have a large collection of Irish parish registers available online.

As it stands these records are of no real use to me, but I mention them for the benefit of any possible readers of this blog who may have Irish interests. I am constantly amazed that in about 30 years of researching I have never yet identified an Irish born forebear, although I remain convinced that there must be some waiting to be found by me.

The other really important addition to FMP’s record set is the 1939 Register, which came online in the last weeks of 2015. Unfortunately, when these records were published, FMP priced them as an extra to the subscription so even if, like me, you pay an annual subscription, you had to pay an extra charge to view them. I, and many other subscribers, protested to FMP about this, and I’m pleased to say that they responded by changing their policy and including the 1939 Register in the UK subscription with effect from 16 February this year. This meant that I could stop my self imposed boycott and in the past few weeks I have been making great use of this wonderful resource which, by the way, is indexed and very easy to use..

The 1939 Register was compiled by the British Government in September 1939, when they had just declared war on Germany. They needed to find out information about all the people in the country – names, ages, occupations and the like, in order to make sure that they made the best use of the skills that were available to be deployed in the war effort. It is rather like a census, in that it lists households and shows the sex, age and occupation of everybody listed. Unlike censuses it does not show birthplaces, but as the precise date of birth is shown, it should usually be pretty easy to find the district in which the birth was registered. Additionally,  heads of households were not identified, and the relationship of a person to the head of household was not shown either.

When the register was compiled it was very important to ascertain occupations with a high degree of accuracy, so FMP say that the occupations listed are very much more precise than those shown in the census entries with which we are all familiar.

As there is a 100 years closure on these personal records the records for any persons born within 100 years of the present date have been blacked out and cannot be read. However, where FMP know that a person born over 100 years ago has died they have not blacked out their record, and if you know of a relative who has died, but has been blacked out in this record, there is a procedure whereby you can ask FMP to release the record.

In quite a large number of cases the records have been updated to show when a person subsequently married, and in these cases the bride’s married name is inserted, and is shown with her maiden name – a great aid to finding marriages relevant to your research.

The reason why the 1939 Register is so valuable to researchers will probably be apparent to anybody who has tried to research 20th century ancestry. At last we have a resource that is comprehensive, detailed, and in a particularly valuable time frame.

The most recent census that we can use at the moment is dated 1911, and due to the 100 years closure rule the 1921 census will not be released until 2022. Then there will be a big gap in these most valuable records. The 1931 census was destroyed by a fire during the night of Saturday 19 December 1942 at the Hayes, Middlesex facility where it was being stored. Everything was lost – schedules, enumeration books, the lot, so we shall never be able to see these records. As if that was not bad enough, the 1941 census never took place, because the country was otherwise occupied at that time, so after the release of the 1921 census there will be a thirty year gap until the 1951 census records are published, presumably in 1952. I don’t know about you, but I can be fairly certain that I shall not be here by then!

Thus, the release of the 1939 Register is a very big event for all types of historians, but particularly for family historians, and I would certainly encourage anybody to make good use of it. I have been doing so over the past few weeks, and have been successful in finding people on all my lines of research, including quite a few people who I have known personally.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 7 March 2016 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

Software MacKiev, a software developer, has agreed to acquire the Family Tree Maker software line as publisher for both Mac and Windows versions. As this company has been the developer of FTM for Mac for a number of years, the software is well known to them, and they are looking forward to developing and publishing it for Mac and Windows systems in future. Software MacKiev will be providing updates to the software, and new versions, and all in all it seems that the availability and development of this software will be much the same from 2017 as it was in 2015. Good news for the likes of me, and I can’t help thinking that this change of circumstances is probably due to pressure from FTM users.

Also last month I told you about my research into John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher of London (c1650-1719) and his apprentices. You may recall that I had been scouring the Haberdashers’ Company apprenticeship records on Find My Past, and come up with a list of ten people who were apprenticed to John Bankes in his lifetime. Well, this month I have been able to add another name to the list. I had not noticed previously that on 9 April 1714 not only was  Nathan Crow indentured to Bankes, but he was joined by a certain George Lord, who was also signing up. Amazing to see the diverse locations that these people came from. Crow was from Cumberland, and Lord from Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire. Then, as now, London was a magnet for migrants from all over the place. The rebuilding of the capital after the fire of 1666 provided so many opportunities for people to make a lot of money, and it seems that there was no shortage of people looking to take advantage of the opportunity. What a pity we don’t have a 1711 London census to look at. The birthplace columns would have made interesting reading!

Bankes died before either of these apprentices would have completed their seven years terms. In the case of Nathan Crow we know that he became a Freeman in April 1721, but I cannot trace a freedom record for George Lord, so I do not know whether he ever completed his apprenticeship, or what became of him.

This find prompted me to look a bit further into John Bankes’s life, so I carried out some research using the London Poll Book for the parliamentary election of 1710, which is available to view on www.ancestry.co.uk. This was most interesting. In those times only men of property were permitted to vote in elections. The amount of property required to be able to vote varied from one place to another and one date to another, so one cannot use poll books to estimate say how much John Bankes was worth, but it is clear that he would have had substantial property.

In the poll book that I looked at the electors were listed by livery company, so Bankes shows as a Freeman of the Haberdashers’ Company. This poll book lists everybody who voted and those who were qualified but did not vote, whereas I understand that the majority of poll books only list those who voted. Whereas today we place great value on the secret ballot, in those days the fact that anybody could see for whom who a person had voted was seen as a good thing, giving transparency to the electoral system.

The poll of Citizens of London in 1710 took place between Monday 9 October and Saturday 15 October. The initials of the candidates in the election are listed at the top of each page, and in the columns beneath these names are marks to show which candidates the electors voted for. In Bankes’s case we can see that he voted for Sir William Ashurst, Gilbert Heathcote,  Sir James Bateman and John Ward esq. I have been able to read brief biographies of these candidates, with the exception of John Ward, and they were all of the Whig party, and very prominent men in the Whig politics of the period. In 1710 the Tories won the elections, and so Bankes was on the losing side. Given what we know about Bankes  – that he was what may be termed a member of the merchant fraternity and a non-conformist, it does not surprise me that he supported the Whig cause, but it is nevertheless  interesting to see the evidence of that, and it all helps to build an image of our benefactor.

Other sources that I have used recently to get to know more about John Bankes the man are the various taxation records that are available, such as rate books and records of the 4 Shillings in the pound tax of 1693-4. They are all quite fascinating but, alas, they do not help us to discover what all Bankes researchers want to know. Who were his parents, and where did he come from?

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 4 February 2016 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

I have used FTM to store my genealogy data for about 20 years, and although I’m sure that there are other products on the market that do the job just as well, I have found that this program has suited my requirements pretty well. An fact Ancestry have only owned FTM for a few years, and it is fair to say that in that time they have developed the product in ways that had not happened previously. The most obvious of these was the facility to search the Ancestry website for sources relating to an ancestor by clicking on a leaf symbol on the ancestor’s record page. If this process leads you to some relevant information you can attach it to your individual at the click of a mouse – a very simple process, and a very effective one, also. I have never actually made use of this search facility, preferring to do things my way, but I am aware that many people find it very useful, and use it a lot, and when Ancestry cease to support FTM they will certainly miss it.

For myself, as I’m not dependent on FMP for my internet searches I am not concerned about the impending loss of this function. My concern is more about how completely I shall be able to transfer my FTM data to another Genealogy program. As the transfer is almost certain to be effected by means of a Gedcom file I fear that I shall not be able to transfer all the data fields I have at present, and if that is the case I may well be faced with a lengthy and tedious process to create the necessary fields in whatever program I choose to use, and then entering my data in them. Not only that, but if I have to do some of this work manually, rather than through an automated process, there is always the possibility of errors creeping in. I always assume that everybody’s research contains a certain number of errors, and mine is no exception, but I certainly don’t want to increase the possibility of errors creeping in.

Apparently, one of the reasons for the diminishing market for genealogy software is the growing number of people who use online facilities such as Ancestry Family Tree to store their data. Personally, I have always avoided putting my research on any of these platforms. I do see the value in letting others know about your research interests, and as visitors to this blog will know, I am more than happy to share the results of my research with other researchers who have the same interests, but I prefer to display my research in my own way.  I accept that I am probably in a minority in this. When I am researching online I often look to see whether there are any relevant trees online, but experienced researchers will not need me to tell them that we need to use any information found in this way with more circumspection than usual, as it often contains significant errors. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve found chunks of the Bankes pedigree attached to a tree that had no connection with our benefactor.

What Helen & I have decided is that we will look at other programs to replace Family Tree Maker but, until we come up with what we think is a suitable solution to these issues, we will stick with FTM. After all, the program works ok (touch wood), and unless we start using an operating system that can’t run FTM there is every chance that we shall be able to use it well into the future. Obviously, we will no longer get updates to the software, but we have to accept that.

Now for a change of subject.

I expect you would excuse me for having done less genealogy work than usual during December, given the Christmas festivities, but in fact I’ve still been pretty active, as I have been looking at the apprentices of John Bankes, Citizen & Haberdasher (c1650-1719). I had traced four such apprentices in the past, but as the Register of Apprentice Bindings and the Register of Freedom Admissions for Bankes’s era are now available to search on the Find My Past website, I decided to have a further look at this topic.

This piece of research was most successful, as I traced a further six apprentices to Bankes. The earliest was Thomas Smith, son of Thomas Smith of Hampton, Gloucestershire, who was, so far as I know, was the first apprentice that JB had, his binding being dated 1676. I mentioned him in the Bankes Biography page of the Geoffs Genealogy website. Ther last apprentice to the great man that I have found was Nathan Crow, son of David Crow of Cumberland, who was bound in 1714 and received his Freedom in 1721 – two years after Bankes’s death. I had already encountered Nathan in my research, in a Court of Chancery document recounting some of the evidence given by John Cartlitch, Banks’s friend and executor on his death:

“John Cartlitch believed that the said Mrs Banks at first employed Nathan Crow the Testator’s servant to assist her in selling and disposing of the testator’s goods and stocks at his wharf and to receive and gett in some of his rents and debts and that she afterwards employed Thomas Russell … therein.” (The National Archives source ref C11/2792/9).

On reading this source I had believed that the use of the term “servant” indicated that Nathan Crow was some kind of house servant to Banks, but it is now clear that this was not the case and he was an apprentice. Nathan Crow’s term of apprenticeship ended in 1721, when he was made a Freeman of the City of London. It does not appear that his apprenticeship was turned over (ie transferred) to another master, so presumably he was able to complete his apprenticeship working in Bankes’s business.

I’ve often seen it assumed by people today that their seventeenth and eighteenth century contemporaries did not travel far, but  this small piece of research provides evidence that this was not the case. You will have noted that the two apprentices mentioned above hailed from Gloucestershire and Cumberland, and in fact only two of the ten apprentices I found came from London.  Two came from places in Surrey that were just outside the capital, but the others hailed from Oxfordshire, Sussex, Norfolk and Gloucestershire (making two from that county in total). In late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries London was a magnet for migration, just as it is now. In the aftermath of the Great Fire in 1666, and the plague that preceded it, there was a great need for people to rebuild the city and replace those who had died in those disasters, and thus a very real hope that a man could make his fortune in the City of London, as was the case with Bankes.

I have saved the most interesting result of this research until last.

In my blog entry of 1 May 2012 I mentioned that I had traced the apprenticeship  of  John Rand, a Barber Surgeon, who we believe was a nephew of Bankes, born about 1684. On his apprenticeship document John was said to be the son of Samuel Rand of Chichester, deceased, but I had drawn a blank in finding any information about Samuel. I was, however, confident that this John Rand was our man, as this was the only one record of a John Rand becoming Free of the Barber Surgeons’ Company in that period. Furthermore, I know that John Rand, Barber Surgeon of London, had a son named Samuel, who was presumably named after his father. Alas, the child did not survive infancy.

Bearing that in mind, imagine my delight when I found that one of John Bankes’s apprentices was a certain John Rand! Details of the entry were as follows:

London Metropolitan Archives Source Ref CLC/L/HA/C/011/MS15860/007, fo 184

1685
Joseph Rand son of John Rand late of Chichester in the County of Sussex Gent decd
bound to John Banks Citizen & Haberdr of London for Seaven yeares from
the date dated [……]

So here we have another Rand whose father was a Chichester man, and as he was apprenticed to Bankes, and the names Joseph Rand and John Rand very much fit with the names of Bankes’s Rand relations, there must be a very strong possibility that there was indeed a link between Bankes’s half siblings and the City of Chichester in Sussex. Maybe Samuel Rand and John Rand were brothers.

I am particularly excited about this lead because for all my interest in Bankes, in fact it was Mary (Rand) Mitchell, his half sister, who was my direct ancestor. Much as I would love to trace Bankes’s parents, the greater prize is to trace the Rand line back beyond Mary. I really do think that this is my best lead yet.

I have searched online for information about these Rands, without any success, so I now need to work out how I can advance this research at minimum cost. If anybody reading this has any ideas please do let me know. I am even thinking of including Chichester in this year’s holiday plans, so that we can visit the records office.

Thanks for reading this rather lengthy blog entry. I hope that some of it, at least, has interested you, and hope that 2016 is good to you.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 8 January 2016 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

It’s a long time since I looked at the Welsh Herberts, so when I saw a reference to the untimely death of David Meredydd Herbert in the second world war I thought I’d take a look into the matter. David was born in Cardiff in 1919, the son of Charles Meredydd Herbert (1872-1940) and Gwladys May Katharine Riches (1878-1972), and I have no information about him apart from the information I have just seen. Ancestry.co.uk contains a reference from the Commonwealth War Graves Registers, showing that he is commemmorated on the Dunkirk Memorial, in France, as a casualty on the Lanastria, a ship that went down on 17 June 1940. He was only 20 years old when he died.

As the entry states that David was serving in the Royal Army Service Corps I sort of assumed that he was probably one of the troops killed at the time of the evacuation from the Dunkirk beaches, but when I looked at the RMS Lancastria in Wikipedia that turned out not to be quite correct.

In fact the Lancastria was a Cunard liner, capable of carrying over 2,000 passengers, which had been pressed into serve in the second world war as a troop carrying ship. Two weeks after the Dunkirk evacuation she was  off the French port of St Nazaire, engaged in the evacuation of British troops and civilians from France, when she was attacked by German aircraft, and so badly damaged that she sank within 20 minutes. There were almost 2,500 survivors of this disaster, but at least 1,700 people are known to have died, which makes it possibly the biggest sea disaster ever. The British Government suppressed the release of news of the catastrophe with D Notices, but the news broke in the New York Times a few weeks later, and was then picked up by British newspapers.

Sadly, Charles’s father had died in the preceding January, so this must have been a particularly difficult time for his mother.

Later in the month I decided it was high time that I had another go at researching my Lancashire Hewitt forebears. I have never had a great deal of success with this line of research, but I come back to it every now and again, hoping that some more relevant sources have become available.

My direct ancestor, Charlotte Hewitt, was born c1800, probably in the Winwick area. We do not know the identity of her parents, but we did discover, many years ago, that she gave birth to a son named William Hewitt in April 1822 –  the problem being that she was not married at the time. She identified the father as Charles Hatton of the township of Kenyon, Lancashire, and he was ordered to pay for the support of the child. However, charles had already fathered another child out of wedlock, in the previous year. This child was born around February 1821 and was named Joseph Higham, the son of Ellen Higham, singlewoman. On this occasion, also, Charles had been ordered by the local Oversers of the Poor, to pay for the support of the child. One is forced to conclude that as Charles appears to have been an ordinary working man, a large proportion of his income must have been going on these payments.

I have tended to ignore Charles in my research. After all, my Hewitt forebears, descendants of William born in 1822, where Hewitts, not Hattons. However, a few weeks ago I changed my view, decided that when all is said and done, Charles was my ancestor just as surely as all those other ancestors who did behave in a more conventional way, and that I should, after all, try to find out what became of him.

It turns out that Charles Hatton was, after all, a decent chap. On 1 September 1823 at Winwick he married Ellen Higham, and they lived together thereasfter in the Winwick area. I traced the couple on the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses. By 1841 Charles was an Ag Lab, and  they had seven children, the eldest of whom was Joseph Hatton. Ten years later both Charles and Ellen Hatton were recorded as being 51 years of age, Joseph was not in the household, which consisted of five children and a male lodger. Charles was said to be a Hand Loom Weaver (Silk), born Kenyon, and Ellen, also born Kenyon was a Silk Throwster, presumably twisting the silk into thread. By 1861 Ellen had died one year earlier, and Charles was enumerated, still in the same part of Lancashire, with two of his children and a daughter in law. He had reverted to being an ag lab.

I can see from the Civil Registration Indexes that Charles died in 1865. I think I may have traced his baptism at Lowton, St Luke in December 1799, which would tie up with his age as stated in the censuses.

Obviously, I could develop this research considerably, tracing the lives of Charles & Ellen’s children towards the present day, but for now I am content with what I have just found out. Unfortunately, although I tried, I didn’t really make any great progress with my Hewitt research. If anybody is interested, William Hewitt (b 1822) lived out his adult life in Manchester, marrting Elizabeth Green (b 1827) in 1852. They had seven children, one of which was my ancestor – Arthur Thomas Hewitt (1852-1915), born Manchester d Penwortham. If anybody reading this knows anything of these people I shall be delighted to hear from you.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 5 October 2015 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

John “Mathetes” Jones (1821 – 1878) was a prominent Baptist minister and scholar in Wales in the nineteenth century. He was married three times, and had six children, one of whom was William Jones, born in 1861 at Llanfachreth, Anglesey. In researching William we found that he had married a certain Lydia Anne Griffiths in June 1886 in Swansea, but were more than a little surprised to see that he married a lady of the same name in 1909! What can have happened here? Of course, we had to investigate, and when we searched the Ancestry.co.uk archive we found some very interesting information.

In June 1899 Lydia Anne Jones nee Griffiths began divorce proceedings against William Mathetes Jones in the High Court of Justice Divorce Division. Lydia’s affidavit states that after the marriage she and her husband had lived in Swansea, and had two children – Frederick Mathetes Jones (b 1887) and Florence Irene Jones (b 1889). However, around 1887 William appears to have become violent towards his wife, and had frequently “assaulted her by catching her by the throat”. He also “hit her about her head and in the face with his fist”. In addition to this, in 1894 William had committed adultery with an unknown woman, and contracted a venereal disease, which he then passed on to his wife. As if that was not enough, in 1896 William had committed adultery with Harriet Griffiths of Merthyr, for which he had been convicted at Swansea Police Court, and fined. Lydia asked the court for a dissolution of her marriage and custody of the children. She also asked for the granting to her of any other available relief.

Lydia was granter her divorce, but for some reason that we are unlikely ever to understand she re-married William Mathetes Jones in 1909, and on the 1911 census they were enumerated together. It must have been love, I guess. According to this enumeration William was a commercial traveller in the drapery business, and in the same Swansea household was their daughter, Florence. The entry tells us that they had had three children in all, but one had died before the date of the enumeration (2 April 1911).

I turn now to my most recent Divorce discovery. Louisa Fiveash (b c1872) was the daughter of George Fiveash (1832-1873) and Martha Jane Sears (b 1863), the family living in Newington, South East London. She married William John Fruin (b c1872) at St Stephen, Walworth Common on 29 May 1893, but according to her affidavit in support of her divorce petition in June 1896 it did not take long for the relationship between her and her husband to turn sour. She stated that after the marriage she lived with her husband at 40 Mann Street, Walworth and later at 1a Thurlow Street, Walworth. On her marriage she said that she became entitled to a sum of money, amounting to £20, but save for the cost of a few items of furniture, her husband took possession of this money, and spent it. He then assaulted Louise, turning her into the street and “refused me my home”. He once knocked Louise down in the street, causing her injury to her head. On this occasion he was arrested and appeared before the Lambeth Police Court, being fined ten shillings as an alternative to seven days of imprisonment.

Louise said that since 10 December 1893 William had not contributed at all to her support, so she returned to a previous employment as a ward cleaner at Champion Hill Infirmary in Newington. We can see that when she filed her divorce petition her stated address was 29 Sedan Street, Walworth, which was her mother’s address, so it looks as though she had returned to live with her mother.

She also states that by December 1895 William was living in adultery with a certain Louisa Spencer at No 1 Ethel Street, Walworth, and that he was still living with this person.

Louisa’s petition was not contested, and a Decree Nisi was granted on 8 August 1896, followed by the final decree on 15 February 1897. On the 1911 census we can see that she was living as a lodger at 15 Grosvenor Park, Newington, London, and was employed as a Cook. I do not yet know what happened to her after April 1911.

Although cruelty towards wives and partners was by no means an unusual occurrence in Victorian England, as is evidenced by numerous records and publications relating to the period, by any standards the behaviour of William Fruin towards his wife was quite obviously abominable, and certainly in contravention of the Victorian Married Women’s Property legislation. It is interesting to learn that that his behaviour had landed him in Court. I have checked the online databases that are available to me, without finding any record of his conviction.

The money that Louisa (Fiveash) Fruin received on her marriage was almost certainly a marriage grant from the Bankes Trust, I would think. Many years ago I searched the Haberdashers’ Company records of these grants, but I only noted those that appeared relevant to the lines of descent from Mary Mitchell, so would not have noted this payment. Certainly the amount that Louisa said that she received would have been typical of a grant from the Bankes Trust.

In support of her petition Louisa provided her marriage certificate, and this is still there in the file. Thus, I was able to see this document, which we had not previously seen.

All in all, I hope that you can appreciate from this short post the immense value of divorce records to our family history research. Apart from their intrinsic interest, the details that they can give us helps immensely to fill out and add colour to our research.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 8 December 2015 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

Now seems a good time to report on my progress in transcribing the Court of Chancery records that we photographed when Helen and I last had a day out at The National Archives (TNA), Kew. We had a really good day, and managed to photograph a lot of documents, and the images needed to be pieced together and transcribed. The piecing together was accomplished fairly quickly, but I always knew that the transcribing was going to be a long term project, and so it is proving. To date I have completed three transcriptions, which I realise does not seem much, but I do have to fit this work in with whatever else I am doing, and it is rather painstaking, so I have to do them as and when I feel inspired to do so, rather than one after the other.

I decided to start with Court of Chancery cause Mitchell v Holloway, TNA reference C1236/27. Helen and I photographed 8 documents relating to this cause, dated between c1764 – 1770. Some of the images are not too clear in certain areas, and I can see that in some cases we have not quite got all the document to the very edge, so inevitably there are some gaps in my transcriptions, but I can safely say that it is a lot better transcribing them at home than trying to rush through it at  when making a day visit to TNA.

As is the case with most legal documents, the documents rarely get straight to the point, so can seem a bit tedious, and they also sometimes use language in a “legalise” way. However, with a bit of concentrated effort and sometimes a second opinion, we can usually make sense of their meaning. Hopefully when we next go to Kew we may be able to revisit these sources, and fill in some of the gaps.

The date of the first document I have worked on is rather hard to read in my photograph. I think it is 3rd August 1764. I’m sure of the year, but the day and month could be wrong.  The preamble recounts how the deaths of several Executors in succession delayed the implementation of John Bankes’ bequests, and also the legal action that had been started by my ancestor, Mary Mitchell. It also summarises the Decrees that had been made by the Court.

In genealogical terms, the most interesting pieces of information come in sections like this:

the Complainants Mary Mitchell Robert Mitchell and Eliz his wife James Jacobson and Mary his wife Elizabeth Hopkins Anne Deane the younger John Rand and Sarah his wife William Rand Martha Rand and Elizabeth Rand Joseph Rand Deborah Rand and John Smith and Mary his wife have severally departed this life and that the Complainant Mary Deane intermarried with the Plaintiff John Benrose (and) this Defendant Sarah Holloway late Sarah Rand an Infant partner answering for herself saith that she on or about the twenty third day of January in the Year One thousand seven hundred and forty two did intermarry with her late husband Joseph Holloway deceased who afterwards departed this life sometime in the month of March which was in the year of one thousand seven hundred and fifty five

As it happens, I already had this information, but the potential value of this statement to our research is obvious. Of course, this is personal testimony, so cannot be taken as necessarily strictly accurate, but nevertheless it is extremely valuable in itself, and as a guide to further research.

The nitty gritty of this document is that the various parties involved were contesting the annuity that had been inherited under the terms of John Bankes’ will by his half sister, Mary Mitchell. On her death this had been split between her son – Robert Mitchell – and her daughter, Mary (Mitchell) Jacobson, wife of James Jacobson. On the deaths of these people this annuity was split between their children:

• Bankes Mitchell
• Joseph Collyer in right of Mary (Mitchell) his late wife
• Elizabeth Mitchell and Hannah Mitchell
• William Jacobson and Mary, wife of the Defendant Thomas Hunt the two children of the said Mary Jacobson

However, both Mary (Mitchell) Collyer and Banks Mitchell had died intestate, and although letters of administration re their estates had been granted in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury to Joseph Collyer the Elder and Hannah Mitchell respectively, this did not necessarily mean that these people were entitled to deal with the inheritance of their Bankes annuities, and the Court was being asked to rule on this.

In fact I have several times searched for the letters of administration relating to Mary (Mitchell) Collyer’s estate that were granted to her husband, but have never found a record of them. I do sometimes wonder whether this was a bit of a bluff by Joseph Collyer, but think this unlikely, as surely the Court would have been alerted to any such deception. Not only that, but Joseph would have had to convince my forebear, the eagle eyed Thomas Hunt, attorney, that he was telling the truth in this matter, and as we have seen from other matters, Thomas was not a man who was easily deceived on such affairs.

There is quite a bit more of this type of stuff in this record, and it would probably be tedious to my readers if I were to go through it all, but I will just mention one other  spicy piece of information which, when I first came across it many years ago was a tremendously exciting find.  In arguing against  Joseph Collyer the Elder’s right to deal with his spouse’s estate the respondents stated as follows:

the Defendants the said William Jacobson Thomas Hunt and Mary his wife as aforesaid does severally say that after such assignment (that is to say) on or about the fourth day of September One thousand seven hundred and forty nine the said Joseph Collyer the Elder took (as a fugitive) the Benefit of an Act of Parliament made in the Twenty first year of the late King intitled an Act for Relief of Insolvent Debtors so that all the Right and Interest of the said Joseph Collyer the Elder in right of the said Mary his wife under the said Will and Deed Roll of the said Testator John Bankes (subject to the said assignment to the said James Jacobson deceased) became subject and Liable to the direction of the said act as these Defendants believe

Some years ago this piece of information enabled me to find records in the Corporation of London archives relating to Joseph Collyer the Elder’s  debts and brief imprisonment when he gave himself up at the Fleet Prison in London, to claim Insolvent Debtor Relief. Listed among his creditors was my ancestor, James Jacobson, pawn broker of London. You can see some of this material in the Joseph & Mary Mitchell Collyer Sources on Geoffs Genealogy.

I should, perhaps, mention that this document is a response to a Chancery Bill which was made by Sarah Holloway a widow late Sarah Rand William Jacobson Thomas Hunt and Mary his wife. One of the great thrills that sight of this source gives us is the sight of the signatures of these people at the bottom of the document. I must say that when I first set out on this research in 1990 I never imagined that I would be lucky enough to see signatures of our forebears from the eighteenth century. What a thrill!

The value of Court of Chancery documents in our research into the Bankes Pedigree cannot be overstated. Quite a lot of the time the process of researching them can seem rather turgid, but these periods become well worthwhile when we uncover gems such as those I have outlined above.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 6 November 2015 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.

The first of these periods away occurred in the second week of the month, when we went for one of our frequent weeks in Carmarthenshire. Mrs Geoff’s maternal ancestors came from that part of the world, and her Welsh blood inexorably tugs her in that direction, so we usually go to that beautiful part of the country several times each year. On this occasion we used the occasion of our visit to attend the annual Maliphant Jamboree that this year was held at Upton Castle, in Pembrokeshire.

I perhaps should explain that Mrs Geoff’s maternal 2 x  great grandmother was a certain Ann Maliphant (1836-c1918). She married Evan Hughes (1834-1916) in 1855 at St Mary, Kidwelly, Carmarthenshire and they had ten children. When, many moons ago, Mrs Geoff found her Maliphant connection, she exulted in the fact that Ann was not a Rees or Evans or Hughes, and she saw some reasonable prospect of being able to trace this line back into the mists of time. Then she found that a number of people have got there first, and as a result of their efforts the Maliphant family line is pretty well documented. Not to say, of course, that there is nothing else to do to contribute to this accumulated knowledge. You will see that Maliphants feature in the tree on the Geoffs Genealogy website.

Anyway, in 2009 some of the Maliphant descendants decided to try to hold a gathering of the clan in a pub in Bristol, and that was deemed enough of a success to repeat the exercise the following year. Scroll on to 2015 and the annual gatherings are very much alive and kicking! The clan meets at a different venue each year, and this year on 8 August over 50 of us gathered at Upton Castle in Pembrokeshire. Here we met on a beautiful sunny saturday, to chat and eat and learn for a whole day.

Many centuries ago the castle used to be owned by a family of Maliphants, and there are effigies believed to be of Maliphants in the chapel. Although actually there is no proof that those Maliphants were our clan, there certainly is no harm in hoping!

Andy Maliphant gave us all a very interesting tour of the grounds and chapel (he really is very good at these things) and we also took lots of photographs to mark the occasion. You can see some of the Photos on the Maliphant Jamboree Photographs.

To top it all the owners of the castle provided a superb lunch and tea in the marquee. All in all a smashing day, and it is great to see that the Maliphants retain their enthusiasm to meet up with old friends and kinsmen, and have a good day together. I have to say that I am a bit envious of them, as my attempts to organise a second Bankes Descendants Reunion several years ago met with failure, after a pretty successful first crack at it.

When we came home from Wales we were only here for a week before we set off on our second jaunt – to France.

This was a trip to Northern France, to visit the battlefields of the First World War. We benefitted from the attentions of a first class expert guide, and visited a many places of great importance in the conflict, finding the trip very fulfilling.

As I remarked to a fellow traveller on our last morning in the hotel, we had all been aware, prior to the trip, of the sheer numbers of casualties in this awful war. However, actually visiting the battle sites and museums and seeing the graveyards, with all the many nationalities of casualties, gave me a deeper understanding of the full horror of these events.

We saw some remarkable things during these few days. The Canadian memorials were perhaps the most striking The monument they had put on Vimy Ridge was extremely beautiful and impressive, and can be seen from many a mile away. That is imposing enough, but when you factor in the preservation of the site that the Canadians have done, it is a truly remarkable effort. The German and Canadian / French trenches are preserved for posterity in concrete, and the German trench includes a mortar firer which despatched massively powerful explosive devices into the allies’ trenches, which are only a few yards away. One can imagine the effect of these explosions on the allied forces, and also note that the Germans had the high ground at the start of this engagement, thus enjoying a huge advantage. This was the best defended position on the Western Front. The taking of Vimy Ridge was, therefore, a remarkable effort, and could only have been achieved thanks to unimaginable bravery. It is right that the battlefield site has been preserved.

The Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial site is also a Canadian-maintained site, and another site that brought home to us what the troops engaged in the battle for Beaumont Hamel went through. The battlefield is preserved as it was on the 1st July 1916, with German and allied trenches and depressions where explosions blew out areas of ground. At the start of this engagement the Allies set off a diversionary explosion, using 40,000 lbs of explosive, under the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, and the Canadian and British forces then started their assault. The British forces were quickly stopped in their tracks and 80% of the Canadians were also wiped out, leaving a rump of the Newfoundland force to continue the assault as best they could.

This was a truly heroic effort, as they were facing a powerful German force on Hawthorn Ridge, and the Germans held all the high ground in the neighbouring field as well. We traced the steps of what was left of the Newfoundland Regiment as they fought their way across no man’s land to engage the German forces, accompanied by our expert guide and narrator, and as we did so we got a clear perspective on the bravery and heroism of these men, all those years ago. There is no doubt that when you see how close to one another the forces of the opposing armies were, it certainly does focus your perception of these events.

In the short time that we were in France we visited many other amazing sites, but the main point of our visit was to visit the Arras Memorial and cemetery, to see the name of my great uncle on the wall in the Bay 6 of the memorial. Sure enough, the name of Charles Hewitt (1878-1917) was etched there, along with the many thousands of his colleagues who gave their lives in the Battle of Arras in April 1917. This memorial is truly beautiful.

I took with me a copy of the War Diary of 1st Battn, East Lancashire Regiment for the period of time encompassing Charles’s death on 19 April 1917. In the days prior to the 19th the battalion was engaged fighting in the Battle of Arras, and was experiencing a very hard time, taking some casualties, under fire. However, on the day of Charles’s death there was no action taking place, and apparently nothing to report. This leads me to wonder how Charles met his end. If it is known that he died on 19 April, the cause of his demise must, it seems to me, be known. If this is the case, as there is mention of other ranks casualties in the war diary on other days (albeit not by name), it seems strange that there was nothing to report on this day, even if his body was blown to bits and there was no grave.

Of course, it is possible that Charles died as a result of an accident or illness, but if that were so why didn’t he have a burial and a stone? I put these points to our guide, and he agreed that I had a point. He  said that there may possibly be other sources to check re this matter in Regimental records held in Preston, so I will check up on that. I don’t hold out too much hope, though.

What has become apparent to me is that although the Battle of Arras was regarded as an intermediate battle of WW1, it was very hard fought. There were 150,000 casualties (50,000 dead). After initial British successes, in which the Germans were pushed back, the Germans hit back, recovering lost ground, and a stalemate resulted.

In visiting these battlefields we had to bear in mind that at the time of these events the area was a wilderness. None of the buildings we see were there when Charles Hewitt and his pals carried out their brave deeds. All the towns and villages had been destroyed, nearly all the vegetation was gone, and the civilians had moved out to pastures new. Many of them moved to work in agriculture in Normandy, and never returned.

We returned having learned a tremendous amount about the First World War. This was most definitely a memorable few days for both of us.

The post Geoffs Genealogy Update 01 September 2015 first appeared on Geoff's Genealogy.