James Stokes and Mary Stokes Removal Godmanchester to Conington

There are many removal orders in various record sets.  In the Huntingdonshire Archives there is a Removal Order for James Stokes and Mary Stokes being removed from Godmanchester to Conington in 1775.

The reference number for this is HP34/13/3/5 and are part of the record set for the parish of Godmanchester St Mary's Church. No children are mentioned in this archives index, just James and Mary.

I wonder what their story was. I can imagine them bumping their way home on a little cart .... the distance from Godmanchester to Conington is about 8 miles.

James and Mary Stokes aren't in my family tree, but my eyes are drawn to the Stokes name in the Huntingdonshire area.

I noticed that a James and Mary had quite a few children baptised at St Mary's church Conington.  I wondered if it's the same couple!  FreeREG shows baptisms of Mary in 1778, but then a burial of a Mary, wife of James, in November 1778.  Then, in 1779 there is a burial of Mary, daughter of James.  However, in 1783 there was another baptism of a Mary, daughter of James/Mary.  This sort of confusion is often found in parish records.  You wonder, then if James went and got himself another wife called Mary, or if there were two James Stokes' and various Marys in the village!  There are further baptisms for James/Mary in Conington in the coming years.

Findmypast has one James Stokes married in 1774 in Huntingdonshire, but without a current subscription I can't even guess if it's this one.

If the Stokes family of Conington are in your family tree, that's quite a lot of sorting out that'd need to be done there!

And, if that weren't enough confusion, there are actually two Coningtons in the Cambridgeshire areas:

• One Conington is adjacent to Swavesey, Cambridgeshire
• The other Conington, Huntingdonshire is 15 miles North West of Conington Cambs.  

Baptisms and marriages have been extracted onto the IGI/Familysearch website.

Sources: CALM, Cambs Archives Catalog; FreeREG.

Cambridgeshire Electoral Registers 1832-1932

Findmypast have released the Electoral Registers of 1832-1932, which includes the Cambridgeshire Electoral Registers and the Huntingdonshire Electoral Registers.

From 1832 if you were eligible to vote then your name was on the list.  Being eligible changed over the years, women didn't get the vote at all until 1918.  In the early days, to be eligible, you pretty much had to be male and a resident or house owner.  The electoral registers were compiled every year, although not all will have survived, of course.

If you are trying to find family before the 1840 Census, then this might be your best chance.  I've several people in my family tree who died between 1832-1840, so I'll be looking for them in the Electoral Registers.

The Electoral Registers 1832-1932 comprise of 5.4 million images, containing 220 million names.  With a good wind and some luck you might find your lost people in there!

I've people to find in the Huntingdonshire Electoral Registers and the Cambridgeshire Electoral Registers, so this is a short post!

Having had a quick look, one of the families I was after isn't found earlier than 1885, which is annoying - but I have to be grateful that the records are online at all :)  Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.... I have to remember to be grateful at what IS there and not annoyed by what is NOT there!

John Stokes, Upton, Huntingdonshire. 1801-1847

One of the things that can trip you up in genealogy is eagerly pouncing on a chap from the past and sticking them into your family tree!  Indeed, you need as much evidence as possible that somebody with a matching name is "your" ancestor and not simply a chap of the same name that moved into the village in the past 10-20 years, or was born into a related family in similar years.

Ancestors often have a limited number of names and parish records are incomplete, or missing.  Often you'll find yourself collecting lots of random finds and information over time, hoping that one day you'll have enough information to dismiss or confirm one.

In my tree is John Stokes.  I believe "my" John Stokes was born in Bourn, but he married a girl, Jane, who came from Upton.  To my knowledge he never lived in Upton, Hunts, but, it's interesting to note that the name John Stokes was very common in the area at the time.  Indeed, in just one newspaper I discovered two different John Stokes' in Upton, Huntingdonshire, in one edition.

One of the John Stokes had an industrial accident when he fell off a haycart and was found.  A second John Stokes committed suicide. They are not the same man as the suicide inquest was held on the Monday of the week and the second John Stokes had his accident (and lived) on the Tuesday.

The John Stokes who committed suicide was reported as being 46 years old in 1847, so he must have been born ~1801.  The same year "my" John Stokes was born.

John Stokes who died in 1847 aged 46 at his inquest, but when he was buried the parish register said he was 43, giving a birth date of ~1804.  The parish registers seem to have no John Stokes in that parish in that year, but there was one baptised in 1806 - of course, that could be the same John Stokes but baptised at age 1-2.

And this is why tracing your family history can take years!  To try to solve this mystery takes more effort and cost than looking at free resources online! The two pieces below were reported in the local newspapers, which can be viewed online through GenesReunited, Findmypast or on the NewspaperArchives sites:

Inquest of John Stokes, August 1847:  

Upton, Hunts. —An inquest was held on Monday last, by John Beedham, gent, coroner, on the body of Mr. John Stokes, aged 46, who was found on Sunday by Thomas Casledme between two bushes near Coppingford Wood, with his throat cut through  his neckerchief, dividing the caroted artery on the left jugular, the razor lying near his right hand, and having 7s. Id, in his pocket. From evidence, it was clear to the jury that he had destroyed himself.  

Verdict, temporary insanity.

As for the other John Stokes, who also isn't in my tree:

Accident.—On Tuesday last, as John Stokes labourer, was about to cut a hay rick belonging to Mr. Colson, butcher, situate near the road, he was seized with a giddiness  in the load, and fell helplessly to the ground. Being a stout, heavy man, fell with great force and received a severe injury in his back and loins, and now lies in a dangerous state in the Infirmary. His bay knife fell on him, and has slightly hurt his mouth, only fortunately falling with the edge uppermost. Considering his severe injuries, it is astonishing how was able to get home without assistance.

FreeREG Huntingdonshire: New Parish Register Transcriptions Added

I just checked the parish records for Huntingdonshire to see that eight parishes had updates on 19 July, which I've listed below.

I'm interested to check out a couple of those parishes, to see if the new records can fill any gaps I've got.

Parish	Church	Baptisms	Marriages	Burials
Alconbury Cum Weston PR & BTs BTs-some years missing	St Peter and St Paul	1559-1875	1604-1626,  1660-1750,  1755-1876	1604-1626,  1633-1842
Alwalton	St Andrew	1576-1672,  1697-1811,  1813-1877	1577-1681,  1698-1812	1577-1673,  1697-1812
Brington	All Saints	1658-1878	1837-1876	1813-1876
Diddington	St Lawrence	1689-1877	1699-1753,  1755-1836	1697-1879
Great Gransden	St Bartholomew	1538-1653,  1701-1876	1538-1653,  1701-1752,  1754-1837	1540-1653,  1753-1877
Huntingdon	All Saints	1558-1876	1559-1876	1558-1875
Stanground	St John the Baptist	1539-1557,  1660-1876	1538-1875	1538-1657,  1661-1862
Yaxley	St Peter	1653-1854	1653-1812	1653-1809,  1813-1875

Wouldn't it be magical if every parish was available immediately!  Unfortunately there are millions of records and FreeREG relies on the hard work of volunteers - and don't have unlimited access to the records themselves or it'd certainly be easier/quicker to achieve that.

Of course, there are other ways to get the parish records, but FreeREG is a great free resource for family history records and parish registers.

Image: FreeREG

Lydia Richardson Chesterton Cambridge

For the last few days I've been looking again at a brickwall I have in the family tree, which stops at Lydia Richardson, who married William Mansfield in St Andrews, Chesterton, Cambridge on 13 October 1776.  There was no father's name, always annoying.  It declared Lydia was "of this parish", but that doesn't necessarily mean that she was born there, just that she lived there and had been living there for awhile.  It could even have been an assumption, or a misunderstanding of the question being asked. Witnesses were a Robert Johnson and Mary Johnson.  I was hoping this might lead to a hook up/link at some point (clutching straws is my middle name these days!).  Robert and Mary had married four years earlier; she'd been from Chesterton and he was from Burwell- I wonder how they knew them! Was Lydia local and had Mary been her friend from childhood, or did Robert work with William?

This record can be found on FreeREG easily enough and, to that point, I know my 'facts' are correct.  Lydia is correctly in the tree, in the right position, but where did she come from?  For months I've had no clue.  It was a dead end.  But then I got a "sniff of a clue".  Now, a sniff of a clue is a clue, so I pursued it.  Having discovered (but not seen) a random tree on Ancestry that indicated she might have a birthdate of 1752 I followed that line of enquiry.  I figured if I could discover Lydia Richardson's baptism then I'd have more clues available to me.  It didn't take me long to track down a random Lydia Richardson - but it didn't "feel right".  Often you have a nose for these things, whether something feels like you might be on the right track, or not.

But, with no other clues presently available (without spending money on multiple parish register transcriptions), I figured I'd follow that sniff and see where it ended up.

What I found, on FreeREG, was a Lydia Richardson baptised in Stanground, Huntingdonshire (this is now part of Cambridgeshire).  What that entry told me was that Lydia was baptised on 30 November 1752, to parents John and Lydia.  Looking at more records showed that they'd already had/lost a previous Lydia (1750-1752).  Next stop, burials - and I couldn't find any concrete evidence of this Lydia having been buried or married within the parish of Stanground.

I then spent way too many hours plotting out this rather large family to see if anything lead me in the direction of Chesterton.  It wasn't easy going - and is now another incomplete project.  It seems that John Richardson always had 1-3 sons called John Richardson, who often died early ... and after a few generations you had many Johns kicking about and the burial registers just saying John had died, but not specifying which one.  There were even two families of John/Elizabeth kicking about at the same time, with all kids being registered to parents John/Elizabeth, so, again, you'd not know which pair!

So, nothing gave me confidence that this Lydia Richardson is the right one.  But, once you've discovered a "possible", you can never tell when another clue will either make it all stack up or not.  Unless I can find a legitimate link/reason for her to up sticks and move it doesn't grab me as a possible.

I am not convinced it's the right Lydia at all - and I've even seen evidence of a Richardson family living in Chesterton at the time, but not being good enough to baptise their children at the church where parish registers have been transcribed!

I doubt I'll get answers this side of a few years at this rate.  Lydia .... you're out there somewhere!

In the meantime, for anybody who is looking for the Richardson family at Stanground, Huntingdonshire, below is what I made of them at my first attempt..... needs more work/research to verify any of this is correct.  Of the 10 children they produced, they seem to have only managed to retain three long enough to get them married off.  They had three Johns before one survived and two Lydias.  The twins are a tiny bit intriguing though as there are twins in other parts of my tree, but maybe I'm clutching at straws and I bet many people have twins with a tree large enough!

Phillimore Parish Registers for Huntingdonshire

William Phillimore set out to transcribe all parish registers, starting with marriages, across the whole of the country. Unfortunately, as with many Grand Schemes, he was hampered by the sheer volume of the task, but Phillimore did manage to make a start in Huntingdonshire.

Family tree research was as popular 100-150 years ago as it is today, but they didn't have the Internet!  You'd have to physically visit each church to inspect its parish registers and go through every line for yourself to check if there were any names that were relevant to your tree.  What Phillimore did was to find 150 subscribers, prepared to pay to receive a printed transcription.  He'd then organise, usually alongside the rector of a parish, for a transcriber to work with the original registers.  Once printed and distributed, the subscribers might then have written back to him with their own corrections and a volume might be republished with corrections.

When Phillimore started to print the parish registers of Huntingdonshire in 1912 he was still seeking the vital investment from subscribers:

"In Huntingdonshire there are 95 parishes having Registers beginning before the nineteenth century.  It is calculated that the Marriage Registers of these can be printed in twelve volumes, of which the present is the first, so that if sufficient financial support is forthcoming to enable two volumes a year to be issued, as in other counties, it is possible to complete the whole county in six years.  To enable this to be done thirty more subscribers are needed.  Fifteen more parishes, including the four comprised in the town of Huntingdon, besides Godmanchester and St Ives, are already transcribed and could be sent to press at once. "

Published in October 1912, Volume 1 Huntingdonshire Parish Registers. Marriages. Edited by WPW Phillimore, MA, BCL and WM Noble, Rector of Wistow, covered the following four parishes:

• Ramsey, Huntingdonshire, 1559-1837
• Little Raveley, Huntingdonshire, 1577-1839
• Bury, Huntingdonshire, 1561-1837
• Wistow, Huntingdonshire, 1604-1837

I have not (yet?) found evidence of any further parishes having been published at future dates.  Phillimore's Atlas and Index of Parish Registers was published with a full list of transcribed registers, but I haven't bought a copy of that yet.  This book was published in 1984 and includes over 1800 parish boundary and other maps and details about parish records and where they can be found.

William Phillimore died in 1913, leaving most of his planned work incomplete. At the time of his death he had published over 200 parish registers and inquisitions - all high quality work that is still used daily by genealogists today.

Huntingdonshire Parish Registers Online:

Only 150 originals were printed - many disappearing into libraries around the world.  You can find a copy of the Phillimore book that has been scanned in, or the records themselves, in a few ways, including, but not limited to local family history groups for the area covered and:

• Archive.org - scanned copies of the parish registers are available online at archive.org
• Ebay - scanned copies are available for sale on ebay in CD/PDF format
• Findmypast has the most parish registers online, making it the best website for searching through BMDs, but I checked for the first name in the Phillimore book and it wasn't present.  FindMyPast are working with the Family History Society and local Family History groups to add transcripts, but they are drip-feeding them into their system as part of their marketing strategy, so they could appear at any point.
• Ancestry.co.uk also didn't seem to contain the first entry.

While FindMyPast and Ancestry are great sites for instantly searching many thousands of registers and documents, they can't contain all information, on everything, immediately/today.  It's always good, therefore, to not rely on them, but to build up your own personal library of information.

I had a quick look through for anybody in the Finding family, but just found one that was over 100 years before the dates I was interested in ... but it's nice to have a copy as you never know what you'll find when you're flicking through the pages!

FreeREG Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, Upton, Huntingdonshire

I've been quite lucky that Upton, Huntingdonshire, is one of the parishes that's on FreeREG, meaning I can find the baptisms, marriages and burials at St Margaret, which is the only church in the parish.

Upton, Huntingdonshire

The Upton parish register transcripts were first made available on FreeREG in January 2014. At the time of writing there are 1271 records input, ranging from 1755 to 1877 and the last update/alteration was made in July 2014 and the following years are parish records have been transcribed:

• St Margaret, Upton, Huntingdonshire baptisms:  1784-1876
• St Margaret, Upton, Huntingdonshire marriages:  1755-1812, 1814-1836, 1839-75
• St Margaret, Upton, Huntingdonshire burials:  1784-76

That's quite good coverage except I am not much further forward in completing the jigsaw!  It's good to see records - so thanks to Sheila for taking the time to transcribe these - but when there are gaps it's annoying.  You'd have thought the church might've taken a little more care with their books and records over the years *sigh*.  I think the vicars were more interested in drinking tea with widows than making my life easier.... slackers :)

FreeREG has given me some great finds though, including:
Six baptisms from 1788 to 1809
Four marriages from 1815 to 1828
Three burials from 1807 to 1837

Of course, parish registers are only as good as what was written in them at the time - and if they are legible or weren't lost.  I need to find out the state of these Parish Records and, to see a copy of the originals at some point.

Soundex also yields some further results as the name "Finding" was written in other ways at the parish, including Findin, which actually looks like the record/s I will find useful. The spelling Fineden is also present.  Having said that, the particular marriage I was looking for exists under the name I was looking for: "Finding".  Annoyingly, there is no bride's father's name given!

As the parish of Upton, Huntingdonshire, is tiny, the next step would be to go through the baptisms, to see if it looks like Jane was born in Upton!  At first glance it looks like she was baptised, under the spelling of Findin, in 1803 and her parents were Thomas and Mary.  Obviously making that assumption is a leap of faith and doesn't always work... but, for now, I've got Thomas and Mary pencilled into the chart as potential parents.

Genealogy is the ultimate online game of strategy, cunning, intelligence, perseverance, patience and tenacity, but the rewards are greater than other online pasttimes as you're discovering your own family roots and secrets.

Image by Wikimedia: Upton

The Finding Family, Huntingdonshire

The Finding Family is a blog I've started to bring together my own collection of notes, records, resources and ideas on my own family history research.  The name was picked based on two discoveries: my ancestors seem to include a family called Finding (or Findin) and my preferred first two names for the blog were already taken!  So here we are.  The Finding Family - although I suspect they are a small part of my journey.

At the present time I've narrowed down my search and research to Jane Finding, who married John Stokes, in Upton, Huntingdonshire in 1822.

And that's pretty much my starting point for this quest.  Who was Jane Finding? Who were her family? Who were her parents?  Where did they all move to?  And then onwards to uplines, downlines and sideways movements around what will become a huge chart over the coming years.

So far my research has been contained in a simple family tree, started when my mother's cousin (there's a name for that!) sent me a cutdown GEDCOM of our family tree.  As with all family trees, everybody is interested and absorbed in a different route.  My source information benefactor's interest was in her own father's tree - he is no blood relation to me, having married my mother's aunt he was my mother's uncle.  My interest was piqued by what I call my "Lady Line".

Having been given the raw roots of research, I discovered that my GG-grandmother had left her children at the workhouse and been imprisoned for the offence.  An offence she repeated as soon as she was released!  So she did more time, this time hard labour in a prison.

So that was the start - I wondered "Why was she in the workhouse? Why did nobody take her in?" which then means it's necessary to research the trees of all her siblings and her parents' siblings - where had they all gone?

There are many reasons I've discovered why they were not in a position to take her in - the biggest stumbling block is that she had five children.  Not many households can take in six people at the drop of a hat. And that got me hooked!

So that's it, here's the first post - and the rest will be assortments of family tree snippets, ideas, sources of records specific to the villages my ancestors lived in and a rambling and never-ending journey!

I live 200 miles away from my area of research.  While this is not impossible to visit (just a car journey), it does bring into question the cost/time elements.  There's one churchyard where there must be 30-40 ancestors buried - spending a day there documenting/finding gravestones would be a day well spent, it'd also cost quite a chunk of money, so before I rush off and prowl that graveyard I first need to fully research if it has ever been done before.  Buying the information in, as a starting point, is often cheaper than making a visit yourself - especially if records show that there's nothing of note to be found!

So, here we go!