Main surnames
Tracing the Nottinghamshire birth of Mary, wife of James HADEN (1831-1901), has proved to be very difficult. It would have been easier had the new versions of the General Register Office birth indexes (which give the maiden name of the mother from 1837) been available to search earlier.
I noticed that a few genealogists were posting on social media some pedigree-style charts of their ancestors’ birthplaces, colour-coded to show the different counties. I knew that most of my direct ancestors were born in Staffordshire, but it wasn’t until I filled in the chart back to my 3x great-grandparents that I realised quite how many of them were from the county.
Receiving my AncestryDNA results prompted me to look again at family history research relating only to my direct ancestors. I had thought I was doing quite well – with one line going back ten generations to my 8x great-grandparents. However, because of the doubling of numbers at each generation, we all have mind-bogglingly large numbers of direct ancestors.
Joseph MOORE and Elizabeth COOK married on 25th December 1824 at St Peter’s church, Wolverhampton. The 1851 census shows them living in Wednesfield, Wolverhampton, with Joseph recorded as a miner. Elizabeth is listed as being born in Wolverhampton but Joseph’s birthplace is given just as Warwickshire. He had died by the time of the 1861 census so it’s unlikely that I shall ever be able to prove his exact place of birth.
It’s thanks to contact from a fellow researcher (Margaret Redfern) that I discovered the existence of the FERN branch of my tree.
Information from Margaret gave the father of my great-grandfather Henry MOORE as Timothy Fern. All I had known until this point was that Henry was the illegitimate son of Selina Moore and was born in 1867. I had no information on Henry’s father. Selina also gave birth to another illegitimate child , Sarah Ann Moore, in 1870.
John BALDWIN was born c.1812 in Lower Mitton (Stourport), Worcestershire, and was the son of Thomas and Sarah Baldwin. He wasn’t baptised until the age of 6 (the baptism took place as Stourport Wesleyan Methodist Church). I haven’t been able to find out much about Thomas and Sarah, other than Thomas was born around 1779 and died in Stourport in 1849. Sarah, whose maiden name is unknown, died on 8th July 1839, aged 60. They are known to have had six children, born between 1803-1819 – the five youngest all being baptised at Stourport Wesleyan Methodist Church.
