An e-mail last week from my friend P enthusing about a family history breakthrough prompted me to do some work my own family history. It's a good while since I looked at it as the little research I've done in the last couple of years has been on my husband's family. In the meantime Find My Past has put a lot of Cheshire parish records online and as I gazed at the family group sheet for William Wright and Sarah Worthington (click to enlarge the photo)I thought in a very desultory fashion that I'd check to see whether I could find Sarah's baptism. To my utter amazement there it was! Sarah dau of Isaac and Hannah Worthington of Mobberley. She was the only one of their children to be baptized in a non-conformist church. There has never been any sign of non-conformity in my family so although I'd scoured the parish registers from all the surrounding C of E churches I hadn't even considered looking at non-conformist registers. I've been looking for this for over twenty years!! That will teach me to look at all the possible sources however unlikely they might appear to be.
You'll need to click on the photo if you want to read it - Sarah is shown in red with her parents Isaac and Hannah and her grandparents John Worthington and Elizabeth Hallworth.
I was lucky enough to find not only her baptism but her date of birth as well.
Sarah is the missing link that takes me back to John and Alice Worthington who must have married around 1665. I already had all this information and a lot on the Worthingtons too (back to c1700) but Sarah was the missing link as without her I couldn't prove anything. Sadly it's unlikely that I shall locate the marriage of John and Alice as they must have married during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell when many parish registers were either lost,destroyed or simply not entered. Another of my family lines has come to a grinding halt at this period too.
This is Dean Row Unitarian Church where Sarah was baptized, it was built in 1694 so is both old and,I suspect,very interesting. I find it very attractive too for all that it is a simple brick building. Once we get the longer days and warmer weather I shall be off to visit both Dean Row and St Wilfrid's in Mobberley along with St Lawrence, Over Peover where generations of my Wright ancestors lie in the churchyard. That should provide me with a couple of posts later in the year:)
19 comments:
What a thrill to find this extra information. I'd love to find out more about my family but it is definitely something you have to settle down and do as a hobby not something you can sort out in a few hours. My relatives seemed to be from all over the world, too, and travelled everywhere, so the small amount I have tried to do seems to run up against a brick wall pretty fast.
Well its a breakthrough D.
It looks more a like a country residence than a church, especially with the virginia creeper on the wall.
How exciting to end your search with such success. I've often thought about tracing my family tree but so far haven't gotten very far. On some sides I know very little to get me started.
You have the same problem with your civil war and Cromwell that many families here have with our Civil War, particularly people whose ancestors are from Georgia and who were in the path of Sherman's march to the sea. He burned Atlanta, and many other towns besides, and many court house and church records were lost as a consequence. My mother has traced her maternal family back to Saxony in Germany, but that ancestor converted from Catholic to Lutheran and he was disowned by his family. He emigrated to Texas in 1864 and founded a Lutheran church that has been in continuous use since then.
Isn't it grand when you find the little link that carries you to where you want to go. I have been searching for links to my grandmother on my mother's side - and simply by accident (while searching for my uncle) I came upon a family tree that had my grandmother's name on it - and that was my lucky find!!! It took us all the way back to 1754 in Scotland and England - something I had never suspected at all. I've been searching for her line for well over 20 years (no living relatives have any knowledge of her ancestry, she kept it well hidden, for unknown reasons). You are fortunate that you can visit these interesting sites.
You must be delighted! I've been dabbling a bit myself and fully intend to do some more.
I haven't done anything on my research for about 18 months now. I would like to, but with last year's upheaval, I've not had the heart. Good luck with yours - at least you don't have to travel too far for the folks you mentioned in this post.
I'm not at all surprised; my own ancestors used to swap between church and chapel regularly. My great-grandfather was said to let go of his walking stick at the gate to see which way it fell, if it pointed towards chapel then that's where he headed, or to church if it fell that way. Fortunately I have a cousin who busies herself with researching the family history.
How wonderful to have broken through one of your 'brick walls' I have a couple I'd love to crack. Both families on my maternal side were non-conformists, one lot Primitive Methodists and the other Baptists. I think their records are so much more informative than those of the Anglican church as they often give dates of birth as well as baptism and sometimes the mother's maiden name as well. The Uniterian church building looks really interesting. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could find that early marriage - you never know:)
I've been thinking myself lately that I have been neglecting my own research into my family history. Must get back into it - soon. Trouble is, blogging does take up a lot of time and can't do everything!
What an exciting find! It will be so interesting for you to visit those places associated with Sarah.
She would never, in a million years, have imagined the way that her name and her history has been spread across the world tonight on the www.....
How exciting to make some progress. My mother had done research when she was in England once and then hit some dead ends. She has created a scrapbook with some old photos for me with what she did know and have of more recent family. It is nice to have this all down in one place to keep it safe for generations to come.
Hugs from Holland ~
Heidi
It's always wonderful when those genealogical "brick walls" can finally be breeched. I've been putting together my own family record for several years,and have done well tracing back all direct-line antecedents until I come to their immigration. In my family, all came over to North America—mostly from Ireland—among the first wave of immigrants, arriving on the Eastern Shore in the mid-1600s. Several grandfathers fought in the various French-Indian Wars, and later in the Revolutionary War. They all trekked south, along the spine of the Appalachians, on the Wilderness Road into what's now Virginia, West Virginia, and eastern-Kentucky, where they became part of the area's first non-Indian settlers. There are a surprising number of record sources for this entire period—mid-1600s onward, and I have most of it and have, in fact, located and visited the graves of most of my grandparents to about the 6th or 7th generation back. But when I try and find anything out on ancestors prior to their coming to America, the best I can do so far are generalizations, "this family is said to have come from this county, or that village," sort of thing. So my brick walls are well removed, by both distance and time, and I don't know that I'll ever be able to solve any of them. I do hope you locate a marriage record for John and Alice…and I certainly enjoyed this post on your search and luck.
So from
Some day I hope to have time to do some family research. I know it will be complicated, especially on my father's side, I really have so little to go on as he was placed in foster care - my mother's side will be where I would start.
Happy week Rowan dear.
Hugs - Mary
How exciting when you make a break through like that! I work on my genealogy every couple of weeks. Mac's is at a stand still, but we're going to Spain this fall and I'm hoping to get more information there.
That's fantastic that the church is still standing, here they would have torn it down.
I recall my parents used to say that my grandfather tried to do this kind of research. I often wondered what happened to it, but I guess without computer technology it mus have been painstaking at that time.
I am sure it must be very intriguing to find out about your past.
xoxo
Oh how exciting! What a thrill for you after all these years. I love doing genealogy, but I've been lucky -- family members have done a LOT of work before me. I can't wait to see more of your little church in the spring and summer!
Rowan, How exciting to have found your missing link "Sarah" I will be looking forward to reading more about your research. Greetings from Maine, Julie.
I've managed (with a lot of help) to trace my mother's ancestors all the way back to the 700's in France. It's amazing! It was an accident really, but I'm so glad I stumbled across the information on the internet.
It's so much fun to find out these things. Good luck with your hunting.
Post a Comment