When I trawled newspapers online for any Winningtons, my surname study, I was somewhat surprised to see this man’s name. It did not feature in the database of Winningtons that I had, but there was a John Myles Wennington from a north Lancashire and Cumbrian family. This illustrates a common problem as the two surnames are often mixed up. Even more fascinating was the fact he was called Sir, as far as I know there were no knights or baronets in this family. So, intrigued, I dug deeper and came up with a fascinating tale, which is not yet complete.

John Wennington was baptised at St John’s, Liverpool on 27 May 1797, the son of Miles Wennington, Gent, and his wife Jane, of Ulveston, Lancashire. However, it also records he was born on 15 November 1794. Ulveston registers have a baptism for him on 22 November 1794, so why was he baptised twice? Both churches were the Established church so he was not changing sect. The Wenningtons can be found in this area of north Lancashire and the southern Lake District for two hundred years before this and were of middling wealth. John’s father Miles Wennington died in Liverpool and is buried the same day his son was baptised, 27 May 1797, and he is described as Gent. of Union Street, aged 30 years.

The next paper trail for John Miles Wennington is when he is articled as a clerk to Thomas Windle in 1811, and is described as the son of Jane Wennington, widow, of Devonshire Street, London. On 18 November 1816 Samuel Austice, Attorney, Tavistock Place, London, files Articles of Clerkship for John Miles Wennington. This is the last time he uses Wennington as his surname. He appears to have finished his articles and to have practised as an attorney.

On 23 August 1820 there is a newspaper report of a marriage at St Margaret’s, Westminster, between Sir John Miles Winnington and Miss Henrietta Antonia, second daughter of the late Bedingfield Pogson Esq, and great niece of the present Earl of Glencairne. However, in 1823 she is suing for divorce in the Consistory Court in London on the grounds of her husband’s adultery. They apparently only lived together for a few months. This case drags on for several years and it is not entirely clear whether or not she gets a divorce. She keeps returning to the Court because she gets no alimony. He pleads poverty. But he is also cited in the divorce case in 1831 brought by Mr Le Fevre, as the guilty party and has to pay 600 guineas.

The next occasion he can be found in public documents is his conviction for theft in 1842 and being sent to Australia for seven years, arriving in Tasmania in mid 1843. He was also an insolvent bankrupt partly because of the debts contracted over his contested divorce from Henriettta, although these were discharged in 1848 after a relative left him £1600. This may have been his mother but no record of her death as been found yet. It is not clear if John Miles Winnington remained in Australia after he served his term, but he is still there when he is declared solvent in 1849.

A tree on Ancestry offered another clue to John Miles Winnington’s later life, as it has him marrying a Jane Nash, date unknown, and having a daughter Maria Nash Winnington, born 1828. This can be partly verified by documents from Australia. Maria married John Gemmell, a surgeon, of the Ovens River, on 5 September 1848 at Parramatta, New South Wales. In the newspaper notice of this event she is described as the grand-daughter of Mr Andrew Nash, of Parramatta. After John Gemmell’s death, date so far unknown, she married Grainger Muir Brough, son of Constantine Brough, on 7 January 1868 at All Saints, St Kilda, Victoria. She is described as Marie Laura Gimmell in the transcription of this record but her parents are John Myles Winnington and Jane Nash so it is obviously the same woman.

So far I have not found a death for John Miles Winnington, but the fact that he keeps using both John and Miles has allowed him to be followed more easily than if he were just John. And the knighthood? He says he was awarded one by Pope Pius VII but I suspect this was a fiction as there is no indication he was ever a Roman Catholic and in the early nineteenth century Pope Pius was having a great deal of trouble with Napoleon Bonaparte, so was unlikely to be honouring a Protestant Englishman. The other notable thing about this tale was that the divorce proceedings were reported in many of the regional newspapers across Britain. It obviously was seen as good copy to fill up any spaces in a newspaper.

Naomi Tarrant
Member 1119

From Gloucester to the Gold fields

Frances Jane Morris Morse was the second daughter of Richard and Ann Morse and was born in 1846 in Gloucester, a city in the south west of England about twenty miles from the Forest of Dean, where her father had originated. In 1862 her eldest sister Emily Anne had married and soon after emigrated to Australia with her new husband Charles Jennings. Three years later, in 1865 at the relatively young age of nineteen, Frances took the bold step of following her sister to Australia. She sailed alone on the Montmorency intending to stay with Emily in Sydney but disembarked at Bowen, thinking she was in Sydney. Realising her mistake she had no option but to stay there. Luckily she had met a family on board who had befriended her and they offered her a job as governess to their children. The Montmorency was the first official immigrant ship to sail to the new state of Queensland in 1860 and did four other voyages.

This was to change the whole course of her life down under as it was in Bowen that she met a young American, Richard Bradby. Richard was originally from Virginia, in the United States of America but was now resident in Australia and a year later they were married. Frances went on to have several children but family rumour, which has not been proved, is that three of them, Roynon, Sterling and Florence, who died as an infant, were fathered by Richard but another child, Joseph Nash Harland, was given away and raised by his father of the same name. He was said to have returned to the family when he called himself Ryan, the surname of his stepfather David Joseph Ryan. It is of course possible that not all the children were illegitimate and Frances put them down as such to keep Richard’s whereabouts hidden and only Vida was David’s. Joseph may have been adopted because of financial difficulties and the Harlands had no children of their own.

Richard Bradby known as “Black Jack Bradby”, was an inveterate gambler who turned to horse stealing amongst other things to pay his debts. Disaster was to strike the family when Richard upped and left and no more was seen or heard from him again. The family was left to survive in the goldfields, a truly desperate time and it was a full seven years before he was declared dead and Frances could marry again.

It is possible that Richard Bradby, who was born in 1830 in Virginia, USA was linked to a Richard Bradby entered in the 1870 USA census as living on an American Indian reservation with a Frances E Bradby (widow of a Sterling Bradby (1825-1864) and her children, Charles and Virginia.

There were many inhabitants on this reservation with the name of Bradby, and it is interesting to note the Christian name of Sterling which is the name also given to Richard and Frances’s son, Sterling Etheridge Bradby – the Etheridge refers to the mining area near Chillagoe in North Queensland where they lived. Sterling drowned in the Tate River whilst attempting to cross it on his way home for Christmas in 1917 at the age of 46. His brother Roynon also came to grief in a flooded river. Although rescued, he died of pneumonia a few weeks later, in 1899 at the age of thirty one.

A condition of the 1870 US census was that Indians resident on a reservation had to be present at the time of the census if they wished to retain their right to land ownership. This could be a possible explanation for Richard’s disappearance. The husband of Frances Bradby, Sterling Bradby, was killed by his brother William Terrill Bradby supposedly in a drunken fight. Richard may well have taken up with Sterling’s widow when he returned to America. As for William Terrill Bradby, who was in the Union Army when he killed his brother, he was subsequently court-martialed and received a light sentence. Richard’s exact relationship to him is still not certain.

James Mooney of the Smithsonian states that the numerous Bradbys of Pamunkey and Chickahominy tribes all have descent from a white man, William Terrill’s great grandfather who about the time of the Revolutionary period married a Chickahominy woman. It is quite possible that Frances might not have known Richard was a native American.

In 1887 Frances married David Joseph Ryan and by this time they had had three children, Alice Mary Frances, William Patrick Francis, and Vida Emily. Alas, history was to repeat itself as David Ryan, a heavy drinker, also disappeared around 1887 in the Palmer river goldfields, with speculation that he may have been killed by Aboriginals. This part of the world was definitely frontier country, a tough place for a woman to survive with a family and no reliable partner.

Frances’s eldest child by her second husband, Alice Mary Francis Ryan was born in 1880 and at the age of nineteen (the same age as when her mother had emigrated from England) married Frank Armstrong Hargreaves, an Englishman from Congleton in Cheshire, who had arrived in Cairns in 1892 at the age of seventeen on the Jeluga.

Alice Mary Francis Ryan

Frank Armstrong Hargeaves

It is believed that his uncle (Captain A Mann from London) captained the ship. Frank supposedly got off the ship without his uncle’s permission on Thursday Island (situated at the top of old Queensland) and swam to the Jardine river where the Jardine family took him in. He got a job with the legendary stage coach firm Cobb and Co. and eventually got a coach of his own, carrying supplies to mining settlements in Outback Queensland. He became a cattle grazier with a large property (147 square miles) called Amber Station in Fossilbrook, described as the wildest country imaginable. Frank and Alice reared a large family of five sons and four daughters. The running of Amber Station was a family affair, Alice’s sons were all stockmen there. Two of his sons predeceased him, Francis Roynon died in 1942 and William Henry in 1922 at the young age of seventeen.

Alice’s sister Vida Emily was living with her husband John William Leonard and family at Sunnymount, Chillagoe until the 1930s, when they took over the Espanol Hotel at Lappa Junction.

Vida’s husband died in 1937 so she earned her living as a hotel proprietor right until her death in 1969.

Joan Bell (nee Broadley) in front of Auntie Vida's hotel in the late 1990s

The following is an extract from the Cairns Post, Saturday, 20 October 2001.

The timber and corrugated iron pub was built in 1901 by a Spanish teamster known only as Mr Barbra, whose love of his homeland is reflected in the hotel’s name. Espanol is Spanish for Spaniard. The pub must have seemed like a little slice of luxury for the miners and their wives from the local mining camps. Their tough homes consisted of a bit of tin perched on top of a few kerosene drums with hessian bags for walls. People would come to the Espanol for their honeymoons. It must have been pretty flash – good beds with mosquito nets and all the meals provided. For any woman out here at that time, not having to cook or carry water would have been a big treat. As well as the miners, Barbra’s pub catered for the 500 or more railway workers who serviced the Mareeba line, which reached Lappa in 1900 and the copper rich nearby town of Chillagoe the following year. In 1902, Lappa became an important rail junction when a branch line was built south to Mt Garnet to service its new copper smelter. The town’s mineral rush was short lived and the line was eventually removed in the 1960s.

Lappa takes its name from nearby Lappa Lappa Creek (Aboriginal for permanent water) where famous Afghan cameleer Abdul Wade watered his camels as he hauled minerals out of Chillagoe and Mt Garnet. In its hey day in the early 1900s, Lappa was home to about 1000 people, with the hotel the centre of the town’s social life and the venue for all the local weddings, parties and dances.

In 1923, the Espanol was bought by William and Vida Leonard who built an adjoining house in the 1940s and ran the pub until Vida’s death in 1966, when the licence was surrendered. One of the highlights of this period was during World War 2, when the Leonards ran tearooms next to the railway station to cater for the 30,000 allied troops using the line. Anyone in uniform scored a free cuppa. The Lappa Leonards also built an air raid shelter under the big mango tree behind the hotel. The Leonards were forced to grow all their own food as the road to Mareeba was so rough. What is now a forty minute journey used to take six hours and was impassable in the wet season. The Leonards kept chickens, cattle, goats, pigs and horses and had a large vegetable garden. Tobacco was also grown near the creek until the crop was washed away by floods.

The “William” referred to is John William, “Willie”, eldest son of William Leonard, the storekeeper at Sunnymount, not far from Lappa Junction on the Mt Garnet line.

Built in 1901 the Espanol Hotel served the travellers and locals until 1966. It was constructed of round bush timber and galvanised iron, the Lappa (bring your own) bush pub still remains as the only example of a once common mining town building. It still survives as a museum and BYO and advertises itself as “a century old tradition of bush hospitality amongst the stark beauty of the outback.” A real wild west town.

Despite its remoteness the Cairns Post regularly reported functions held “at the residence of Mrs V E Leonard at Lappa Junction. In 1935 a dance was held in aid of the Petford Cricket Club and described as “A Happy Occasion” and “A dainty supper was supplied by Mrs Leonard” and the description of the beautiful dresses worn and waltzes to the music of violins, concertinas and flageolet paints a picture far removed from the harshness of the outback.

The Australian media in the first half of the twentieth century regularly reported the social activities and comings and goings of the ordinary citizen much as they do for celebrities nowadays. Visits between the Hargreaves and Irwin’s Amber Station and Kuranda (Frank Hargreaves’s daughter Minnie Jessie and her husband Joseph Nicholas Irwin.) were a regular feature of the gossip columns. In 1937 the Cairns Post reported that “Mr & Mrs R Hargreaves who were married at Amber Station last week, spent a few days with Mr & Mrs Irwin, Kuranda and left by Tuesday’s boat from Cairns for Magnetic Island, where they will spend part of their honeymoon.” 

Grace Hargreaves

Even visits to hospitals were recorded; the Cairns Post reporting in 1948 that “Mrs F Hargreaves of Amber Station, Fossilbrook, leaves by this afternoon’s plane for the south to seek medical attention. She will be accompanied by her son Norman, who will return by tomorrow’s plane.” Five years previously, in 1943, it reported that “Miss Grace Hargreaves of Amber Station, Fossilbrook left last Wednesday for Brisbane where she will visit her sister, Mrs Kelvin Grainger-Smith who has been seriously ill in a private hospital for some weeks”. Frances Vida Grainger-Smith at one time ran a beauty salon in Darwin called Valmae Frocks and Beauty Salon.

Weddings and funerals were also widely reported, because of the vastness of the country and communications in those days, the newspapers would perhaps be the only source of information for local inhabitants.

As well as losing children in their infancy, Frances lost two children in adulthood. Roynon Morris Bradby her first-born died at Irvinebank in 1899 at the age of 31 leaving a wife and two children. Another son, Sterling Etheridge Bradby died on 1 December 1917 drowned in the Tate River at the age of thirty six.

Frances died in 1922 at the age of seventy six at the home she had lived in for most of her married life with her large family, children and grandchildren around her. She had had a life tinged with sadness but was evidently a strong yet loving woman, a pioneer in every sense of the word choosing to spend her life in the Australian outback, far removed from her home city of Gloucester in England. It is not known whether she had any contact with Emily before she and her husband W J Holloway retired to England or her younger sister Maria Margaret who came to Australia towards the end of the nineteenth century and married an ex pat Englishman, before herself returning to England for the rest of her life. One thing is certain Frances adapted herself to life in the Australian outback, never venturing out of the country of her adoption again.

Janet Rigby
Member 1314

My Study of Micklethwaites wasn’t planned – once it started, it grew of its own accord. I had (and still have) a huge brickwall with my great great grandfather, John Micklethwaite, who died in 1849 aged 44 in a cholera outbreak in Huddersfield, Yorkshire. I couldn’t (and still can’t) find a baptism for him, so I expanded my search area. My initial searches found five possibilities for him, and the Study has eliminated just two of them. But the Study had started growing, and 12 years later it has now gone worldwide.

Over the years, several fellow researchers have individually come to see me. About two-and-a-half years ago, I was contacted by someone in Barnsley, Yorkshire (the ancestral home of Micklethwaites). His wife (a Micklethwaite) and her brother wanted to meet me, but they weren’t well enough to travel far (he has sadly died). So my contact arranged for us to meet for lunch at the Ardsley House Hotel just outside Barnsley. The location was chosen because it was the home of the Micklethwaits of Ardsley for many generations.

I had been wondering for some years about some sort of reunion/meeting. My thoughts had somehow turned towards a seminar, with various people talking about various aspects of our families’ history. However, my own ill-health meant that I could no longer contemplate arranging that sort of event.

Then we had a discussion at the Derbyshire regional meeting of the GOONS. Siann (who runs the Hurt Study) talked of her “reunions” where she had laid out all her research for visitors to peruse. Again, this sort of event was beyond me, but it opened my mind to other possibilities.

Then I remembered the lunch in Ardsley. If we all met for lunch, then I wouldn’t have much organising to do. What I forgot to think about was how stressful being interviewed by local radio can be, even if it is by telephone, and how many people would want to tap into my research. By this time I was producing a newsletter about the Micklethwait(e)s which I circulated to my contacts, so the proposed lunchtime meeting was announced there, as well as on local radio and in newspapers.

So that’s what we’ve done for the last 3 years. We’ve met in Dodworth, near Barnsley, which is about as close as possible to the “ancestral home”, the settlement once called Micklethwaite which is the one most of the Micklethwaite branches appear to be named after. The venue has a carvery for lunch and a sitting/drinking area for afterwards. Some people come for lunch (we had 21 this year, the best yet), some just for the drinking and nattering. The first year, more than a dozen people just turned up for a natter because they had heard about it on local radio – that was fantastic as I got to know how they fitted into the various branches. This year, the novelty has worn off and we didn’t get any media coverage, but someone brought me a family Bible to look at, and that disclosed something I didn’t know about. Earlier this year, I had reunited a photo album with another family (see https://andymick.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/a-photo-album/) – they came too.

Will I do another? I don’t honestly know – I’m not getting any younger or fitter! Everyone seems to enjoy them but I do find them exhausting. I get into discussions with people about their branches, with usually two or more wanting information at the same time! Perhaps a venue where we could have our own space and display the trees might be less stressful. Who knows what the future holds, but they certainly have been a big help to my research.

Andy Micklethwaite
Member 1027

Born: 1853 Clawton, eighth of ten children of Richard and Philippa (nee FANSON) SILLIFANT.
Married: Jane BASSETT, September qtr 1877, Holsworthy Registration District.
Died: 22 October 1923 at Station Road, Halwill.

Richard Sillifant married Philippa FANSON in Holsworthy, 30 June 1836. They had ten children: Charlotte (1838-1853), Isaac (1840-1910), Arscott (1841-1842), Frances (1841-?), Elizabeth Ann (1846-?), Mary Ann (1849-1850), Richard (1851-?), William (1853-1923), Selina (1856-?) and William Rundle (1860-?). Ashwater was the family home for many years and after his marriage to Jane BASSETT in 1877, the couple lived in the village until the late 1880s when they moved to Halwill where William was a ‘rural postman’.

The following description of HALWILL is from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)¹:

‘HALWILL, (or Halwell by Holsworthy) a parish in the hundred of Black Torrington, county Devon, 7 miles S.E. of Holsworthy. The village consists of a few farmhouses, and is a meet for Sir H. Seale's hounds. There are stone quarries. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Exeter, value £210, in the patronage of the lord chancellor. The church² is an ancient structure, with a high tower, containing five bells. The Baptists have a chapel and Sunday-school.’

Halwill Church

Halwill is a village in Devon, England just off the A3079 Okehampton to Holsworthy road. About a mile away on the main road is another settlement called Halwill Junction. This name brings to mind the former significance of the two villages, as home to an important railway junction, where the North Cornwall Railway (forming part of a main line railway from Exeter to Plymouth) diverged from the earlier Okehampton to Bude Line. Portions for the two routes separated and rejoined at Halwill station, giving the villages a much better service than larger habitations in the area.

Halwill Junction

William and Jane were Bible Christians and the non-conformist records for the area show that many of their children were baptised at home by the Bible Christian Minister. They had a relatively large family, with nine known children in all:

1. Thomas SELIFANT baptised 22 July 1878 at parent’s house. Married Alice ABBOTT in 1907 at the Independent Chapel in Beaminster.
2. Elizabeth Ann SILLIFANT baptised 11 April 1880 at Spring Cottage, Ashwater.
3. William SELIFANT baptised 5 November 1882 at parent’s house. Married Elsie JEFFERY in 1911 at the Union Chapel in Sherborne.
4. Eber SELLIFANT baptised as HEBER, 26 July 1885 at parent’s house. Married Olivia Emily SNELL in 1913 in Eggerford. Interestingly, Olivia is residing with the Sillifant family in the 1911 census.
5. Emily SILLIFANT baptised 8 January 1887 at parent’s house. Died aged 6 in June qtr 1893.
6. Ernest Richard SILLIFANT baptised 29 September 1889 at parent’s house. Married Beatrice WATKINS in 1916. Died 19 December 1937 aged 45 years at Tavistock Hospital as a result of an accident³.
7. Frederick SILLIFANT born 12 August 1892, baptised 1 January 1893 Halwill. Married Winifred Helen WHITE at the Baptist Church in Halwill.
8. Herbert John SILLIFANT born 31 December 1894, baptised 17 March 1895 Halwill. Married Ada NALDRETT in Dartford in 1919.
9. Hedley Charles SILLIFANT born 30 April 1897 Halwill. Enlisted to Royal Field Artillery as a driver in December 1915. Discharged ‘unfit’ a year later with ‘Graves Disease’⁴. Appears to have married three times – (1) Mabel HAWE in 1922, died 1946, (2) Rosa L.E. LARNER in 1949 and (3) Helen J. BROOMFIELD in 1955. Hedley died in Swindon in 1970.

William and Jane remained at Station Road in the village of Halwill, despite their children’s travels to other counties. William continued to work as the village postman in Halwill⁵ throughout the war years it would appear. He passed away in 1923, leaving £429 7s. 2d.⁶ Jane outlived him by just seven years and died in 1930.

William Sillifant Administration

The question I have is: why on earth did William also have a younger brother called William?!

Kirsty Gray
Member 1002

¹ http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/Halwill/Gaz1868.html - Transcribed by Colin Hinson, 2003

² Image from the author’s personal collection and not to be used without prior permission

³ http://family-wise.co.uk/34-ernest-richard-sillifant/

⁴ http://goo.gl/Eh5bmJ - WO 364/3706 Hedley Charles Sillifant, WW1 Pension Record (Ancestry)

⁵ https://goo.gl/1Q8TkZ - Map of Halwill Junction, 1946

⁶ http://goo.gl/0G7ZHD - National Probate Calendar (1924) - William Sillifant

This is the gentleman who initiated my surname study. When I discovered him around four years ago I thought he was a STEERS, but now I’m not so sure.

The conundrum that started the one-name study (ONS) was my husband’s four times great grandfather. He was, by all accounts a Londoner; born in Bishopsgate, lived in Bethnal Green and died in Shoreditch. He worked as a hearth mat maker. His children all lived and worked in London. However, they were all born in Hull, Yorkshire. Which is not near Shoreditch, or Bethnal Green. His wife, Maria, was born in Durham, which is also not near Hull, or London. She outlived him, but appears to have died as a result of complications of epilepsy in Hanwell Asylum.

William was my husband’s three times great grandfather. His marriage certificate states his father was Thomas Bradshaw STEERS. On the death certificate of Thomas Bradshaw STEERS the informant was Maria Steers.

However I couldn’t/cannot find a baptism or marriage for him to Maria. I also couldn’t find him in 1841.

I had identified the children as Ellen (born c. 1834), William (born c. 1840), Eleanor (born c. 1841), Anna M[aria?] (born c. 1844) and Watson (born c. 1846). However I had been unable to find GRO birth index references or baptisms for them.

And thus created a brick wall, which began the ONS, and then later a DNA Study.

Fast-forwarding to the present …

The Y-DNA (37 marker) test that my husband allowed me to do have had no other hits for STEERS. His Haplogroup is I-P37 and the hits that he has appear to be Irish. However I don’t understand enough about DNA yet to fully explore this aspect.

The Society of Genealogists ran a (rather successful) series of ‘Brick Wall Workshops’, facilitated by Amelia Bennett. To this I took my conundrum. The sessions produced useful ideas and suggestions for ‘where/what next’ options.

One suggestion made was searching the datasets with the surname blank and ‘Bradshaw’ in the forename box. Another was to search the 1841 census by occupation and forename.

And herein lived the possible breakthrough. A couple of days later I received an email from a fellow attendee and one-namer, Nicola Elsom.  

She had done the above and found a marriage on 26 February 1859 at St John’s in Bethnal Green for a Thomas BRADSHAW, mat maker to Maria Griffin whose father was William Blackstone. They were both widowed.

Source: London Metropolitan Archives, Saint John, Bethnal Green, Register of marriages, P72/JN, Item 013 Accessed at ancestry.co.uk

In 1841 she had found an entry for a Thomas BRADSHAW, rug maker living in Reynolds Court in St Giles without Cripplegate. He was living with an Ann BRADSHAW, born in Ireland, who was probably his wife.

The problem is there are two Thomas BRADSHAW’s, both are rug makers, both are in Reynolds Court and both have a probable wife called Ann, who was born in Ireland. One of the Thomas’s was born in county, around 1814, and the other was born out of county around 1818. From Thomas’s death certificate he was born about 1814, so is most likely the Thomas born in Middlesex.

Ref: HO107; Piece: 737; Book: 2; Folio: 26; Page: 46 Accessed at ancestry.co.uk

She also located GRO references for a Watson GRIFFIN, and I was able to locate Anna Maria GRIFFIN, both born in Hull in the correct timeframes.

The certificates were ordered and came back as

• Anna Maria GRIFFIN was born on the 4th of July 1843 to Maria GRIFFIN formerly FEATHERSTONE and Thomas GRIFFIN, a labourer in Green Lane, Hull.

• Watson GRIFFIN was born on the 4th of June 1845 to Maria GRIFFIN formerly FEATHERSTONE and Thomas GRIFFIN, a labourer at 46 Carr Lane, Hull.

However I cannot find a record for William or Eleanor GRIFFIN/BRADSHAW born in Hull.

There is a registration for a William Gower FEATHERSTONE in March 1840 in Sculcoates, but he died there in March 1840

I cannot find an Eleanor GRIFFIN/BRADSHAW or FEATHERSTONE, and Ellen would not have been registered as she was born before Q3 1837.

To date I have been unable to locate William on the 1841 Census. He was not with Thomas and Ann BRADSHAW.

It appears that the family as seen on the 1851 census are blended, i.e. Maria’s children from her previous marriage(s) and Thomas’s children from his. But whose is who?

Well the certificates above show Anna Maria and Watson as Mary’s. That leaves Ellen, William and Eleanor. It is possible that Eleanor is also Mary’s whereas William and Ellen are Thomas’s. William gives Thomas as his father on his marriage certificate, but I’ve not been able to marry off Ellen or Eleanor.

If Thomas BRADSHAW is ‘my Thomas’, and his wife is Ann who is Irish this would support the theory that William is Thomas’s. This would also explain the initial DNA hits.

So the new challenge is – Who is Ann? Why did Thomas change his name? and the biggest question – Should this be a BRADSHAW study?!

Carole Steers
Member 1060