Investigating family history

[sally_maria]

I've been doing a bit more family history research, with the help of the very kind posters on the RootsChat forum. This is probably the oldest family photo I have, my Pearce gg-grandparents and five of their six children, including my great-grandmother, the right-hand one of the three girls. I don't know exactly when it was taken, but from the ages I'm guessing somewhere in the first half of the 1890s. (She was born in 1876.)

My mother's second cousin, who also descends from the Pearces, has spent a lot of time looking at their history and has found quite a lot of interesting information, including a connection with Edward Jenner of smallpox fame. On the other hand, I was intrigued by Mary Ann Pearce, the mother in the photo above.



Mary Ann Williams was five years older than her husband, Thomas, and had, as far as I can tell, been the only daughter of a widowed mother since she was 15 at the oldest. There's nothing in writing, but I can't help thinking that the Pearces, who were established farmers, probably disapproved of the marriage. It's telling that they got married at the nearby town of Dursley at the Register Office, with the master and matron of the workhouse as witnesses. (Neither the bride nor the groom were listed as inmates, so whether they were just handy to be dragged in for couples who didn't have witnesses of their own, or if they already knew them, I'll probably never know.)

Another reason for the Register Office marriage may have been that the bride was a Non-Conformist - after the family moved to Leeds there are records of her membership of a local Methodist church, and at least three of the children were christened as Methodists.

Still, it wasn't a complete break - after his father's death Thomas moved the family back to Gloucestershire to take over the family farm, and that was where we believe this photo was taken - the White House at Little Cambridge.

Because originally I didn't have any information on Mary Ann, not even her maiden name, I decided to order a copy of their marriage certificate, which has quite a lot of useful information for family historians, including the father's name and occupation - that's how I know about the register office wedding. He was listed as William Williams (deceased builder). My usual methods of searching on Ancestry didn't get me any further though, there were WWs but none who looked like mine - I was starting to wonder if Mary Ann had been illegitimate and had invented him.

So I decided to ask for help from more experienced searchers, and in the course of an afternoon several people were able to use their copies of local church records to find out that William Williams definitely existed, that he'd died before 1851 and that Mary Ann's mother maiden name was Hannah/Fanny Davis, giving me another generation, and Hannah's several half-brothers and sisters. Result! :-)

I also got the solution to another minor mystery that had been bothering me - in 1891 my great-grandmother wasn't at home the night of the census. She was listed as staying with an Edward Davis and wife, and listed as their niece, which confused me rather when I realised that her mother was a Williams. When I realised that her grandmother, Hannah, was Edward's half-sister, it all made sense - I suppose niece is an easier description than great-half-niece.

The main result of all of this is to realise (diversion to Leeds not-withstanding) how firmly rooted in southern Gloucestershire Mum's side of my family is - her father this side of the Severn, and her mother in the Forest of Dean, with occasional incomers from across the Welsh Border. Dad's is much more widely spread, though still southern - Essex, Portsmouth and Cornwall, all converging on London.

Comments

[sally_maria]

You're welcome, thanks for replying. :-)