A
family historian contacted me through my Online Parish Clerk (OPC) website
last week looking for information that might confirm a family relationship. The
problem brought up two things genealogists should always be concerned about: using
a variety of sources; and the limitation of indexes.
Jeremy
commented: “According to a transcript on
Find my Past my 2nd great grandfather, William Saunders, married Jenny Adams in
Malborough on the 22nd January 1834. I am trying to confirm that his parents
were William Saunders and Elizabeth Widdecombe and am hoping that the original
details of William and Jenny's marriage will provide some additional
information. I wonder whether you can help by sourcing the original marriage
details?”
I
replied that I did not have copies of the original parish registers for
Malborough parish in Devon, so could not look up the details of the event in my
own OPC files, but could help with looking at other data. That parish is not one
that has images of its registers on FindMyPast
(FMP) as many Devon areas do. The marriage predated the establishment of civil records so
Jeremy could not order a copy of the record from the General Record Office.
The
Devon Family History Society (DFHS), however, has scanned the records of many
parishes that do not have an agreement with FMP and they are available for
society members to view. Malborough is one of the parishes the DFHS has in its
library. When I looked up the event on their website, I found an image of the
marriage entry that has some interesting information on it. In addition to the
names of the bride and groom, of course, it also had the names of the witnesses
to the event: Richard Adams, Elizabeth Adams, Mary Jane Adams, Mary E. A.
Gellard, George Barkwill, and Wm. Widdicombe. That last name was a clue
as to a possible relationship to the family connection Jeremy was wondering
about.
The
marriage entry also said William Saunders was from “Charles in Plymouth” and
Jenny was living in Malborough parish. While accurate as far as their being
residents in those places, it was not helpful in terms of where they were born.
Plymouth is 17 miles from Marlborough, 22 miles by road, so something must have
brought William to the area.
The
1841 census has the family living in Blanksmill, Malborough parish, with three
of their children. A fourth, as it turned out, was staying in the area with another
family member, Mary Adams. Later censuses showed the children were born in
Plymouth and Jenny was born in Slapton, Devon. So, everyone was far from home! William
died in 1844 in Plymouth. We find the rest of the family living in Charles,
Plymouth, in all subsequent censuses from 1851 to 1891, Jenny remaining a widow
until her death in 1894. Because of his death year, census records could not
tell us where William was born.
The
marriage of William Saunders and Elizabeth Widdecombe that Jeremy referenced
actually took place in Ugborough parish, Devon, in 1803, another area to take
note of. On that entry in the marriage register, available on FMP, William is
shown as being from Hartford and Elizabeth from Ugborough. Now there are a few
places named Hartford, but they are in Cheshire and Cambridgeshire. While it is
possible William was from one of those places, it is more likely that the clerk
made an error in the record and he was actually from Harford parish, Devon,
right next door.
Harford
is the area where a William and Elizabeth Saunders lived for many years and had
nine children. I am the OPC for that parish and have copies of all of the BMD registers. One of those children was William Saunders, baptized 30 October
1805. That date fit with everything else we found about William and Jenny
Saunders and the conclusion is that he is the person Jeremy was seeking
information about even though we cannot yet prove the relationship.
William
died in 1834 in Harford at the age of 60; Elizabeth died there in 1863, aged
86. That gives us birth years as 1774 and 1777, respectively, for the them. The
1851 and 1861 censuses show us Elizabeth was born in Modbury parish, Devon. A
baptism record from that parish shows a William Saunders born in 1774. It
appears they were both from the area. Note that scans of Modbury parish
registers are also only available on the members only part of the DFHS site.
As I
stated in the beginning, two elements of genealogical searches were important
in this study. Looking at a variety of sources was necessary to find all of the
relevant data: FindMyPast, Ancestry and Devon Family History
Society. Individual parish registers for Harford, Modbury, Malborough and
Ugborough showed us detail indexes do not. In order to put together enough
information draw any conclusions we had to look at several data sites and, in
particular, at copies of the original records.
In addition
to investigating and integrating data from a variety of sources, I recommended that Jeremy join the DFHS in order to access much more data than database
sites of Ancestry and FMP can offer for the region.
