"Ann" as a surname? And a Bassingthwaighte disappointment...

I've been searching for my Pike ancestors, namely James Pike and his wife, Hester. The family lived in Alveston, Gloucestershire and all the children were born there. The only marriage that seemed plausible, however, was between James Pike and Hester Ann on 26 June 1811 in Bristol. I'm not sure if people from Alveston would have gone to Bristol to get married. If they did, though, and this is the correct couple, then I may have found a whole lot of new cousins.

There seem to be a lot of people with the Ann surname in the areas of Alveston and Olveston. These were such small places that everybody must have known the family!

Oh, and as for the Bassingthwaightes, I don't think they're related to me after all. I've found a more likely candidate for my Robert Johnson's wife (Mary Elseygood rather than Mary Bassingthwaighte), and now all the censuses make sense. There may still be a connection, as one of the children of Robert Johnson and Mary Bassingthwaighte was living with my Robert Johnson in 1841. Unfortunately, I don't know what the relationship was. (The two Robert Johnsons are perhaps cousins?)

The elusive "Mary" finally has a last name!

When your ancestors are from Ontario, Canada and Gloucestershire, England, you never think to look for a marriage in Kent, England!

I think I've got the right family here... I knew that my ancestor, George Pike, had married three times. His first wife was Elizabeth Screech/Screen. His third wife was Catherine McCarter. His second wife (my ancestor and -- as luck would have it -- the wife I had the least information about) was either Elizabeth Daniels (according to family stories) or someone named Mary (according to the 1861 Canadian census). On that census, there was a Hannah Daniels living next door. I thought it might be Mary's sister. Was the Daniels surname correct after all?

And then I found a marriage in early 1855 in Dover, Kent, England for a George Pike (widower) and a Mary Daniels (single). Judging by the fact that their first child was born in England in August of 1855, this could very well be the right family. This Mary Daniels also had a younger sister named Hannah (which would fit with the census information I found).

Just when you think you've hit brick walls all around, you get a break. I love finding ancestors!

Ancestry.com

A while ago, I was a subscriber to Ancestry.com, which was great. But after a while, I couldn't justify paying so much for something I wasn't using every single day. So I switched to the pay-per-view system, so I could only pay when I was on a real genealogy kick and wanted to view a few records.

For a long time, I was able to attach census records to my tree without using any credits. As long as I had some credits in my account, I could do this. If I wanted to actually view the record images (and not just see the indexes), I had to actually use a credit. That was fine by me. I was also able to attach records from other people's family trees without using credits... which I thought was great, since the information there is questionable at best. Why should I pay for someone else's assumptions?

Last time I was on the Ancestry site, though, I noticed that I couldn't do anything without using credits, other than attach the 1881 England census or records from the FreeBMD archives. Curious, I fired off an e-mail to Ancestry, only to be informed that I should have been charged credits all along, and that I should be happy for this little mistake.

Excuse me?

I'm supposed to spend almost a dollar each time I want to attach some random person's record to my tree, even though there's no way of knowing if the information is even correct? Don't get me wrong; that attaching feature has been a great way of building up my family tree. But it's only a beginning. To ensure accuracy, I then have to go and find other information that corroborates the other person's tree. If this was already done (meaning the information had already been checked out and verified), I wouldn't have a problem with paying for it. But as it is, someone could make up anything, put it in their tree... and Ancestry would still make us pay for it.

I'm a bit put off by Ancestry at the moment. I have much of my information there as private trees, mostly for backup purposes (in case my computer explodes or something). But I don't know how I feel about them making money off my information... especially if it's not even 100% correct information. I know that companies want to make money, but I find it a bit disgusting that we genealogists have to pay ridiculous amounts of money simply to find out things about our own heritage.

Lambert family of Panfield Hall

I have some Lambert ancestors who supposedly lived at Panfield Hall in Essex. I have come across another Lambert family who also lived at Panfield Hall (that of John Lambert, a Puritan who immigrated to the U.S.A. with his family). I'm guessing that these two Lambert families are related somehow (Panfield Hall wasn't that big, after all), but my searches have turned up nothing. John Lambert was probably the contemporary of my Jeffrey Lambert; but I don't know if they were brothers, first cousins, second cousins, or even more distantly related.

It's amazing how much information is online these days. But it is still possible to come away from an Internet search disappointed... especially when you're researching things that happened hundreds of years ago.

Musings... about Mormons?

One of the tree branches I've been walking lately is a line of folks from the Norfolk, England area. They are variously Murrells and Johnsons, with some Bassingthwaightes thrown in for good measure. I was going merrily along, adding in some potential distant cousins to my database... when I hit a patch of polygamist Mormons. Now I think I'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome...

While not a Mormon myself, I know that there are quite a few Mormon families scattered through the family tree. This group that I was looking at today originated in Suffolk, England and settled in Utah in the U.S.A. I would love to know what the impetus was for packing up everything, heading for North America, and then traversing most of the continent to arrive at their destination! Things must've been tough in England. Why else would you risk your family's lives by undertaking such a journey?

Charlemagne's descendant? So they say...

I've heard before that many people (especially if they are European) are descended from Charlemagne. Many are supposedly descended from British royalty, too. I was having a look at the Wikipedia page on the genealogical relationships of Presidents of the United States and marvelling at how many of them are related to each other... and to the British royals. Barack Obama and George W. Bush are tenth cousins? Wouldn't that make for an awkward extended-family reunion!

What boggles my mind, though, is how all of this was determined. Finding out about your tenth cousins requires going back quite a ways... probably about 300 years. My question is this: how on earth do they do that?

I've been researching my family tree for years (probably at least 10, at this point), and I've yet to come across anyone who even comes close to tying into a royal tree. Most of my ancestors were farmers, fishermen, labourers, or servants. I'm always on the lookout for that one person from long ago who can help me break into the royal trees... but so far, no luck. The brick walls at approximately 1800 in various branches of my tree don't help, either.

Mathematically speaking, there is probably some blue blood in the family tree; I just have no idea how to find it when the last two hundred years have been obscured by my family's less-than-royal pedigree. Poor folks didn't always keep the best records...

Carden family of... Ireland!

Thanks to my distant cousin, John, I've discovered that James Carden was actually Irish! He was born in a place called Island Bridge in Dublin around 1819. That still doesn't help me trace the tree any further back, but at least it helps explain why I couldn't find him in the English or Welsh birth records.

So now I've got at least two ancestors who were born in Ireland...

Carden family of England? Wales?

My great-great-great-grandfather has been somewhat of a mystery ever since I started tracing my family tree. It's not as if he's so far in the distant past that there are no surviving records; he was born around 1820, after all. I think the problem is that he was a military man. Other kind researchers have helped me out a little bit, confirming that there was a James Carden who served with the Black Watch in the Crimean War (which fits in with the family stories). He never returned to his family in Scotland, and I haven't found any death records for him... but apparently there was a 37-year-old James Carden of the 42nd Regiment who was buried in one of Malta's military cemeteries in 1855. Malta! Who would have guessed?

I would really like to be able to tie my James Carden to one of the Carden families that have been extensively researched. Family stories say James was Welsh, but on the 1841 census his birthplace was listed as England. I'm wondering if he was perhaps one of the Cheshire Cardens -- a possible candidate is a James Carden, born about 1820 in Manchester, who was the son of William Carden and Elizabeth Lee. I know there are some DNA studies out there that might help me out, but unfortunately they use the Y chromosome... and that doesn't exist in my branch of the family anymore.

There must be someone out there who knows something about James. I guess I just have to keep searching.

Pike family of Gloucestershire and Somerset

I've recently been looking for Pikes in Gloucestershire and Somerset. My earliest known Pike ancestor raised his family in Alveston, Gloucestershire, but the censuses say he was born in North Petherton, Somerset sometime in the 1790s. There are a few Pikes listed in the IGI for North Petherton, but I can't find one the right age to be my James. The closest one seems to be a James Pike, son of James Pike and Sarah Parker, who was christened in 1782.

I also found a John Pike who was born in North Petherton around 1794, who raised his family in Olveston (just down the road from Alveston). I suspect that John and James may be related, but I have no idea how at the moment.

The Beginnings of a Blog

I used to have more of a presence on the Internet, as far as genealogy is concerned. Unfortunately, when GeoCities went away, it took my family tree site with it.

I'm not going to be posting much actual family tree information here. This site will act more as a log of my research (such as it is). I have fairly comprehensive family trees on Genes Reunited and Ancestry.com, so it seems a little redundant to post the information here as well.

My surname interests... well, let's just say that the list is a little bit long. As I go forward and make new blog posts, I'll add labels so that all posts for a particular surname can be easily found.