I can't think of any more things to add to Robert Hughes's list here:
'Loose ends that I want to follow up, and where you would have thought the internet would help, include:
Newton Thomas, youngest known child of Samuel and Marie–Antoinette Thomas; b. 1883, and died presumably in New Zealand in his eighties or later, but when and where exactly?
Samuel Thomas, b. 1900, elder child of Frank and Gertrude Thomas (née Morris). Said to have married the daughter of a pig farmer, presumably in Canada. Were there any children?
Samuel Thomas, b. Billancourt, Paris, c. 1872: later known by the family as George, he married Ethel May Morris in 1906 and emigrated to Canada, said to have been Saskatoon. May, as she was known, made several visits to England, but George seems not to have done. They appear to have had no children, but is this correct? When and where did he die?
The Thomas Millions: a huge fortune is said to be tied up in Chancery because someone lost a birth certificate. Great-great-aunt Flossie had her chauffeur drive her around Wales looking at tombstones in the hope that she could unlock the Millions. Any truth in this family legend? (A five-pound Wrapit voucher for anyone who gives us the answer, and we'll add interest from today's date!)
Mary Quarterly, b. Devonport 1808: this family is heavily concentrated in the Devon and Exmoor area, but otherwise it is not a very common name. Does anyone have a Quarterly family tree which would give us a clue about Mary?
Thomas Nimmo, apothecary of Greenock: he was born at some time in the mid-Eighteenth Century, and is almost certainly the father of Elizabeth Nimmo, the [maternal] great-grandmother of Lionel Britton. Is there any way to access records about his medical training, and can he be the link to the Earls of Mar which the family later claimed to have?
Elizabeth Harding, wife to the above: where did this family come from? As no record can be found in Scotland or England for the marriage of Thomas and Elizabeth, there is a strong possibility that they were at some point in the colonies or in Ireland.
When and where did Elizabeth Smith die, and similarly her husband James Smith, for whom I can find no record?
A note about the Britton family tree was found written on the back of a picture by John Britton, in Nova Scotia, who tragically has been incapacited by a stroke for some years and cannot communicate.
This note refers to "Sherry Hales" 1665, and "Chusburne".
While "Chusburne" is totally cryptic, it is reasonable to suppose that 'Sherry Hales' was a corruption of Sheriffhales, a village near Shifnal in Staffordshire. Does the Britton family have an origin there?
John James Britton went to live at Vire in Normandy, shortly after Catherine his first wife died in 1879. He may have been there for less than two years, but we know that his younger son by Catherine was enrolled in a college there.
When he remarried in April 1882, one of the witnesses was Thomas Perkins, (1842–1907), who wrote numerous books about church architecture, especially that of Normandy. Did the acquaintanceship with Thomas arise from the sojourn in Normandy or predate it?
Thomas Perkins married John James's eldest daughter Ethel Alice in 1891, and the officiating minister was J. Townroe Coward, "Vicar of St Leonards", of whom I can find no trace on census or any other records. There is much mystery surrounding the Coward family, but it would be useful to discover more about them in order to shed light on how John James came to marry Maud May Coward, (c. 1857–1946), a girl young enough to be his daughter.
The remarkable John Britton, (1771–1857), was not only a notable writer about church architecture in Normandy and elsewhere, but also about a variety of other topics, including many works of topography (illustrated by himself), and commentary on the political and philosophical scene of the day.
John Britton of Nova Scotia thought it highly likely that the grandfather of John James was called John. Is it possible that this was John Britton the writer himself?'
Robert
It seems from a death announcement in the Greenock Advertiser, unearthed for me by courtesy of the Watt Museum of Greenock, that Elizabeth Nimmo (Née Harding) my G4-grandmother and the Great-great-grandmother of Lionel Britton, died on July 19th 1841.
ReplyDeleteApart from the information that she was the widow of Thomas Nimmo, druggist, the only other detail is a place: Auchenblain.
While it is possible that this was a name given to a property, a house or nursing home for example, the more direct inference is that it was a location such as a village.
However I can find no villages called Auchenblain, and the sole internet match for this name is for William Ferguson of Auchenblain:
www.stirnet.com/campbell20
There is of course the village of Auchenblae, in Kincardineshire about 8 miles from Laurencekirk. Is it possible that the two places are the same?
There seem to be plenty of Fergusons around that area, but of course it is not an uncommon name.
If Elizabeth died in that remote region, why was she so far off her patch, or was this her patch after all?
It is not unknown for someone to return to her, or his, roots following the loss of a spouse; for example my Great-great-grandmother Marie-Antoinette Thomas, (née Goffin), seems to have spent the last few years of her life in Belgium, her family's native land, and she died in Brussels.
Thomas Nimmo died on Aug 3rd 1834, and possibly there was nothing to keep Elizabeth in Greenock, so that it felt natural to her to return to her own place.
This is very speculative however!
What I would love to see is any clue which could advance the enquiry.
The birth certificate of Thomas Perkins, (28th May 1842), reveals that his mother was Elizabeth Crespier North.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, the 1861 census for this family comes to light, and it shows that at that date they were in Tiverton, a modest town in Devon, known to readers of 'Lorna Doone' as the scene of Jan Ridd's scholastic career.
They do not seem to have been a Devonshire family however, as Thomas Lovell Perkins, Thomas' father, was born in Bedfordshire, as was his old mother who was also living with them; and Thomas himself was born in London like his mother Elizabeth.
In 1862 the Perkins family were living just around the corner from the older James Eyres Coward, the 'Medical General Practioner' who was the father of the ship's surgeon of the same name.
The younger James Eyres Coward had married Lucy Pick North in 1844, and had several children with her, including the twins who perished on the voyage of the Poictiers.
The strong suggestion here is that Thomas Perkins was related to the Coward family by marriage, on his mother's side.
In this 1861 census return, he is described as a 'scholar at Christ's College Cambridge', which was the college where Arthur Britton, John James Britton's second son, was 'adm. pens.' in 1887.
Although it is still unclear how John James Britton initially knew the Norths, the Cowards or the Perkins, there is not a doubt that the web became even more entangled: Thomas Perkins was the pastor who married John James Britton and Maud May Coward in 1882, and when Thomas himself, having lost his first wife, married Ethel Alice Britton in 1891, it was a J Townroe Coward who presided at the ceremony!
In modern terms, Perkins is Forrest Gump: wherever the action is, there is Perkins. He even writes a letter to Lionel Britton before Lionel's birth!
Thomas Perkins' mother was not Elizabeth Crespier North, but Elizabeth Crispin North.
ReplyDeleteThe error arose from an ambiguity in the 1861 census. In this case, the transcribers at Ancestry.com were not to be blamed at all, as the first interpretation seemed correct.
Handwriting can do odd things! Anyone who still prefers Ancestry's version is welcome to contact me, and we can take it from there.
However, a copy of the birth record for Thomas Perkins, which I have received from the General Register Office, confirms the second version of this fellow's mother's middle name, (i.e. Crispin), and a marriage record from the same source provides further corroboration.
I apologise to avid followers of Dr. Tony Shaw's blog for having, (inadvertently), introduced a misleading fact.
Elizabeth's father, (and therefore Thomas Perkins' grandfather), was John Exton North.
Whoever old John Exton was, he excites my curiosity for a number of reasons:
Firstly, the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth Crispin North in the Parish of St Mary Leicester on March 16th 1841 was witnessed by Thomas Pick, R.E.North, Rosa North and Lucy North.
Henry Law, (Curate), signed the marriage certificate.
John Exton North himself was described as a 'bookeeper'.
Assuming that this was not a mistranscription for 'beekeeper', it would be reasonable to suppose that he was what we would call today a 'white collar worker'.
In another certificate, the marriage record of his other daughter Lucy Pick North in Dover in 1844, he is described as a 'gentleman'.
This term is rather loaded in the context of Nineteenth Century economic and social history...
Secondly, the very middle name Exton strongly suggests Devonian roots, as Exton is a village below Exeter on the widening Exe.
There appear to be a number of Norths in Devon, and perhaps even more in Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and adjacent counties.
Thirdly, while those Picks and even Crispins tend to establish him firmly as a man of the East Midlands, why was he delivering his daughter at the altar to Thomas Lovell Perkins, (resident in the Parish of Saint Andrew Holborn)?
Could anyone shoot down my theory, which goes like this:
John James Britton, my Great-great-grandfather, (a Solicitor of the Supreme Court, no less!), was the son, perhaps the only son, of James Britton, who in the 1841 census is described as a 'leathercutter'.
A most memorable message from one of my cousins whose acquaintance I have newly made, describes how Edith Leslie Britton, John James' youngest daughter, told him as she cuddled him in her favourite armchair that her grandfather had been 'an ironmonger, but a gentleman ironmonger!'
This seems to conflict with our census evidence, but Birmingham people are quite happy to try their hand at different businesses, and I can't see why old James might not have had an ironmongery as well as some other stuff, (we know he had lots of houses, a fact well attested by the contract drawn up on the marriage of John James Britton and Maud May Coward).
James then, (following my theory), was a businessman, but there could have been something else: some evidence suggests a link with Durham and a Doctor of Divinity.
It is beyond dispute that John James Britton became a solicitor by the fairly normal route of articles; his sons had various careers: Richard was a solicitor who never quite qualified, and Arthur went to Christ's College Cambridge and then into the church.
Thomas Perkins went to Christ's College Cambridge and then into the church, and later married Ethel Alice Britton, John James eldest daughter.
The invisible link which binds is...
a thong of leather.
By courtesy of the Central Library, Greenock, Inverclyde, I have received a copy of an entry in the Greenock Advertiser of 7th Aug 1834 which is most illuminating.
ReplyDelete"[Died] Here, on the 3d instant, in his 77th year, Thomas Nimmo, Esq., of Auchinblain."
I have now also established that a Thomas Nimo was born to Robert Nimo [the] younger, on February 21st 1858, at Auchenblain.
Auchenblain passed to William Ferguson on his marriage in 1713, and the Fergusons were connected to the family of Mar, so this is the most likely link between Lionel Britton, (who claimed to be a fourth cousin of the Earl of Mar and Kellie), and that line.
The record of the deaths of James Smith, and Elizabeth Smith (Nee Nimmo), have finally come to light.
ReplyDeleteJames died on 21 Mar 1862, (paralysis).
Elizabeth died on 20 Sep 1861, (Cholera, 3 days).
We know that cholera was a horrific and sudden slayer as recently as the later Nineteenth-Century, but we know too that it is hardest on those already weakened.
Elizabeth Smith had suffered the loss of her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Mary Chalmers (or Elizabeth Mary Nicholson), just four months previously, and it would seem likely that she had suffered a decline in her strength and will to survive as a result of this tragedy.
The death of James not many months later, even though he reached the tolerably respectable age of 69, seems to follow a familiar pattern where a husband does not long survive his wife.
The modesty of this advance in our knowledge of the Smiths should not discourage us in our quest for their ancestors.
There are in fact several intriguing clues, for example, next door to James Smith in 1841 were a whole household of young Scottish guys trading in cloth, tea, and perhaps more.
The head of that next-door household was Eaglesfield Bradshaw Smith, born 15 Feb 1814 in Hoddom, Dumfriesshire, to Eaglesfield Smith and Judith Elisabeth Irving.
Smith is a common enough name for that to be a co-incidence...if we can dismiss Slater's Directory for Birmingham (1852) which lists 'Smith and Co. Pearl workers' at 15 Caroline St.
The record of the deaths of James Smith, and Elizabeth Smith (Nee Nimmo), have finally come to light.
ReplyDeleteJames died on 21 Mar 1862, (paralysis).
Elizabeth died on 20 Sep 1861, (Cholera, 3 days).
We know that cholera was a horrific and sudden slayer as recently as the later Nineteenth-Century, but we know too that it is hardest on those already weakened.
Elizabeth Smith had suffered the loss of her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Mary Chalmers (or Elizabeth Mary Nicholson), just four months previously, and it would seem likely that she had suffered a decline in her strength and will to survive as a result of this tragedy.
The death of James not many months later, even though he reached the tolerably respectable age of 69, seems to follow a familiar pattern where a husband does not long survive his wife.
The modesty of this advance in our knowledge of the Smiths should not discourage us in our quest for their ancestors.
There are in fact several intriguing clues, for example, next door to James Smith in 1841 were a whole household of young Scottish guys trading in cloth, tea, and perhaps more.
The head of that next-door household was Eaglesfield Bradshaw Smith, born 15 Feb 1814 in Hoddom, Dumfriesshire, to Eaglesfield Smith and Judith Elisabeth Irving.
Smith is a common enough name for that to be a co-incidence...if we can dismiss Slater's Directory for Birmingham (1852) which lists 'Smith and Co. Pearl workers' at 15 Caroline St.
Was this whole thing about pearls and buttons?