My most complete quarter

The quarter of my tree that has proven easiest to follow through on paper trail is from my maternal grandmother, Margaret Jane Henderson (1899-1982), born in Amble. Perhaps this is because she was the one who knew most about her own ancestors so she gave me lots of good clues when I had to prepare a family tree at school when I was eleven.

In the composite picture of my 4 grandparents on the right hand panel of the blog she is at the bottom left.

Here is a snippet showing the first few generations. It is the only section of my tree where I can get to 4th great grandparents with no gaps, and as you can see from the little black arrows I can go even further on 9 lines.

If any of these couples belong to you to then please drop me a line as that means we are cousins.

New format on Ancestry

Had to smile at this rather pretentious certificate. This is what you get after a half hour e-learning course if you take the little 20 question quiz at the end. The course had the silly title “Learn About Your Ancestors Using the Latest from Ancestry“. The actual content is a run through the main features of the new format, including the Lifestory functionality. I wish they would not call it lifestory, as until you go through and edit each lifestory it can include a number of time related historical events that are totally irrelevant for the ancestor concerned. My objective in taking the course was to see whether to wait or jump in and go over to the new format now. If you are wondering about the result of this decision making process, here is a snippet of my paternal line in the new format:

End of line ancestors – more updates

Added brief profiles for the following end of line ancestors:

• Thomas Thornton – 5th great – probably born before 1750, possibly Hartburn
• Jane Nichol – 4th great – probably born before 1771
• Hannah Hunter – 5th great – born about 1740, maybe Elsdon
• William Thompson – 5th great – born about 1738, maybe Elsdon
• Isabel Hedley – 5th great – probably born before 1748, maybe Elsdon
• Andrew Oliver – 5th great (tentative) – probably born before 1759, maybe Hartburn
• Alice Carr – 4th great – probably born before 1791, maybe Wallsend area

130 years ago yesterday

Oops, missed the day. Should have posted this yesterday. My great grandparents, George Murray Turner of Amble and Sarah Ann Carr of Radcliffe, were married 8 July 1882. The ceremony took place in the Wesleyan Chapel at Alnwick in Northumberland by certificate. The certificate shows them both as age 21 which is in accordance with the information I have on their birth dates. Sarah was born in October 1860 and George in May 1861. Their fathers are recorded as William Robinson Turner, shoemaker, and Thomas Carr, miner. However, I now know George to be the illegitimate son of Barbara Murray who married William Robinson Turner in 1864. The witnesses to George and Sarah’s marriage were Sarah Elizabeth Rogers and Leonard Watson. I currently have no idea whether these were friends or relatives.

Family history through the alphabet – F is for Fecund Forebears

F is for Fecund Forebears

My tree has many branches because large numbers of offspring appear to have been the norm among the mining, fishing and farming families of North-East England and Scotland. Three of my grandparents are from large families. Grandmother Ellenor Turner was the seventh child of ten. Grandmother Margaret Jane Henderson was the third child of seven. Grandfather George Crackett was the eighth child of ten. (Shown in the banner of my blog).

Taking it back one generation further the big families include: Cracket 8, Parkinson 5, Carr 5, Henderson 7, Thornton 11. Similar trends can be seen in the earlier generations too with most of the couples having somewhere between 5 and 10 children.

F is for findmypast

F is also for findmypast which is one of the resources I find most useful for my genealogy research. I find their transcriptions among the most reliable, although Cracket has on occasion been twisted to Crackel. So far I have just used the UK site, but expect I am soon going to have to take a look at both Ireland and Australia. I have not managed to figure out yet whether having a subscription for one country gives any discount opportunities for the other countries.

If you would like to know more about this alphabet challenge take a look at Family History through the Alphabet.

Family history through the alphabet – C is for Calendar

Family History Through the Alphabet – Picture from Genealogy and History News

C is for Calendar

Surprised you there didn’t I? I bet you all expected me to take the easy option here and go with C is for Crackett. Well of course it is, but before I move on to my family name and the other three C’s in my pedigree I want to take a look at C is for Calendar. I picked up blogging again at the end of February, then during March and April I started thinking more about the dates of events. To begin with I just looked at what may have been happening on a specific date when I was short of inspiration for other topics. Then I realised that it could be fun to take a closer look at what was going on each day in my family history. This lead to my series of posts entitled “xxx years ago today”. These posts have inspired me to try to find out background information about the individuals who have an anniversary so that I can tell you more than just names and dates. Setting up my plan for these calendar event posts has revealed several dates with a lot going on. I wrote a few days ago about the date coincidences in the deaths of my great great granny Barbara Murray Turner, her father George Murray and his sister Barbara Murray Rennie. The busiest day in my family history calendar so far is 9 July which has five birthdays (1873, 1899, 1926, 1949, 1957) and a wedding (1947). Then when we get to November I will be telling you about my granny Crackett giving birth on her own birthday. So far I have 218 days in the year with identified family events, but I will not be blogging about all of them as some relate to living members of the family. 86 of those days have more than one event.

C is for Crackett or Cracket

C is for Crackett, my family name, which developed from Cracket by adding an extra T in the mid 1800s. I currently have over 600 Cracket/Crackett persons in my genealogy database and am now working on verifying vital records and tying together the various branches. If you are a Crackett somewhere out there in the big wide world then drop me a comment and let us see if we can figure out our connection.

C is for Carr

Another C in my pedigree is Carr, starting with great granny Sarah Ann Carr who was born in 1860 at Seaton Delaval in Northumberland.

C is for Corbett

C is also for Corbett. So far I only have great great granny Ann Corbett, who may have been Sarah Ann Corbett. Unfortunately I know little about her yet.

C is for Chator

C is also for Chator. My 5x great grandmother Susannah Chator, born in the early 1700s, is the only one of these I have found so far.

If you would like to know more about this weekly challenge take a look at Family History Through the Alphabet.

May modus operandi

Most of my genealogy research so far has been structured according what grabs my interest on a particular day and what mood I am in. The Easter break was the first time I tried to set myself some more structured plans. Although I did not manage everything on the list it did help me to not wander too far off track, so I am going to do the same for May. Focus areas this month (unless of course I get sidetracked onto something much more fun to follow up) are:

• Register all of the Murray, Winning and Lemcke information that I have been working on with my Aberdeenshire cousin and follow up other interesting leads he feeds to me. Will probably take the whole month doing a few each day to get up to date.
• 1st week: Tie together in my tree on Ancestry the families of my 2x great grandfather William Cracket and his siblings Adam, David, Margaret, Mark and Jane
• 2nd week: Sift through the Oliver and Thornton notes I made at Woodhorn at Easter
• 3rd week: Bang my head against that Webb brick wall again. Maybe some day it might crumble when I look at it from a different angle
• 4th week: Feel I am on a roll with my Halls of Elsdon so I might see where Gabriel & Hannah take me next
• 5th week: See what is behind Ancestry’s shaking leaves on my Carr line

Planning next archive trip

I have been doing some planning this evening for my next trip to Woodhorn Archives and NDFHS at Percy House. Among the checks I want to make if I have time are:

• Confirm the correct father for Margery Hall born 1803 in Elsdon, Northumberland, since we have found conflicting information in various transcripts
• Try to confirm which Isabella Cracket married Garnet Caisley
• Integrity check on the various Adam Cracket and David Cracket births and marriages in the early 1800s. I think I may have some errors in  my data.
• Take a closer look at the Olivers of Netherton and Hauxley
• Try to find a marriage record for Thomas Oliver born 1800 in Hepscott and his wife Alice
• Try to find parents for Robert Parkinson born 1792, probably somewhere around the Walker area.
• Look for a marriage record for William Reay born 1776, possibly somewhere around the Walker area
• Look for a marriage record for Thomas Carr born 1815 in Willington and Ellen Reed (Reid or Read) born 1822 and try to find her parents

Ambitious plans, and if previous experience is anything to go by, I will no doubt get sidetracked onto something completely different but equally useful.

New 4th cousin once removed

A question from another researcher about my great grandmother Turner born Sarah Ann Carr resulted in the discovery of a new 4th cousin once removed in Peterhead, and this has lead to a wealth of new information about my Murray line in Aberdeenshire. This new found cousin has helped me to add the following names to my pedigree: Anderson, Dow, Ironside, Gardner/Gairdner, Stonehouse/Stenhouse and another line of Taits.

Pedigree lines

Under My Family on the menu I have set up individual pages for the various lines in my pedigree. The first piece of content on each page will define the start of the line and indicate how many generations I have traced back. In future updates I will add more factual information about the individuals in the pedigree lines and other branches. I made a start today on Carr, Webb, Henderson and Tait.