My family history event for January 14th is:
Turner family plot in Amble East Cemetery
My family history event for January 7th is the death of my great aunt Ann Roden Turner in 1903. Annie was burnt to death. She was standing close to the fire and her clothes caught hold when someone in the family opened a door. My big mystery with Annie is that I cannot figure out why her middle name is Roden. All other members of this family of 10 who have a middle name have Robinson. Could Roden perhaps be a name from her maternal side which I have not yet tracked or could it be a clue to the unidentified paternal biological grandfather? Annie is buried in the Turner family plot in Amble East Cemetery.
My cousin, Maureen Burton (née Ormston) has just sent me a fascinating newspaper cutting about our Aunty Jean. Aunty Jean is actually our great aunt. Jane Ann Evans (née Turner) was born in Amble, Northumberland in 1896. After marrying a Welshman, William Daniel Evans in 1924, she moved to Swansea. The cutting shows Aunty Jean, aged 90, meeting stars Sue Pollard and Matthew Kelly after a cycle ride around Gower in aid of the British Heart Foundation.
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:
The master version of my tree has been developed on my laptop using FTM (Family Tree Maker). I synchronise it regularly with my public tree on Ancestry: Crackett-Webb-Turner-Henderson. I also have versions of my tree on My Heritage, thegenealogist.com, genesreunited and a couple of other sites, but these versions are a little out of date.
If you are interested in my family, drop me a line and I will send you an invitation to view my tree on Ancestry. You do not need to have a subscription. It is possible to establish a free guest account if you want to view an existing tree.
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.
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.
Granda George Crackett – taken in the yard at Church St.
My paternal grandfather George Crackett was born 26 May 1890 at Choppington in Northumberland. George’s parents Leonard Crackett and Mary née Parkinson baptized him in the Primitive Methodist Church on 18th June 1890. In 1915 he married Ellenor Turner of Amble, my grandmother, and they spent the whole of their married lives there. They had three children, my Dad George William, Sydney and Evelyn.
Crackett: Granda George and 3 of his sisters
This second photograph shows Granda George as a young lad with three of his six sisters (Elizabeth, Nellie, Bella, Dorothy Ann, Jane and Mamie). He also had 3 older brothers (Jack, Will and Len). I am guessing he may have been about 10 at the time the picture was taken.
My granda died in 1978 at the age of 88, having outlived granny by a couple of years. He was a keen gardener and man of few words. I remember when I was 11 having to do a little family tree as homework from school. I asked him what his mother’s name was and he answered “Mam”. Fortunately, my granny knew that her mother-in-law had been called Mary so I was not stuck with a complete blank.
Since yesterday was Limerick Day I thought I might try my hand at a little “poetry”:
NPE is the abbreviation for Non-Paternity Event. The NPE referred to above is the illegitimate birth of my great grandfather George Murray Turner which brings into question my Turner pedigree line.
(Since I missed two days of posting last week, this counts as a catch-up post for Wednesday 9 May.)
1942 – George Crackett & Peggy Webb
My Mam & Dad, George William Crackett & Margaret Jane Webb (George & Peggy) were married on 18 April 1942 at Amble Methodist Church. You can see from the attire that it was a wartime wedding, and the festivities were no doubt a little dampened by the loss of my Dad’s brother Syd just a couple of weeks earlier. The officiating minister at the wedding was great uncle Will (the Rev. William Robinson Turner) brother of my granny Crackett. Shortly after the wedding my Dad went off to serve in India for 3 years and my Mam returned to live with her parents in Radcliffe for the duration of the war.
Digging up the ancients 