Maternal Fan Charts

 My previous post showed my paternal fan charts and thi post is about my maternal ones.

This is my mother's paternal fan chart.  Her ancestors came from Sussex, where she grew up.

I am lucky in that a don't live far from The Keep, the archives for East Sussex; Sussex Family History Group have some excellent records available to buy or search if you are a member; most of the parish registers I need to view are available online at Family Search.

Weston Line

I have concentrated on the Weston side which is rather obvious when you look at the chart.

Clark Line

This looks like research has been fairly well balanced except in reality I have another couple of generations beyond the outer filled in segments.  Margaret Anne Hoad is a brickwall.  I know her father was Henry Hoad a shipbuilder but the identity of her mother and Henry's parents need more work to confirm them.  I need to do more work on the Poile/Stapley side but they appear to go back into Kent and I have less access to records there.  The Hawkinge/Hawkings line has just taken a back seat for some reason.

Paternal Fan Charts

 Fan charts are a useful way of identifying which sides of your tree you might need to put more effort in to researching.  

Jackson Line

This is my father's paternal side who are based in Scotland. Very easy to see my brickwalls here!  I need to work on them now that the Scottish Kirk Sessions have been released.  The records aren't yet indexed so it will be scrolling through page by page which is fine if you know where the people came from and where you should be able to find them.  I don't for 3/4 of them!!!

I did a quick search for Charles Telfer on Find My Past and was interested to find a transcription that lists the name Hood as well as Telfer.  Some of my DNA matches have Hood in their family trees ...... certainly an area to pursue.

White Line

This is my father's maternal side from Kent.  It is more a that I have been sidelining this side rather than struggling with brickwalls as there is quite a lot of information out there.  Find My Past has some excellent images and transcriptions for the East Ashford area where they come from.  I am also lucky that there is a Vant One Named Study.  

🌟🌟This is a top tip 🌟🌟....... always check if there is a One Named Study for the surname you are researching.  You can find a list of One Named Studies here

Mind the Gap

 No, not another railway ancestor but another of the Weston families and this time they are missing in the 1901 census, every single one of them.

 I had been researching the family of my 2x great uncle, Samuel Weston born 1840 in Etchingham, Sussex and using a timeline technique to identify missing records for them.  Firstly I researched Samuel’s marriage to Jane Pilbeam in 1865 and then used baptismal records and the GRO indexes to find their children; Caroline Jane 1866, Alfred John 1868, Richard Samuel 1870, William Rowland 1872 and Eliza Ellen 1875.

 

Samuel Weston and Jane Pilbeam

As expected, the 1871 census showed Samuel and Jane in Burwash, with their eldest three children and Jane’s, mother who was a widow.  In 1881 census they are in Etchingham but Caroline and Eliza are missing.  Time to check the death records and indeed I found them both.  Caroline dies in 1880 aged 14 and sadly Eliza died in 1875, the year she was born.  In 1891 only William remains with his parents and in 1901 ……they were missing!!! Death records didn’t help here.

 Further research showed Richard Samuel had emigrated in July 1888 and Alfred John in 1890.  Delving further showed the last son, William Rowland had emigrated in the summer of 1891 and finally Samuel and Jane must have plucked up courage to go off and join the family in Portsmouth,  New Hampshire, America and they emigrated in 1893 aboard the SS Catalonia.

 American records and newspaper enabled me to find the details to complete my research of this family including showing that Samuel lived to the ripe old age of 99 years and 3 months!!

Looking further at American records showed that one of Samuels cousins on his mother’s side (Newick) had already emigrated in the 1870s and in fact in America there were marriages between the Westons and the Newicks.  Samuel’s eldest son, Alfred John, married his second cousin, Harriet, who had been born in America.  Samuel is both her father in law and a 1^st cousin once removed!!

Samuel Weston was an agricultural labourer living in farm cottages; it must have taken him quite a while to save sufficient funds to emigrate whilst supporting his family.  It was probably quite a while after electric lighting started appearing in streets and houses in 1881 that landowners would have modified the cottages of agricultural labourers.  I also doubt they champed at the bit to purchase any of the first Kodak cameras that was invented in 1884 or even bought newspapers that would have brought news about the Jack the Ripper murders and professional football that also started in 1884.  The event that probably affected them most would have been the Great Blizzard in 1891which caused the death of over 200 people  and 6000 animals and Devon and Cornwall were cut off for 4 days from 9^th and 13^th March.  The devastation left behind included uprooted trees and many fences and roofs were blown away also. The strong gales and heavy snowfall hit Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Herefordshire and Kent. Temperatures dropped below zero and snow drifted in places up to 15 feet high. A man froze to death in Surrey and fishing boats washed up at Hastings and 3 fishermen lost their lives so I wondered how that affected my Sussex ag labs.  Samuel’s last son emigrated in the summer that year ….. perhaps he decided he had had enough!!