Kreativ Blogger Award: Seven (and a bit) things about me

Let me start by saying thank you to Karen over at the Twigs to Roots blog for bestowing a Kreativ Blogger Award on me and my blog. It is great to have a new geneablogger with English ancestry, and more importantly with Sussex ancestry, so I am no longer alone blogging about my Sussex ancestors!

Apparently I have to pass this award on to seven other bloggers, which is not going to be easy. I never have been good at making decisions, so forgive me if I sit on the fence for a bit longer.

The other thing I am supposed to do is tell you seven things about me, preferably things that I haven’t told you about before. Whilst I am deciding who to give the award to (and never being one to stick to the rules!), I thought I would give you something to think about. So instead of seven facts about me I am going to give you eight, but only seven of them are true.

1. I have only left England six times in my life.
2. My favourite band is the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
3. In my final years at school I excelled in maths, but failed in history.
4. I have not had a day off work sick for over seven years.
5. My favourite food is a crispy bacon sandwich with tomato ketchup.
6. I once owned a pair of fluorescent yellow socks.
7. I can’t drive a car, but was once trained to drive a forklift truck.
8. I have more books than I will probably ever have time to read.

So which one of these do you think is false? Can I lie convincing in a blog post? Let me know in the comments and I will give you the answer in a few days.

In praise of Horley Library

Last Tuesday I spent a very productive few hours in the public library at Horley, Surrey. Horley Library is not the first place I would think of going to for family history research or for anything else for that matter.

I normally pass through Horley on the train from Horsham to London and barely give it a second thought, but hidden amongst the shops in the town centre is a wonderful library, which has a fantastic local history centre tucked inside it.

I think a large part of this is due to the presence of a very active local history society in the town, the Horley Local History Society, which covers not only Horley, but the surrounding area as well.

The local history centre contains many local and family history reference books, as well as transcriptions and indexes for a variety of local records such as parish registers and monumental inscriptions. Many of these are as a result of the hard work of the members of the local history society.

Most of my time was spent on the microfiche reader, looking at parish registers for Horley, Burstow and Charlwood. It was really a case of checking the accuracy of information and getting the full details for records gathered from other indexes such as the Surrey Baptism Index and the International Genealogical Index.

This short trip to Horley has saved me from having to make a trip to the Surrey History Centre at Woking, which has saved me a few pounds, probably the equivalent of another birth, marriage or death certificate.

As it is so close, and as I seem to have several branches of my tree in the area, I am certain I will be visiting again before too long and making new discoveries that will push those branches of my tree back even further.

Weekly Genealogy Preview (for week 48)

Time is running out for my Christmas Tree Project, so much of my focus last week was on filling in gaps in my data, and this coming week will be much the same. I didn’t totally neglect my stuff to sort folder and I can at last see the end of it, probably not during the next couple of weeks, but certainly before the end of the year.

• Carry on filling in the gaps in the data for my 4x great-grandparents and for any other of my ancestors that I can easily fill in.
• More work out of the stuff to sort folder, most of my notes on George Thomas GASSON have been sorted, so now most of the large sections are complete.
• I still need to prepare for a visit to the London Family History Centre, possibly next weekend, my last chance to find the missing individuals for my Christmas Tree Project.
• Continue preparing my new PC, the GenTower. I need to go through my current PC and make a list of all the software I use, and which I need to uninstall and which I need to download.

Introducing the GenTower

This is my new PC (codename: GenTower) and it has one purpose in life, to be my genealogy PC. As you can see it is not really new, that is rather given away by the presence of a 3½” floppy drive on the front.

Interestingly I have never bought a new PC in my entire life, only a new netbook. All my other PCs have either been second-hand or upgraded from existing PCs. I just can’t bear to throw away a PC that is still working, without at least pulling parts out of it for re-use.

The truth is that most of what I will use it for is not going to be that demanding, it doesn’t need an expensive graphics card or a water-cooled processor for viewing census images. What I do need is more memory and a newer operating system than my current PC provides.

It already has more memory than my current PC, but importantly it has the capacity for more, so I will probably add the maximum I can over the next few months, dependant on the price of course.

The hard drive is a reasonable 80GB, which doesn’t sound a lot these days, but knowing that my family history files all still fit on a 4GB memory stick makes me think that 80GB will probably be sufficient for the time being, unless I happen to come across a large hoard of family photos that need scanning.

It has a DVD player, but I will probably swap that with the DVD writer from my current PC. I can’t actually see much use for the 3½” floppy drive, although I do still have some old DOS games on 3½” disks, but I expect they are probably unreadable now anyway.

For some strange reason I am overcome by the desire to have a 5¼” floppy drive in the machine as well. I don’t really know why, I can’t imagine that I would ever use, but I think it would be really cool just to have it sitting there alongside the DVD writer.

The operating system on the GenTower is Windows XP Pro, which is a step up from the Windows 2000 that I have on my current PC. I know I am still a couple of operating systems behind, but XP should be good enough to keep me going for another couple of years at least, and at least now I will have a PC that will be capable of handling a newer operating system.

Most of the software I need will be removed from my old PC and re-installed on the new one. Having Windows XP will give me a greater choice of software to use, because so much new software doesn’t support Windows 2000 and several online services don’t support Windows 2000 either, like Dropbox.

Before I can start using it there is much to be done, in it’s previous life the GenTower was a business machine and today, after having a good look around it’s hard drive, I decided that best option was to do a complete restore, back to it’s original factory settings.

That has cleared out a lot of rubbish, but it has also cluttered it up with a few bits of unwanted and out-dated software (like Norton Anti-Virus 2004), so my next task is to remove all that, get some fresh virus and firewall protection on it and then plug it in to the internet.

Then I will point it to the Microsoft Update website and let it spend several hours updating everything in sight. Only then will it be ready for me to plug in all my other devices and start cluttering up the hard drive with my family history.

Susannah POCOCK: could this be her mother (option three)

Susannah TAYLER/TAYLOR of Micheldever, Hampshire

There is a baptism in Micheldever, Hampshire on the 26th February 1809 for Susannah the baseborn (illegitimate) daughter of Susannah TAYLER/TAYLOR.

Why this might be Susannah’s mother

The right christian name, about the right date (a little later than I was expecting) and an unknown father who could have been a POCOCK, or perhaps Susannah TAYLER/TAYLOR later married a POCOCK who may or may not have been the father of my Susannah POCOCK.

Why this might not be Susannah’s mother

Despite much searching I have found no evidence to link Susannah TAYLER/TAYLOR to anyone by the name of POCOCK.

What do I need to do next?

I need to trace what happened to both mother and daughter, hopefully to find some connection with the name POCOCK, or at least to rule them out of the picture.

Susannah POCOCK: could these be her parents (option two)

Thomas and Rebecca POCOCK of Madehurst, Sussex

Interestingly Thomas and Rebecca POCOCK of Madehurst, Sussex had a daughter Susannah who was baptised in Madehurst on the 17th January 1808. They also had at least two other daughters, Harriet baptised 1806 and Rebecca baptised 1810.

Why these might be Susannah’s parents

Their daughter Susannah was born about the right time, and there is an obvious match with her christian name and surname.

Why these might not be Susannah’s parents

The problem is that Madehurst is in the wrong county, admittedly Sussex is next to Hampshire, but there is still quite a distance between Madehurst, Sussex and Micheldever, Hampshire. This doesn’t mean they didn’t move, but so far I have no evidence to suggest that they did.

What I need to do next

I need to find out what happened to Thomas and Rebecca, did they ever leave Madehurst? Also what happened to the two other daughters. If only I could find some link with Micheldever.

Susannah POCOCK: could these be her parents (option one)

Richard and Mary POCOCK of New Alresford, Hampshire

In the 1841 census there is a couple, Richard and Mary POCOCK, living in New Alresford, Hampshire. Richard was born around 1778 and Mary was born around 1783. Richard was from Hampshire, but Mary was born in Surrey. I have only been able to find one child for them, who was Laura Eliza baptised in New Alresford on the 18th November 1818.

Why these might be Susannah’s parents

Not only are these the only POCOCKs of the right age anywhere near Micheldever, but they were probably in New Alresford between 1818 and 1841. This puts them in the same parish that Susannah was married in at the same time as she was married, 1832.

Why these might not be Susannah’s parents

So far I have nothing else to connect Richard and Mary POCOCK with Susannah POCOCK, other than probably being in the right place at the right time. I have no idea where Richard and Mary were around the time of Susannah’s birth, and I don’t know where they were married, there was no entry for them in the Hampshire Genealogical Society Marriage Index.

What do I need to do next

If I could find a marriage for Richard and Mary then I might also find the baptism of Susannah, whether that would lead to a connection with Micheldever or not is another problem. I also need to find out what happened to Laura Eliza POCOCK, if she married who were the witnesses?

Update on the will of William HOLMAN

On Saturday morning, whilst sitting on the train on the way to Winchester, I transcribed the will of William HOLMAN, my 5x great-grandfather.

Most of it was quite straight forward, but in taking the time to go through the will word by word I did pick up on a couple of mistakes.

The National Archives had the will indexed as being the will of William HOLMAN, farmer of Burstow, Surrey. When I looked at the word farmer it didn’t seem right. In fact I am pretty certain that William wasn’t a farmer but a farrier.

The second mistake was mine, in my earlier post about William’s will I said that his nine sons and six daughters inherited one guinea each upon his death. However on reading the will again I discovered that they inherited the one guinea each after the death of William’s wife Elizabeth.

Both of these may seem quite minor points, but could make a big difference further down the road in my research.

Susannah POCOCK: the known facts

Susannah POCOCK is my 3x great-grandmother, and her claim to fame is that she is the only one of my ancestors for which I have been unable trace a set of parents.

The purpose of this post is to put out the known facts about Susannah POCOCK in the hope that someone somewhere knows who here parents were, or that someone has an idea where to go next.

Although I am using the christian name Susannah, she has also been recorded under the christian name Susan and Susanna, although Susannah has been most commonly used.

The earliest reference I have to Susannah is her marriage in New Alresford, Hampshire on the 16th January 1832 to William MITCHELL. Both were living in the parish of New Alresford at the time, William was a bachelor and Susannah was a spinster.

The two witnesses at the marriage were Ann WESTWOOD and John LOCKETT. William MITCHELL’s mother’s maiden name was LOCKETT, so I believe that John LOCKETT was almost certainly a relative of William. Ann WESTWOOD was probably Ann LOCKETT who married Richard WESTWOOD in January 1816, so again probably another relative from the MITCHELL side.

Susannah appears in six census returns from 1841 to 1891, in Exton, Hampshire. The 1841 census information is not as precise as later years, because of the rounding of the individual’s age and the question asked about the place of birth. However the later years do provide more useful data.

Census Year	Age	Place of Birth	Calculated Year of Birth
1841	30*	Hampshire	1807-11
1851	43	Micheldever, Hampshire	1808
1861	55	Micheldever, Hampshire	1806
1871	62	Micheldever, Hampshire	1809
1881	72	Micheldever, Hampshire	1809
1891	83	Micheldever, Hampshire	1808

*her actual age could have been anywhere between 30 years and 34 years.

All this data (with the exception of the 1861 census) seems to indicate a birth year of around 1807-09 and almost certainly in the parish of Micheldever.

According to the GRO Death Index Susannah died in Q2 1898 in Droxfield Registration District aged 90, pointing to a birth year around 1808. She was buried on the 28th April 1898 at Exton, Hampshire. The entry in the burial register gives her age as 90 years, so once again giving a birth year around 1808.

So all this data points to the fact that Susannah POCOCK was born in Micheldever, Hampshire around 1808. The problem is that there is no record of a baptism in Micheldever for Susannah POCOCK around that time. In fact there is no Susannah POCOCK baptism anywhere in Hampshire around that time. Without a baptism record I am unlikely to find out who her parents were.

The Hampshire Genealogical Society (HGS) Baptism Index only records the baptism of two Susannah POCOCKs, one in 1785 and another in 1827. There don’t appear to have been any POCOCK baptisms in Micheldever during the years covered by the index.

The HGS Baptism Index only includes Church of England baptisms, so there is the possibility that Susannah’s parents may have been non-conformists, but there was no non-conformist chapel in Micheldever around that time. If they were non-conformists then they could have worshipped almost anywhere in the county.

So where does this leave me, I have three other leads to explore, which I will detail over the next few days. It is probably worth me following up the names of the witnesses at the marriage of William and Susannah, to prove that they were both on the MITCHELL side of the family.

It might also be worth searching the registers of all non-conformist chapels close to Micheldever and then gradually working further out. Also there is a possibility that the baptism in 1827 could have been a late baptism for my Susannah, so I should try and rule that one out of the equation as well.

If anyone has any other suggestions then please let me know, all suggestions are welcomed, although there are very few avenues that I haven’t already explored.

Weekly Genealogy Preview (for week 47)

I didn’t touch my stuff to sort folder last week, largely due to spending most of my time updating my 4x great-grandparents, and getting sidetracked into looking at William HOLMAN and his large family.

• This week I will definitely get the George Thomas GASSON stuff in the stuff to sort folder organised.
• I think I will carry on working through my 4x great-grandparents filling in as many gaps as possible.
• I need to prepare a plan for a visit to the London Family History Centre. This will probably be my last chance to find any missing details before I have to get my family tree printed.
• The work I did on Ernest Arthur TROWER has made me want to find out more, I know there is not a lot more to be found out, but it would nice to try and find some more.