#England #Folkestone #Kent #Lancashire #Liverpool #Shifnal #Shropshire #Telford #Yorkshire
A comment people will hear me say time and again is that with family history research you never know where investigations will lead and sometimes you will just come up against a brick wall.
Sometimes at a later date, perhaps years down the line, one more document or thought is found and this may come tumbling down which is exactly what happened to me in 2018 when reviewing an ancestral line.
Most of my family is Kent, England based but knew a couple of lines had originated elsewhere and turns out that I had been walking in my ancestor’s footsteps without even realising it.
I had lived in Telford, Shropshire, England for a short while in the early 2000s and liked it and had spent time in Shifnal which is just on the outskirts of the combined new town. About three weeks after moving back to Telford decided on a break from unpacking and logged onto the computer.
Now it wasn’t even a particular new document coming to light but just by revisiting the information held and with more knowledge of available resources had a breakthrough which placed my ancestor nearby.
Had looked at some of the census documents that were not sure related to my family but then when putting a group together realised that if someone moves from a location very young that may not be aware of their actual birthplace.
Therefore, when they start to complete the returns give factually incorrect information but unintentionally as it is what they believe to be true. Myself and the three generations before on this line were born in South East Kent so had concentrated my focus there for a time.
Combining knowledge from all the census returns and considering different factors was able to decide on the balance of probabilities that I had the correct person all the way back so then able to work further based on other family members logged in the records.
Therefore, I established my 2x Great Grandfather was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England in 1851. Ten years later his family have moved to Blackburn in the county and then at a point before 1881 he moved down south.
Birthplace through the 1851 to 1911 documents, reviewed via Ancestry 1, varied in detail giving Liverpool, Blackburn, Lancashire and Yorkshire as responses which is why it did not originally seem that they were all for the one person.
This realisation though then enabled me to go one generation further back with confidence and his father’s birth was transcribed as Shephall, Shropshire. Looking at the image it is not very clear either what it actually states.
Working through available record sets found out that this was actually Shifnal and my 3x Great Grandfather was baptised there in 1821 to parents Robert WARD and Charlotte.
Name: George Ward
Baptism Date: 24 Oct 1821
Baptism Place: Shifnal, Shropshire, England
Religion: Anglican
Father: Robert Ward
Mother: Charlotte Ward
Page number: 83
Reference Number: P246/A/2/1
Indexes Created From Anglican Parish Registers Held At Shropshire Archives; Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England; Anglican Parish Registers
Ancestry.com. Shropshire, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813-1900 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2021.
At a later date worked out from the placement of still in use pubs of the town the enumerators route on the early censuses. This enabled me to work out more precisely the area that they lived in 1841.
So about 200 years on I found myself living only 2.2 miles (3.5km) as the crow files from my ancestors which I could not have imagined when starting to review the line out from Folkestone, Kent, England. 2
Footnotes
- Ancestry – https://www.ancestry.co.uk/ ↩︎
- As the crow files – https://www.doogal.co.uk/MeasureDistances ↩︎
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