Currently a number of events have brought my focus back to the Williamson Family – my maternal grandmother’s family (through my mother’s adoption).
The purpose of this post is to summarise the current areas of research and what is being done (September 2021) in order to help others and via search engines to catch the attention of people currently unknown to me who may be researching the same family.
Currently we know of the Williamsons in Cork in the first half of the 19th Century, later emerging in Worcester in England in the 1861 Census. That same census indicates that there was a branch of the family in New Jersey United States.
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James Keighley was my Great Great Great Grandfather. His daughter Martha (1834-1920) married Robert Fell (1924-1910) and their eldest child, Elizabeth Fell (1856-1929) was the mother of my paternal Grandmother, Marjorie Fell Lendrum (1887-1963).
Reconstructing James’s family or families is of interest not just because he is at the time of writing the most distant Keighley relative but also because of two outstanding genealogical itches:
As a “read” it is probably only of interest to Keighley, Fell and Ramsden relatives and those wanting to find out a bit more about the two posts referenced in the paragraphs above.
genealogyWe know from census records that after Elizabeth Ramsden died on 26th April 1851 (aged 40, at home in Manningham), James Keighley remarried at least once. In the 1861 Census (7 April 1861) James is recorded as residing in the same house as in 1851 (1 Belle View, Manningham) with his wife Sarah, a 49 year old born in Farnley, Yorkshire. This would imply a year of birth of 1811/12.
A note in the Leeds Times of 25th October 1862 (page 8 column 5) states: “DEATHS … Bradford … On Monday, age 51, Sarah, wife of Mr. James Keighley, Belle Vue.” This death announcement would indicate a year of birth of about 1810/11 – reasonably consistent with the 1811/12 implied from the 1861 Census. No probate record has been found.
This note is about the steps taken to identify her given her 1861 Census entry and the above death announcement, in support of another note about James Keighley’s families. It is also written in the (not entirely forlorn) hope that other researchers will find this note and add their thoughts.
A marriage announcement in an on-line Newspaper archive identifies her as “Mrs. Sarah Knight, eldest daughter of the late Thos. Ingle”.
genealogyOn 5 April 1981 the 1981 UK Census was taken. Normally this is not a particular issue but for my mother it was. She was adopted but had traced her birth mother. On the approach to Census night she realised that she would be staying with her birth mother that night so would be listed as a “visitor” on her mother’s household census form.
This meant her mother would have to record their relationship. In 1981 this was “a secret” and left my mother in a quandary; knowing her mother had promised her (later) husband that she would keep my mother’s existence a secret but also knowing she wanted to be honest – how could she complete the form?
(more…)“On the night of 18th May 1918, members of the St Omer Convoy were called out to evacuate patients after a bombing raid had hit a local ammunition dump.”
“First Military Medals awarded to the FANY” – FANY website [accessed 18 May 2020]
The FANY as they are almost always know were the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a group of predominantly women with the possibly fanciful idea of combining their horsewomanship and first aid ability to be of service to the British military. They envisaged they could gallop out on to the battlefield to retrieve the wounded and carry them back to the lines where First Aid could be applied. In reality this romantic idea evolved rapidly in World War One into driving heavy motor ambulances – initially for the French and Belgians because the British wanted nothing to do with them.
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