Coincidences in genealogy

Several weeks ago, I started some research into the family tree of a friend. It was a very direct line that he wanted drawn up, so I started looking. It led me to a place in Brewham, where I found that some of his relatives had been involved in a witchcraft trial there, as both complainants and the accused. At least one family member was executed for witchcraft, although the manner of her death isn't given (it was more likely to be from hanging rather than burning in that period though).
Now, here is where it gets interesting. I decided to give my own family tree branches a well earned rest and add some of my husband's family (from an old tree I'd done more than ten years ago) as research has moved on and there are many more sources to look at on-line.
I discovered that my husband and friend shared a set of 4th great grandparents, making them fifth cousins.

(*Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0)

My Beautiful Somerset

My Beautiful Somerset is a tribute to my Ancestors from the county and their descendants who live there to this day.

My Beautiful Somerset

Gorges, coves and raging sea

A county of diversity 

With valleys, tor's and golden sands

Marshes, moors and much woodland

Ancient yews grow next to graves

And witches lay in deep dark caves

Great bridges over chasms span

And other marvels made by man

The levels fill with nesting swans

Local inns ring with folk songs

From rolling hills to flattened downs

That house our villages and towns

Perry, cider, mead and beer

Are brewed, matured and bottled here

Orchards rich in fruit and flower 

In landscape rife with leys of power

Alysa Blackwood-Bevan 2016

The Silent Scream

(*Image from www.leopoldmuseum.org)

Anybody who is researching a family tree will be aware of the times that the lack of progress with certain family lines can infuriate you. Your research seems to come to a full stop, no matter how many different sources you are looking for in parish records, nothing is coming to light. 

It can be made more difficult when there is already some faulty research in existence, along with Chinese Whispers of family or local oral tradition. 

I'm in the middle of trying to cut through a fog of myths about a distant relative, who, long ago, committed a terrible crime. Lots of sources exist about him, and the events surrounding the case... But what is true and what is not? 

That he committed the crime is not in doubt. It is confusing about how he received folklore status and was thought to be a victim, as the brutal way he killed his wife of only a few weeks shouldn't award him that accolade. 

The parish records of the time have his birth, marriage and death, but don't show a brother being born to the same parents as him, instead, a first cousin with all the correct details. Unlikely that the record transcriptions would be that wrong. That set my mind on a tangent, and I wondered if fostering was as common in the lower classes at the time. As a foster brother may well be referred to as a 'brother'. 

He is also said to have had an illegitimate child, but this isn't recorded either in the parish records and they are full of other examples, so it would have been entered. 

It is possible that I will never untangle the history behind the mystery, but it is fun (even if frustrating) to try. 

The Sword of Damocles is suspended by a single thread (of DNA)

Have you ever started a chain of events in motion that could either be wonderful, or on the other hand, like being immobilised and made to watch a car crash you'd orchestrated yourself?
That is how I feel today, having sent a DNA sample off for autosomal testing. My journey to find my ancestors has been fraught with obstacles since the beginning, and the people I have found in my family tree feel hard won already. I feel a connection to some of them, which strengthened as I've found details about their lives. And now I'm half dreading something on the test leading me in a different direction. All it takes is one infidelity and those names you have started to cherish on a branch of your family tree, may not be yours any more.
On the upside I could find a new connection to common relatives on a side of my tree that is a total unknown.
Strange and unsettling time. All I can do is hope the results are worth the worry.

"Honouring" my Ancestors

My ancestors and blood relatives have become more and more important to me as I research my family tree.
It is amazing to look at their lives and deaths and put flesh on their bones, so they grow into something much more than a sterile name in a computer generated programme.
I see the pain, the love, the loss and the short or long lives. Several ancestors only managed to raise one or two children past the age of five (due to disease, poverty and poor diet I would guess).
The census returns or occasional notations in the parish registers alluding to their jobs wasn't particularly diverse. I have lots of agricultural labourers (not unusual for Somerset folk), brick yard labourers, dressmakers and factory hands followed during and after the industrial revolution.
Very early on in some branches of my tree, I can see families who had farms and land while their siblings, nieces and nephews lived in relative poverty in comparison. There are also instances of families with a good income losing everything within one or two generations.
I have broom squires and tenant farmers, one of my grandmothers from the nineteenth century married into a family who went on to own a brewing empire.
Many of my ancestors would have been good, honest working folk, who attended Church every Sunday, paid their tithes and contributed to society. Some were not so good. I have a diverse range of forebears and distant cousins whose criminal activities ranged from murder, manslaughter, sheep stealing, larceny and (most sadly of all) felo de se (self-murder).
I've thought a lot about these folk who did what they did to get by, when you are surviving hand to mouth with no relief available, you do what you have to do to stop your family from starving.
There was recently a discussion about whether you should honour all of your ancestors, or just the ones who did good things. I think I choose to 'honour' mine, by remembering they were human, and not looking at their history in a revisionist manner. Remembering them as fallible, flesh and bone men and women who sometimes made mistakes and sometimes did fantastic or wicked things in their lives.
Here's to you all, the righteous and the rogues...  I'll life a glass to you at Samhain just the same.

Do we ever reflect upon the honour 

Of walking in the dust of ancient civilisations? 

In the shadows of our ancestors

Our steps in the footprint of theirs

Our hands touching the same stones? 

Your tree of life has branches on 

With our ancestors as leaves 

That have floated to the ground 

And become renewed 

The roots go deep and grow strong

When we nurture them 

They are our roots too 

As what went before is intertwined 

With now 

Plant your own tree

And strengthen it with love 

Remember the names of those gone before 

And write the names of those still to come 

In the stars 

Do not mourn the fallen leaves for long 

For when they fall, they feed the roots

And become immortal

They are etched in your memory 

Instead, share their story 

All falls eventually, save love

Requiem for Joan Fisher

Requiem for Joane Fisher

You got with child when he lay you down 

In April among the sweet spring flowers 

You were still a slender June bride 

As the country spoke of Popish plots

Your Beltane child quickening by autumn 

Kicking you like you kicked the golden leaves 

Last year when you were still carefree 

And the dreams of holding your first child

At your breast

Warmed you as the winter came

But a woollen shroud and icy ground 

Awaited you instead

Joane Fisher was my tenth great grandmother. She was born in Spaxton in the second half of the seventeenth century. Joane married Arthur Biffen on 09 Jun 1678  Spaxton (St Margaret's Church). She was already with child on their wedding day. 

On January 4th 1669 Joane was brought to bed with son William, she died either just before or after giving birth to him. She was buried the next day.
William thrived with his wet nurse and went on to marry and have children. He is my direct ancestor.
Arthur remarried a couple of years after Joane's death, but had no further children with second wife Rebecca Edney. 

The Mystery of Sarah of the Crossroads

Betty  (known as Sarah) was born in Cannington, Somerset in 1772 to parents Daniel and Mary Davis. She was married from her family home at the age of 18 to Willliam Walford , son of Edmund and Betty who lived in  Over Stowey.  There are parish records showing the Walford family living in Over Stowey since before the sixteenth century.

 When William was 23, he took an interest in a local lass who had already had an illegitimate child with his cousin John. Her name was Jane Shorney and her parents kept The Castle of Comfort Inn nearby. He got Jane pregnant in 1787 and was ordered to pay upkeep for their daughter named in the parish register as Betty Walford.
William (b.1764) had already had his share of tragedy, in 1789 his cousin (having made the same Jane Shorney pregnant for a second time) was forced into marriage with her, as his mother refused to pay another bond to keep the child, leaving John with a choice of imprisonment or marriage (This however, might be hearsay as I am yet to find records of a bastard child for Jane other than the child she had with William).
John, after only 3 weeks of marriage beat Jane half to death in woodland near their home and finished her off by cutting her throat. He tried to drag her heavily pregnant body to a disused mine shaft to dispose of her, but was unable to, as by all accounts, Jane was a heavy set woman, even without the extra weight of carrying the child. He rolled her body into local earthworks, part of Dowsborough Hill Fort, known as Dead Woman's Ditch.
Jane's body was discovered the following morning, and the knife and clothing found in John Walford's home had her blood on. John was tried, and astonishingly, received much public support. Even the Judge wept on sentencing him to death. It was usual to send the body of an executed felon found guilty of a capital murder to the anatomists, but John was hanged in chains for a year and a day at the spot of his execution. This was in sight of his family home, so his mother would have seen his body decomposing every day.
It was said that he was still a better looking man than many, even after being dead for a year when he was cut down by local men and buried under his execution place. It is still to this day called Walford's Gibbet.
William and Sarah had a total of seven children together, daughters, Sarah, Elizabeth and Ann, and sons Thomas, Edmund, William and Charles, before William died in 1809.
Sarah was living 'over the brush' with a man called James Thresher, when she was found suspended from a willow tree in October of 1821. According to his evidence at her inquest at Nether Stowey, they had quarrelled as he had refused to marry her, giving his reason for not being willing to do so as her 'owing money' to someone. He said that she had left the home they shared and it was also said at the inquest that she had tried to find alternative lodgings, but was unable to find anyone who would take her in.
The inquest jury of thirteen men voted 12 to 1 and found her to be of sound mind when she died and thus RP Caines (the Coroner) found her death to be felo de se. It was ordered that in the manner of the law (which was to change just two short years after Sarah's death) that she be taken to Bincombe Green and buried at the crossroads on the following day. She would have been staked through the heart with iron.

Was it self-murder, or something entirely more sinister? Although there is no record of the full transcript of the inquest - just newspaper reports, it seems that there could have been more to her death. There was a parish workhouse in Over Stowey, where Sarah could have gone if she was desperate for a bed. She also had children living locally.

An even bigger mystery surrounds Sarah today. Where is her body now? There is no record of her being disinterred after her burial  and she certainly wasn't reported as being found when the road around Bincombe was widened.
Was she buried on the green, rather than the crossroads? It is a puzzle that may never be solved.

Sarah of the Crossroads

The comfort of Gods arms denied you 

The walls of the Church never yours 

In life or in death 

A broken promise 

Took away your will to live 

Those who should have aided you 

In your pain

Turned you away 

They cast you aside because you loved 

Unwisely 

Cast you into unhallowed ground 

At crossroads 

Millions have passed you by 

Unaware 

But we know you lay there 

Flowers we will bring 

John and I 

We will speak your name 

With love

Not as one on the edge of society 

But with love, as distant family 

Your soul holds no stain 

Sleep gently in the womb of the ground

May the rain wash away your pain 

You are not forgotten 

The snowdrops that grow on your grave 

Are your tribute