Sunday 27 February 2011

Family History Writing Challenge - Day 22

I can't quite remember how I got onto the next trail; I may at some point remember and I may not! John Butcher's wife stated that she was born in Artington. Now, I went back to the 1851 Census for Wonersh as that was the original source and noticed that whilst the census did say Artington it did not say Surrey. How could I have missed that? I turned to my trusty friend Google and did a search for Artington just to see what the results yielded. The result was Arlington in Sussex as a distinct possibility. So, Mary had probably come from Sussex. I turned to FamilySearch to see if that yielded any suitable marriages for a John Butcher to a Mary and bingo! Mary Baverstock married John Butcher in Wisborough Green Sussex 26 May 1823. Certainly Wisborough Green is what I would call the right bit of Sussex, close to the Surrey border. My John and Mary had their eldest child baptised in November 1823, so whilst not nine months between marriage and birth, It would not be unheard of for the bride to be pregnant at the point of the wedding. So the big question was, was this John and Mary the same as my John and Mary?

I had always felt that the Butcher's had originated from across the border in Sussex. I didn't have anything to substantiate that, just a hunch. Before I embarked upon parish records and census records I undertook another Google search for "Baverstock"+ Wisborough Green. I was surprised, it did show some results, and some that looked promising. Most importantly, it gave me the website and email address of a fellow researcher. Did we have a connection? Actually we did. The researcher had worked at the research line from the Baverstock name rather than, as I had from the Butcher line. Their website confirmed that they had also looked at the same census material as I had, so I felt confident that we indeed were researching the same family and more importantly that this family connected to mine. The clinching factor was the will of Charles Baverstock in 1846 when mention is made to Mary Butcher living in The Street, Wonersh.

What is intriguing is the name change from Bavister to Baverstock circa 1813.....but that is another story.

Word count 387

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