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I cant find his birth or parents

Any ideas anyone?

Could he have been born in Chapel on Le Frith?

1841 Census Winshaw Farm, Macclesfield Forest

1851

Name: Thomas Cooper
Age: 70
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1781
Relation: Head
Spouse's Name: Nancy Cooper
Gender: M (Male)
Where born: Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England
Name Age
Thomas Cooper 70
Nancy Cooper 63
William Cooper 24
Thomas Lomas 24 Servant
Mary Vernon 21 Servant

1861

Name: Thomas Cooper
Age: 80
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1781
Relation: Head
Spouse's Name: Nancy Cooper
Gender: Male
Where born: Wildboar Clough, Cheshire, England

Civil parish: Sutton
Ecclesiastical parish: St George
Town: Macclesfield
County/Island: Cheshire
Country: England
Thomas Cooper 80 Retired Farmer
Nancy Cooper 76 b Prestbury

??

Thomas Cooper
England and Wales Census, 1841

birth 1781 —Cheshire
residence 1841 —Prestbury, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England
census 1841 —Prestbury, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England

record title: England and Wales Census, 1841
name: Thomas Cooper
event: Census
event date: 1841
gender: Male
age: 60
birthplace: Cheshire
record type: Household
registration district: Macclesfield
sub-district: Bollington
civil parish: Prestbury
county: Cheshire

have you looked on www.familyseach.org/


to see if you can find his baptism??


OR his marriage?


That's where I would go to look


It's free




sylvia

Ann
Thanks for looking but the Thomas Cooper I am looking for was living at Winshaw Farm, Macclesfield Forest in 1841.

Sylvia

I have looked for him on IGI and as their is only one church St Stephens I just cant find him.

Was the birth not recorded?
Was he born outside Macclesfield Forest or outside the County?

This is a transcript of a memorial in St Stephens churchyard


James COOPER,
Of Winshaw Farm, Macclesfield Forest,
6 June 1813 - 20 Oct 1880
Ann, w/o Thomas COOPER,
23 Dec 1883, 33
Arthur, their son, 18 Feb 1884, 10 weeks
Mary COOPER, 12 April 1887, 32
James COOPER, 14 July 1888, 72
Elizabeth Ann COOPER,
20 Jan 1802, 28
Fred, grandson of Ann & Thomas,
21 May 1984, 68
Helen, w/o the above,
6 Aug 1989, 66

James Cooper was Thomas Coopers son

Simon

are you looking for him on the IGI

or on the web site I gave you ...... which is the LDS church's upgraded site



I now prefer the new site



sylvia

Sorry

I miss read your message

Familyseach I have not heard of that one. I will take a look now.

Simon


Putting the / (forward slash) is very important to take you to the new beta site.

www.familyseach.org/


Have you considered the following:-


Not everyone was baptised ......... which was the only way they would be "registered" before July 1 1837

Some never were baptised

Others were baptised years after birth, for various reasons

............. parents did a bulk baptising ... it was cheaper!

............. may be there was not a permanent vicar, so babies were baptised when one did come to the village

.............. some were baptised when they bega work because the employer insisted on it

.............. some were baptised before they got married, either because spouse or vicar insisted on it, or because it "looked better"

.............. some might not even be baptised until just before death!


What that all means, is that you should not be restricting your search to the couple of years after a birth, but also check years and years later.


Not easy, I know, when you have a relatively common name.



sylvia

so this is probably James Cooper's baptism then?

record title: England, Cheshire Parish Registers, 1538-2000

name: James Cooper
gender: Male
event type: Christening
christening date: 27 Jun 1813
christening place: Macclesfield Forest, Cheshire, England
father's name: Thomas Cooper
mother's name: Ann Cooper
principal's residence: , Macclesfield Forest, Cheshire, England
digital folder number: 4018379




sylvia

Yes that is James, Thomas's son

I take your advice on Thomas's birth

I will broaden my search.

I can't find a marriage to Nancy though either.

Oh no Simon ... I haven't read it all yet, but ... just don't broaden your search to Calverton, Notts ... or we will be RELATED, aaaargh.

:D

Simon


Nancy could also be ANN


there are several marriages of a Thomas Cooper to an Ann, at approximately the right time in approximately the right area.


Note that James' mother is shown as Ann



True name is probably Ann, with Nancy as a "pet" name



Unless he married twice of course!




sylvia

Who is this in the cemetery? --

Elizabeth Ann COOPER,
20 Jan 1802, 28 = c1774 -- edit -- c1773 much more likely, if age accurate

A sister of Thomas 1781?

Where is Thomas's own burial?

JC

You never know we might just be!

From Macc Forest to Calverton is only 50 miles.

Maybe young Thomas moved to Macc Forest from some other part of the country.
Maybe he was offered a farming job or he met his wife Nancy and she was Macc Forest.

It would be very funny if we were related but Cooper is quite a common surname.

There is this one


name: Thomas Cooper
gender: Male
baptism/christening date: 16 Sep 1781
baptism/christening place: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, England
father's name: Samuel Cooper



About 13 miles from Macc Forest

This looks like his marriage to Ann


name: Thomas Cooper
gender: Male
event type: Marriage
marriage date: 04 Dec 1810
marriage place: Prestbury, Cheshire, England
principal's residence: , Prestbury, Cheshire, England
spouse's name: Ann Nixon
spouse's residence: , Prestbury, Cheshire, England

i

Who is this in the cemetery? --

Elizabeth Ann COOPER,
20 Jan 1802, 28 = c1774

A sister of Thomas 1781?

Where is Thomas's own burial?

I wondered why Thomas death isnt on the memorial but Elizabeth An Cooper could be his sister

Cooper is quite a common surname .......... Nooooo! XP

You'd think I'd be able to fnd one called Reuben back in 1841 when the population was so much smaller though, wouldn't you?


Now here, we again have the problem of you trying to find things without having any subs.

In the 1851 census, on a search for any Cooper born in wildboar*, we find maybe 20. Some are still there, some are in Macclesfield, and some are in Lower Withington.


Several are born about the time of your Thomas (who is the oldest of the crew in 1851):

Moses 1782 in Wildboarclough
- address is Higher Nabs?, occupation Farmer, with unmarried sons etc.

Daniel 1783 in Wildboarclough
- address is "Parks", occupation Farmer, with nephew William aged 13

John 1893 in Wildboarclough 2 households from John
- address is Benit? Sitch, occupation Farmer, with daughter Sarah aged 26

Martha 1789
- unmarried sister-in-law of Josiah (Jane) Moss, which doesn't make a lot of sense since Jane Moss is 21 yrs younger


One would assume some connection among them. The place just wasn't that big. It's barely there even now.


So again, the thing is that collecting names (in a good way) and looking for patterns and connections is a very useful thing to do.


If you go back and delete the blank fields in those records you've copied it makes it so much easier to scroll through and see the actual info there ...

I am learning all the time. Pattern and connections are key.

Thinking laterally always helps.

They all could be siblings of Thomas. I do not have any Moses or Daniel Coopers in later generations though, I do have more Thomas's

Thomas children were James, Thomas, John and William

Macc Forest was tiny is tiny. A collection of farms

The parish is small, so there is no parish council; instead, the residents hold a periodic Parish meeting.[1] The area consists mainly of reservoirs, woodland, farmland, and moorland. There are no centres of population, only a few villages and hamlets, most notably Wildboarclough and Langley.

So all my known Coopers were farmers in the 1840's and 50's in Macclesfield Forest and now JC who have found some more who are Coopers and all farmers.

I guess they must all be related as children of Thomas or Thomas siblings.

Macc Forest is just too sparsely populated for them not to be connected.

I can't find a burial for Thomas and only the birth in Chapel on le Frith 13 miles away. Father Samuel.
No pattern there only the 'right' date.

I meant to say that if you search at

http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html

for *only*

year range 1700-1800
location Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom

you get 305 results, all of them "Cheshire Land Tax Assessments 1778-1832".

Add Cooper to the search as the surname, and you get 147 results. They appear to be mainly the same people, over and over from year to year: John (Jno), James, Daniel (Danl), with William (Will Wm) and Thomas less frequently.

It would take a bit of sorting, but you could check to see whether there was only one person for each name, e.g. in 1787 there was one John, one James, etc.

Ah, doing it again for 1800 to 1841 produces 484 Cooper matches. There are no details in the records there; just name, year and Wildboarclough. The originals would have to be consulted for any more, I guess.

You might also look through the surnames in the non-specific search results 1700-1800 to get an idea for what other families lived there. The records start only in 1784, I think.

In all likelihood baptisms and marriages did not take place there, so anyone born there would have been baptised somewhere else.

You can do an "exact search" at Ancestry for, say, 1851, for people born in wildboar* before 1800. You can do this on a free search.

http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=8860

If you find any particularly unusual names, especially, you could try looking at pilot.familysearch for their baptisms, to see where people born in Wildboarclough tended to be baptised.

If you specify born 1781 +/- 20 years in the census search, say, you'll get people of the same generation -- 70 of them. A number of them are married women whose husbands weren't born in Wildboarclough, so they won't help, of course.


Here's one in 1851.

Joseph Mayson abt 1791 Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England

There's a Joseph Mason baptism on 17 Jan 1792 at Christ Church, Macclesfield, parents Thos and Mary, for instance. But there's no matching baptism for

James Mayson abt 1784 Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England

How about

Samuel Moss abt 1788 Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England

There's a baptism 21 June 1786 at St Michael, Macclesfield, parents Samuel and Jane.

Absolutely no guarantees any of these are matches, but again, you might find a pattern.

John Chappell abt 1791 Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England

There's a baptism 26 March 1790 in Macclesfield Forest, parents Joseph and Hannah Chapel.

Thomas Truman abt 1774 Wildboarclough, Cheshire, England

There's a baptism 18 May 1773 in Macclesfield Forest, parents Thomas and Anne.

If you search for Cooper events in Macclesfield Forest, say 1770-1800 (one name at a time, I guess, too many otherwise), there's the baptism of a John Cooper 12 June 1792, parents William and Hannah. Now there's a reasonable candidate for the John Cooper in 1851. A search for children of those parents turns up him and Alice 1787.


So, going on the above -- the patterns that appear in the censuses and baptisms -- I might like this one for your Thomas (and see how I delete all the blank fields!):

Name: Thomas Cooper
Gender: Male
Event Type: Christening
Birth Date:
Christening Date: 30 Aug 1778
Birthplace:
Christening Place: St Michael, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England
Father's Name: William Cooper
Mother's Name: Han.
Principal's Marital Status:
Principal's Residence: St. Michael, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England
Image Number: 70
Digital Folder Number: 4018409
Film Number: 1656951
Collection: England, Cheshire Bishop's Transcripts, 1598-1900


Someone completing the census in 1851 would have been told in 1841 to round their age down. I think a lot of people just kept doing it. My grx2 grfather baptised in 1819 reported dob 1821 consistently on every census to 1891, for example.

Thomas would have been "60" in 1841, and may have just stuck with that.