Genealogy Chat

I am often amazed at how far they travelled considering it could not have been easy.And I have Grooms who were born in Somerset marrying people born in London etc etc etc .I would love to find out how they met, and where .

Like you, I have ancestors born in Somerset but married people from or in London and other places. Only explaination I can think of is employment. Many girls/women went into service, sometimes a long way away from home. And I have some lads who also went into service, either as house servants or grooms. If the men werent Ag Labs but were something like blacksmiths or bakers etc - then a village could only support a certain number of those, and so they had to travel to find work.

I like to guess but we`ll never know the answers.! Were they visiting a different part of the country- but many folk didn`t travel in years gone by. Ros

Gosh, yes, Valerie, all the time. My mother's father died when she was 2, but he was in the Coldstream Guards and my mother once told me he met her mother when he was stationed in Windsor. My grandmother was in service and was staying in Windsor at the time. I wonder how it happened? Was she walking down the street on her afternoon off and she dropped something, and he gallantly picked it up for her? You can weave all sorts of wonderful stories, can't you. But the one that puzzles me the most is my 3 x great grandparents, who married in Scarborough in 1808. He was born in Pocklington, Yorkshire. She was born just outside Crawley in Sussex. He was 17 when they married and she, if her age on the censuses and her death cert are to be believed, was 12!!!!! So what was a 12 year old from Sussex doing in Scarborough anyway in 1808? Despite the rather strange beginning, they were married for 48 years, eventually settling in Stockport. Yes, that's part of the attraction of this Family History lark. All the unanswered questions, all the stories we shall probably never know, all the fantasies one can weave. How can anyone not be fascinated by it. Tina

it is fascinating this research isnt it, I found on a Census the Head of the House was in Wales away from his family who were in london , on the next Census he is home with a Servant and a baby both born in Wales ????? I wonder who the Father was????.

I used to live in Datchet just 2 miles from Windsor, I bet it was beautiful in those days .Wouldnt it be good if we could go back just for a week maybe and see what happened . as long as nobody could see us.

I have a John Free Smith, from Lincolnshire, who married a Scottish woman. I think I have tracked down their marriage to Norham in Northumberland and am waiting for the cert to prove it. They had 2 children in Nothumberland, before retuning to Lincolnshire. That seems to be a lot of travellin for the mid 1800's, how did they manage it? Lynn

god luck Lynn hope its the right Cert I have had some bad luck with mine recently. Yes thats some miles isnt it??? I dont even like travelling these days and it must be a lot better now.

Thanks Val, I did as much checking as a could, there were a lot of John Smiths, even then. I read about your bad luck with the certs, glad you decided not to take drastic action! Lynn :- )

I have a lot of Quaker rellies, from Bristol, Worcestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. There were various towns and villages that were Quaker strongholds and many spouses came from one of the other areas, because of distant cousin relationships. This sometimes causes problems for the tree........such as Mary Marshall living in the same street as John Tyler on the census .....a year later they marry. But do they???? No, she has married his first cousin with the same name, from 50 miles away! Merry

thanks Lynn I am glad too, otherwise I would not be meeting nice people on here like you!!!. Merry that sounds horrendous, I would be pulling my Hair out at that.

The more I dig, the more I realise that very few people ever married a random stranger. They are all distantly related, either through blood or by marriage and some of these links are several generations before. So, what appeared to be a random pairing between a Lancashire man and a woman from Stafford, turned out to be - his great grandfather's sister had married a man from Stafford and several generations were born there. It was one of these descendants that he married. I can usually trace this sort of connection if I look hard enough! And the same often applies to sevants too - turn out to be a daughter of an impoverished branch of the family living in another county. As for how they managed to move around - well, train travel was extremely cheap in the 1800s, as was travel by canal barge. OC

Val, I would be pulling my hair out too, but for the excellent records kept by the Quakers. Marriage records give details of fathers AND mothers, plus occupations of everyone, from about 1700. Lots more info in birth and death records too than you get with C of E. In fact, if that Marshall/Tyler couple had been C of E, I KNOW I would have paired Miss Marshall to the wrong husband and been COMPLETELY happy with it! He died before 1851, so no chance of noticing he was born miles away!!! Merry

I think a lot of it is down to workplace. Several of mine have married people doing a similar trade - eg cabinet makers marrying upholsterers and so on. My watermen/lightermen in London were an incestuous bunch anyway, thought themselves above the general labourers and kept in a clique. Ive got at least 6 families inter marrying in that trade over a period of 250 years. Of course further back if you were in a small village I guess you didnt have a lot of choice really! Perhaps you may meet someone in the next village or so at a fair or market but apart from that .............. Then there was the agricultural/industrial revolutions so people would be going from the land all over the country to an industrialised area. Ive got licensed victuallers marrying the daughters of licensed victuallers albeit it that one may have been born in Surrey and the other in Devon. I guess that eventually they would find themselves working in the same area and like now, would tend to be friendly with people of the same ilk.

Wasn't there something on 'who do you think you are ' about how one way to get out of the poor house was to agree to upsticks and go up north to industrialised counties to work in various factories?And they all came up here on barges. I'd like to trace where my lot who were all 'journeymen bricklayers' went to - just so i could say - that buildings one of mine!!! Jenx

I do know some....... Mum met dad through a dating agency! Gran met granddad on a railway station in WW1. He had both arms in plaster having been injured on the first day of the battle of the Somme. She said ''from the back I knew he would be good looking when he turned around''.......she was right!! Pity they didn't get on! Other granny pulled a pint for granddad in her father's pub. He spent the rest of his life sitting by the bar and she spent hers bringing up 14 children and running their shop. One set of great-grandparents met when he became a school master and she was governess to the headmaster's youngest children. Another set of g-grandparents met when he employed her to be his housekeeper. Errmmm......then they ''had'' to get married. Pity she already had a husband! Merry

this is something that fascinates me too. I suppose these days we take it for granted that a lot comes about by chance meetings. Its also something you can easily miss if you only look at your direct line. Once you learn more about your respective ancestors families, a lot of it becomes more obvious. In circles where there were assets such as land or property to be kept within the family, it was far more usual for cousins to marry. It puzzled me for a long time why a soldier would marry - in India -a coalminer's daughter from Gateshead. There was actually a family connection. One day she was visiting her uncle & met his wife's younger brother, who was also visiting during a period of leave from the army... The marriage was arranged & the rest (as they say) is history... I would never have known about this family connection if I hadn't been looking at the rest of their respective families. My Gt Gran from Somerset married the parish clerk in a North Kent village. Like many others, her family moved to London in the 1850's on the promise of a better life with more opportunities for work. Like many other young girls, she was in service prior to her marriage. I still can't imagine exactly how & where they met, but it was a start knowing her family were settled in London at least 10 years earlier. As far as ag labs are concerned, the Hiring Fairs were not just used as a means to find work! The next village was just as useful as a source of a prospective bride as a new employer.

This is where a census can also give you a clue. My 3x g.grandmother's parents owned the pub just down the road from where my 3x g.grandfather lived. I expect he met her in there. I can picture her working behind the bar and serving him with his pint of ale.

My Mum & Dad were next door neighbours, But, had mums family never migrated from Essex side of the Thames to SE London then doubt they would never have met. Que Sera Sera. Shirley

Just back from Dinner yummy. what fascinating stories, I know one of mine was a Gentlemans Coach Driver and his Wife also worked for him, so thats how they met, but often wonder about their first meeting what they looked like as I have been unable to find any Photos for them yet, so am trying to find others in the family who hopefully have more knowledge about them.