Sunday, January 31, 2010

To Do: Search Cheshire Wills

The following are non-ancestry.com links:
Cheshire wills are here.
Also may be something here.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

William Hall & Hannah Richardson

Checked both in Hinshaw in Virginia - nothing.
Checked both bapt in Cheshire Parish Register Project CPRdb - a few teasers recorded in ResearchSavedInCase for William.
Checked both marr in same - nothing.
Checked both in Non-Parochials of theGenealogist.com - nothing

Friday, January 29, 2010

Pemberton Huff Notes from Wigan Archaeological Society

The George M Pemberton Scrapbook contains this fascinating couplet:

"While olives are green and commodities rough
Here is the place for Pemberton's huff.
"

If we could just locate the place of this unique object, we would have pin pointed the location of our George Pemberton, born in Cheshire about 1660.

This is an extract from an email forwarded to me by Dixie originally written Oct 2006
Hello Dixie Ann,
 
As we are an archaeological society, family histories are not are speciality. However Christine Watts or Alan Davies at the Wigan Heritage Services may be able to help at heritage@wlct.org. Also there is a Family History Society in Wigan, their web address is www.ffhs.org.uk/members/wigan.htm . 
 
What we can tell you is that the township of Pemberton lies just a few miles southwest of Wigan and was incorporated in to Wigan Borough in the early 1900's. Both Pemberton and Wigan have always been in the county of Lancashire, at least until the boundary changes of the 1970's (now we are all in Greater Manchester). I suspect Pemberton Hough is probably in Cheshire which traditionally lay south of the River Mersey. However Wigan Parish originally came under the diocese of Chester, as did most of Lancashire (up until 1880 when the diocese of Liverpool was created). I haven't heard of the name Pemberton Hough but I will certainly make enquires through our society.
 
Bill Aldridge
(secretary)
Wigan Archaeological Society 

Neither one [Christine Watts or Alan Davies] was able to help. But Aldridge was not the only one to point out that "Hough" rhyming with rough, pronounced huff, referred to husbandry, farming.  Later, hough refered to hamstrings or livestock and the pronounciation changed.
-----------------
This Blog's Author's notes: So the couplet might have used "hough" and meant a farm rather than a fit of frustration. This presupposes that the couplet was passed down verbally at some point, or someone doing transcription thought to update the spelling. All possibilities.
Also so:
The village Pemberton and Wigan have always been in Lancashire and the archaeologist prefers to believe that if there was a Pemberton Hough it would have been in Cheshire. There are several villages in Cheshire with "Hough" in their names.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Suggested Pemberton's Huff to BBC "Trackers"

From an email from S & N Genealogy Supplies email of 25 Jan 2010:
Do you want to track down a missing relative, loved one or close friend but don’t have the resources?
Or perhaps your genealogical search has gone cold and you don’t know where to turn?

Help is at hand in the form of "trackers" who will be filmed as part of a new BBC primetime television programme.

Our team, with expertise in genealogy and people finding, may be able to help you find your missing person or lost contact.

Please contact for more information: trackers@RDFTelevision.com or 0207 751 7304

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Frequencies of Surnames in Church of England & Quaker Records

I did some macro work on surname frequencies to see what I might learn about the probabilities of various names being quaker or Church of England, etc. Here is the result.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Published Middleton Cheshire Parish Extracted Data

I have fabricated marriage records from burials (leaving the burial date in the record) and added them and actual marriage records to the baptismal records to create one file named PemBaptMarrBuri. Marriage records come in three types:
1. marr - a true marriage record extracted directly from marriage records
2. mard - a fabricated marreage record created by duplicating a burial record that had mother data in it
3. mars - a fabricated marriage record created by copying burial records where the wife was the new widow and the"burier".
I sorted this data by date, then in descending order of the record type (to put marriages ahead of baptisms, then on the father's forename to create tentative family groups. By scanning down the father's forename column you see all the records with the same father's Christian name in a group.
You can see the sorted file here.
For details on how this was done, see the file aReadMe.txt in the Cheshire Parishes Project folder.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Sent email probes to Family History Society of Cheshire

I sent emails to the chairmen of the Nantwich and Chester areas telling them about "Pemberton's Huff" and asking for any assistance. I will update this post as replies return.
Nantwich: Sue Church - reply of Jan 29 - no hits there
Chester: David Guyton

Monday, January 18, 2010

Tentative Pemberton Families in Cheshire Published

I have fabricated marriage records from burials (leaving the burial date in the record) and added them to the baptismal records to create one file named PemBaptMarr. Marriage records come in three types:
1. marr - a true marriage record extracted directly from marriage records
2. mard - a fabricated marreage record created by duplicating a burial record that had mother data in it
3. mars - a fabricated marriage record created by copying burial records where the wife was the new widow and the"burier".
I sorted this data by date, then in descending order of the record type (to put marriages ahead of baptisms, then on the father's standardized forename to create tentative family groups. By scanning down the father's forename column you see all the records with the same father's Christian name in a group. The marriages where that father would appear as a husband will be before the baptisms.
You can see the sorted file here.
For details on how this was done, see the file aReadMe.txt in the Cheshire Parishes Project folder.
Note: Feb 21, 2010 I republished this file because the old file had some records missing. The new file also has a new column of standard forenames for the fathers/grooms so the family groups are less fragmented by different spellings. The down side is, of course, that some formerly separated groups are now merged into one family. The forename of record is also there so you can sort that out.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Possible Pemberton Families in Cheshire, UK

This is a little spreadsheet where I have collected the more promising finds from the Cheshire Parish Register Transcription Project and www.theGenealogist.com's Non_Parochial BMD data and combined them.
The potential family tree this data suggests goes like this:
Lines 60 - 63 is the oldest family group (Note the father is John). Line 61 of this family -
is the father of the family group lines 50 -56. Line 54 of this group -
is the father of the family group lines 27 - 47. Line 34 -
is the father of the family group lines 20 - 24. Line 20 -
is our progenitor George who married Sarah Middleton, line 69
It is interesting to note that if this tree is correct, the John Pemberton father (lines 60 - 63) is right where we might expect him in chronology. The Pennsylvania Pembertons arrived there a century before ours arrived in Virginia and there were many John's among them. There are none in my direct line, and only one anywhere (a brother to my direct line Robert L).

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Cheshire Parish Register Transcription Project

Discovered the subject has been published here and that it is a rich source!! I searched for and found some likely suspects for George and Sarah Middleton which I will post soon.

I extracted all the baptisms, marriages and burials for the Pembertons from the earliest records available to about 1760: 469 records. I put them all in a spreadsheet and sorted the data by date, parish, and father's forename which gave me tentative family groups.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Permission to Publish the Buckley Site at Ours

Received an email from Daniel's widow Dannie, giving me permission to publish their web site at PembertonFamily.com which I did here.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Dream

"Last night I dreamed about being up on a stool at a counter giving a document back to someone at the counter. A voice clearly said “ Come any time. Just ask for what you want”… It made me feel greatly encouraged about this endeavour." See Dixie's email of this same date for details.