Your favourite ancestor

[Merry]

Ann in Sussex mentioned her favourite ancestor on a thread on research, which got me thinking.....

Who is your favourite ancestor and why? (I'll let you have a maximum of three favourites!!)

[ElizabethHerts]

It changes from month to month - it depends which family I'm researching at the time!

[kiterunner]

My favourite three to research are: Sir Nathaniel Hodges, Walter Horner Brown, and Robert Bristow. All in my maternal grandfather's tree. Not necessarily the people I think I would have liked the most, but the most interesting to research as there is lots to find out about them and lots of databases etc that they turn up in. Also always the hope that I will solve mysteries close to them - who exactly their wife was in two of these cases, and who exactly Nathaniel Hodges' father was.

[Merry]

I have to admit, I can't get excited about any of my father's tree except for one chap who has a double life with two wives at once (and appears in the households of both of them in 1871!), but he isn't my relative - his legal wife is!

On mum's side my three are:

First, my 3xg grandfather, Job Smith. Having a rarer-then-usual first name enabled me to trace lots about him and his extended family with certainty. In his 50s he emigrated to America with his second wife and I would love to know if he was in touch with his first family and also what happened to him.


Second, on another line, my 5xg-grandfather, Nathan Crawley. It took me about 15 years to discover his name and he's still causing problems, but I feel as if I 'know' him. Weird??

Third, my 2xg-grandmother, Mary Smith, daughter of Job (above). She seems like a 21st Century woman trapped in the 19thC.

[Shona]

John McLean - the last person to be convicted of grave-robbing in Scotland before the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act,

http://www.genealogistsforum.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=16066&highlight=john+mclean

[Asa]

Mine change a bit too but I tend to feel I know the ones who I've worked hardest on, even when there are still mysteries to solve. I suppose it's the amount of time we spend "with" them?

I also feel I know those where there's a lot of info on them - either because they were very well off, very badly off or in trouble with the law a lot. But then place has a lot to do with it so I have a lot of feeling for the Londoners, the Berks/Oxon ones and the Devonshire ones.

I'm particularly interested in the ones I'm descended from more than once - so perhaps at the moment, Leonard Slade (d.1693) and Eleanor Sayer (1626-1684) as I descend from them four times.

[Langley Vale Sue]

I don't know about my favourite ancestor, but probably the one I have most sympathy for is my 4x G grandmother Mary Ann Carter.

She married aged about 17, had a son who died aged 2, two months after the death of her husband. She then married my 4 x G grandfather George Tivers 18 months later in 1810, had one son in 1811 and then in 1813 before she was 30 and whilst expecting my 3 x G grandfather, was widowed again just before his birth. This son died aged 25, leaving a widow and a 10 month old son.

Mary Ann, probably understandably, didn't re-marry but as far as I know she is the only ancestor on that side of my family to have left a will (which I have a copy of) which gives an insight into her life. I'm sure there is plenty more to be discovered about her - which is a task for the future. :)

[Merry]

Sad story, Sue.

Asa, My feelings are much like yours - I nearly ended up with all Smiths in my top three (the third one from a different branch) because I've 'got to know them' because it's such a challenge researching Smiths!

I think the reason I can't get very interested in my father's family is because they come from places that are not easy to research (Somerset and Gloucestershire) and fall into the 'in-between group' - neither rich nor poor and not in trouble with the law! Before the census era I just have a few BMDs, but hardly anything else.

[marquette]

If I had to choose, I think I would pick Thomas Brazill, my 5xg grandfather. I know lots about him, but want to know more !

What I know - he was born in Norwich, Norfolk in 1766 and married for the second time in 1798. He was a captain of a coastal trader taking mostly Herring down the east coast to London - in 1807 his ship the Rising Sun was captured by the French and he spent 7 years as a Prisoner of War. After his return to England, his only son was born. In 1837 aged 71 years, he undertook to voyage of 5 months to come to the colony of NSW. Unfortunately, he died just three weeks after arriving in Sydney in May 1838.

What I want to know - who was his first wife, what did he do for 7 years as a prisoner of war, what did he do when he got back to England and what on earth made him decide to come to NSW ?

Another favourite would have to be his wife Mary, who managed to raise three daughters on her own for 7 years, only applying to the Trinity Corporation for support in 1812. She lived with her son in Newcastle and died aged 92 in 1865. I wish I could locate "the family vault" where she is supposedly buried at Morpeth NSW.

[ElizabethHerts]

My favourites are the families I have got furthest back with, too.

So, my Quintrell and Andrew families in Cornwall, my Wood and Popple families in Lincolnshire, and ny Jeffcoat and Parrott families in Oxfordshire.

[anne fraser]

I liked Samuel Blacker at first because of his unusual name. He is one of my father's ancestors. The family story that I have been unable to prove or disprove is that his family came from Carrick Blacker in Ireland. They were on the losing side in the battle of the Boyne and three brothers found it desirable to settle in Somerset.

I first come across Samuel owning the manor of Midsummer Norton and a tenant of the Duchy of Cornwall. He started a coalmine on his land. I can't find details of his first wife but late in life he married for the second time to Elizabeth Brookman and the couple had four children. My ancestor another Samuel and three daughters Elizabeth, Mary and Sarah. Elizabeth became an 1820 settler to South Africa and the family were prominent in early South African history. She was buried beside the Great Fsh river.

Other family stories are that Mary was buried in a leadlined coffin in London and that one of Sarah's children was killed by a sibling in a shooting accident. I have been unable to find evidence for either story.

[Phoenix]

May I nominate, on behalf of best mate, Great Granny Lanning?

The only thing we can say with any certainty is that she was not a Lanning.

We have at least three candidates:

Jane Clements b Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire c 1780 m George Lanning and then James McLeod
Rebecca Horseman nee Taylor b Castle Camps, Cambridgeshire c 1800 second wife of Jane's son George Lanning (and probably his deceased wife's sister)
Sarah Coombes second wife of Jane's son Thomas Lanning

Tree and notes are at home, but the journey has been fscinating, teasing out the facts from the stories we heard as children. BM's granddaughters are also being regaled with stories. I particularly like the highwayman:

GGL was travelling in a coach when she was held up by a highwayman. She gathered her jewels, wrapped them in a shawl and said "Pray, do not wake my baby"

Although she lived to tell the tale, we have never found evidence of the jewels!!

[Nell]

Well, I know who'd be on my list of most exasperating ancestor!!!

Favourites, well I suppose the ones I've found out most about, because that helps bring them to life.

I am quite fond of my gt x 3 grandfather Robert Chowns. His settlement dispute enabled me to find out some details of his life, how much he paid in rent, the fact the ceiling of his house fell in, etc. He also lived for over 20 years in an almshouse. I looked in vain for his death for ages, in the days when you had to trawl through the ledgers at the now defunct Family Records Centre. When I got his death cert from the GRO I was thrilled - he'd died of old age at the age of 93. I was dancing round the room with excitement when my son said "But he was born in 1779, of course he's dead"!

[Val in Oz]

It has to be OH's goodness knows how many greats uncle Joseph Samain who was born in 1773 in London, son of Abraham and Ann. He joined the Navy and fought on Admiral Duncan's flagship the Venerable in the Battle of Camperdown in 1797 as an ordinary seaman, but the lovely fellow wrote a letter to his family whilst waiting on board ship at the Nore in the Thames Estuary for repairs.
This letter is now held in the Naval Museum in London, and in it he gave a detailed account of the Battle, plus he wrote out a list of all the Dutch ships and their captains.

This alone drew me to him as none of the Samain family - right up to the present day - are known for their letter writing skills......lol

He eventually settled in America where he married and started the Samain dynasty over there and there was much information to be found about him.
I have really enjoyed researching Joseph.

[Lindsay]

My favourites are definitely the ones I've found most information on - so almost any of mine who left Wills (not many of them did), went to court or appeared in the newspapers are on the list.

An unusual name helps - Zachariah Senier ticked all the above boxes and was a dream to research. And there's the (so far unanswered) question of why a man who spent 30 years as a London draper decided to move back to Yorkshire and become an iron founder two years before he died - perhaps that's the form a mid-life crisis took in the nineteenth century?

Conversely, I found it very hard to get excited about OH's Sadds - generation after generation of ag labs called John and Mary Sadd, who married people called John and Mary and had children called, you've guessed, John and Mary.

[Jill]

I am very fond of my Badcocks who sometimes had distant relations to stay on census nights, and would often like to marry one as well. Berkshire was riddled with them and some emigrated to Australia. The names Joses and Thirza often crop up with makes them easier to find, though three disliked their surname and changed it.

My OH's wider Juniper family owned the Rose and Crown at Cuckfield and his Holfords were tenants at The Crown at Horsted Keynes both of which do superb food so as well as visiting the villages for research and visiting the family graves we feel duty bound to pop in for lunch!