Mistake is smaller than I thought!

[Merry]

Nothing to add to BK6 from this thread

Sorry, you'll be bored stiff reading this, but I have to put it somewhere to get my head round it.....

For a few years I've been trying to verify and add info to a tree drawn up by one of my ancestors for my Maynards and associated names in the 1850s. With the LMA records available on Ancestry I have found a few nuggets as these families from Beds, Cambs and Herts seem to like to go to London to marry.

I have only ever found one seemingly glaring error on the tree - it says Mary Maynard married someone called Nichols and her sister, Elizabeth, married someone called Whiteman (no dates or places of course!). However, I found that Mary Maynard married James Whiteman and Elizabeth Maynard married William Nichols in the 1760s in the same parish they are reputed to have been born in, so I accepted this mistake with the womens forenames as an error on the tree and carried on investigating other people.

Today I was looking (again :rolleyes:) for the burials of these two couples. I found a possible one for James Whiteman in the same home parish, but not one for his wife Mary. Considering she might have remarried I had a look at local marriages and found nothing.

Then I wondered about the London records. Yesterday I found three marriages in the LMA records for people with 'my' surnames where the names of the witnesses (Sarah Moule and Robert or William McCrery) make them 99% likely to fit in my tree somewhere, but I don't know who they are yet. This morning I tried looking for a remarriage for Mary Whiteman and guess what? I found one - to her widowed brother-in-law, William Nichols! Just to make things even more positive, one of the the witnesses was Robert McCrery, the bride's nephew or her brother-in-law, depending on which Robert it is.

So, you are bored and I am happy - the tree now isn't as wrong as it was because Mary Maynard did indeed marry 'Nichols' eventually, and I can see why the tree writer got confused.

[kiterunner]

I suppose Elizabeth didn't marry for a second time, to a Whiteman?

[Merry]

Not if she was dead!

Suppose I should check?!! lol

[samesizedfeet]

Erm, your Nichols weren't from near Bushey in Herts, then moving in to London were they?

I have a whole bunch of them marrying widowed brother in laws, uncles by marriage etc

[Margaret in Burton]

Maybe they just wife swapped. :D:D:rolleyes:

[Lindsay]

For a few years I've been trying to verify and add info to a tree drawn up by one of my ancestors for my Maynards and associated names in the 1850s. With the LMA records available on Ancestry I have found a few nuggets as these families from Beds, Cambs and Herts seem to like to go to London to marry.

.

Merry, just out of interest do you know why they went to London to marry?

I have this in my OH's tree, where three different generations live in the Essex countryside, then suddenly decamp to London to marry someone from the same village before returning to Essex to have their children. One woman did this for her first and second marriages.

They were gardeners, ag labs etc so it certainly wasn't for a grand London wedding!

[Merry]

Well, I used to think it was just my ggg-grandfather who had done so in 1803. He was living in Whittlesford, Cambs and got himself in a fix when he allowed his wife's niece to come and live with them to care for his wife as she was infirm. Six months before his wife died the niece produced a baby boy who was tactfully named after my ggg-grandfather! Immediately after the wife died ggg-grandfather took his late wife's niece to London to marry and I had always presumed this was to avoid the net-twitching from the neighbours in the village, but now, since I've seen the LMA records, I'm thinking they were either being fashionable or were actually non-conformist and prefered not to marry in their local C of E church, or a combination of all these, as there seems to be quite a few relations who did the same thing (went to London, not got the wrong person pregnant!).

It's just lucky for me that some of the names are unusual, or unusual enough to be so when in combination with the others - and I have this tree which has helped me to a point. Also, one spinster lady, Sarah Moule, obviously liked weddings as she was a witness in London at about half a dozen marriages over about 30 years (60 mile journey for her to get there!) and has a nice distinctive signature! The other lot of witnesses came from the McCrery family who lived by the church in Bloomsbury so it wasn't far for them to pop round to the church when their relatives came to marry!

My problem now is that I get the odd marriage pop up in London with family witnesses, but I don't know where in the country the people really lived and often their children (where they had any - I have lost count of the number of lines that dry up in this part of my tree) don't seem to have traceable baptisms and it's all too far before the censuses for those to help me.

[Merry]

Erm, your Nichols weren't from near Bushey in Herts, then moving in to London were they?

I have a whole bunch of them marrying widowed brother in laws, uncles by marriage etc

I wish I knew! Elizabeth Maynard m Wm Nichols in 1766 in Kempston Beds. I am tempted by a load of baps in Woburn which begin in 1767 and end in 1779. There is a death for an Elizabeth Nichols in Woburn and then Wm Nichols marries his sister in law in Holborn.

I have no idea how I can prove anything though! Hardly any of them seem to have left wills, though apparently Bedfordshire ones are particularly difficult to find.

[Uncle John]

Holborn / Woburn - what's the difference???

[Kit]

I'm glad you have sorted one part of this mystery.

I can't help with the rest.