Linferd Ware: My missing Great Uncle

 

Linferd Ware was the Great Uncle who most intrigued me and until this week he was also uncompleted, a brick wall. He was the third child of my Great Grandfather George Ware and his second wife, Rebecca Linferd, born on July 1^st 1875.  Like all their children he was born above the Town Hall in the Saturday Market Place Kings Lynn. This was because his father was Police Superintendent based in the Town Gaol next door.

Linferd’s story reads like the life of an over-active butterfly. By the age of 15 he was living in Regents Park Barracks in London as a Bandsman in the First Lifeguards Brigade. The life obviously didn’t suit him so with his father’s help he purchased a discharge for £18 and soon after returning home he joined the Lynn police.  There were suggestions of nepotism when he was soon given more responsibility, so he moved to the police force in Nottingham where he worked as a young detective constable. However by 1895 he was attracted to the military again, this time joining the Royal Dragoons, once again as a musician. He was now aged 21, 5 foot 10 inches tall, weighing 137 lbs. He had hazel eyes and dark hair. This time he remained in the army for 3 years before once more purchasing his discharge.  Later that year Linferd Ware married Katherine Clarke (Kitty), daughter of the Kings Lynn Dock Master. At that time Linferd is listed as a Coal Merchant.

Linferd appears twice in the 1901 census. Once with his wife living in the centre of Southampton, occupation musician and Ship steward and in the other entry he is named as a steward aboard the steam yacht, Erin, lying off Hythe in Southampton water.  The Erin has an interesting history. At the time it belonged to Sir Thomas Lipton, who also owned the Shamrock II one of the entries to the Americas cup. Linferd must have been aboard the Erin on April 30^th 1901 when it towed Shamrock II to New York.

A Model of the Steam Yacht Erin

After that I was unable to find any trace of Linferd though I suspected a death when he was not named in his father’s will in 1911.  Finally, I found a small death report in the Lynn Advertiser saying that Linferd Ware had died in the Memorial Hospital in Bulawayo, in the Eastern Cape in September 1909 aged 34.  I believe his wife Kitty was with him as Katharine Ware is on the passenger list of a ship sailing from Cape Town to Southampton in 1912.

My McKinnon Family

 

When I started to research the McKinnon side of my family in 1999, the easiest way to access information about them was a set of CDs of the 1881 Census issued by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Here I found my great grandmother and all her siblings working as house servants (the girls) or farm servants (the boys).  Meanwhile her parents John Mckinnon and Mary Barron were at home in Petty, Inverness-shire looking after 3 illegitimate grandchildren.

The McKinnon (or MacKinnon) family originated on the islands of Mull, Coll, and Tiree n the Hebrides and later Skye and Rum.  For hundreds of years the MacKinnons held offices of importance in both the military and civil administrations of the Isles. A MacKinnon chief was the marshal of the island fleet that transported Robert Bruce and his army at the start of the campaign that ended at Bannockburn in 1314. MacKinnon chiefs were respected members of the Council of the Isles and from 1357 until 1498 the MacKinnon clan supplied the abbots and priors for the monastery on Iona.

After the Act of Union between England and Scotland, Clan MacKinnon supported the Jacobite cause especially in 1715 and 1745. Following those failed uprisings, the clan members were reduced to poverty. Their land was sold off and many emigrated. The Highland Clearances, moving people to make room for sheep, caused more McKinnons to scatter round the globe.

The first McKinnon we can trace in our family is William MacKinnon, a weaver, living in Stronaba, Kilmonivaig, Invernesshire.  He and his wife, Ann Cameron had two children, Christian (female) and John MacKinnon. By 1841 William had died and Ann McKinnon (Cameron) was in misery (on charity). In 1851 she was listed as a parish pauper. Later that year John, a labourer, married Mary Barron, a servant maid working at Glenfintaig House, in Kilmonivaig. 

John McKinnon and his wife Mary, who spoke Gaelic and English, soon moved to Elgin, Moray where their first 2 children were born, but by 1854 when their son William McKinnon was born, they were living in the village of Petty on the edge of the Moray Firth near to the town of Inverness.  John worked as a railway surfaceman until he died of a heart attack aged 82. His wife Mary Barron died 8 years later in Inverness and was buried at Tomnahurich Cemetery in Inverness.  Of the 10 children of John McKinnon and Mary Barron, my great grandmother Eliza was their 6th child.

Eliza was later called Elizabeth. Her son Alexander Stewart was born in 1879 when she was 17. By 1881 she was working as a nursemaid in Inverness but at some point, during the next 7 years she moved to work in Dunbartonshire over on the west coast. There she met Northern Irishman, Robert John Hughes, a mason, but by the time they married in 1888, he was a postman. On the 1891 census they are listed living in the village of Row (Rhu) on the Gareloch. The couple had 9 children including Elizabeth Hughes, my grandmother born in 1900. Of Eliza McKinnon’s 7 sisters, two, Catherine and Mary, moved to Australia with their husbands, the two brothers, William and John, were farm labourers and Johanna never married.

Eliza McKinnon

Where there's a Will #Genealogy

For many years, my great great grandmother Sarah Ann PETT was a brick wall in following my family tree.  Apart from her marriage to John LINFER(D)  in Wisbech and the fact that her brother William PETT is listed in the 1871 census as living with her in Walpole St Peter, Norfolk, I was unable to find any other reference to her family.  It was as if these two PETTs were orphans who had popped out of nowhere

Finally I was able to travel to Walpole St Peter where I found the gravestones of Charles and Henry PETT in the churchyard but I was still unable to connect them with Sarah Ann.  From my early days of family history research I have listed queries on surname websites such as Genforum.  I had no reason to believe that I had connections in the US or Australia but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Out of the blue, in 2002, I received an email from someone called Mark in Missouri, concerning a will he had in his possession, dated 1876.  The will of Joseph PETT, who had died without children, in Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, contained a long list of beneficiaries including William PETT and his sister Mrs LINFORD.  It also listed four other large PETT families, including Henry and Charles, whose tombstones I had seen in Walpole St Peter.  The will contained the married names of the female members of the extended PETT family enabling me to connect to other families in Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk.

Soon Mark and I were collaborating with another distant cousin in the UK and one in Australia. Two more cousins joined our mailing list via Genes Reunited.  All instigated by the wealth of connected surnames in Joseph PETT’s will.  Hard times farming in East Anglia in the 1840s had caused most of the PETT family to emigrate to the States or to Australia. However, from 1850 to 1875 farming in Britain thrived.  Grain was the predominant crop in East Anglia and due to the Crimean War and the American Civil War, there were not yet large surpluses of cheap wheat to threaten the British grain farmers.  Wheat prices rose from 40 shillings per imperial quarter to 57s between 1850 and 1871.  

After Joseph's death the solicitor had to calculate all the expenses involved in the funeral and running costs for his 91 acre farm. There were wages to be paid including boys at a lower rate. The seasonal tasks such as threshing, harvest and wood cutting involved extra labour and there were local taxes such as the poor rate, Highway rate and church tithe to be paid, not to mention fire insurance. As the farm was in the Fens digging drains and maintaining banks was an important necessity.

The very long expenditure list (4 times the lists shown above) included fees for mole catching, a boy leading the horses, crow keeping and hoeing.  As Joseph was a landowner, a list of receipts from local tenants gave added colour to his story. Other receipts include the sale of sheep and bullocks. Joseph may have had no surviving children but he left quite a dynasty.

#AtoZChallenge F is for Family History

A to Z Challenge 2020

Things to be Grateful for

is for Family History

At the present time we can’t help thinking about our family, those who live with us and those living elsewhere, but many of us are also thinking about our family tree.  More time at home gives the opportunity for researching our genealogy but many of us also think about the distant cousins we have already discovered many miles away.

Since I first started to research my Family History in 1998, I have connected with many “new” cousins, some I have met, others I correspond with online.

Here are some of my ancestors:

My Great Gran born in Inverness-shire

My Grandma married in Canada

My Great Uncle Vernon who died in Egypt in 1916

My great Grandfather retired to Bournemouth where he married his 3rd wife

My great great grandfather was a career soldier who lived in Yorkshire, Winchester, Devonport, Gibraltar, Nova Scotia and Barbados

My Great Uncle in the Lifeguards

My Great Grandmother in Norfolk with some of her children

Researching online has never been easier and some websites or local online Libraries are making their data free. I really recommend starting this fascinating hobby.

Here is a family gathering of cousins from 2 continents

Overseers of the Poor #ParishChest

St James the Less, Pangbourne, Berkshire

Recently I’ve been reading the Berkshire Parish Overseers’ Records. They give a comprehensive view of how the poor and needy were provided for at the end of the 18^th century and beginning of the 19^th.  The Overseers were respectable men from the middle class selected annually to administer funds available for the poor in their parish.

When there was doubt if an individual came from your parish, Removal or Settlement Orders were made, so that each pauper was helped in their own parish, not a place they had moved to.  In 1816 when her husband was away in the army, Mary Warner was removed from the town of Reading to her home village of Pangbourne, since she would receive no money to support their family from his army pay until he returned home.

Earlier in 1798, one soldier whose wife had been allowed to accompany him, wrote home from the island of Jersey begging for assistance.

The Overseers needed to provide employment for orphans and needy children in their parish and the best solution was a 7 year apprenticeship.  Boys might be sent to a Master to learn skills such as carpentry, shoe-making or barge-building, but it might be husbandry (caring for animals and tilling the soil).  In most cases, girls were apprenticed to learn housewifery.

An apprenticeship established Settlement in a parish, which might explain why the Berkshire Overseers were eager to send their paupers to parishes on the outskirts of London, from where they were unlikely to return.

The other problem they had to deal with was bastardy.  Unmarried pregnant women should preferably be provided for by the man who was responsible.

Great Dunmow #Genealogy #EssexChurches

I recently visited Great Dunmow, in search of the church where some of my ancestors worshipped.  After parking in the centre we discovered that the church is on the edge of the small town, some twenty minutes away, but this gave us the opportunity to see the lovely Doctors Pond and some of the beautiful pargeted cottages.

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The church is set in a very large graveyard with pleasant walks to the river and rabbits scampering among the graves.

Inside there are some stunning modern stained glass windows.

I was thrilled to find these small monumental brasses half hidden behind an altar near the west tower.  I learnt about them from "The Glasscock Families" by Rev. Laurence Glasco.  I have my distant cousin Barbara in America to thank for sending me copies of pages from his book.  We know they relate to our family as they show the crest of the Glasscock family, many of whom were early emigrants to America.

Although there are many beautiful carved tombstones around the church I was unable to decipher them.

These chubby faced cherubs probably date from the 18th century.

Two Essex Village Churches #MondayBlogs

Last week I visited seven of the churches in rural Essex where members of my family were baptised or buried.  These are the first two which we saw.  Sadly only one was unlocked.  Moreton is one of the many villages which are reached by small winding lanes, but the church includes architecture from pre-Norman times with changes and additions over the years.  Originally built of flint and clunch, a soft, chalky limestone, the walls have been strengthened by replacing the clunch with more durable stone.  The tower is built in red brick with a lower shingled spire and there is a typical Essex wooden weather-boarded porch.  The windows date from the 15th, 18th and 19th centuries.

St Mary's Church, Moreton

There was a tradition of Dissenting Ministers in Essex so it was a pleasure to find this memorial to Rev. S. Gaffee.

St Mary the Virgin, Matching is reached by driving along a single track road past a beautiful pond.  The village has changed very little since the 18th century.

St Mary the Virgin, Matching

This was the smartest church we visited, mainly due to the owners of nearby Down Hall who gave £3000 for its improvement in 1875.  Probably a Norman church, on the site of a former Saxon church, it has a 13th century doorway and a 15th century tower.

The signature of William Dearling MA vicar from 1761-1784 is written in the Prayer Book given to my ancestor Bartholomew Glasscock who was churchwarden in Matching.

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This window is dedicated to Sir Henry and Lady Selwin-Ibbetson of Down Hall, who supported the church so well.