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Maria Bayston's whole arc — and the mother who appears exactly once

Maria Bayston's story is now closed at both ends. Her 1798 Bubwith baptism has been read at the image in both surviving registers — the parish book and the Bishop's Transcript, agreeing word for word: "Maria, illegitimate D.r of Ann Bayston, of Bubwith" — and her burial has been found and read: she died in the Sculcoates workhouse, where the 1871 census had found her a pauper inmate, and was buried from it on 11 January 1875, aged seventy-six. Her mother Ann Bayston now has a page of her own — a woman who appears in the whole surviving record exactly once, in her daughter's baptism; who she was, and who Maria's father was, are the line's two open questions, and the research thread carries the honest state of both.

• Maria Bayston — the baptism at the image twice over; the workhouse burial; the death age corrected.
• Ann Bayston — named twice at the image, and nowhere else; the candidate work stated honestly.

The Oates family — behind Mary Elizabeth: a master shoemaker of Hull, a sailmaker ruined, and the last of the round-one wife-lines

Behind Mary Elizabeth Oates, who married the Hull keelman Samuel Richmond in 1871, stands a family now written and evidenced: the Oateses of Hull — a line of skilled tradesmen whose craft, and whose fortunes, fell a rung with each generation. It runs from Christopher Oates, a master cordwainer buried by his trade at Holy Trinity in 1796; through his son Christopher, a sailmaker; to William, a wandering joiner. With this family the round-one wife-lines are complete — the eighth and last of the great-great-grandmothers' families. Press “open Oates” on the family tree for “The Oates story” and a journey map from Hull south to Brigg and west to Manchester.

The spine was read at the register, census, ticket and newspaper images this pass. William's 1821 baptism names his father a “Sail-maker”; Christopher's 1819 marriage holds the family's literacy in one line — he made his mark, his bride Maria signed her name — and his 1844 seaman's ticket draws him whole: an able seaman and sailmaker, grey-haired and blue-eyed, five foot seven, and “Can write: No.” The 1838 insolvency that ruined him at Scawby was verified at the page, its plainest words intact — the creditor asking “whose poor bairns are these?” of the seven children round the hearth, and Christopher's answer, “They are mine, and I have nothing to put into their mouths.” The trade tells the fall on its own: cordwainer, then sailmaker, then joiner.

Two findings corrected the record this pass. The “William Oates in the Hull workhouse, 1881” the family long took for him proves, at the leaf, to be another man — a cabinet-maker born in Plymouth, whom a mis-index had merged with the line above; our William cannot be placed that year. But his mother Maria truly was a pauper inmate of the Sculcoates workhouse in 1871. And Jane Thompson's impossible “29 February 1821” baptism is set right to the 25th. Above Christopher the master cordwainer, buried 1796, the record does not yet reach — his own parents unknown. Through Mary Elizabeth the Oates line joins the Richmonds and the Brocks.

• William Oates — the wandering joiner; his 1821 baptism and 1851 Salford household read at the image, and the 1881 workhouse record shown to be another man.
• Christopher Oates — the sailmaker ruined at Scawby in 1838 and gone to sea; his ticket and the “poor bairns” report read at the image.
• Christopher Oates — the wall: a master cordwainer of Hull, buried “Cordwainer” in 1796; his own parents unknown.
• Maria Bayston — Christopher's wife, base-born of Bubwith; the sailmaker's widow, a Sculcoates workhouse pauper in 1871.
• Jane Thompson — William's wife, of Goxhill in Lincolnshire; her impossible baptism date put right this pass.

The Verity family — behind Clara: cartwrights and shoemakers of the Yorkshire Dales, and a moulder who crossed the Pennines for the iron

Behind Clara Penrose Verity, who married the Hull iron moulder Thomas Wilson at Oldham in 1876, stands a family now written and evidenced: the Veritys of Upper Wharfedale — cartwrights and shoemakers of Kettlewell and Burnsall, high in the Craven dales, who came down to industrial Bradford and Leeds and, in the last generation, crossed the Pennines to the cotton-and-iron towns of the Tame valley. The line reaches back with certainty to William Verity, a cartwright married at Kettlewell in 1790. Press “open Verity” on the family tree for “The Verity story” and a journey map from the head of Wharfedale across the hills to Oldham.

The records that carry the recent generations were read at the register image this pass. Abraham Verity's second marriage of 1850, at St Philip's in Leeds, is the one that reaches back a generation — it names his father “William Verity, Cart Wright,” the man at the head of the line. Frederick's marriage of 1859 at Stalybridge, and the Dukinfield census of 1871 that holds him a moulder among his daughters in the cotton mills, are read at the leaf too — the marriage correcting a slip in Mum's notes, where the witnesses of the entry above had been copied by mistake. The trade tells the family's story on its own: cartwright, then shoemaker, then iron moulder, a rung's change with each generation as they came down from the Dales.

It was the iron, not the cotton, that drew Frederick west — a moulder cast the machinery the mills ran on — and through his daughter Clara the foundry trade carried straight into the Wilsons, for Thomas Wilson was a moulder too. Above William the cartwright the record does not yet certainly reach: he was born about 1760, and the likeliest origin — a William Verity christened at Skipton in 1759, son of Jonathan and Mary — is named on his page as probable, and no more.

• Frederick William Verity — the iron moulder who crossed the Pennines; his 1859 Stalybridge marriage and 1871 Dukinfield household read at the image.
• Abraham Verity — the Kettlewell-born shoemaker who came down to Leeds; his 1850 marriage names his father the cartwright — the link to the top of the line.
• William Verity — the wall: a cartwright of Kettlewell, married Jane Calvert in 1790; a Skipton baptism of 1759 is his probable, unproven origin.
• Harriet Penrose — Frederick's wife and Clara's mother, a gamekeeper's daughter; the Penrose line waits for a pass of its own.
• Clara Penrose Verity — the join to the Wilsons: born at Stalybridge in 1856, married the moulder Thomas Wilson at Oldham in 1876.

The Scott family — behind Annie: a miller's village by York, the drift down the Ouse, and a line that lost its letters

Behind Annie Elizabeth Scott, who married John Harrison at Eastrington in 1880, stands a family now written and evidenced: the Scotts of Howdenshire — Thorpe Lidgett, Cavil and Newfields, the flat farming country where the Derwent and the Ouse run out into the Humber levels. But their beginning lay elsewhere. The line reaches back with certainty to Ralph Scott, born not in the levels but at Dunnington, near York, in 1713 — son of a David Scott the register calls a miller and then names no more. Press “open Scott” on the family tree for “The Scott story” and a journey map from the Vale of York down the Ouse to the Howden fields.

The records that carry the recent generations were read at the register image this pass. Annie's parents' marriage of 1854 catches the whole line's condition in a stroke: George Scott, a widower and labourer, and Mary Stanley both made their marks, with George's brother-in-law John Calvert as witness. Her grandparents' marriage of 1812 reads a rung higher — Ralph Scott entered a “Husbandman”, a small tenant farmer — and the censuses of 1861 and 1871 hold three generations under one roof, with Mary Ann's widowed father George Stainley boarding in his old age and a Holliday Scott, an uncle who wore his mother's maiden name, next door. Behind them the deep spine rests on Janet Brock's own reading of the older Blacktoft and Dunnington books.

Theirs is a quiet story of decline and of staying put. Solomon Scott, baptised at Blacktoft in 1756, rose to be the parish clerk — the last of this line the records show could write; two generations on, the clerk's grandson George signed his marriage with a mark. And it is the women who carry the name onward: Elizabeth Holliday, widowed at Thorpe Lidgett and set down at the last in the old country name, “Bessy Scott”; and Annie, who through her daughter Harriet Ann Harrison, wife of Thomas Batty Drewery, brings the Scott line to the Drewerys and the Brocks. Above Ralph at Dunnington the record runs out at David the miller — the wall, stated plainly on his page.

• Annie Elizabeth Scott — the join to the Harrisons: baptised at Howden in 1860, married John Harrison in 1880 and made her mark where he signed.
• George Scott — twice married, an agricultural labourer all his life at Thorpe Lidgett; he and Mary Ann died within two days of each other in 1898.
• Ralph Scott — the “Husbandman” of Cavil, married Elizabeth Holliday in 1812; the family's last hold on land before the labouring generations.
• Solomon Scott — parish clerk of Blacktoft, the literate high-water mark two generations above his labouring grandson.
• Ralph Scott — the wall: born at Dunnington near York in 1713, son of David the miller; above him the record does not yet reach.

The Wood family — behind Mary Ann: a Derbyshire dale, the carts of Hull, and one probable step past the wall

Behind Mary Ann Wood, who married the bricklayer John Henry Frith in 1854, stands a family now written and evidenced: the Woods of Darley Dale, in the Derwent valley of Derbyshire — an agricultural labouring family who reach back with certainty to Anthony Wood, baptised at Darley in 1745, son of a John Wood the register names but takes no further. From Anthony the line runs through his son George, an agricultural labourer, to George's son Samuel, born there in 1805 — the one who left. Press “open Wood” on the family tree for “The Wood story” and a journey map from the Peak to the Humber.

The Hull records that carry the family were read at the register image this pass. Mary Ann's baptism at Holy Trinity in 1837 gives her father's trade as “Truckman”; her marriage of 1854 holds the quiet turn of the whole line — where John Henry Frith signed his name in a bold hand, Mary Ann, a truckman's Hull-born daughter, made her mark, with her brother James Graham Wood as witness. Her parents' own marriage of 1831 reads the other way: Samuel a “Mariner” before the carts took over, and both bride and groom signing their names. The Darley Dale origins — Samuel's 1805 baptism, and Anthony's 1745 christening, 1769 marriage and 1830 burial — are confirmed on FamilySearch, matching Janet Brock's own reading date for date.

As so often here, it is the women who carry the family through. Mary Ann died of consumption before she was thirty, in 1866, her husband at the bedside; her son Samuel David Frith would grow up to lead the Hull dockers. Behind her stands her mother, Elizabeth Graham — a Hull woman baptised “Betsey” — widowed in 1859 and holding the household together for a quarter-century after: keeping a shop, taking in her daughter's motherless Frith children, and ending her days with her son at the Vauxhall Tavern on Hessle Road. And one probable step past Janet's wall: the only John Wood marriage at Darley of the right years, to a Johanna Prince in 1727/8 — so Anthony's mother was very likely Johanna Prince, though nothing yet ties that marriage to his baptism, and the page claims no more.

• Mary Ann — the join: baptised at Holy Trinity in 1837, in service on Dagger Lane at fourteen, married John Henry Frith at seventeen and made her mark; died of consumption at not-yet-thirty in 1866.
• Samuel — the one who left the dale: a “Mariner” at his 1831 marriage, then truckman, brickman and carrier at Anne Street; his 1831 register read at the image, exactly as Mum had transcribed it.
• Elizabeth Graham — the widow who held the family: baptised “Betsey” at Holy Trinity, kept a shop after 1859, took in her Frith grandchildren; her Graham parents are the next wall on her side.
• George — the Darley Dale generation: an agricultural labourer, eleven children christened at Darley, still at Wensley at seventy-one in 1841; his people rest on Mum's reading of the register.
• Anthony — the wall: baptised at Darley in 1745, son of John Wood, married Jemima Gregory in 1769; above him the record thins, and the page names what a deeper Darley read might still find.
• Honest on the pages: the Hull baptism and the two marriages are read at the image; the Darley origins are the FamilySearch index confirming Mum date for date; the widow-years censuses rest on Mum's transcripts; and above John Wood at Darley — his own people, and the proof that Johanna Prince was Anthony's mother — the record does not yet reach.

The Stubbs family — the Lincolnshire Marsh line behind the Brocks: a carpenter who raised a 200-acre farmer, and the dispersal sale that named the horses

Behind Eliza Stubbs, who married the Tetney miller George Brock in 1852 and became the mother of the Hull Brocks, stands a Lincolnshire family now written and evidenced: the Stubbs of the Marsh — people of Alvingham and North Cockerington, the rich low farming country behind the sea-bank near Louth. The line rises in a single generation: from William Stubbs, a village carpenter and wheelwright baptised in 1752, to his son Christopher, born in 1786, who left the workshop for the land and became a farmer of two hundred acres. Press “open Stubbs” on the family tree for “The Stubbs story” and a journey map of the Marsh.

Christopher Stubbs was the height of the family — a farmer of two hundred acres at Alvingham by 1851, and a name the county sale-notices could point buyers to. This pass read two records at the image. The 1851 census — the 200-acre farm, Christopher and Mary and eight children — a leaf Mum never had; and the dispersal sale of 1863, when he sold up at Alvingham and the auctioneer John Willson cried off fifty-two sheep, thirty-eight beasts and seven horses on the premises. Mum had transcribed that notice; the newspaper page confirmed her word for word, down to the horses’ names — Smiler, Prince, Tinker, Beauty, Metal. He retired inland to West Ashby and died in 1875, and the probate calendar set his death right — 23 July, not the “25 June” of the family note. His estate did not pass quietly: a decade on it was still before the courts, in a Chancery suit of Stubbs against Stubbs.

The line leaves the Marsh through a daughter, and one small gap of Mum’s is closed. Eliza’s own baptism — North Cockerington, 12 September 1830 — is now found: Mum had all eleven of Eliza’s siblings baptised there, but never Eliza herself. Widowed when George died of smallpox in 1869, she took the children to Hull, where the master miller’s sons grew up warehouse hands and oil-mill labourers — and through her the Marsh-farming Stubbs join the milling Brocks, and run on to William Henry Brock and his descendants.

• Eliza — the join: a farmer’s daughter at home in 1851, married George Brock the miller in 1852; widowed by smallpox, remarried, and off to Hull; her own baptism recovered where Mum’s page had a gap.
• Christopher — the carpenter’s son who became a 200-acre farmer; the 1863 dispersal sale read at the image, his death date set right by the probate, his estate fought over in Chancery.
• William — the wall, and the start: a carpenter and wheelwright of Alvingham with a string of apprentices, married to Frances Addison of Saltfleetby; above him the link to a Thomas Stubbs is a fourteen-year gap, not yet proven.
• Mary Waters — of Ludford Magna, Christopher’s wife and mother of a dozen; her maiden name still unsettled between Waters, Walters and the register’s “Wautars.”
• Honest on the pages: the spine is read at the census and the register index, the farm and the sale at the image; the deeper Marsh baptisms and marriages rest on Mum’s research, and above the carpenter of 1752 the record does not yet reach.

The Padget family — the gap on the Crabb page, closed: Littleport labourers, a Padget in both marriages, and the widow of The Holmes

For as long as the tree has been up, the Crabb page has carried a dashed grey chip at generation five: “Pagett · gap.” It is a gap no longer. Behind Thomas Crabb's 1835 marriage stands a Littleport family now written and evidenced: the Padgets — agricultural labourers of the Isle of Ely's last parish before Norfolk, who in every record we hold stay within a mile or two of the Ouse. The line runs from Susanna Padget, the bride of 1835, through her father John to Thomas Padget, married at Littleport by licence in 1792 — the wall. Press “open Padget” on the family tree for “The Padget story” and the stillest journey map yet.

Susanna's page is built from records read at the images this pass: her baptism — entry No. 199 on an 1815 page where the trade column reads Labourer top to bottom, the year before the Littleport riots — her wedding by banns “with Consent of Parents” (she was nineteen, and signed with her mark), and the two censuses of her widowhood: alone in two rooms at The City, entered as a pauper in a street of widowed paupers, and at eighty-five one of six widows in a row at The Holmes. Her father John had his own day in print, and Mum found it: at an 1851 inquest he told how he watched a bather drown below Littleport bridge and rowed out — a Thomas Crabb in the second boat — to bring the body home. This pass re-read the article at the newspaper page itself, and Mum's transcript held almost to the word.

The family joins the spine twice, through two sisters: Susanna to Thomas Crabb in 1835, and Hannah to Jacob Barber in 1842 — whose daughter Rachel married Susanna's son Isaac in 1869. And one real find behind the wall: Thomas's bride Mary Aspland now has her own baptism, read at the 1770 transcript leaf — daughter of William and Elizabeth Aspland, her father the very man who stood bondsman on the 1792 licence Mum read.

• Susanna — the gap herself: baptised, married, widowed and buried in the one parish; ten children on Burnt Fen; her last decade the plainest record of a fen labourer's widowhood in the whole tree.
• John — Welney-born, Littleport all his life; the inquest witness of 1851; sixty years married to a Mary whose maiden name still waits in an undigitised register.
• Thomas — the wall: married by licence at twenty-two in 1792; nine children with the burials in among the baptisms; entered with Mary in 1851, both eighty-one, as “Paupers (Ag. Labourers)”.
• Hannah — the second join: married Jacob Barber in 1842 and went north with the fen migration; died in Hull in 1893, her daughter married to her sister's son.
• Honest on the pages: no Thomas Padget baptism exists at Littleport 1760–1780 — the transcript leaves of his birth-years were read entry by entry — and the nearest candidates, a John and Mary Pagett christening a son in 1770, are named as candidates only. The licence bond at Cambridge and the Littleport marriage register 1813–37 at the record office are the next doors, and both are marked on the threads.

The Ardington family — behind the Thomases: the Gribthorpe yeomen who became Howden shoemakers, and the joiner who broke the trade and the family with it

Behind Jane Ardington, who married the Brixham fisherman George Henry Thomas in 1865 and so became the mother of Jenny, the Thomas girl who married into the Crabbs, stands an East Riding family now written and evidenced: the Ardingtons of Gribthorpe and Howden. The line runs five generations, from Jane back to William Ardington of Gribthorpe, a yeoman buried at Bubwith in 1765 — the wall. For two generations in between — Richard and his son William — they were Howden shoemakers. Press “open Ardington” on the family tree for “The Ardington story” and a journey map from the Bubwith hamlet to the Humber. (It corrects a shorthand on the Thomas page: the Ardingtons are Gribthorpe and Howden people — Hemingbrough was Sarah Caukill’s parish, not theirs.)

The story turns on one man who reached too far. Robert Ardington, born at Howden in 1820, trained not as a shoemaker like his father and grandfather but as a joiner, and in 1841 he married above himself — Sarah Caukill, a landowning Cliffe farmer’s daughter, in a match her family thought beneath her; the June census that year finds the newlyweds lodged inside her father’s own farm. Then he tried to become a shopkeeper — a grocer and flour-dealer, at Howden, Scarborough and Grimsby by turns — and in the crash year of 1847 it failed in the bankruptcy court. This pass read the court’s own report in the Hull Packet: a £57 debt, a joiner earning twenty-four shillings a week, his final order granted at the first examination on condition he pay small instalments. A modest ruin, in a column of them.

After that the family scattered. By 1851 Robert had taken them west to Manchester; Sarah, the family said, “could not bear the reduced circumstances, and ran away” — and after that census she vanishes from the record entirely. Robert lived on in Manchester in a second household, with an Elizabeth of Rhyl, and died — the only death that fits him, aged forty-six — far to the south at Christchurch in Hampshire in 1866. His daughter Jane made her own way back east to Hull and into service, and out of that wreck came the marriage that carries the line to us. Both of Mum’s cautious guesses — the 1861 Manchester household, the 1866 Hampshire death — proved true at the record.

• Jane — the join: baptised at Hemingbrough, a general servant at eighteen, married George Henry Thomas at the Hull Register Office in 1865; through the fishing years the census twice sets her at the head of her own house, the master away at sea.
• Robert — the joiner who broke the shoemakers’ trade: married up, went bankrupt, took the family to Manchester and lost it, and died a stranger in Hampshire.
• William — a Hailgate shoemaker whose Howden Minster monument buried a soldier son dead in the East Indies, and a son and his wife three weeks apart.
• William of Gribthorpe — the wall: first of the name, a Bubwith yeoman; the register runs back past his time, but no baptism stands in it for him. His widow Mary is now brought into the tree beside him.
• Honest on the pages, two walls: William’s origins at Gribthorpe, and — nearer and more human — Sarah Caukill, the farmer’s daughter who married the joiner and walked out of the record in 1851, her end still unknown.

The Houlton family — the Lincolnshire line behind the Friths: the shoemaker of the Old Town courts, and the labourer alone at the inn corner

Behind Samuel David Frith's marriage of 1877 stands a north Lincolnshire family now written and evidenced: the Houltons — farm labourers of the Humber bank whose son John took up the shoemaker's trade and carried it across the water. The line runs from Alice Houlton, born in the parish of St Mary, Hull, in 1859, through her father John, a shoemaker for fifty years, to Joseph Houlton, born about 1784 at North Elkington on the Wolds — the wall. Press “open Houlton” on the family tree for “The Houlton story” and a journey map from the Wolds to the Old Town courts.

The registers gave this pass its anchor and its grief in one book. John's 1842 wedding at Wrawby — he signs, his bride Sarah marks — names his father: Joseph Houlton, labourer, turning the “(Parents?)” on Mum's page into a read record. Two years later one opening of the Burton upon Stather burial register holds both “Sarah Wife of John Houlton Shoemaker”, aged 25, and their infant daughter Christiana. And George William's 1848 baptism — found by paging the register past a hole in the index — names his mother as Ann, John's second wife, so two children now sit under the marriages the registers actually give them. At the other end of the story the 1901 census writes old John's means in three words: “Living on Parish.”

Joseph's end is told as Mum recorded it. Widowed in 1846, the census of 1851 found him at 68 living alone at the Boucherett Arms corner in North Willingham, twenty-five miles from his hamlet; that July he was buried at Winterton, and at the foot of the register page Mum found the clerk's note: “This man committed suicide.” The Winterton register is not yet online, so the note stands on his page as her reading — corroborated in date and place by the GRO index, and awaiting the page itself in round two.

• Alice — the join: a shoemaker's daughter of the Old Town courts, ‘Received into the Church’ at ten with her birth date written into the register margin; married Samuel David Frith at the same church in 1877.
• John — three marriages, one register opening of grief in 1844, and fifty years of Hull shoemaking from De la Pole Court to Lock's Place.
• Joseph — the wall: born about 1784 at North Elkington by his own account, his baptism unindexed on every service searched, his wife Mary without maiden name or grave.
• Held open, honestly: the 1846 Holy Trinity register marks John's father “Late” — dead — five years before the Thealby Joseph was buried; and an Ann Houlton who married at North Willingham in 1838 may be the daughter who explains Joseph's last address. A £2.50 GRO certificate would name her father.

The Clegg family — the Lancashire cotton line behind the Brocks: Rochdale weavers, and the road east to Hull

Behind Elizabeth Clegg, who married William Henry Brock in 1877, stands a family now written and evidenced: the Cleggs of Rochdale, Lancashire handloom weavers of St Chad’s parish. The line runs four generations, from Elizabeth — born in Hull in 1858 — back to James Clegg, baptised at Rochdale in 1774, and one step further to his father Isaac. Each generation’s link to the next — Elizabeth to Robert, Robert to Edmund, Edmund to James — was read at the original register this pass. Press “open Clegg” on the family tree for “The Clegg story” and a journey map from Rochdale to the Humber.

What moved them east was a death. When Edmund the weaver died at Rochdale in 1841, only about forty, his widow’s second marriage — to a Castleton bleacher — carried the whole family the ninety miles east to Hull. By 1851 the Cleggs were living under one roof at Front Factory Lane in the Groves, the Sutton district that had become a colony of transplanted Lancashire cotton folk — warpers, winders and carders from the southern Pennines, and the neighbours on the census leaf to prove it. They carried their trade with them: Robert Clegg was a cotton packer for twenty years.

Robert’s was the life that doubled back on itself. Born a weaver’s son in Rochdale, carried east as a boy, widowed at forty-five, he went — once his children were grown — back to Lancashire, to end his working life a cotton porter on the Liverpool docks, before coming home to Hull in old age to live with his daughter Elizabeth and the Brocks. He died in 1919 in his ninety-fifth year.

• Robert — the ninety-four-year life across two cotton counties: Rochdale weaver’s son, packer in the Groves, cotton porter on the Liverpool docks, and at the last the “wife’s father” in the Brocks’ east-Hull shop.
• Elizabeth — the join: motherless at twelve, she married William Henry Brock at St James’, Sutton, in 1877, both signing their own names; she died in 1928, two years after him, her notice reading simply “Reunited.”
• Edmund — the handloom weaver whose early death set the whole migration going; his 1800 baptism, read at the image, names his own father James.
• James — the wall: baptised at St Chad’s in 1774, father Isaac Clegg; his own death not yet found, and above Isaac the line does not yet reach.
• Honest as ever on the pages: the spine is read at the register this pass, but the deeper Rochdale records — the earlier marriages and burials, and Isaac beyond James — rest on Mum’s research and the parish index, and wait for the register images in round two.

The Batty family — the Holderness line behind the Drewerys: the prize ploughman, the auctioned roof, and a death set right

Behind the Drewerys, on Janet’s side, stands a Holderness family now written and evidenced: the Battys — farm servants and labourers of the flat corn country east of Hull, who for three generations moved among villages never ten miles from the city without once living in it. The line runs from Martha Batty, born at Aldbrough in 1862, through her father William and grandfather Jonathan, to Robert Batty, born about 1772, ‘of Sutton’ — the wall. Press “open Batty” on the family tree for “The Batty story” and a journey map of their ring of villages.

They were working people who could write — every generation signs its registers, down to Martha signing in 1882 beside a bridegroom who made his mark — and twice the newspapers name Jonathan among the prize ploughmen of Holderness: Mum found the 1832 match in the Yorkshire Gazette, and this pass found its sequel, the Hull Packet of 1838, where one of Sir Clifford Constable’s sovereign prizes goes to ‘Jonathan Batty, ploughman to Mr. J. Ingleby, of Ryhill’ — a decade with one farm. What finally moved the family was an auctioneer’s hammer: in 1864 the Aldbrough cottage William rented was sold at the George Inn — Mum’s newspaper find again — and within three years they were dockside in Hull.

And one record is set right: William’s page carried a 1905 burial that the registers show belongs to a different William Batty — a Hull shipwright of the same name and age, at that exact address since 1891. Ours died in the first quarter of 1901, in Sculcoates — which is precisely what Mum’s own page title, “(1834–1901?)”, always suspected. Her instinct is now the record.

• Martha — born at Aldbrough in the family's last Holderness years; in service at a Rowley farmhouse at eighteen while her baby son was elsewhere; married William Drewery in 1882, her brother and sister witnessing — her boy grew up Thomas Batty Drewery, and carries the line to us.
• William — farm servant at the 308 acres of Newton Garth; married Eliza Ollivant, both signing; auctioned out of Aldbrough, a dock labourer and coal heaver in Hull; twice widowed, and now given back his true death.
• Jonathan — the champion ploughman of the Hedon road, prize-listed in 1832 and 1838; buried at Paull, aged 56, his father named in his own wedding register.
• Robert — the wall: married by licence at Sculcoates in 1801, signing his name; he and his wife Mary died in the same quarter of 1847, aged 77, forty-six years married. Above him the record has not yet been found.
• Honest threads, marked on the pages: the marriage bond that may name Robert’s kin waits at Hull History Centre; the Aldbrough burial register has a fifty-one-year gap discovered on this pass; and Mum’s two newspaper finds stand in her name, awaiting the British Newspaper Archive.

The Barber family — the fen behind the Crabbs: one island, seven generations, and the first family land

On Mum’s side, behind the Crabbs, stands a fen family now written and evidenced: the Barbers of Witcham, on one small clay island in the black peat of the Isle of Ely. The line runs eleven generations, from Rachel Barber, born on the fen in 1848, back to a John Barber who died in 1589 — and it carries a first for the whole family. Press “open Barber” on the family tree for “The Barber story” and a journey map from the fen to the Humber.

For the first time anywhere in the tree, these are people we can show owning land in their own right — not renting it, as most of the family we have traced turn out to have done, but holding it and passing it on by will. A five-acre close of drained fen called “The Dams Heads,” and other parcels beside the great drain, descend son to son from at least the 1700s — and the land itself was new, made in the century the Great Level was drained, when the Hundred Foot Drain was cut straight across the fen in 1652. The field names still carry the works.

They were Wesleyan Methodists, and Witcham folk for two hundred years, before the drained levels loosed them — off the island to Ely and Littleport, where the old standing slowly thinned (a farmer’s bailiff in 1851, a plain labourer by 1861), and at last, in the 1870s, the whole hundred and thirty miles north to Hull. There Rachel married Isaac Crabb and worked as a midwife; through their son Alfred and his daughter Ida Crabb the fen line runs into the Crabbs, and on to Janet and the Brocks.

• Rachel — born on the fen, a midwife in Hull; widowed, she made a second marriage the family never forgave — to a kinsman, they said, “for his money” — and her son Alfred kept her, with a house and a carer, to the end.
• Thomas the carpenter — the first of the family we can see holding land: his 1705 will leaves his son the five acres of The Dams Heads, and binds him to provide for a daughter, in an age when a woman could hold none herself.
• Jacob — a farmer’s bailiff at Whelp Moor in 1851, read this week from the census; a plain labourer ten years on, and the one who took the family off the fen to Hull.
• John — the earliest we can reach, known only by his 1589 will: Witcham’s registers begin ten years after him, so above him the record does not yet exist.
• Honest as ever on the pages: the deep Witcham wills reach us through another researcher, Andrew Martin, and wait to be read against the originals at Ely — a job for round two.

The Wilson family — Grandma Joan’s mother’s line: five generations of Hull iron

Grandma Joan’s mother’s family is now written and evidenced, and the line carried a rung further back. It runs to James Wilson, a whitesmith baptised at Holy Trinity, Hull, in 1761. Mum had already reached his father — her page names John Willson, read from that same baptism — but the name sat there alone, unsourced and unbuilt. It is now confirmed and built out: the surname, written the old way (Willson, with two Ls), had hidden it from every plain search, but the Holy Trinity register and its Bishop’s Transcript both set down the same father — and John is now a person in the tree, with the true wall standing a rung higher, at his own wife and origins.

These are Hull people — Sculcoates people — and metalworkers for as far back as the record goes: a whitesmith, then a blacksmith at the Foundry on Gibson Street, then iron moulders two generations running, and at the last a shipwright in Earle’s yard on the Humber. Five generations of metal within a few streets. The one time they left, they went for the iron, not the cotton: in the 1870s Thomas carried the moulder’s trade west to Oldham, to cast the machinery that spun Lancashire’s cotton, and brought his family home when his young wife Clara died in 1890. Press “open Wilson” on the family tree for “The Wilson story” and a journey map of the Sculcoates streets and the road over the Pennines.

• Thomas — iron moulder turned shipwright; married Clara Penrose Verity at Oldham; widowed at the family’s Waterloo Street houses in Hull in the black year of 1890, and buried at last beside her under a stone that kept two quiet words: her end was peace.
• James Henry — iron moulder of Gibson Street, father of thirteen; his death certificate, his widow’s, and the family stone all read fresh this week.
• Peter — the blacksmith who fixed the family on Gibson Street; he signed his 1805 marriage register, his bride Ann Manby made her mark.
• James — the whitesmith at the head of the line; the father Mum had named above him now confirmed against the register and its transcript, and built out.
• And the join: Lydia, born at Oldham, who married Samuel David Frith in 1906 — where the iron Wilsons become the Friths, and run on to the Brocks.
• Open threads, marked plainly on the pages: James’s mother (probably a Mary, married 1760 — not yet proven); John Willson’s own origins, the new wall; and James’s own death, still unfound.

The Richmond wall falls — William’s beginnings, at Grimsby

Two days ago the Richmond story closed on a name it could not place: the 1795 Thorne register recorded William’s father as a Henry Richmond, but Mum’s tree stopped at William — his parents blank, his birth only reckoned “about 1746” from his age at death. Following that one name has now broken the wall.

William Richman was baptised at Great Grimsby, St James, on 23 January 1746/7 — the son of Henry Richmond and Mary Loggon — the entry found this week, image and all, across the Humber on the Lincolnshire shore. His family is now written: Henry Richmond, a Grimsby man of a long Grimsby line, who married Mary Loggon in 1740/1 and raised ten children in the town — William the fourth, and the one who carried the family and its water-trade north to Thorne. The register even bears out Mum’s “about 1746” exactly.

Two walls stand beyond, both already being worked. Henry’s own father is, in strong probability, a John Richman of Beverley — the naming runs true, Henry’s first son being a John — though nothing yet carries the family across the estuary. And Mary Loggon’s people, a large old Grimsby family, want the register read leaf by leaf. The one join we cannot yet document — the Grimsby boy to the Thorne waterman — is set down plainly on William’s page, matched by name, age and trade.

The Richmond family — Grandma Minnie’s line: the keel people of Thorne

Eddie’s mother’s family is now written and evidenced: seven pages, from Minnie herself back to a Thorne waterman born about 1746 — the family that arrived by water. For four generations their census address was as often a vessel as a house. Press “open Richmond” on the family tree for “The Richmond story” and a journey map drawn along the waterways.

• Minnie Gertrude — born six weeks after a census that shows her father sixty miles away on his barge and her grandmother, a nurse, already in the house; married William Edmond Brock — Ted, to the family — from the shipowner’s house on Pennington Street; and at Wilton House in 1957, on her birthday, the Queen stopped and asked if she was happy — her answer, the only words of hers the family holds, is on the page.
• Samuel — keel boy at eleven, master at twenty, owner of the steam keel Reliance: robbed twice, at law in the 1906 case of the two Reliances, wrecked off Grimsby in 1912 with her lights still burning. He signed his first wedding register with a mark and his second, forty years on, with his name — “Ship’s Captain”.
• Henry — the register settles his birth (6 January 1803; the transcript’s “1802” explained on the page); married in London at St George in the East — the line’s best mystery; lost his wife and infant daughter twenty-one days apart in the black year of 1841; and on census night 1861 his whole household slept aboard his keel, the Ann.
• William — waterman, then mariner, married on Thorne’s all-mariners leaf; his wife Hannah Kettle’s burial entry carries the clerk’s correction — “Killed”, struck through, then “Accidental Death” — read fresh from the register this week. The 1795 register even names William’s own father: a generation waiting one step beyond the tree.
• The wives’ shore: Selina, the collier’s daughter from Elsecar who raised sixteen children and was the nurse in her son’s house six weeks before Minnie’s birth there; and Mary Elizabeth Oates, Manchester-born, who kept the Spyvee Street half of a divided household for thirty years.
• Coming next on this side: the Wilsons — Grandma Joan’s mother’s line — and the Richmond loose ends: Ann Dobson’s London wedding, and the Reliance’s official number in the shipping registers.

The Harrison family — Great-Grandma Harriet’s line: the levels, the common, and the village that stayed

Grandad Bill’s mother’s family is now written and evidenced: nine pages, from Harriet Ann herself back to a wedding of 1754 — and for once there is no journey: the whole line lives inside ten miles of low country between the Derwent and the Ouse. Press “open Harrison” on the family tree for “The Harrison story” and a journey map that is, for the first time, a local one.

• Harriet Ann — school-girl at her grandparents’, farmhouse servant at seventeen, bride of Tom the platelayer at Eastrington in 1908 (the banns book calls him “Thomas Watty Drewery”) — and the Sandholme garden remembered on her page in Mum’s own words: the secret garden, the ponds, the long walk from the Gilberdyke crossroads.
• Woodall — christened with his mother’s surname, born on the enclosed common of the Eight and Forty: farm boy at eleven, married from the farmhouse where he met Harriet Wainman in service, farm bailiff by Kelly’s 1893 — and a 1914 obituary, digitised only this year, that prints his character: “honest, straightforward… particularly successful in feeding and rearing cattle.” The family’s own kept leaf of the Laxton parish magazine, June 1874, is on his page.
• George & Hannah — Breighton, 1787: a village slander war reached the Archbishop’s court at York, and Hannah’s own sworn deposition — read this week in the digitised court file — is on the page, her mark beside it, with the defence’s shilling-and-dinner story told fairly as the allegation it was.
• At the top, Thomas Harrison and Ann Baylier — their marriage, the record Mum never found, recovered at St Helen’s, Thorganby, 3 November 1754; his birth stated honestly as the line’s wall; her Thorganby people, the Bayleys, sketched from the surviving transcripts. The village of that wedding is the village where this history is now being written.
• Waiting in Mum’s notebook, ready for their own passes: the Wainmans of Laxton (back to about 1693), the Scotts of New Fields (to 1713), and the Woodalls of Selby and Howden.

The Thomas family — Jenny’s Devon fisher-line: Cornwall, Brixham, and the sea road to Hull

The Crabb story’s promised journey is made: six pages, from Great Grandma Jenny back to a Cornish mariner of 1754. On the family tree, open Crabb and then open Jane’s Thomas family — the line has its own card, “The Thomas story”, with a sea-road journey map of its own.

• Jenny — her own birth certificate corrects the year the family always gave (7 December 1881); her Salvation Army portrait in full uniform; her 1915 National Registration card; the Hull Daily Mail notices; and the photograph of her at ninety holding her great-granddaughter Jane — the disputed name, an heirloom.
• George Henry — Brixham boy, Hull smack skipper: the 1886 man-overboard report traced to its vessel — the Burton Constable, H77, her crew agreements found in Hull’s archives naming George as her skipper and recording the drowning in the ship’s own words — and a new context piece, “The Silver Pits”, telling the world that made him and unmade itself inside his working life.
• Eleanor Clarke Peters — his mother: twice widowed by the sea, north with the fleet to the other Humber port, a grocer’s shop on Church Street, Grimsby — and “her own income” to her death at eighty-six.
• Behind them, two Williams — master mariner and mariner, both dead young, “possibly at sea”, both widows remarried — and at the top John Thomas of Illogan, the Cornish sojourner who signed the Brixham register with a mark: his death is the line’s honest wall, and we have said so.

The Crabb family — Grandma Drewery’s line: the fens, the sewers, and the train to the end of the line

Mum’s mother’s family is now written and evidenced: seven pages, from Ida back to the Littleport of 1710. Press “open Crabb” on the family tree for “The Crabb story” and their journey map — five generations in one Cambridgeshire fen village, a colony digging London’s sewers, and the train that stopped at Hull.

• Ida — the coal merchant’s daughter: every civil record found, her exact birth date confirmed twice over, and her family’s notice in the Hull Daily Mail — “peace after much suffering bravely borne”.
• Alfred — trawler hand turned coal merchant of Hessle Road: his 1905 wedding register read (occupation: seaman), his wartime police-court scrapes, the love poem he wrote Jane, and the probate calendar’s quiet verdict — effects £2,127 15s. 7d., proved by his son Harry, coal merchant.
• Isaac — dug Bazalgette’s sewers at Plaistow with a colony of Littleport men, rode the train to the end of the line in 1873, helped found the Salvation Army in Hull — and the Army’s own War Cry (digitised only this year — Mum could never have seen it) reports Brother Isaac Crabb’s funeral: the Citadel Band out, hundreds on Hessle Road, just as the family always said.
• The Littleport generations — freeholders in Carter’s 1753 county history (one of them named Pepper Crabb), the 1814 auction that sold Thomas’s house over his head, and the 1816 riots at the family’s door: five neighbours hanged at Ely, and a new context piece — “Bread or blood” — telling why.
• Robert — the top of the line, married 1710, stated honestly as a wall: 1710s Littleport held four Robert Crabbs at once, and the manor rolls, not the registers, will tell them apart.

The Frith family — Grandma Joan’s line, from the stonemasons of Grimsby to Ceylon Street

Dad’s mother’s family is now written and evidenced: seven pages, from Joan herself back to about 1771. Press “open Frith” on the family tree for “The Frith story” and their journey map — Brocklesby and Grimsby, over the Humber with a widowed innkeeper and eight children, to Hull’s Old Town and Marfleet.

• Joan — her original 1914 birth certificate, her 1922 school report (“shews much intelligence”), Thornton Varley’s “Little Flapper”, and the wartime letters: the Hull house lent to a bombed-out couple, and her brother George writing from Basra.
• Samuel David (1884–1917) — her father, serjeant of the Hull Commercials, killed at Oppy Wood. His war-graves file is read in full: his body lay on the field three years and was known at last by the wallet he carried.
• Lydia — widowed at thirty-four, she kept the family on a corner shop on Ceylon Street, and was still “wife of the late Samuel David” in the family’s notice fifty-five years on.
• Samuel David the elder (1857–1929) — fruiterer of Chapel Lane and president of Hull’s Dockers’ Union: “not knocked out” after the great strike of 1893, bound over for demanding an extra man on an orange gang — and remembered as the man “asked to go to London to meet Keir Hardie”.
• Behind them, John Henry the bricklayer — married to a woman the 1861 census had dismissed in one bleak word, and dead in the Hull workhouse; David the freeman-mason of Grimsby, dead at 38; and at the top William (~1771–1838), whose parents are the family’s wall — with the documents that could break it named on his page.

Three of Mum’s own kept documents anchor the line — Joan’s birth certificate, the 1854 marriage certificate, and Mary Ann’s 1866 death certificate — beside register pages read in the clerks’ own hands from Brocklesby, Grimsby, Sculcoates and Lowgate.

The Drewery line — Mum’s own name, back to the grazier of Fleet

Mum’s side of the family now runs written and evidenced from her own father back to about 1726 — six generations of Drewerys, from the silt fens by the Wash to Hull. The family tree now opens their chapter too: press “open Drewery” on the first marriage and the page becomes theirs — “The Drewery story” in three paragraphs, and their own journey map: south Lincolnshire, north over the Humber, and into the East Riding.

• Bill — Mum’s father — with the 1939 Register and his 1940 marriage certificate read word for word; Tom, platelayer, soldier and Observer Corps man, his army record “exemplary”; and William, who left the fens for the East Riding — and whose name the Ordnance Survey may still carry, at Drewery’s Sock Dike on Wawne Common.
• Robert (1811–1884) of Long Sutton and Holbeach — his baptism’s father-name puzzle solved the measured way, and Mum photographed outside the chapel at Moulton Chapel, her great-great-grandmother’s birthplace.
• Jonathan German (1768–1837) — three marriages read from the registers, a duck-thief transported for seven years, and a widow in the Spalding workhouse.
• At the top, Jonathan Jarman Drewery (~1726–1794), grazier of Fleet, churchwarden, noticed in the Gentleman’s Magazine — and the family’s great unanswered question: where he came from. His page carries the whole hunt, what it ruled out, and exactly which documents at Lincolnshire Archives could still answer it.

Several of the register pages shown were photographed by Mum herself in the record offices, years ago — her own research, finally on the page it proves.

The Brock line is complete — back to 1544

The whole Brock male line is now written and evidenced: nine generations, from George the Tetney miller back to Robert Brocke, born at Belton on 2 August 1544 — six years after England’s parishes were first ordered to keep registers. Every generation is anchored to a register page, and most now show the page itself, in the clerk’s own hand.

• Robert’s birth — “Natus Robtus Brocke, filius Robti” — sits on the earliest, most worn leaves of the Belton book, the year written out in full Latin words. His father’s name stands one name beyond, at the very edge of the written record.
• The Civil War nearly erased the middle of the story: two of the marriages that carry the line were never recorded at all. The line holds on the baptisms — George Brock (1619)’s page shows exactly how, on the very register pages where Latin gives way to English and the entries thin to nothing.
• New families found along the way, each with their own page: the Wards of Epworth and Owston Ferry (Susanna’s parents and grandparents, traced through a marriage of 1671), Elizabeth Taylor of Belton, Alice — the widow who carried the family through the Commonwealth — and Anna Fox of Crowle, whose christening in 1562 is the oldest record on the site.
• The family tree now opens with “The Brock story” — the whole journey in three paragraphs, and a truer map: Belton first, Haxey after; yeomen of the commons long before the mills.

Where a claim is only probable — an identification the registers make likely but cannot prove — the person’s page says so plainly.

Two lives written in full — George and William Henry Brock

The first two lives are written in full. George Brock (1824–1869), a master miller at Tetney, and his son William Henry Brock (1856–1926) — the two generations either side of the family’s move from rural Lincolnshire to the mills of Hull — now each carry a complete, evidence-backed biography.

• George’s newly found death certificate records the cause his family long wondered about — smallpox, in January 1869, with a fellow miller rather than his wife at his side.
• William Henry’s life traces a long climb — from a boy of thirteen uprooted to Hull, through the oil mills and the labouring trades, to a grocer’s shop and, at the last, a home in Reckitt’s Garden Village.
• One question stays open on his page: which oil mill William Henry worked at in 1881 — a thread now waiting to be pulled.

As ever, Mum’s original notes sit one tap away under “As Mum wrote it.”

The evidenced site is live

Every one of Mum’s 288 people is now in a proper database and rebuilt in the new design — each with their own page, a timeline of their life, the records that prove it, and their family a tap away.

• All four lines — Brock, Crabb, Drewery and Frith — are browsable.
• 73 record-scans (certificates, registers, censuses) are linked to the exact fact they prove.
• Every date is marked confirmed or estimated, so you can see what’s solid.
• Mum’s original words are preserved on every page via “As Mum wrote it”.

The quarter’s wives — the Barbers, the Thomases of Devon, and the 1921 census

Behind Ida’s line stand the deepest doors in Mum’s research: Rachel Barber’s family reaches back to a John Barber who died in 1589, and Jane Thomas’s people were Devon fisherfolk — George Henry Thomas came up from the Ipplepen country to Hull’s fishing streets. Behind Joan’s line wait the Wilsons, Houltons, Woods, Swains and Quickfalls; on the Drewery side, the wives of the fens and the two candidates for the top of that tree. And a batch of 1921 census households is queued for one buying session — the Ceylon Street shop, the Edinburgh Street coal yard with Ida aged nine, Bill at Sandholme, and old Samuel on New Bridge Road.