The Gamekeeper’s Daughter

Thomas William, the younger brother of Robert DENNIS (Monday’s post) married Mary Eleanor GORING in 1880. She was born at Beaumanor Park, Leicestershire, where her father was a gamekeeper to William Perry HERRICK. I checked on this representative of the landed gentry to see how distinguished he was and my spirits lifted to discover he had been photographed by Camille SILVY. When I first became entranced by the Art of Photography, Camille’s River Scene was an early favourite.

Courtesy J. Paul Getty Museum, Open Content Program

You can read about the photograph here. Camille Silvy spent some years in London and made many portraits, including this self-portrait with a young boy. William Perry Herrick is just William on the FamilySearch Tree, with the male line stretching back to the 13th century but he died without issue.

I don’t lnow why Beaumanor’s gamekeeper moved up to Yorkshire. In 1881 he is enumerated at the Keeper’s Cottage in Kirby Knowle with his wife, their recently married daughter, son in law and perhaps their first grandchild, Thomas Goring DENNIS.

In the next ten years Mary Eleanor gave birth to five more children but died in 1891, aged only thirty-three. Four years later, Thomas William married a widow whose husband had likewise died young, leaving her with three children aged two to five. All of these children have yet to be brought together on the Shared Tree.

Bird 93 · Wigeon♂

The Brothers Dennis?

Robert DENNIS married Sarah Jane HARDWICK, the younger sister of the little girl assaulted on 5 December 1860 in Nether Silton. Robert was 12 years old at that time, living two miles away at Mill Hill, Kepwick. His wife-to-be was just two.

Robert was baptized in Over Silton Church on 1 October 1848 by John OXLEE, the incumbent. He was the sixth child of Thomas, a carpenter. and Jane nee HARKER. They appear to have had four children after Robert, but perhaps there were only three.

I could not find a birth registration for Robert and so guessed he had been born the previous month, September 1848. There is, however, a birth registration for Thomas Dennis in the December quarter of 1848. The notion that the boys were twins was fleeting. The births of both would surely have been registered and/or they would have been baptized together. I could not find a death registration for Thomas – or his enumeration in the 1851 census. It is Robert, aged two, at the Cooling House, Kepwick, with his parents and five siblings that year. Two of these were sisters called Mary Jane (6) and Mary (about six months old). The elder had been registered as “Margaret Jane”. This discrepancy made me think the parents were somewhat forgetful – so young Thomas and Robert were probably one and the same person.

I was surprised to discover that Robert married Sarah Jane in Bradford, when censuses indicated that neither family had moved far during their lifetimes. I had to look hard to find Robert’s whereabouts in 1871 but eventually –

So we can make that nine children born to Thomas senior and Jane. Both parents have seven or eight FamilySearch IDs, generated mostly by baptism records I’m guessing, though I have yet to tackle all of the merges. The Dennis family is “all over the place” on the Shared Tree. One of Robert’s IDs currently has him married to Sarah Jane but they are awaiting the arrival of the first of at least six children (and he only has one sibling, brother Henry). I hope to make some deliveries tomorrow.

Beach 125 · Butcher Haven

Another Impostor

Yesterday morning I returned Laura to her true family on the FamilySearch Shared Tree, with the intention of then marrying the younger Elizabeth HARDWICK to William GRAINGER. I didn’t find him with an existing ID in Sources and when I entered his name on Elizabeth’s details page I was told he didn’t exist and could therefore create him. I didn’t hit the button. I have failed to find people with IDs in sources before, only for them to appear on the Tree. Rather than possibly create a duplicate, I looked for William on the Tree – and found him married to Elizabeth LOFTHOUSE.

The Grainger Pedigree is extensive with some of William’s forebears being well-sourced and illustrated, making my comment on Thursday that there was little apparent interest in the Hardwick family seem foolish.

I draw your attention to Elizabeth Lofthouse’s fifth child. Yep, she gave birth to all of Elizabeth Hardwick’s children.

I already had the birth registrations for the six children, all bearing Hardwick as the Mother’s Maiden Surname but, out of curiosity I looked for Lofthouse representation in Over and Nether Silton – and came up empty.

My next step was to message a recent contributor to this corner of the Shared Tree. Ireceived a same-day response with an assurance that things had been put right. Miss Lofthouse remains a woman of mystery but she has gone from the Shared Tree now and can be forgotten.

I have added a few sources today and will give Elizabeth Hardwick and William Grainger some grandchildren soon – though maybe other contributors will beat me to it. The changes Rosemary and I have made will be seen by at least five interested people.

The Grainger ancestors will take you back to 16th century England and forward to a wonderfully illustrated colonisation of the United States.

The Hardwicks have not been as thoroughly researched but I was pleased to find several family headstones on Find A Grave. Elizabeth’s younger sister, Sarah Jane, has yet to be married on FamilySearch but, after spending some years in Middlesbrough, she returned home. Her husband, joiner and wheelwright Robert DENNIS, became landlord of the Gold Cup Inn. Fifty years after Elizabeth was enticed from the Inn by John HOGGART, Robert and Sarah Jane are enumerated there in 1911 and remembered in All Saints churchyard, Nether Silton.

Looking at Filey REDUX

adventures in the kin trade

Kepwick