Tag Archives: england

Family history, Jenkins

Richard Standish D’Ouseley’s complicated life

Rose Fitzgerald Meredith c 1914
Rose Fitzgerald Meredith c 1914

My stepmother Margo’s grandmother, Mary Sophie D’Ouseley, made a name for herself as a watercolor painter (a small selection of works is above) in the late 1800s. I remember Margo’s mother, Rose, had a few of  her mother’s paintings when we were kids – she lived with us for a few years in the 1960s when we were “between parents”. I had no idea about D’Ouseley family history – if Rose knew, she didn’t say, and of course we never asked at the time. Mary Sophie’s father, Richard Standish D’Ouseley, had died in 1886, long before Rose was born, and Mary D’Ouseley died when Rose was 2, so she never knew her mother’s parents.  Mr. & Mrs. D’Ouseley didn’t live together for a substantial part of their marriage so there’d have been no big family Christmas gatherings anyway. Fortunately, newspaper archives and online records help to sketch out parts of the D’Ouseley family’s story.

Continue reading Richard Standish D’Ouseley’s complicated life →
Family history, Williams

John Hewitt Hatfield-watchmaker to surgeon dentist

William Williams bow tie chart

John Hewitt Hatfield is my 3rd great grandfather – his daughter Jane married the brewer William Williams. John was born in Great Wigston – or Wigston Magna – in Leicestershire in 1821 (or thereabouts). His father, John, was a watchmaker from a nearby town, Husband’s Bosworth. Adding another lovely name, John Hewitt’s father died in Kibworth Beauchamp . I think the family may have been non-conformists (i.e. not Church of England) and records of John Hewitt Hatfield’s birth or baptism aren’t available anywhere I can find. Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths only began in 1836, so without a parish record of a baptism, later census records are the only source (and as they’re self reported, they aren’t always reliable).

Economic conditions in the Leicester area were pretty dire at the time, as an excerpt below from the May 1819 Leicester Chronicle points out. I can see why a young man in the late 1830s might head for London to see if he could do better for himself.

Continue reading John Hewitt Hatfield-watchmaker to surgeon dentist →
Family history, Williams

William Williams, brewer

Elberfeld
Elberfeld, William Williams’ birthplace

Other than wondering how one survived childhood with first and last names almost the same, I hadn’t thought much about my 2nd great grandfather, William Williams. I had him in the family tree and knew he was born in 1840 in Elberfeld, Germany, but lived in England as an adult, dying in Forest Hill, London in 1907. I don’t think we have a beer brewer anywhere else in the family tree, but William picked about the best time to get into the beer brewing business as it was booming in England in the mid- to late-1800s. He moved frequently from one beer-brewing town to the next in England and Germany and managed to make a decent living along the way. Not bad given the very rough start he had.

Continue reading William Williams, brewer →
Family history, Forster, Poulson

Born in London with ancestors in Utah?

21 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, London (picture courtesy Google Street View)
21 Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, London (picture courtesy Google Street View)

Deciding to take a DNA test has been a source of all sorts of surprises – an unknown cousin, for example. The discovery of Cornish mining ancestors for my husband’s family as another. My current puzzle is how a kid from Camden Town in London (photo on left is the flat my parents lived in) has DNA matches to a group of people who have been living in the USA since the 1860s. The more digging I do, the more clear the picture becomes with one small, but important, missing piece – how this group of related people in the US is genetically connected to me!

Continue reading Born in London with ancestors in Utah? →