Could it be the Lyfords of Pangbourne?

 

Sometimes there is not enough information about people to be able to trace their families back further. There might be an approximate year of birth, but no indication of where that may have happened. Searching for possible matches if the surname is fairly common borders on the impossible. But on occasions a ray of light – a clue in a descendant’s name, for example – may help solve the puzzle.  Pea-Bee thinks he may have crack the code to trace back – at least on one side - a couple called John and Elizabeth Bradley. To show his workings, Pea-Bee will start in the middle of the story.

John and Elizabeth Bradley were living in Fulham, south west of London, from at least 1810, when their first known child, Henry, was born there on 26 June 1810 and baptised at All Saints’, Fulham, 19 days later. Over the next decade, Henry was joined by two siblings that we know of for sure – Mary Bradley, baptised at All Saints’ on 3 December 1815, and Jane, baptised 20 September 1818.

Their father’s occupation on both occasions was listed as labourer.

There is a possible fourth child, John, baptised at All Saints’ on 4 February 1821 but his father’s occupation is given as maltman and no further records have been found.

Sometime before 1824, John and Elizabeth moved their family down the Thames to the Deptford and Greenwich area. This is where their next child, William, was born on 5 August 1824. However, he was not baptised until the following Easter – 3 April 1825 – and he had been taken back to All Saints’, Fulham, for this event. Once again, his father was listed as a labourer.

On 30 March 1827, another son was born to John and Elizabeth and he was baptised George at St Alfege’s, Greenwich, on 10 August 1828. The family’s home was given as Greenwich Road and John was described as a coal porter.

Young George died when he was just two years old and was buried at St Alfege’s on 19 April 1829 when the Bradleys were living in Blackheath Road.

The next recorded event effecting the Bradley family was the marriage of Henry to Mary Ann Briant from Greenwich. The marriage took place at St Luke’s, Charlton, on 19 February 1837. The church of St Luke in Charlton became a popular venue for marriages in the Bradley family: certainly William was married there in 1850 and it is believed that Jane was wed there in 1841.

The 1841 census reveals much about the Bradley family – but sadly not quite enough as will be seen later.

Most of the family were living in Lewisham Road and the household comprised: John Bradley, aged 55, coal porter; Elizabeth, also 55; Mary, 25; Jane, 20, dressmaker; William, 15, coal porter; and Lydia, 7 months. John, Elizabeth, Mary and Jane were all said to have been born outside the county of Kent, while William and Lydia were born in the county.

The three roads – Greenwich Road, Blackheath Road and Lewisham Road – converge at the foot of Blackheath Hill in the area known then as Limekilns.

Henry and his new bride Mary Ann were just round the corner in Friendly Place and Henry, like his father and brother, was a coal porter.

Lydia Matilda Bradley was the illegitimate daughter of Jane, born on 27 October 1840 and baptised at St Paul’s, Deptford, on 24 January 1841. In the baptismal records, the “father” was recorded as William Bradley, coal heaver of Lewisham Road, Limekilns. In fact, this was Jane’s teenage brother who was probably acting as Lydia’s godfather.

The 1841 census was taken on 6 June and Mary Bradley was listed without an occupation, probably because she was unwell: she died shortly after the census, on 17 June, and was buried at St Alfege’s on 27 June.

In the third quarter of 1841, Jane married George Mayze, a horse keeper from Great Stoughton in Essex, and Lydia was to take his surname.

More about the Mayze family and the later life of Lydia can be found in a series of blogs written several years ago and published by Pea-Bee under the title The Barham Saga.

During the 1840s Henry and Mary Ann moved to Westminster. In 1851, they were at 47 Peter Street, between the Millbank Penitentiary and Westminster Abbey. Henry was described as a labourer at a wharf and Mary was a laundress.

Ten years later, they were still in the same area, at 44 Charles Street, and Henry was a horse keeper but no occupation was given for Mary.

A decade further on, they had crossed the river and were living just the other side of Lambeth Bridge, at 15 Little Canterbury Place. Henry was by then a carman.

It would appear that Henry and Mary Ann never had any children – or, if they did, none survived to be recorded in any census. It is not known when Henry or Mary Ann died.

William Bradley remained in the Deptford/Greenwich area, working as a carman, coal heaver, and eventually as a coal wharf manager. He married Tabitha Morton in at St Luke’s, Charlton, on 14 January 1850. Tabitha already had an illegitimate daughter, Sarah Ann, who was born on 23 January 1847 in Bucklebury, Berkshire. After the marriage, Sarah Ann was given the Bradley surname, and William and Tabitha had another four children, all born in Deptford:

Evangeline Bradley, born 3 March 1854

John Morton Bradley, born 3 February 1857

Henry Liford Bradley, born 2 March 1861

Albert Edward Bradley, born late summer 1867

 

Going back in time

 

At the beginning of this blog, Pea-Bee said he was starting this story in the middle – and it has been fairly easy to trace the descendants of John and Elizabeth Bradley. It is their origins which are harder to ascertain.

John Bradley died on 6 July 1846 and was buried at St Alfege’s on 12 July. His age was given as 64, putting his birth as 1782.

His widow Elizabeth died two years later on 2 October 1848. She buried at St Alfege’s on 8 October and her age was stated to be 62 – putting her year of birth as 1786.

The only other information we have on them is from the 1841 census which tells us that neither was born in Kent. Great! That just leaves the leaves the rest of England – plus Wales. (The census would have noted if either were born in Ireland, Scotland or overseas).

However, it is known that they were in Fulham region when their first child was born in 1810. Looking at possible marriages in the 10 years prior to 1810 of a John Bradley to anyone called Elizabeth, there were 89 entries in Findmypast. Of course, many of these were duplicate transcriptions of the same event made by different organisations. Some were records of the banns or the issue of licences as well as the actual marriages themselves, but all in all, there were dozens of possibilities. However, the Bradley surname was more common in Northern England and so Pea-Bee concentrated on those in the south and the ones close to the end of the decade.

 

The Lyford Possibilty

Of all the various possible brides, the most likely is “Elizabeth Lyverd” who was married to John Bradley on 23 July 1809 at St Marylebone.

However, it is most unlikely that her surname was Lyverd – the marriage is the only record of anyone with this name – and it is more likely that her name was Lyford, sometimes spelt Liford, the error occurring because the clerk making the entries in the parish records misheard the name. Both bride and groom could only make their marks in the register and so would not have seen the error.

If she was Elizabeth Lyford or Liford, it would explain why one of her grandchildren was named Henry Liford Bradley.

There are only two other instances of anyone with the Lyverd spelling in either Ancestry or Findmypast databases – one, an Ann Lyverd who was married in Tring, Hertfordshire, in 1598; the other Sebastian Lyverd who was married in Reading, Berks in 1609/10. These published records are transcriptions, and therefore suspect – and indeed Sebastian appears as Lyverd in one transcription and as Lyvord in another. While the spelling Lyvord sometimes appears in census returns for Farnborough in Berkshire, the parish records record the same people as Lyford.

 

The Pangbourne Possibility

The Elizabeth Lyford who most closely matches the bride of John Bradley was born in Pangbourne, Berkshire, early in 1786 – she was baptised on 15 January, the second daughter of John and Mary Lyford. Her elder sister was Jane who was baptised on 2 March 1784.

John Lyford was baptised on 12 February 1748. His parents were John Lyford and Martha (nee Wells) who had married in Pangbourne on 19 December 1746.

There is no record of the younger John’s marriage to Mary, and so her maiden name is not known, but they did have a third child, Richard, who was baptised on 6 May 1788, just four days before his mother was buried (10 May 1788). Richard himself only survived a few months and was buried on 16 August 1788.

With two young daughters, aged 2 and 4, to look after, John remarried on 6 December 1788. His new wife was Anne Mitchell, who was born in about 1753, but her origins are as mysterious as so many others in this tale.

John died in Pangbourne in 1813 and was buried on 12 September. Anne survived until 1841 and was buried on 3 January.

It is possible that John and Anne had a late addition to the family. In 1800, when Anne would have been about 47, a child called Martha Lyford was baptised on at Pangbourne with the parents given as John and Anne Lyford. There were no other Lyfords in the parish at that time but it could have been that John and Anne were claiming parentage to protect one of John’s daughters – Jane would have been 16 and Elizabeth 14 at that time.

Martha stayed in Pangbourne and married Jeremiah Pidgett there on 2 December 1820. Nothing more is known about Jeremiah – or indeed anyone else with that surname, but Martha Pidgett was buried at Pangbourne on 25 May 1826.

So if Elizabeth Lyford was the person who married John Bradley in Marylebone in 1809, what happened to her sister Jane? There is no record her in Pangbourne but there was a Jane Lyford who married Joseph Burgess in St Andrew’s, Holborn, on 10 October 1811. Unfortunately it has not been possible to trace either Jane or her husband after then.

 

Was the name Warren or Waring?

Or even Warring or Wareing or Wearing?

 

According to the register of marriages at Holy Trinity, Derby, on 1 August 1880 George Bathe married a woman called Elizabeth Warren, whose father was Joseph Warren, a dyer.

A misreading of the marriage certificate at the time of Elizabeth’s death in Queensland 40 years later meant that the local authorities recorded her father as Joseph Warren Dyer.

But this was not the only confusion over Elizabeth’s maiden name.

 

Elizabeth was just 18 years old when she got married, meaning there would have been only one census taken between the time of her birth and when she was married. That was in 1871 when she was nine years old and living with an aunt and uncle, Ann and William Keene, in John Street, Derby.

The census states she was born in Coventry, Warwickshire. Calculating back for the ages given in the census and at the time of her marriage, her year of birth would have been 1862. However, no birth of an Elizabeth Warren was registered in Coventry that year, or the any year either side.

Not only that, but none of the census records include a Joseph Warren in the region. There are, however, records of a Joseph in Coventry whose surname is variously spelt Waring, Warring, Wareing, Wearing and, on one occasion, Waren.

That this Joseph was the father of Elizabeth can be confirmed from a number of clues.

 

The Keene Family

First, the uncle and aunt with whom Elizabeth was living in 1871 – William and Ann Keene.

William Keene had been born in Coventry in about 1794. When he was 23 and living in the parish of Holy Trinity, Coventry, he married Elizabeth Sadler, also born in Coventry, but a year older. The marriage took place at Elizabeth’s parish church of St John the Baptist, Coventry, on 3 August 1817. The couple had at least seven children, three of whom are known to have died in infancy.

From the baptismal records of these children it is known that William was working as a weaver.

The first child, born in March 1820 in St John’s Bridge, part of the parish of Holy Trinity, was baptised William, after his father, in the parish church on 29 March but then buried there, when 6 weeks old, on 16 May 1820.

A little under a year later, when the second child Mary was baptised on 25 March 1821, the family were in Spon Street, in the parish of St John the Baptist. There they remained for at least 12 years.

The other children born to William and Elizabeth were all baptised at St John the Baptist:

Sarah, on 23 February 1823

A second William, baptised 3 October 1824 but buried 22 August 1826

Emma, 4 March 1827 buried 18 November 1846

Thomas, 16 November 1828

Samuel, 20 March 1831 buried 5 February 1832

It was soon after the birth of Samuel that the children’s mother died and was buried on 22 May 1831. Their father quickly got a new carer for them, and on 2 October 1831, widower William Keene married Ann Waring at St Martin, Birmingham.

Ann gave William another child, a son who was baptised William on 14 January 1833. This William survived into adulthood.

By the time of the 1841 census, William and Ann Keene, with their two youngest surviving sons, had moved to St Alkmund parish in Derby. Both William and Ann were described as silk weavers.

Sisters Mary and Sarah Keene were both silk winders and living together in a house in Full Street, in the parish of All Saints, Derby, and it was from Full Street that Sarah married fellmonger Joseph Gregson on 13 September 1841, with Mary as one witness.

In 1851, William and Ann were still in St Alkmund parish, at 42 Erasmus Street, with their son William, a 9-year-old granddaughter – Sarah Ann Gregson – and a 21-year-old visitor called James Stain. All four adults in the house were described as power loom silk weavers.

By 1861, William and Ann had moved into the parish of St Werburgh in Derby and were living at 236 Abbey Terrace. Also in the house was James Stain. Both William and James were still silk weavers, but Ann was now referred to as a seamstress.

The 1871 census shows that William and Ann were at 31 John Street, St Werburgh. With them in the house was Elizabeth Warren, Ann’s 9-year-old niece – and James Stain, the lodger. The males had left the silk weaving trade: William was now a provisions dealer and James Stain, a lamplighter. Ann continued as a dress maker.

William Keene died a year later in the spring of 1872. On 16 June 1873, Ann married the lodger, James Stain, and continued to live at 31 John Street – they were still there at the time of the 1881 census. However, the marriage took place back in Coventry, at St John the Baptist church, and both bride and groom gave their address as Spon Street. The witnesses to this marriage were Ann’s brother Joseph Waring and his wife Elizabeth. James Stain had been born in Foleshill, near Coventry, in about 1829 and so was some 16 years younger than Ann.

The Stains were still in Derby in 1891, at 32 Nun Street, with a new lodger, a 20-year-old general labourer called Henry Wright and Ann died at the beginning of 1894, aged 87. It is not known what happened to James Stain.

 

The Waring Family

Ann Waring, who became Ann Keene, and then Ann Stain, was born in Leicestershire in about 1813, by Elizabeth, the wife of William Waring. Ann had at least three brothers, William, James and Joseph, all born in Coventry between 1818 and 1825. Their father, William Waring, was described as a gardener when the children got married but had been listed as a labourer at the time of their baptisms.

The marriage certificates of the 1840s provide the next set of clues.

Ann Keene acted as a witness to at least three marriages in Coventry in the 1840s, each also involving members of the Waring family:

On 9 December 1844 James Waring married Eliza Muddeman, and the two witnesses were Joseph Waring and Ann Keene.

On 25 May 1845 Ann Keene’s stepdaughter, Mary Keene, married John Rollason and again the witnesses were Joseph, who signed his name Warring, and Ann Keene.

On 15 June 1846 Joseph himself was married to Elizabeth Oughton. He again signed his name Joseph Warring. The witnesses on this occasion were James Waring, who signed his name with one R, and Ann Keene.

Joseph and Elizabeth had seven children born between 1851 and 1868. One died in infancy but of the others, three called themselves Warren in later life.

The first four children were all baptised together on 26 December 1860 with the surname Waring, although the birth registrations varied: the eldest, Joseph, appears in the register as Warring in 1851, John as Wareing in 1854, Sarah Ann as Warren in 1856 and Eliza as Waring when she was born in 1859 and as Wearing when she was buried in 1862.

There are no records of the last three children ever being baptised, but the birth registrations were all with the name Waring.

Their mother Elizabeth died in the spring of 1878 and her death was registered with the name Waring.

Meanwhile, as the eldest boys got married, they were using the name Warren and not Waring. Joseph junior, for example, married Harriet Dowswell on 15 June 1873 at St John the Baptist, Coventry, and gave his name, and that of his father, as Warren. He continue to use that name until his death on 16 October 1917 and gave it to all his six children.

When his younger brother John married Elizabeth Samuels on 19 November 1877 at St Thomas, Coventry, the family name was given as Warren: for the groom, the father and for the two witnesses – Joseph junior and a sister, Sarah Ann, although she only made her mark and the name was written by the vicar.

When Sarah Ann herself got married, on 5 October 1879, to Thomas Olorenshaw, both her name and that of her father were given as Waring, although her brother Joseph signed his name Warren as one of the witnesses.

And when another sister, Emily, was married to Frederick Williams on 2 August 1884, she again was called Waring, as was her father.

While her sisters may have used Waring as their maiden names when they were married, Elizabeth, like her older brothers, used the name Warren when she married George Bathe on 1 August 1880 at Holy Trinity, Derby.

The final conclusive clue comes from the marriage on Christmas Day 1881, again at Holy Trinity, Derby, when their father, the widower Joseph Waring, married Elizabeth Marks. The register shows that the two witnesses to the marriage were George Bathe and Elizabeth Bathe.

Joseph retained the name Waring until his death at the end of 1901 – and gave it to the five daughters he had by Elizabeth Marks.

 

The Oughton Family

Elizabeth Oughton who married Joseph Waring was the eldest child of William Oughton and Mary Hollingshead.

William Oughton was baptised at St John the Baptist, Coventry, on 7 February 1803, the youngest child of Francis and Elizabeth. So far it has not proved possible to trace this couple back further beyond the fact that they were married on 16 February 1791 – the register has been damaged so badly that all that is known of Elizabeth’s surname is that it began with a B.

William married Mary Hollingshead at Holy Trinity, Coventry, on 31 August 1822 when he was 19 and Mary just 18. It would appear that she had been baptised on 21 November 1804 at Great Dalby in Leicestershire, the daughter of William and Ann Hollingshead. Again, it has not been possible to trace this family back further.

William was a watchmaker but he died when he was just 32. He was buried at St Michael, Coventry, on 6 August 1835.

William and Mary had had five children in all, with the youngest, Sarah, having been born the year before William’s death. Mary was to remarry, a ribbon weaver called Thomas Dowell, on 27 April 1837, and had three more children by him before she died eleven years later. She was buried at St John the Baptist on 12 March 1848.