A possible route into family stories, and the religious leanings of one of my ancestors - more news from January

A possible route into family stories - a "life index"
 I've written several times about family history being more than just 'names and dates', that it's about the lives of our ancestors, and their other relatives, who they were, what they did, and the circumstances that impacted them. Even their hopes and fears, where possible. 

I've also mentioned that we should be recording our own stories because, one day, most of us will, more than likely, have become an 'ancestor'.

But I hadn't resolved the issue of how to make any of that easily accessible to future generations (or even to 'future me'!) or how to provide a 'way in' that might catch their attention and spark their interest.

For some years, I've tried to keep a "Master Timeline" record, in an excel spreadsheet, of what we, as a family, did on particular days.  It began as just a way of keeping track of some of the mundane things, like dentist and optician's appointments, but also included holidays, days out, and other key dates as the children grew up. 

It was designed to answer those inevitable questions of "When did we....?"

Maintaining the spreadsheet has been a bit erratic at times, particularly in the years when I've also kept a journal, and especially once the children left home. And I'd never seriously even considered how easy (or otherwise) the information would be for anyone else to access, since it was mainly just for me, and I knew what was in it.  

But, of course, one can ask a question the other way around - "What did we do on...?"

 For example, looking up all the 31st January entries, I can see that, in 1986, my parents' dog, Sadie, had to be put to sleep, that in 1998, one of my sons ran in the local primary schools' cross country championship, and, in 1999, he had a rehearsal for a school show. (and yes, on this date in 2012, there was a dentist appointment! ☺)

I've realised this as a result of a post by Taneya Koonce¹, another member of the Guild of One-Name Studies, whose blog I follow.  She posted a video about her "life index" journals, and it struck me what a brilliant idea this is, to have an index for every day of the year.  

It was one of those 'lightbulb moments', when an idea that I 'knew about' in some form, eg from the old 'birthday books' that some of us might have kept, or the 'on this day' notices on 'history' websites, suddenly became something I could actually use in a way that will help me to achieve what I want to.  

Taneya is in the US so, although I love the tree design on the front of her journals, those specific ones would take a while to arrive in the UK. There are similar ones available here but I have decided instead to go for a plain covered, larger journal (A4) which contains 400 pages (200 sheets).  That means I can include two pages for dates which I know I'll probably have lots of stories for (eg Christmas, or close family birthdays).  There'll also be some 'spare' pages that I can use to list stories where the specific date is unknown (eg my mother, as a child, using the bedsheets to climb out of her bedroom window, in order to try to avoid having a bath!)

As you can possibly tell, from the things I've listed above for the 31st January, just noting a key event on a day can act as a prompt for a family story - in those cases, what Sadie, the dog, was like and the things she got up to, as well as the childrens' sporting and 'theatrical' activities. 

As Taneya says, "writing things down doesn’t just preserve them. It activates them."

Another January discovery, the religious leanings of an ancestor
I had a lovely surprise early in the month, when I was contacted by a descendant of one of the step-daughters of my 2xgreat grandfather.  We had exchanged information some years ago but, recently, she had discovered that the burial register for Rowlestone, Herefordshire, is available on the Ewyas Lacy Study Group site.²

 

Now, I knew that my Thomas PARRY's second wife, Ann, had been buried on 19 September 1908, "without the burial service according to the rites of the Church of England", because that was information supplied to my dad, by a local vicar, back in the 1990s. 

But, what the vicar had not passed on, was that the register also gives the name of who performed the service, "William JAMES, Abergavenny", or that it was a noted as a Christadelphian funeral. 

Having discovered this, my contact had then spent time working through the Christadelphian Magazine archives, from which she was able to discover that:

    - My Thomas PARRY and his wife, Ann were both formerly Methodists

    - That they were baptised by immersion and received into fellowship with the Christadelphians in May 1900

    - That their home in Walterstone was used for meetings

    - That their names occurred several times among those from Walterstone who met with the brethren in Abergavenny

    - and that, when Thomas PARRY died, in February 1918, the Christadelphians noted that "we were not allowed to take any part in laying our brother to rest." 

Did other members of the family not approve? 

Or was it the minister of the church where Thomas was buried who objected? 

Or could it have been simply because he was being buried in the same grave as other family members, and a non-conformist burial would have required a separate grave? 

We'll possibly never know for sure. But Thomas PARRY was buried on the 26 Feb 1918, in Christchurch, Govilon, which comes under Llanwenarth Ultra, Monmouthshire, in the same grave as his first wife, Sarah, and their infant son, Lewis.

I'm very grateful to the researcher who, many years ago, uncovered the gravestone and supplied my dad with this photograph:

 

[Especially since, when I visited the graveyard some years later, in 2002, the particular area where this stone was, was totally overgrown. I found several of the graveyards around there were being allowed to 'return to nature', so the stone would have been almost impossible to find. ] 

Notes and Sources

1. Taneya's post on substack: https://taneyakoonce.substack.com/p/helping-dates-tell-stories-with-an

It's also on a Facebook reel: https://www.facebook.com/reel/950876704124479

2, Parish Registers on the Ewyas Lacy Study Group website:
https://www.ewyaslacy.org.uk/-/Digital-Archive-Index-to-Ewyas-Lacy-Parish-Registers/1700s-1800s-1900s/rs_DA_0051

DNA match numbers

 Like many people, I imagine, I've spent some of January doing a bit of 'sorting and planning' to help me achieve what I'd like to during the year.  

So now I just need to actually do the things I've planned!

One of the first tasks was to update the graph of how many close matches I have at Ancestry.  At the time of my last post, the review of 2025, the number had increased to 376 close matches.  I now have 378 close matches - and I also noticed yesterday that I had exactly 20,000 matches, in total, there. 

(But that total had already increased to 20,003 by this morning.)

Since I was interested in the rate of increase, I also looked at the change in the totals over the years:

The Ancestry test was launched in the US in 2012 and then in the UK, in January 2015.¹ One can see that, after an initial slow start, for me, the three years between 2017-2019 saw the most new close matches, with an average of 50 across those three years.  Numbers have since reduced, averaging 30-35 per year, but are quite variable.

 From the graph, many of the years seem to show a higher rate of increase in the early months of the year - probably due to the sales in December, and 'Christmas gifting', which results in more kits being processed during those early months.

It will be interesting to see if the early part of this year shows the same sort of curve. Although kit prices at Ancestry were reduced, those of one of the other companies, MyHeritage, were even cheaper.  

And, with the news that MyHeritage was moving on to "Whole Genome Sequencing" (WGS)², perhaps more people will have opted to purchase kits from there instead?

Either way, I'm sure, with this change, there will be a surge in the numbers at MyHeritage - if only because of all those who have already taken DNA tests elsewhere now deciding to try the new test, as well. 

I admit it - I did too. ☺

My kit is currently in the "WGS in progress" stage, and I am looking forward to receiving the results.  It will be interesting to see how they compare to those received from the other companies I have tested with, and especially with those kits I transferred to MyHeritage.

Unfortunately, I've not been tracking numbers there in the same way, with those transferred kits - but perhaps it will be worth starting to do so, once these new results are in.

Notes and Sources

1. Launch dates of the autosomal DNA test at Ancestry: https://isogg.org/wiki/AncestryDNA

2. MyHeritage upgrading to Whole Genome Sequencing: 
https://blog.myheritage.com/2025/10/myheritage-upgrades-its-dna-tests-to-whole-genome-sequencing/

2025 NJTPs review

I thought I'd end this year with a quick review of how things have progressed with my family history research, and this blog, over the past twelve months - which basically consists of me looking at all my blog posts and seeing how many things I said I'd do, and whether I have actually achieved them, or not!  

The previous year had ended with a family get-together, which reminded me of "the need to focus on my own family history again - the unwritten stories, the wider research possible now that record availability is so much better than it was when my parents began their research in the 1980s, the opportunities that DNA provides in tracing more distant or 'lost' relatives...."  (January)

There's been very little visible progress with this, since my focus has still been on other things for most of the year.  However, I did make a start on sorting out my various family trees in FamilyTreeMaker (private, working, & public, etc), and hope to get that process finished, and the relevant trees synced online, in the early part of 2026, so that I can then build on them, when I (finally!) deal with my parents' research paperwork.  

In January, I noted that I had 345 DNA matches on Ancestry in the "4th cousins & closer" category.  While I haven't yet added this year's entries to my file, in order to produce a comparable graph, I do now have 376 matches in that category. So the numbers of closer matches are still steadily increasing.

Also in January, I wrote about my need to catch up with the best tools for working with DNA matches now, since I hadn't been keeping up with such things over the previous few years, especially since I had recently taken out the Ancestry "pro-tools" subscription.  Again, I haven't made much visible progress with that.  However, in October, I did attend the DNA seminar organised by the Guild of One-Name Studies, at Oadby, in Leicestershire.  That was an informative, and useful, day, and I shall be attempting to apply some of what I learnt over the next year.

In February, I mentioned DNA and pro-tools again, after receiving a couple of DNA matches who are likely to connect to me through my NAYLOR ancestry.  I still haven't written the post I originally planned to write, using data from my first and second cousins, to illustrate how useful it can be to see the quantity of DNA shared between shared matches - so that post has become a 'priority' for next year. 

But I was able to confirm the information about the NAYLOR monuments that I mentioned in February, adding photographs of them in March. The NAYLORs are a family that I will certainly be posting more about over this coming year, - their line was one of the larger branches that I needed to add to my FTM files, and, in October, I was also able to photograph a couple of the churches, in and near Hull, where the earliest known events in the family occurred.  I'll obviously be including the photographs, when I write about the events.

As well as the post about the NAYLORs in March, I had a little 'rant' about incorrect information that had been supplied to my Dad, some years before, relating to our JONES & SAUNDERS family in Breconshire, and also shared a bit about a different JONES family who, together with the HENGLERs, were involved in firework making and displays.  Major failure here, in that I still haven't finished writing the article about them that I mentioned, for the local Family History Society. (Despite undertaking Janet FEW's course, "Are You Sitting Comfortably? Writing and Telling Your Family History" with Pharos Tutors, in the meantime!  This is definitely no reflection on Janet, or the course, which was very good, and gave me several ideas on aspects I hadn't previously considered. But I deliberately chose not to do the assessed version of the course, and the year reinforces my experience, from several episodes in the past, which have demonstrated that I am not very good at meeting deadlines, even when I set them myself!  I think I prefer my experience after the Guild Conference this year, when I wrote a post about the Conference for my one-name study blog, and was pleasantly surprised to then be asked if it could be included in the Guild's Journal - definitely a less stressful process for getting something published. ☺)

In July, I took a look at Ancestry's 'clustering' and demonstrated how necessary the genealogical research still is, and identifying as many of your matches as possible through that, rather than relying on the clustering.  Clustering is not a 'magic bullet', and can be misleading, if considered on its own.  Using pro-tools to look at how shared matches are related to each other, and using that information to build out their trees, is a much more important tool, in my opinion.

Although one could be forgiven for thinking I had dropped off the face of the earth after July, considering the total absence of posts here, a cursory glance at my two other blogs would demonstrate I was still alive and well.  

But I do want to bring about a better 'balance' between the three blogs next year, since they each relate to areas that are important to me, and which I want to see progress in.  So, just as I have done with my one-name study blog, I am setting a 'pact' for myself - that I will try to make at least one post each month here, in my 'family history and DNA' blog.

And so I am including some 'intentions' here - hopefully I will be able to look back at the end of 2026, and say they are all completed!

  

Activities to do:

Family trees to bring up to date, and shared/synced as appropriate

Work through, scan, and clear, parents' paperwork

Improve family history 'administrative' documentation

Finish the 'firework makers' article

Write posts on:

1c and 2c DNA sharing

Graphing numbers of close matches

The NAYLOR family events

 (and making at least one post per month - current ideas for posts include: my current 'brickwalls', whether I have identified my first case of bigamy, an annual "% of my tree completed", and continuing with 'in depth' posts on particular ancestors, or couples.)

Also some "educational" intentions:

Use of AI tools

WATO and BANYAN, tools for analysing DNA relationships and complex genealogies

Check out Zotero, a tool I have seen recommended, to help manage references, 

Finally, if I compare what I have written above, which includes several 'failures', to what I think other people achieve during a year, it would be easy to feel a bit down. 

But Ancestry recently told me that I am a "Hint Hero!" 

So I thought I'd record their figures and, if they produce another set at the end of 2026, it will be interesting to see how they compare!  

I had 1,935 new hints, 188 of which came from new collections. 
I have viewed 2,679 records during the year.
Clues from my tree supposedly helped 30 other people this year.
Their Regions update uncovered new detail in 6 new regions
They rate my tree as 'good' (at 7.7)(which I know isn't really that good!)
 And I had 1,240 new DNA matches!

 

Happy New Year Everyone!

Clustering on Ancestry - a first look at the new Pro-tool.

 I sat down at my computer recently, ready to tackle one of my "ToDos", which was to read through my blogs from the last few months and create a list of all the things I have said I will do, in order to (try to!) keep myself 'on track' with those tasks.

Funny how plans can change! 

I'd previously seen a post by Debbie Cruwys Kennett, in the "DNA help for Genealogy (UK)" group on Facebook, which indicated that Ancestry was releasing a "clustering tool" for DNA matches. The tool is only available to those with Pro-Tools, which I currently happen to have. But the official Ancestry blog does state that "Some members will not be able to access this feature until December 2025." 

So I wasn't expecting to have access to it yet, although I was pleasantly surprised to see a few UK members reporting that they did.  I was then even more surprised to discover that I also now do.

I'm not going to spend time describing what the tool does, or how important 'clustering', or grouping one's matches on the basis of other shared matches, is - you can read about that on the official blog, at https://www.ancestry.co.uk/c/ancestry-blog/dna/dna-matches-by-cluster or on the Support page at https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/Matches-by-Cluster.

I've also written a couple of posts over the years, regarding genetic networks and clustering of shared matches, which you can find at https://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.com/2017/08/ancestry-shared-matches-and-new.html and https://notjusttheparrys.blogspot.com/2020/01/genetic-networks-simple-ones.html

But the aim of this post is to show that, even though analysis of shared matches using clusters is extremely useful, it is not some "magic bullet" that is going to instantly solve all your genealogical DNA problems.

The genealogical research is still going to be necessary, in order to make sense of the clusters.

At the moment, the clustering only involves matches who share between 65cM - 1300cM of DNA. Perhaps, unlike many in the UK, I am fortunate in that I have almost thirty matches who meet that criteria, through an assortment of first and second cousins, at varying levels of 'remove'.  This means I am seeing some clusters - but not the overwhelming numbers which, perhaps, many people in the USA are having to make sense of.

As with any new tool, it is also important to remember that the initial release by Ancestry is in a "Beta" mode, which means the tool is still 'being tested and actively developed'.  So it (or the results) are likely to change.

And they have certainly been doing that!

This was my 'first look' at the clusters. over the course of the initial days:

Even without knowing who any of the squares represent, those of us who have seen other clustering tools might find the first image a bit 'strange', since it looks as if almost all of the matches should fit into one of two main groups, each group containing some subgroups, rather than the two main groups being split up as they appear there.

When I next looked, the results had changed to the second image. "Great", I thought. "The system just wasn't properly taking into account the separation between my paternal and my maternal matches." 

On the third day (not shown), the results had reverted to the first image, with split clusters.  

Oh well - I did say the tool was in beta! :-) 

Currently, the results still appear as per the third image and I imagine they will stay like that until I receive some more close matches.

But how close does a match need to be to affect the clustering results?   [ps I don't know the answer!]

You'll note that I have stated the numbers of matches included at the top of each image.  The text might be a bit small so:

1st image - 24 matches

2nd image - 22 matches

3rd image - 23 matches

This variation in the number is something I noticed because I was trying to write this post, and was therefore privatizing the names.  

Since the clustering seems to be redone each time the page is visited, perhaps differences should be expected. 

But nothing had changed with regard to those close matches - there were no 'new' close matches received.  Whether more distant new matches were affecting the results, or whether the changes were due to Ancestry modifying their clustering calculations, I don't know.   

The loss of one of the matches, in particular, is intriguing, and helps to demonstrate the ongoing need for genealogical research, and not 'assumptions' about what the clusters are showing.

I'm going to deal with each side of my family separately.

Maternal Side

These are the maternal clusters - on the left, an image from the first day, when there were 24 matches included in total, 8 of them being maternal, on the right, the current results, which only includes 7 of the maternal matches:

The red cross shows the match that is no longer included - as you can see, it is someone who matches everyone in both clusters.  The clusters have also switched around (so the blue in the left hand image is now the purple in the right hand, and the pink in the left hand is now the blue in the right hand image, less the one match.)

I haven't yet identified one of the eight matches, but the following image indicates the relationships between the other seven matches and me:

It can be tempting to treat the various clusters as if they represent separate branches of our ancestry, with any overlap likely to be from a closer generation (who therefore combines DNA from both of the branches).  

But here you can see that: 

- all of the matches in the two clusters are from one side of my Mum's family. They do not represent both of my maternal grandparents.

- the 'now missing' match ("X") had been placed in a different cluster from their full sibling.

I already knew the relationship between the two siblings, "23" and  "X", through correspondence with them. And, since the clustering is only available to subscribers to the Pro-Tools, it was obviously possible for me to check Ancestry's predicted relationships for them, when they appeared in different clusters, which confirmed that they are full siblings. 

But, if they had been unknown matches, it might have been easy to miss, especially if the clusters had involved more people.  

Paternal Side

The clusters for my paternal side - just one image this time since, although one match did "disappear" after the first day, they did reappear again, and have remained included in the clusters since.

 

Two of the matches are so far unidentified, "6" and "11" but the following image shows where the other fourteen fit in my paternal side:

Once again, you can see that, if it wasn't for two of my first cousins, who will have received DNA from my paternal grandfather, all of the rest of the matches are on my paternal grandmother's side of my family. 

So, as with my maternal side, not all branches of my family are represented in the clusters.

And, just as close relatives (the two siblings) appeared in different clusters on my maternal side, this time, a parent is in a different cluster from their three children, and grandchild. 

Although Ancestry does give details about how they do the clustering on their support page, "Science of: Matches by Cluster", and indicate that the tool takes into account how matches match each other, using "sets of matches who are more related to each other than to your other matches," in order to end up with "Clear, organized clusters", you can see that the results don't always look like that!

Considering that the majority of people on my paternal side are all matching each other, it would be interesting to know more about what the different clusters are representing.  Matches 4, 5, & 7, as well as 1, 2 and 3, (the 'gold' group) will contain DNA from branches of my family that the 'pink' and 'purple' groups don't so, perhaps, when I finally do a more detailed analysis, not just of how much DNA is shared between all of us who are second and third cousins, but also combine that with who shares which ancestral lines, it might become clearer.

Comparing to the DNAGedcom Client App clustering

In the meantime, I thought I would also do a comparison to the clustering produced by the DNAGedcom Client app, using the same cM criteria that Ancestry does.  I have a total of 29 matches who fit into that range and since, with the Client app, it is possible to include "unclustered" matches (ie matches who don't have sufficient shared matches to create a cluster), they are all shown in the following diagram:

All sixteen of the paternal matches shown by Ancestry are included in the initial purple cluster, although not in the same order as in the Ancestry Clusters.  Again, I'm going to need to take a closer look at this - but I'm thinking that those Ancestry 'sub-clusters' might turn out to be more informative in the end.

The orange and blue clusters, which show some shared matching between them, are the eight original maternal matches included by Ancestry, along with one match that Ancestry didn't include ("1") 

The final four are all matches who were not included by Ancestry, no doubt because of limited shared matches.

Out of the additional matches: 

"1" - I don't know exactly where this match fits, because identifying the shared ancestry in this case is complicated because of immigration into the USA (possibly via Australia). But my current thought, based on pedigrees and research in the USA, is that they descend from a sibling of WN in the first generation shown on the tree.  That would explain why, although they appear in the cluster for my mother's paternal side, they do not match numbers 25-27, but do match 21-23 & X, who will all carry DNA from the same line (ie parents of WN, down through CN, and then JWFA.)

That would make them a 4c to me - however, Ancestry predicts that they are a "3rd cousin or half 2nd cousin 1x removed" (and I find it unusual for Ancestry's predictions to be closer than the genealogy suggests.  Several of my second cousins are predicted to be more distant than the genealogy indicates, to the extent that I have wondered whether the Ancestry predictions are slightly 'biased' by the multiple common ancestors many American testers seem to share with each other, since that creates a higher level of shared DNA for particular relationships, than we see in the UK. Thus causing predictions for some of our relationships to be more distant than the relationship actually is.) (I hope that makes sense! :-) )

The cousin matching is something I still need to look into more specifically among my matches - as is the possibility that there is a missing 'Frederick Nayl(o/e)r' at a closer level than the one I know of, who descends from a sibling of WN.

"2" and "3" are identified matches, who descend from my Mother's maternal lines, a branch not represented in any of the Ancestry Clusters

"4" is currently unknown but, given the shared matching to "2", is also likely to be on my Mother's maternal side 

And, finally, "5", the solitary match, is a 2c from my Father's paternal lines.

I have added the three known additional matches, to the following tree image, which combines my maternal and paternal lines.  I have also included a representation of where I currently think "1" descends from, as doing so should help to clarify their matching/not matching within that maternal cluster (the match themselves should be at either my mother's, or my generation):

As Ancestry develops the tool further, we know there will be changes to the cM limits, which will help to make the tool more useful.  Whether they also start to include 'unclustered' matches remains to be seen.

But, in conclusion, I hope this goes some way to demonstrating how necessary the genealogical research still is, in order to make sense of the clustering.  

JONES and HENGLER (HANGLER) update

 This is the final one of three updates about the documentary research I've been doing on my own ancestry during the past month.  This time, it concerns my firework making ancestors. 

I've started looking at this branch again, having made the 'mistake' of mentioning to one of my friends about how some of my ancestors used to produce firework displays at the ends of circus and musical performances.  I'd forgotten that my friend is involved with our local family history society, but I imagine it's not a coincidence that I was later contacted with the question, "Could you write a piece about them for the journal?"

Initial 'panic' - do I know enough to write something of sufficient interest to the local members?  And am I sure of all my facts?  This is another family whose period of activity starts in the late 1700s, and they originate in Germany, so much of the story is second hand, and that is always a concern when it comes to the reliability of the information.

But then FindMyPast’s newspaper collection came to the rescue - while the family primarily lived in London, they did travel around the country to put on performances and, lo and behold, there are reports of them putting on events in this very area.  So I am hoping to create an interesting piece, just summarizing the family line and their wider activities, before using the specifics from those events to provide the local aspect.  

Who knows, some of the readers' ancestors might even have been at the performances!

I'm not going to write much about the family here now, but I thought I'd just mention some of the recent discoveries, which aren't directly relevant to the article.

The earliest known ancestor for this family line is John Michael HENGLER, who was buried on the 18th February, 1802, in Southwark, London.  There are almost seventy family trees on Ancestry for him, some of which now show a birthdate of 1759, along with potential parents' names.  I hadn't seen this information before, which comes from a database on Ancestry called "Germany, Select Births and Baptisms, 1558-1898". But, since I haven't investigated the details further, and there are other pedigrees that give his birth as around 1740, I won't be adding these earlier generations to my tree just yet.  I have my doubts as to whether someone born in 1759 would have been old enough to have served as a Lieutenant in the Hanoverian Artillery, and developed the skills necessary for producing large scale firework displays, before moving to London in around 1780 and setting up a firework company three years later. (But I could be wrong!)

It is often helpful to research more widely than just one's own direct lines.  Whether that is in the form of a One-Name, or a One- Place, Study, or using the "Friends, Acquaintances, & Neighbours" (FANs) principle of developing clusters of the people who were connected to 'your' people, these methods of researching can be very helpful in solving some of the more difficult genealogical problems, such as identifying who is who, when there are several people with the same names and ages, in the same area, or when individual records have insufficient information to confirm identification.  It's useful to build up biographical profiles of the individual, and to ensure you aren't creating a 'fictional' person in your tree, through a mix of references that actually relate to several different people.

But sometimes such research doesn't (immediately) lead to a solution - just to another sad story.

In the 1841 census¹, John Michael's widow, Sarah, aged 70 and now remarried, so under the surname FIELD, was living with her daughter, Magdalen JONES, aged 45, along with a Harriet JONES, aged 5.  The occupations of Sarah and Magdalen were given as "artist in fireworks".  Their neighbours were an Elizabeth CANNON, aged 30, with two children, Elizabeth aged 4, and Sarah, aged 1.  Also in the house was a Thomas NASH, aged 20, and a Henry CORBY, aged 40.  Elizabeth CANNON and Thomas NASH were both listed as firework makers.  

I had previously seen that some pedigrees gave a maiden name of "CANNON" for Sarah, but it was only when searching recently that I found potential confirmation of this, in the parish records for St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, on Ancestry, where, on the 15th September 1783, "Michael HANGLER" married Sarah CANNON.  So I decided to purchase the birth certificate for the one year old Sarah CANNON, to see if that might eventually lead to more information about the earlier generations of the CANNON family. 

The certificate showed that Sarah was born on the 25 February 1840. Her father was a William CANNON and Elizabeth's maiden name was NASH.  Their address was Edwards Place, Westminster Road, the same as in the census entry.  

William CANNON and Elizabeth NASH are possibly the couple who married in St. Bride Fleet Street, London, England, on the 5th June 1830.  Sarah CANNON's birth certificate did not indicate that William was deceased but, as I searched the BMDs and newspapers, I soon discovered newspaper reports of two accidents he seems to have been involved in, the second of which led to his death.  I also found a record of his burial in St George the Martyr, Southwark, on 31 Jul 1839, aged 30.

The first accident was in 1835, and was reported in several newspapers.  The following is from the London Packet and New Lloyd's Evening Post, 08 July 1835, available through FindMyPast.

I am reasonably confident that this is the correct William CANNON, since he is described as an artist in fireworks, from Westminster Road.  But I have noted that it mentions his mother being present, but not the fact that he was married.  (And it's a shame that the report doesn't give his mother's first name!)

The second accident, which led to his death, took place in 1839.  Again it was widely reported - the following being from the Blackburn Standard, 31 July 1839, available through FindMyPast.

Another article, from the Morning Herald (London), 27 July 1839, indicated that William CANNON had told his wife, after his admission to the hospital, that the boy, on leaving the room, had "slammed the door sharply after him, and that the current of air caused by the violent shutting of the door, blew a spark from the candle into some firework composition which was spread on a bench to dry.  The fatal explosion instantly took place."

Elizabeth must have been in the early stages of pregnancy at the time of William's death, since the articles only mention one child, and Sarah was born seven months later.  The reference to Elizabeth's brother in the article suggests that the Thomas NASH in the 1841 census might be that brother.

So that's one sad story.

There's a potential second sad story, which stems from a greater appreciation that "John Michael HENGLER" can appear as just "Michael HANGLER", and that it's therefore worth searching for  HANGLER entries, as well as "HENGLER", "ENGLER" etc.  

I'd probably always known this, at some level, because the baptisms of two of the children usually recorded as born to John Michael and Sarah HENGLER (Henry Michael, bapt. 30 June 1784, and Magdalen Elizabeth, bapt. 8 June 1788), as well as the burial of a third child, (Tobias Joseph, bur. 1 Sept 1786), are all under the surname HANGLER in the  "All London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812" database on Ancestry, with the parents listed as Michael and Sarah (ignoring the one record that has the father as "Richard" - despite the image clearly showing Michael!)

A search on Ancestry (UK and Ireland) produces 120 results for HANGLER, and on FindMyPast (Britain), just 44 results, so it is not a common spelling.  When I narrowed the dates down to an expected range for children to John Michael and Sarah, in addition to the known London events, I found a burial of a Barbara HANGLER, daughter of a Michael, in Hull, on the 31 October 1791.  Intrigued, I tried the HENGLER spelling, and found, not just the baptism of Tobias Joseph in London (8 Mar 1786), but also the baptism of a Barbara HENGLER in Nottingham, on 28 Mar 1790, parents Michael and Sarah.

The HENGLERS are known to have travelled around the country producing firework displays.  The later generations certainly performed in both Nottingham and Hull². 

Although I haven't been able to find any newspaper reports of them being in those cities, in those particular years, could it be that there was a fourth child, now long since forgotten in the modern accounts of the family? 

It would be interesting to know if the John Martin Turner Circus Research Collection³, which contains a family tree for the HENGLERs (along with a vast quantity of information relating to the family, and other circus performers), mentions Barbara.

Notes & Sources

1. 1841 census entry:  HO107; Piece: 1086; Book: 9; Civil Parish: St George The Martyr; County: Surrey; Enumeration District: 18; Folio: 10; Page: 13;

2. Newspapers containing adverts for displays of fireworks by the HENGLER family in Hull and in Nottingham appear in The Hull Packet 28 July 1807, and The Nottingham Journal 29 June 1838

3. Details about the John Martin Turner's Circus Research Collection, held at the National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield Library: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/2c11bc5a-26a5-343a-9fc2-dd1dfe2f420f , https://archives.shef.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/10 .

JONES and SAUNDERS update (and possibly a little rant!)

 This is the second of my three surname updates for March.  This one was prompted by a query from a cousin's son, who is also researching his family history.  Our shared ancestry is on the paternal side of my family and the query specifically related to my 3xgreat grandparents, William JONES (abt 1809 - 1887) and his wife, Hannah, formerly SAUNDERS (abt 1814 - 1890) who lived in the parish of Llanigon, Breconshire.

Now, I've never properly researched this couple - like many of my 'non-PARRY' branches, the original research on them was carried out by my Dad, who started researching in the early 1980s.  Dad was a conscientious researcher of both local and family history.  However, compared to today, very little information was easily available and so he often did have to rely on (frequently paid) researchers for sources, such as parish registers and censuses. These records tended to be held in London, or in archives local to the relevant area.  Since my parents have now passed away, it's always been my intention to go through all their old paperwork, to confirm (or disprove) the details of our family, and also to develop the research further, particularly now that DNA testing makes it possible to be even more certain about connections.

But that's still on my "ToDo" list.

The details being queried were Hannah's birthplace (Ruhlen, Radnorshire, according to Dad's information, rather than Llanigon, Breconshire, which every census that includes a birth parish indicates), and the maiden name of Hannah, since the only marriage entry for those names seems to be in Bedwellty, Monmouthshire, on 29 July 1834, whereas there is another possible marriage of a William JONES to a Hannah WILLIAMS that took place in Glasbury, a parish on the border of Breconshire and Radnorshire, on 1st August 1835.   Since 'my' William and Hannah are living in Glasbury in the 1841 census, this later one does seem to be the more likely marriage.

But that doesn't make it the right one!

So, over last weekend, I went through some of Dad’s correspondence and found that he had obtained a possible birth certificate for my 2xgreat grandmother, Sarah JONES, back in 1994.  The birth at "Tregoid" (usually spelt Tregoyd), one of the hamlets in Glasbury, Breconshire, took place on the 21st July 1842, and Sarah was the daughter of a William JONES and Hannah, formerly SAUNDERS.

As I read through Dad's correspondence with researchers in the area, I could see that there were times when he doubted whether this was the correct birth registration.  But, eventually, he was able to obtain the birth certificate for one of Sarah's brothers, Lewis, who Dad had identified by working back from the details for an elderly aunt, who used to live with Dad's family, when he was growing up.  Again, the certificate showed the maiden name of Hannah, Lewis's mother, as SAUNDERS.  So I was reasonably confident that the mother's maiden name was correct but, just to add more evidence, I searched in the GRO for birth registrations of the other children.  Interestingly, some of the children's births were registered, but others' were not:

The children of William and Hannah JONES:

I have heard it said that, in the early days of civil registration, when the responsibility for getting births registered lay with the Registrar, rather than the parents, some people viewed baptism as an 'alternative' and therefore did either one, or the other.  It would be purely speculation on my part, to suggest that William and Hannah might have been acting under this impression, registering Sarah maybe because it was easier (or the Registrar followed up the birth) and then, not registering Jeremiah, possibly because the minister insisted on baptising both Jeremiah and his older sister, making baptism seem more important.  

I'll never know, but it can be interesting to ask "Why?" when we find variations in our ancestors' behaviour over time. 

Anyway, purchase of the digital image for the registration of Thomas's birth, also showed his mother's maiden name as SAUNDERS, and I haven't found another family in the censuses etc, whose children could account for these civil registration entries.

I also knew there was potentially additional confirmation of a SAUNDERS connection, based on a DNA match from 23andMe, who I had been in contact with some years ago.  They descend from a brother of Hannah - he, and Hannah's parents, Daniel SAUNDERS and Elizabeth, formerly LEWIS, emigrated to America.  But the shared DNA is only a 14cM segment so, although it is suggestive of the SAUNDERS link, it was always possible that we share other ancestry from the area, so I couldn't rely on the DNA alone. There needed to be documentary evidence, as well.

So, that was Hannah's maiden name dealt with - but what about that "Rhulen" birthplace?

I eventually traced that back to what appears to be census entries supplied to Dad in 1993, by a researcher in Gwent:

Now, it's apparent that the researcher has added some additional details (census enumerators can't usually forecast death and burial dates! ☺)  

But, knowing the format of a census entry, I think most of us would probably read the 1851 details as if the birthplaces have been transcribed from the census.

However, these are the relevant portions of the actual census entries, from Ancestry:

1851 census:

1871 census

Since the images might be a bit hard to read, working down from William, the birthplaces are: Llanigon, Llanigon, Glasbury, Glasbury, Llanigon, Glynfach, and all of them are in Breconshire.  

So, as you can see, the birthplaces that were supplied to Dad, as if from the 1851 census, for Hannah, and three of their children, are totally incorrect.

The age for Thomas in the 1871 details is also wrong, since it is 19, not 10!

Perhaps I'd be doing the researcher a disservice, if I had a little rant, about how wrong the information is.  Perhaps they only had access to an index of names and ages, and everything else was just what the researcher 'thought' was correct.  

But it is not clear!  

There is no indication that other sources were used, even when, later, Dad queried the information.  So, as a result, my Dad spent years searching for Hannah's birth in the wrong place! 

Of course, it’s not just individuals who make such mistakes - during the course of checking the records for this family, I discovered that some marriages in Grosmont, Monmouthshire appear on Ancestry as having taken place in Cwmcarvon, Monmouthshire. And some burials in Llanelli, Breconshire appear on FindMyPast as being at Llanfihangel Pontymoile. 

Is it any wonder that we sometimes struggle to find the records we are looking for!

NAYLOR/NAYLER family research update

 I’ve been making progress with several branches of my family over this past month and, rather than lumping all the activity on them together into one ‘mixed bag of updates' post, as I had originally intended, I'm going to split them into three smaller posts, relating to each surname. So this first post is about progress on the NAYLER (NAYLOR)¹ line.

As I wrote on 5 February, when following up two recent new DNA matches at Ancestry, I have a cluster of matches who all seem to connect to me through the NAYLER family. I'd therefore made a start on confirming the information for that branch, which previously was just in a rough version derived mainly from other people's trees. I ended that post with details of a possible epitaph in St John The Baptist Church, Gloucester.  

Looking on Wikitree later, I discovered that someone had created a profile there for the Herald, George NAYLER (1764-1831)², along with profiles for his wife & three children.  I'm assuming that this was possibly done because George classes as a 'notable person', since the profiles for George and two of his children had then been orphaned.  So I have adopted those. I also created a free space profile for the epitaph³, which will provide another way of showing the connections between members of the family.  I do like the ability to include such pages on Wikitree, along with 'Research Notes' etc, on individual people's profiles - one of my concerns about family tree programs has always been that, once people are connected as parents/children to each other, it isn't obvious what evidence the relationship is based on, and it becomes more difficult to identify those connections that are just based on assumptions.  These options on Wikitree can be used to make it clear what information is reliable and what is still speculative.

One of the next steps was to try to confirm the epitaph.  Searching for St John The Baptist Church in Gloucester, I discovered that it still exists, but is now a Methodist Church called St John's Northgate⁴.   It seemed a bit strange to contact a minister directly, just to ask about their building, but eventually I decided to send an email.  Of course, I didn't realise that, the very next day, at the Malvern Family History Fair, there would be a stand from the Gloucester Family History Society and volunteers there very kindly also took details of my query.  

And so it is that I now have, not just confirmation that the monuments still exist, but photographs of them, from both sources, as well as a copy of a booklet showing all the monuments in St Johns, produced by the late Alan Morgan, who was a member of the church. Credit is also given in the booklet for information supplied by Dr Robert Tucker.

My thanks to the staff of the Methodist Church, and to the volunteers, Sue and Dave, from the GFHS, for dealing with my query. 

Updating the pages on Wikitree is one of my next tasks.

As well as adopting the profiles of the Herald and two of his daughters, I had created profiles for his father, George NAYLER (1722 - 1780)⁵, and for his grandfather, Joshua NAYLER (abt 1683 - 1750)⁶, who are both mentioned on the memorial.  

Joshua NAYLER, who died on the 14th December 1750, and was buried in St John's⁷, was described as a "Captain" in the epitaph, and is currently the earliest known ancestor in the NAYLER line. So he makes a good starting point for adding information about the rest of the descendants.

However, there is already an issue with regard to Joshua - who did he marry?

Over twenty family trees on Ancestry have claimed the marriage of a Joshua NAYLER to a Mary WISE, which took place in St Martin-In-The-Fields, London, Westminster, England, on 5 Sep 1717⁸, as the relevant marriage for Joshua, before his children were all born in Hull between 1719-1724. 

The marriage in London is currently the only marriage that appears on Ancestry for a Joshua, at about the right time, so I can understand why people might think that this one ‘must’ be the correct one.

However, FindMyPast shows a marriage of a Joshua NAYLER to a Mary GALL as having taken place on 30 Jan 1718, in Cottingham, Yorkshire⁹, and I wonder whether this might be a more likely marriage, considering that Cottingham is only about four miles away from the centre of Hull.

The marriage was by licence and I now have a copy of the licence from the Borthwick Institute for Archives, at the University of York.  Some of the document is in Latin, but, as far as I can work out, Joshua was described in the initial bond portion as of Newland, in the county of York, yeoman, and then, by the time of the marriage, he was described as of the parish of Cottingham, a sailor, aged 24.  

His occupation as a sailor at that time could potentially fit with him being described as a captain in the epitaph by the time of his death. However, the age would mean he was born in 1694, which would only make him 56 in 1750, rather than the 67 as stated in the epitaph.

Unfortunately, as with so many early records, there isn’t sufficient information in any of the documents to conclusively connect relevant entries together.  Is it more likely that the age of the Cottingham Joshua (or on the epitaph) is incorrect, or that a couple, who were both described as of the parish in London when they married, then moved almost 200 miles north to settle down?

Or is there another possibility that doesn't even appear in the currently available databases?

Perhaps DNA might eventually help to answer this question, by indicating a connection to descendants of either the GALL, or the WISE, families.  However, since Joshua is my 6th great grandfather, any such matches are likely to be related to me at about 7th cousin level, which is well beyond the reliable level of autosomal DNA testing.¹⁰

So Joshua has now become the "brick wall" of my NAYLER ancestral line.  

Notes and Sources

1. Many of the sources mentioned here use the spelling NAYLER.  However, the more recent generations of my ancestors often appear in records with the spelling as NAYLOR. 

2. The profile of George NAYLER (1764-1831) Herald, on Wikitree: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nayler-58

        3. The Wikitree freespace page for the epitaph: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Nayler_epitaphs_%28said_to_be_in_St._John_the_Baptist%27s_Church%2C_Gloucester.%29

4. St John's Northgate: https://www.gloucestershiremethodist.org.uk/churches-old/gloucester-st-johns.html

5. Wikitree profile for George NAYLER (1722 - 1780): https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nayler-126

6. Wikitree profile for Joshua NAYLER (abt 1683 - 1750): https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Nayler-127

7. Source for Joshua's burial: "Ancestry.com. Gloucestershire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1813 [database on-line]."

8. The (potentially incorrect) marriage, included on many Ancestry pedigrees, is from the "Ancestry.com. Westminster, London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1558-1812 [database on-line]", as well as appearing in the "Ancestry.com. England, Select Marriages, 1538-1973 [database on-line]."

9. The Cottingham marriage is in the "Yorkshire Marriages" and the "Yorkshire, Archbishop Of York Marriage Licences Index, 1613-1839" on FindMyPast

10. The reliability of Autosomal DNA testing: https://isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA