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Topic: ARMSTRONGS of Ravensden (Read 6730 times)
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bedfordshire boy
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Posts: 4748
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Good find. So it was probably a second marriage for both. A William Wrench age 34 was buried at Thurleigh on 17 Jan 1819. It took a bit of a long time for her to remarry, but it all fits. So Mary Gammons was the mother of your Thomas (subject of course to confirmation from the PR that Mary Wrench was a widow on marriage to William Armstrong, widower!)
I wonder if Wilden PR will be helpful and give William's parish of residence for the 1816 marriage?
Chin chin
David
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Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukBeds: Cople: Luke/Spencer Everton: Hale Henlow: Cooper/Watts/Sabey Potton: Merrill Southill: Faulkner/Litchfield/Sabey Woburn/Husborne Crawley: Surkitt Hunts: Gt Gransden: Merrill/Chandler/Medlock Toseland: Surkitt/Hedge/Corn Cambs: Bourn: Bowd Eltisley: Medlock Graveley: Ford/Revell |
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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No worries, John - what a fascinating afternoon!
So your William 1791 Ravensden is in fact Upper Gravenhurst.
And my missing William 1839 is in fact William 1837 Ravensden.
Now here's a question. The Ravensden records in the IGI which supplied the baptisms of the children of Eleanor Green and John Armstrong in Ravensden are extracted records. Yet William is missing.
The BVRI has William, but doesn't have the later children Sophia 1841 and Emma 1843.
As both surely come from the same source, the parish records, why the discrepancies?
Having said earlier that the only Ravensden Armstrongs in 1841 were John Jnr and his family, I have now found a Ravensden population count for 1831 on the Beds CC website, and again, John Jnr and his family are the only Armstrongs.
"Only sixteen..." - showing your age, David!
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
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Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
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Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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bedfordshire boy
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 4748
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Hi Wendy
The BVRI has more than I've mentioned to date -
Ann 18 Sept 1836
Eliza 18 Sept 1836 with a year against it of 1833 which doesn't tie up with the 1841 census
Sophia 11 Apr 1841 with a year of 1831, which is totally adrift!
Emma 14 May 1843 (can't see her in either census)
Even worse is Rebecca 18 Sept 1836 with a year of 1795!
I have found the same thing in Southill where the year against the entry, presumably based on the age of the the child being noted in the register, has been calculated incorrectly. I wish they'd just add a note "age 4" or whatever rather than deduct 4 from the baptism year and put a year in.
I don't know why William should have been missed from the IGI - perhaps it was simply that - he was missed! Ravensden doesn't appear on the Hugh Wallis site, so possibly this is a fairly recent batch - it's different to the usual C batches in that it's all lower case. And the LDS has done weird things with recent extractions - like extracting only females. And looking quickly I can't see any male names after 1812, and a search against the batch number and "John" or "William" shows nothing after 1812. It might be that the PR has been fully extracted up to 1812 and females only thereafter.
Speaking of the IGI. it's better than it was yesterday, but still in go slow/error message mode for anything but the simplest search. One shouldn't complain about such an incredible free facility, but one does!
I still remain to be convinced about the Upper Gravenhurst William! One enumeration error Ravensden for Gravenhust perhaps, but two is pushing it, but not impossible. But I wouldn't want to hang my hat on that being the sole supporting evidence other than the age fits. I'd like to see what Upper Gravenhurst PR says about the about the 1807 burial and the Wilden PR about the 1816 marriage. Bit of a coicidence though, that an Armstrong from Upper Gravenhurst should pitch up in Ravensden where there's just the one Armstrong family. (Might John have been from Upper Gravenhurst? - although there's still no marriage)
But it does seem as though the Ravensden Armstrongs did eventually baptise their children, so why would they have missed William? But there is a big gap between Ann born 1791 (subject to this date from the BVRI being correct) and Edith in 1798. I never like large unexplained gaps!
Not so much as showing my age as finding it increasingly difficult to hide it! I have a 7 year old son who only knows songs from the 60's (plus Meatloaf)!
Regards
David
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Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukBeds: Cople: Luke/Spencer Everton: Hale Henlow: Cooper/Watts/Sabey Potton: Merrill Southill: Faulkner/Litchfield/Sabey Woburn/Husborne Crawley: Surkitt Hunts: Gt Gransden: Merrill/Chandler/Medlock Toseland: Surkitt/Hedge/Corn Cambs: Bourn: Bowd Eltisley: Medlock Graveley: Ford/Revell |
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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And there's me thinking I was the only one sad enough to be sitting at my PC at 7.30 on a holiday....
Thanks for the BVRI info - and yes, some of it is way out.
1833 for Eliza just doesn't work. She was 4 in 1841, 14 in 1851 (transcribed by Ancestry as 12, but the image says otherwise!) etc, and I have her memorial inscription as follows: "In Loving Memory of Lizzie Chandler. The Beloved wife of George Chandler, who peacefully passed away June 27 1921, aged 85 years. "Forever with the Lord". Perhaps she was 3 MONTHS rather than years at baptism - her birth could have been the trigger for the multiple baptism on 18 Sept 1836. (And how's this for a coincidence? Her husband George Chandler was baptised on exactly the same day in Marston Moretaine!)
1831 for Sophia is plain wrong. She was 1 in 1841. And not 10 till 1851! (Mistranscribed by Ancestry as 6.) I wonder if, like Eliza, her age at baptism was 10 months and was simply misread?
And as for Rebecca! Words fail me. Actually they don't - if you think about how things were physically written down, "4" could be misread as "41" - I have just seen a "4" on a census page with its downstroke written so far to the right it could easily be misread. That accounts for 1795!
Emma seems to have died in March 1851 - I haven't confirmed with a cert, but she is on FreeBMD thus:
Deaths Mar 1851
ARMSTRONG Emma Bedford 6 16
I had noticed that males and females are listed in separate batches in some parishes - J and K seem to be the prefixes. And I am pretty sure the Ravensden batch IS new - when I first looked at these Armstrongs about 6 years ago, there weren't any Ravensden baptisms. And Hugh Wallis doesn't list it, as you say.
As for JP's William 1791-ish, he DOES say Ravensden in two consecutive censuses. However, it's always worth remembering that even the images we see in the enumerator books are already first generation copies - and as some of the enumerators were practically illiterate, I can see how Gravenhurst could be misread as Ravensden. And of course the Ancestry transcripts are dreadful. I subscribe to the Genealogist and British Origins for more reliable transcripts!
The IGI has the baptism I put up yesterday - William the son of Thomas Armstrong and Phoebe Wisson was baptised in Upper Gravenhurst. In 1851 a Thomas Armstrong b 1799 with his wife Mary is in Upper Gravenhurst, with Phoebe his mother also in residence. His birthplace is given as Upper Gravenhurst, so at the time of his birth in 1799, Thomas Snr and Phoebe were not in Ravensden - indicating they are unlikely to have been there in 1791 either. And certainly in 1841 Thomas Snr and Phoebe and Thomas Jnr, Mary and all the little Armstrongs were definitely in Upper Gravenhurst.
So the William 1791 born in Ravensden and living in Thurleigh in 1851 is likely to be a completely different person to William the son of Thomas and Phoebe. Thomas and Phoebe's family didn't move, so if William went travelling it must have been alone, perhaps looking for work. Even in his teens he would surely have known where he had been born? I can see a confusion between UG and Ravensden if the whole family had moved from UG to somewhere else, and the only knowledge he had of his birthplace was what he had been told as a child and perhaps misunderstood or misheard.....
Following in the tracks of you and JP, it seems that the "Ravensden" William married Elizabeth Franklin in Wilden in 1816. Eilizabeth was a Wilden girl, probably the daughter of Thomas Franklin and "Trew" and b about 1796. They had a son William in 1822. Elizabeth died in 1825. William then married Ann Wrench nee Gammons in Thurleigh in 1827 - probably he needed a wife to look after his little boy (and there could also have been other children who had left home by 1841) William and Ann had three children - Sarah 1828, Thomas 1831 and Eli 1835.
So who was this William Armstrong? Wilden is only yards from Ravensden. Thurleigh is also very close. On purely circumstantial evidence, I would put him as a son of John and Sarah in preference to the documented son of Thomas and Phoebe- if he really was born in Ravensden, and he seems convinced he was, then he is 90% likely to have been an undocumented child of John and Sarah - they were the only Armstrong couple having children in Ravensden at that time.
Oh dear - and now to add insult to injury, in addition to the IGI messing me about, my broadband connection is playing up so goodness knows when I can send this!
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
Cadmans & Kings in Isleham, Cambs
Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
Abbott/Abbit in Witham, Essex
Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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William Armstrong and Elizabeth Franklin do seem to have had three other children in Wilden as well as William b 1822 -
Sarah baptised 26 Oct 1817
John baptised 19 May 1822, same day as William
Elizabeth baptised 17 Oct 1724
That's a good clincher, in my opinion - first daughter named after William's mother Sarah and a son (who could be the eldest - hard to say whether William or John came first as they were baptised together) named after his father.
OK, they are very common names, but it's another piece of circumstantial evidence to add to the pile. 
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
Cadmans & Kings in Isleham, Cambs
Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
Abbott/Abbit in Witham, Essex
Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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Quite possible, John.
If the first Sarah DID die, it's another little bit of circumstantial evidence, in that William Snr was determined to have a daughter named Sarah! Which strengthens the theory that it could have been his mother's name.
When you first raised the possibility of a connection between our trees, it seemed unlikely. But after all this digging around, I suspect we do have a link via William b 1791....it's just going to be very hard to prove it!
He exists as the husband of Elizabeth Franklin and Ann Wrench/Gammons, and as the father of 7 children. He also exists in 3 census returns. But we still have no definite information about who he was or where he came from other than his own declaration of being born in Ravensden.
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
Cadmans & Kings in Isleham, Cambs
Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
Abbott/Abbit in Witham, Essex
Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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bedfordshire boy
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 4748
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I go away for 5 minutes and there's a whole new load of messages for me to catch up on! I forgot it was a bank holiday until I spoke to my mother in Bedford.
I cannot see a burial of the first Sarah on the NBI.
And as the IGI seems to be a bit iffy so far as Ravensden PRs go, I think I would have a hard look at the transcript to see if William 1791 might have been missed too.
Bank holiday here tomorrow, not that that will affect me a lot. Lots take today off as well - making the bridge they call it - to make a very long weekend of it. The trouble in May is that there are three such bank holidays, so there are three 3 day weeks!
But tonight is bar night!
Enjoy!
David
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Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukBeds: Cople: Luke/Spencer Everton: Hale Henlow: Cooper/Watts/Sabey Potton: Merrill Southill: Faulkner/Litchfield/Sabey Woburn/Husborne Crawley: Surkitt Hunts: Gt Gransden: Merrill/Chandler/Medlock Toseland: Surkitt/Hedge/Corn Cambs: Bourn: Bowd Eltisley: Medlock Graveley: Ford/Revell |
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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We have discussed the possibility of William Armstrong 1791 b Ravensden as being an undocumented child of John Armstrong 1760 and Sarah.
I have just found a burial for a Sarah Armstrong as follows:
NBI = Name Sarah ARMSTRONG Date 12 Dec 1810 Aged 3 Place Ravensden Description All Saints Denomination Anglican County code BDF
So there's a genuine undocumented child - in that particular period, she can ONLY belong to John and Sarah.
Unless it is a mistranscription.
William 1791 and Elizabeth Franklin had a daughter Sarah b 1817 in Wilden. He later baptised another Sarah in 1828, the inference being that the first Sarah had died, as JP said. It's not very likely, but would be possible for 1820 to be misread as 1810, and it's possible he may have buried her in Ravensden rather than Wilden.
Having said that, it seems William and Elizabeth weren't very lucky parents - they also lost their son John, but they buried him in Wilden:
NBI = Name John ARMSTRONG Date 6 Apr 1823 Aged 1 Place Wilden Description St Nicholas Denomination Anglican County code BDF
And 2 x Elizabeths, the first of which does not appear to have been baptised, the second of which was baptised on 17 Oct 1824.
NBI = Name Elizabeth ARMSTRONG Date 4 Mar 1820 Aged 2 Place Wilden Description St Nicholas Denomination Anglican County code BDF
NBI = Name Eliz ARMSTRONG Date 23 Dec 1824 Aged 6m Place Wilden Description St Nicholas Denomination Anglican County code BDF
The only survivor appears to have been William b 1820 - which is a blessing, or it would have left no link at all between William of Wilden and the William of Thurleigh!
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
Cadmans & Kings in Isleham, Cambs
Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
Abbott/Abbit in Witham, Essex
Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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bedfordshire boy
RootsChat Marquessate
Posts: 4748
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And there's no Sarah baptised 1807 on the BVRI either. Just Ann 28 Sept 1807, which doesn't leave much time for a Sarah who was 3 in Dec 1810 to have been been born (unless Ann was another of their delayed baptisms). Have you traced Ann going forwards Wendy?
Regards
David
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Census information is Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.ukBeds: Cople: Luke/Spencer Everton: Hale Henlow: Cooper/Watts/Sabey Potton: Merrill Southill: Faulkner/Litchfield/Sabey Woburn/Husborne Crawley: Surkitt Hunts: Gt Gransden: Merrill/Chandler/Medlock Toseland: Surkitt/Hedge/Corn Cambs: Bourn: Bowd Eltisley: Medlock Graveley: Ford/Revell |
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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No, David - trying to do the day job! (Without much success...) 
There is a baptism in 1807 on the IGI for an Ann, but not for a Sarah. But at Ann's baptism, big sister Ann was still alive. Is it just plain wrong and she was Sarah, not Ann, or perhaps even Sarah Ann?
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
Cadmans & Kings in Isleham, Cambs
Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
Abbott/Abbit in Witham, Essex
Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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wdurham
RootsChat Member
Posts: 207
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Looks like it, John.
Elizabeth Armstrong - daughter of John 1860 and Eleanor Green - married George Chandler on 28 Dec 1857 in Bedford St Paul.
They had umpteen children - Annie b 1863 was child No 3, and my g-grandmother Sophia was child No 11 b 1878. Like the Ravensden Armstrongs, the Chandlers were addicts of the job-lot baptism and Annie was baptised in Dec 1867 along with 4 or 5 siblings.
I know nothing of Annie, although I do remember many of her sisters - Aunt Lou (Louisa 1869) Aunt Harriet (1874) and Aunt Lot (Charlotte, one of the twins b 1876). They used to send me postal orders and improving books for Christmas.
A quick check shows that Annie Chandler married Charles Bernhard Pfau in Shoreditch, qe Sep 1884. 1901 census shows her birthplace as Bedford.
But which Annie is she? In 1881 one of the 1863 Annie's is a visitor to a George Denton in Bedford - implication being that she is more likely to be the Ann Elizabeth Denton Chandler, although no relationship is given to George. The other Annie (listed as Annie Elizabeth) is a servant at a school in Bushey, Hertfordshire. This one seems most likely to have been the Annie that married Charles Pfau in London, as she was already over halfway there, and if the other Ann is the one with the Denton connection, then this Annie must be the daughter of George and Elizabeth...all a bit convoluted but I am sure you see what I mean!
I can't find entries for either of the Annies in 1891. Nor for Ann E D Chandler in 1871.
I have put a question on the Pfau thread - if the marriage certificate of Annie Chandler and Charles Pfau has arrived, then a partial solution is at hand... I say partial, because you can't be sure that both Annie's weren't fathered by a George. The only way to be certain is to get birth certs for both of the Annies.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Another mystery to solve....
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Willson & Pell in Faversham, Egerton, Folkestone in Kent
Cornhill in Kent, Devon and Wokingham, Berks
Cadmans & Kings in Isleham, Cambs
Swan, Gregory, Smith & Mingay in the Burrough Green/Westley area of Cambs
Armstrong & Chandler in Bedford
Abbott/Abbit in Witham, Essex
Davies/Davis in Islington & Hackney
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