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| | | |-+  CHAINEY/ CHINA/ HATSWELL: Barnstaple/ Tiverton 1800+
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Author Topic: CHAINEY/ CHINA/ HATSWELL: Barnstaple/ Tiverton 1800+  (Read 296 times)
Fire Fox
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Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
CHAINEY/ CHINA/ HATSWELL: Barnstaple/ Tiverton 1800+
« on: Saturday 20 June 09 10:42 UTC (UK) »
Hi

This isn't a question as such, more an introduction and perhaps some fresh eyes ...

I am descended from the CHINA family who lived and worked in Tiverton and Barnstaple in the first half of the 1800s and later moved to Nottingham. The family are mentioned in the book "Barnstaple's Vanished Lace Industry" and are to be found on all the census returns.

Although the family had their five minutes of fame, they are less easy to trace in the parish registers! In fact the name CHINA is conspicuous by it's absence in Devon - for many years the only lead we had was a Tiverton marriage in March 1800 Elizabeth HATSWELL m. Thomas CHAINEY of the Berkshire Militia and the baptism of a daughter, another Elizabeth, the same day. We cannot find the baptisms or burials of any other child for this couple.

Recently we have been copied three wonderful letters written by Elizabeth CHINEY of Tiverton in 1816 to the overseer of Abingdon parish (North Berkshire). She names her children as Elizabeth age 16, twin boys age 10 and born in April, James age 8 and born in May, and another boy "in his third year" (not sure if this means age 2 or 3?). She must have lost other children, as Thomas CHAINEY would have been home when the militia disembodied in 1802 until they re-embodied in 1803. Elizabeth also talks of "a factory setting on, [which is] going on with lace and silk ..."

This makes the connection to our CHINAs more likely tho we still have no baptisms for the children, and no names for her boys - we believe the twins to be Thomas and William. There are no surviving militia records for Thomas senior sccording to the National Archives websitee, tho I have skimmed through a book on the history of the Berkshire Militia to find out where he was posted (all along the south coast from Devon to Kent and later north).

If anyone has any ideas of how to proceed that would be great, given that we have already searched the parishes surrounding Tiverton and Barnstaple without success! It is 23 years since we visited the Devon record office, so it may be new records are now available?

Also does anyone know how Elizabeth HATSWELL might have learned to write with such a neat script? We think she was born in Tiverton in 1779, tho we have not followed up the HATSWELLs yet as the letters are so new to us. Was there a free school in Tiverton that accepted girls?
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DOB7
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Re: CHAINEY/ CHINA/ HATSWELL: Barnstaple/ Tiverton 1800+
« Reply #1 on: Saturday 20 June 09 13:01 UTC (UK) »
The Devon FHS name indexes states that there are 11 baptisms for the name CHINA in Devon 1813-1839. It might be worth asking them to supply you with all entries they have for the name CH*N* - this will cover spelling variants.
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Squance, Lillicrap, Dankester, Surtees, Yates
Fire Fox
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Posts: 14


Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
Re: CHAINEY/ CHINA/ HATSWELL: Barnstaple/ Tiverton 1800+
« Reply #2 on: Saturday 20 June 09 20:35 UTC (UK) »
Thank you, I wasn't aware of that service: thirteen is a lot more than on the IGI!
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DOB7
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Re: CHAINEY/ CHINA/ HATSWELL: Barnstaple/ Tiverton 1800+
« Reply #3 on: Saturday 20 June 09 20:56 UTC (UK) »
Devon is not well represented on the IGI - for more information on records available for Devon see http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/index.html
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Squance, Lillicrap, Dankester, Surtees, Yates
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