Hi everyone- first post!
I've been researching a friend's family and it seemed 'different' to any I've researched before. I suspected gypsies, travellers etc., but when I told my friend I was having trouble he mentioned that his mother had said: "you know there are Romanys in the family".
So, has anyone heard of the Fieldstaffs please? George Fieldstaff was born at Uttoxeter about 1791. He was a labourer/ hawker and seems to have kept a lodging house there in Smithy Lane. His lodgers were an assortment of hawkers, pedlars, boatmen, labourers. In fact, the whole street and one next to it abound with these people as well as besom makers, china dealers, etc. He and wife Maria Brough lived there until 1861 at least. As they don't seem to have travelled, are they really Romanies?
There are no Fieldstaffs before George. None anywhere else.
His daughter, Elizabeth, ran away, I think, with Thomas Hughes. I suspect he was already married to a Uttoxeter girl (who was a hawker). Thomas was a tin-man, brazier and coppersmith. He was born about 1812 in either Burton on Trent or Church Broughton in Derbyshire. Missing on the 1841 census. Elizabeth Fieldstaff, now calling herself Hughes, had children with Thomas at Uttoxeter, Ashby de la Zouch, Cheadle, Stafford and Burton. 3 of the children were baptised at the RC church at Rugely. But they are at the same address in 1851 and 1861.
They had a son, Thomas Fieldstaff Hughes, born 1862 at Burton. He was a a bricklayer, and was called 'The Black Prince'. That sounds as if he was a boxer, maybe at fairs?
Does any of this ring bells with anyone? Sorry if it's not clear,I've got lots of dates and names but thought that was enough for one post!