"Register of Strangers" *COMPLETED*

[Ayashi]

Thank you so much. Now you see my pain! 

I'm now more confused about Mark and William (the "twins") but then again, that doesn't surprise me  Part of why I wanted to prove whether or not there was a brother William was because Mark named his only son William, a name that didn't appear in his wife's side of the family. I did wonder if this mysterious William had died, freeing up the name for William Snr's marriage. If Mark and William are the same child, no wonder I didn't find any trace of him  I guess it would make more sense that Mark's entry in the dissenters was mistranscribed than for there to have been twins, one in the parish records and one in the dissenters. Dumb records... 

If you think that Sord is a mistake and the original surname definitely is Ord, I'm more sunk than I was hoping lol. "Sword" was the only surname I'd made any headway with. Maybe I shall have to resign myself to forever having her in my tree as "Margaret the Widow"!

I really appreciate you taking the time to look.

[c-side]

Perhaps you're overthinking the naming of Mark's son - is he not simply named after his paternal grandfather - standard naming pattern?

As for Ord/Sord/Sword - your guess is as good as mine.  Certainly there are Swords in the parish but I also noticed that the surname 'Old' crops up a lot and I wondered.......

Sorry if that adds to your pain 

Christine

[Ayashi]

Re. the father thing- since Mark was illegitimate, I wondered if the naming of his son after his father might indicate how much contact the two had with each other- he might not have bothered if William was not a part of his life. It is also interesting to note that William took his family to Coldstream and pretty much the same year that Mark left to become a mariner.

I've got to the point where Mark is pretty much nothing BUT pain 

[c-side]

Obviously you know Mark better than I do - I’ve only just ‘met’ him - but I have the impression that this was not the usual illegitimate birth.  The fact that Mark was given the surname Brady, not (s)ord and the wording of the baptismal entries made me wonder whether William and Margaret were possibly living together.  Otherwise I would have expected the baptismal entry to read ‘Mark illegitimate son of Margaret (s)ord, reputed father William Brady’ or words to that effect.

On the other hand it could be that Mark was a stickler for tradition and called his son William regardless of how he felt about him.

[Ayashi]

Thanks.

Going through the Cornhill BTs I recall a few that were like this. I was told that the bishop of Durham for this time demanded certain information to be on the entry within a range of a few years and Mark's entry only just caught that, so I assumed that's why this was, but always thought that if the child was Brady, then William would have had to have consented to that as you say. I do wish there were other documents for the time that might shed light on any of this, like school records or something (Mark could read and write, so either he attended school or someone taught him). You make a good point about tradition... I guess I do hope that he did get on with his father!

[c-side]

The bishop’s name was Shute Barrington and he was an amateur genealogist.  When he was appointed to Durham  in 1797 he instructed all the parishes in his diocese to include additional information in baptism and burial records.  Baptisms should include mother’s maiden name and place of birth and father’s place of birth.  Sometimes you get more.  Sadly for us all this stopped when standardised records were introduced in 1813.

Mark’s baptismal record does not comply with this instruction (we would know more about Widow Ord if it did!) but if the baptism took place in a Presbyterian church then it wouldn’t need to.  Even in the Barrington years the baptisms of illegitimate children don’t necessarily  contain details of the father.

If it’s OK with you then I think next week at the archives I’ll spend some time looking at the transcriptions - they have indexes - see what pops up.

Christine

[Ayashi]

Well, in any case, good old Shute Barrington 

That's totally OK with me.

Thank you for that. For some reason it never occurred to me that William and Margaret might have been in a stable relationship; I thought Mark was just a little whoops baby, but maybe that's just how my mind works! I have no idea when Margaret died so I couldn't say if she went before William's marriage to Jane or not. They might even have married for all I know... I can't find the marriage of William to Jane which might be because potentially it could have been in Scotland, although it seems both William and Jane were christened in Cornhill  or maybe I'm just not seeing it.

It's sort of funny how a record that does have a mother's surname on it can cause so much trouble! 

[c-side]

William and Jane could well have married in Scotland.

After 1754 (Hardwicke's Marriage Act) all English marriages other than those of Jews and Quakers had to take place in a church of England.  For Presbyterians the choice was either marry in C of E or pop across the border and marry in a Presbyterian church.  Bearing in mind how close to the border they were......

There was no such law for baptisms so children being baptised in Cornhill would be normal.

Christine

[c-side]

I spent an hour looking at the name indexes in the books of transcripts for Cornhill and Crookham.  The Cornhill transcript is better organised than the actual parish record and I can have both books open at once.  Sword occurs in Cornhill - one baptism (1756), two marriages (1755 and 1789) and ten burials (1759 - 1807).  The transcript ended in 1812.  The higher level of burials indicate to me that they were, in the main, non-conformist.  None matched what we were looking for.  Nothing occurred for Ord.

In the dissenters section of Cornhill I did find -

Jan 28  1799  Thomas son of Andrew and Margaret Ord of Cornhill.

I don’t think this would be your ‘Widow Ord’ - she wouldn’t have had time to have Mark (unless Thomas was baptised as an older child).  This baptism was not recorded in Crookham so I assume they must have used another Presbyterian church - maybe Norham - but it does show that the name is out there.

I need to do some more digging!

Christine