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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Somerset => England => Somerset Lookup Requests => Topic started by: Keith Sherwood on Sunday 29 October 17 09:52 GMT (UK)
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Hi, Everyone,
Can anyone who is privy to the Widcombe Parish Records tell me whether there is a baptism for a John MILES in about 1830. He was my gt-gt-grandfather, and has always proved elusive. And if he is indeed lurking there whether the MILES family appear elsewhere in these records, in other words remained settled in this parish for a while.
Many thanks,
Keith
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Somerset Baptism Index has the following
John Miles bapt. 10 October 1830 Lyncombe & Widcombe. Parents Thomas and Sarah. Thomas gives occupation as Painter and their abode as Perry Wood Place.
Emeltom
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Skelton,
Thanks so much for taking the time to look that up for me!
Keith
Sorry, this tablet has a mind of its own, deciding how words should look after I've pressed the send button, Emeltom...
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John Miles was indeed baptised at Widcombe on 10 Oct 1830 but his parents were James and Sarah. Father's occupation was Painter, but abode Peterbourg Place (more usually spelled "Petersburgh").
Both Ancestry and FreeREG have this, I don't know where Thomas was found.
(Petersburgh Place no longer exists. It was in the Dolemeads area, a row of a dozen or so houses running south from Ferry Lane to the railway.)
David
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According to the Somerset Baptism Index the information can be found on page 112 of the Bishops Transcripts.
Emeltom
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Goodness,
Did the records sometimes get mistranscribed by whoever copied them down for the Bishop? I suppose mistakes were made, and one would prefer to refer to the original Parish Records, though sometimes the incumbent priest or his parish clerk made mistakes. Have two baptisms simply been mixed up?
Keith
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Mistakes can happen at any stage. The image on Ancestry is very clear but "James" and "Thomas" are quite easily confused if an image is poor or the handwriting is very bad. It's even possible the vicar got in a muddle and wrote the wrong name in the original entry, there were 7 baptisms on that day. However in this case the father's name is confirmed as the family can be seen in the 1841 census (plus a daughter Sarah aged 8 ).
To answer the rest of your initial question, they didn't stay long in Widcombe. Sarah Ann was baptised in 1832 when the family were living in Walcot Street. By 1841 they were at Lower Midsummer Buildings (which was in the area now called Fairfield Park but was then an isolated terrace surrounded by fields on the northern edge of the city).
The parents were still there in 1851, which is nice as it gives you their birth places. They also have another daughter Caroline aged 6, so her birth registration should give you her mother's maiden name. (See BathBMD).
David
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David,
Thanks SO much for going the extra mile (unintended pun in the context of this thread!) for me. What you have told me in your post above gives me several new lines of discovery.
Very best wishes,
Keith
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I may have been over-optimistic. I can't see any birth registration for Caroline. She was baptised at Larkhall in 1844, as Caroline Dickman Miles, daughter of James and Sarah. So perhaps Sarah's maiden name was Dickman, but that could be James's mother's maiden name or some other relative's.
It also looks like James and Sarah had several other children, in various parts of Bath. Most useful is a Charles baptised in 1840 when they seem to have been back in Dolemeads. He was registered, with mother's maiden name Baker. (Unless of course there were two James Miles in Bath who were painters and had wives called Sarah.) They appear to have married at South Stoke in 1822.
Was your gt-gt-grandfather the John Charles Miles who married Elizabeth Upton in Birmingham and later lived in Eastbourne?
David
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David,
I'll just answer that last question you posed, and my response is that - yes - my direct ancestor John Charles MILES is the individual who married Elizabeth UPTON and went to live in Eastbourne..
I need to have a little think about some of the other points you raise in your last post. I'll be in contact again tomorrow - many thanks again for all your input here.
Regards, Keith
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Then I think there's no doubt that James and Sarah were his parents. By the 1861 census they had also moved to Birmingham. There may possibly have been two James and Sarahs in Bath - there seem to have been a lot of Miles - but there can't have been two such couples which both had the husband born in Cheltenham the wife in Bath and a connection with Birmingham.
David
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Morning, David,
Have had time to ponder all that you have unearthed for me. There's a lady in Australia, a second cousin - we both share a common gt-grandmother in Hannah (Annie) MILES - and she's probably done rather more research into this line than I have so far. But she's always found our gt-gt-gt-grandpa James MILES, the one who says he was born in Cheltenham, a painter, very elusive. I/we must get hot on his trail - if indeed it has not grown too cold already...
Keith
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James does seem very elusive - I can't see any trace of his birth anyway.
It seems John Miles wasn't the only one to add a second name later in life. The marriage record for Caroline Dickman Miles and Richard Boon at St Mary Redcliffe in 1867 apparently has her father's name as James Price Miles. Perhaps that is a clue.
David
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David,
Now, that is very interesting, these middle forenames that surely indicate a surname from a previous, recent generation. But very confusing at the same time.
Thanks so much for continuing to pursue the true identity of James MILES, born 1806/7...
Keith
The other rather odd thing is that John MILES, b.1830 called himself John Charles MILES later in life, and these are the forenames too given to my grandfather (and therefore his grandson) John Charles SHERWOOD when he was baptised in Eastbourne in 1883...
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These middle names formed from surnames are certainly potentially helpful, but we can't assume they're necessarily copied from a direct ancestor. In my own family I can think of one case where the surname comes from an uncle by marriage, another where it's from the landlord of the family's tenanted farm.
In your family one which stands out, as it's an unusual name and so hopefully easy to trace, is Densem. John Miles's sister Caroline Dickman Boon has a daughter name Caroline Densem Boon and a witness at his sister Sarah Ann's wedding was James Densem. Although I've never met the name before it turns out there were quite a few in Bath, some of them painters. So perhaps they were just work partners of the Miles family. But then we find James Densem married a Mary Ann Miles, born about 1823 to James and Sarah Miles! This is not John's parents. They baptised several children in Bath and Bathwick from 1813 onwards and so were much older.In the 1851 census they are to be found at Petersburgh Place, the street where your James and Sarah lived earlier and John was born. The census reveals that they came from Maiden Bradley and Hill Deverill in Wiltshire respectively. They married at Hill Deverill in 1805. That raises the interesting question, where were they from 1805 to 1813? Could it be Cheltenham, and they are your James's parents?
On a different tack, your James and Sarah had two sons called Charles, both died young, and then their surviving son John took on Charles for a middle name. That makes it quite likely that James's father was called Charles, though it could come from Sarah's father or just someone else who was important to them.
A very puzzling family, I'm afraid I can't thing of any other approaches.
David
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David,
What a splendid piece of research you have conducted, and even if it raises more questions than provides answers, the whole thing is quite fascinating. Those middle names must surely have a bearing on the truth, and you may have seen that I started a speculative thread on the Common Room about who might have been James's father, but totally without any bites (as in angling parlance, with the float still bobbing on the water, the bait untouched...)
But you've certainly inspired me to continue the search, though I'm not all as familiar with the geography of Gloucs/Warwicks 200 years ago as you so obviously are...
Many thanks again,
Keith