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England (Counties as in 1851-1901) => England => Wiltshire => Topic started by: HenryCR on Sunday 21 June 20 14:46 BST (UK)
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Christopher Ricketts was born in ~1749. He married Mary Speck in Broad Blunsdon, Wiltshire in 1772 and they had seven children together, all born in Broad Blunsdon. Christopher was 'of this parish' when they married, but of course it's not hard to achieve that status.
I can't find any record for Christopher's birth, or his parents, though. I have tried searching baptismal records in Blunsdon and neighbouring parishes without any luck. Of course he may have come from further afield, possibly Gloucestershire. Extremely grateful for any assistance.
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No luck with finding a baptism for Christopher but looking at the parish records on A….y the surname seems strong in Wiltshire. I note that their three sons were Henry, William & Charles.
I guess this is Mary below, so as her father was Henry, I looked at the baptisms for Ricketts father William and there are quite a few, one parish in particular, West Knoyle, I looked at the register and although there is a baptism for a William in 1749, he is only one of two that year and looking at the few years prior to that the records are not great, I wonder if there are some missing records?
That of course may be the case elsewhere, Calne for instance states the “Register is not perfect from March 1748 to March 1749”
Mary Speck Baptism 4 Nov 1745 Broad Blunsdon Henry,Mary
Mary Rickets Burial age 85 (1746) 20 Dec 1831 Broad Blunsdon
Colin
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Thank you very much for that. There are Ricketts events in Broad Blunsdon going further back in time, which suggests that the family was there when Christopher was born (not conclusive, obviously, but it increases the likelihood) so missing records could well be the explanation.
The Ricketts name has been reasonably well studied using Y-chromosome DNA testing, and the West Knoyle branch appears to be unrelated to my branch, at least within the surname era. Of course that could be for more than one reason, but at least in the case of my line we have genetic surname matches going back multiple centuries.
The details you found for Mary Speck match up with what I've found for her as well, which is reassuring.
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They actually had eight children, the first Henry bap 29 December 1776 was buried 31 March 1778
Child number four was the other Henry bap 6 December 1778
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Good spot, thank you.