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« on: Friday 20 May 16 20:03 BST (UK) »
I really can't thank you both, and everyone else on this thread, enough. For the two of you, Priscilla and easterHammer, not just for the information, but also for your kind messages. I've been off the board for some time, I retired earlier than originally planned, my husband cut down his work abroad, we moved house south to be nearer family and then, 7 weeks ago, my husband died suddenly and very unexpectedly. I'm now planning to downsize and move again, probably within the next couple of months.
Life happens. We all know that. I have a lot of things I need to do, but not much that I want to do or am particularly looking forward to doing, so working through all the information this thread has given me is going to be my treat to myself whenever I can.
I'm still a bit shocked by the connection to the Plantagenet roll - I've always been happy to come from a long line of nobody in particular (though special to me) with absolutely no gateway ancestor within miles. This is my mother's side of the family, and my father's is pure Scot with family traditions taking us back to one of the many 'wrong side of the blanket' children of The Bruce. If Edward II really comes into it the idea that the family might have been on both sides at Bannockburn is a bit disconcerting, to say the least...
On the other hand, John of Gaunt and Richard III have always been quite heroic to me, and I read everything I can get my hands on about the Plantagenets and have always the ramifications of Edward III's children and the steps towards the Cousins' Wars fascinating, so it's really exciting.
Looking at my own tree as far as I had got, the difference to all your information is first and very minor, the name, which I have variously as Simons or Simmons. I had got the Spicers, and Mary Barton, and gone back to Hester Chilman and her marriage to Boys Simmons,. There the difference comes in. I had Hester's father as Stephen Chilman, b 1680 but no note of her mother.
Boys' parents (this is her husband Boys, who I had as b 1723 in Southwark) I have down as the son of William Simmons and 'Elizabeth'. Elizabeth was work in progress, with possible candidates noted as Ellizabeth Boys or Elizabeth Hughes. I can't remember at this distance why I had those two surnames for candidates, but going back to that brick wall (it was a brick well for me if not for you) and looking at it in the light of all the information you two have provided is going to give me many interesting hours when I've had enough of downsizing my possessions.
I'm really interested to see so many mentions of the name Philadelphia. In the family tree/story book I made for my children a few Christmases ago, I mentioned that my favourite names in the ancestors I had found were Titus Spicer and Philadelphia Simmons or Simons. That Philadelphis had died age 15, and as far as I remember was buried in St Michael's in Marden.
So much for that line centres around Marden. My gr.grandfather (different line of my mother's) originally watchmaker/jeweller was the first PostMaster there, and his daughter, my much loved Great Aunt, carried on the post office until she retired at the end of the war. Seems there was so much more history for us there than ever of us ever realised...
Thank you both again.