Hello All
Thanks for all the extra Bloomfield info, especially Janis, that's amazing info you've found. I'd noticed one of the christenings to John/Mary Bloomfield and did wonder if he had been married before, hence the hope that I could find his rough year of birth, to see if he was possibly old enough to have had a first marriage.
I'd also seen the chr of Margaret Shanks in 1809 to Mark Shanks, but it would have meant that she was only 16 when she married a widowed older man, unless she was born a few years before her christening. There is her son called Mark too though, a more unusual name at the time.
There are two other chr that I was looking at, one in 1796 to a John/Margaret Shanks in Woodhorn, NBL, and another in Wallsend in 1792 to George/Susanna Shanks, obviously the Wallsend one stood out to me more than the one in Woodhorn, Woodhorn is further up the coast, away from the Newcastle area. There is also Ruskie's census info where Margaret gives her age as 60 in the 1851 census, which gives her a possible birth year of 1791 from that, putting her closer to the chr in 1792 and no where near the one in 1809.
The fact that there is only one Bloomfield in the records during all of this does suggest that John wasn't born in the area. More fuel for the fire I suppose!
Thanks,
Brenda