Author Topic: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell  (Read 8022 times)

Offline Carole Gomez

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #18 on: Monday 27 April 15 11:03 BST (UK) »
Brilliant, thanks for moving it dawnsh!
Price & Griffiths (Swansea), Horwood & Harris (Herts/Bucks), Robertson (Aberdeenshire/London), Vamplew (Lincolnshire /London),  Smith (Romani Travellers/BlackPatch), Greig (Aberdeenshire) Grimes (Norfolk)

Offline Carole Gomez

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #19 on: Monday 27 April 15 11:54 BST (UK) »
I've just come accross 17th Jan 1757 marriage banns in Nuneaton for John (back to the Buswell spelling) and Eliz - and this time she has given her name as Orti. They've both signed their names on the banns themselves, which surprised me. Perhaps I've gone down the wrong path after all, but at least the Orti alternative spelling gives me another thing to investigate.
Price & Griffiths (Swansea), Horwood & Harris (Herts/Bucks), Robertson (Aberdeenshire/London), Vamplew (Lincolnshire /London),  Smith (Romani Travellers/BlackPatch), Greig (Aberdeenshire) Grimes (Norfolk)

Offline richarde1979

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #20 on: Thursday 30 April 15 10:44 BST (UK) »
Hello Carole

I am currently writing a two part book on the early Romany Boswell family 1650-1810. I've collected around 350 different sources on the family for those dates, and made a rough attempt  to make some sense of them and put them into some sort of framework.

First thing I would add to what has been said is ages on burial were typically inflated in the Romany community, especially amongst the older more high status families such as the Boswells, Hearn, Lovells, Smiths etc. This is partly because a strong cultural difference existed, age was viewed with prestige in the community, whereas some non Gypsies in comparison might be more inclined to knock years off themselves on  census records etc, the tendency is almost always the opposite amongst Romanies. Then of course most only had a vague idea of their exact age anyway, so accuracy is rare to begin with.

Woodfine/Woodbine Smith (or his family) did claim an age of 102 for him at death, but he was actually more likely around 87, he had been baptised the son of Nehemiah Smith and Elizabeth, at Weedon Lois, Northamptonshire on 6th March 1780. This matches well with his eleven known children born to  Sarah 1801-1824.  His own looseness with his age is shown by the fact he gave his age as 84 in October 1857, three years younger than his true age, but probably his best guess, but just four years later claimed to the 1861 census takers he was 96, so in his own mind he'd aged himself twelve years in just four!


Sarah is likely to have been a similar sort of age to Woodfine, born circa 1780. I don't have a baptism for a Sarah around that time, and certainly there are many children still missing from the record who were either baptised, but the record has yet to be found or were not baptised at all (though church baptism in the community was a lot more common then is sometimes made out).

This record is interesting though

Vagrants pass for Cornation Boswell and child, Sarah, from North Wraxall, Gloucestershire to Bottlesford otherwise Bulford, Wiltshire, 8th July 1780.

I would say this is very likely the wife of Lawrence Boswell, as I don't have any other Cornation Carnation in records at that time, and she had links to Wiltshire. Her marriage, license of October 1774 describes her as Carnation Boswell ‘of Devizes, Wiltshire’.

These are the first three children I have baptised to Lawrence and Carnation:

Robert Boswell, son of Lawrence Boswell and Carnesia 'Travellers' baptised at St Mary the Virgin, Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex on 19th May 1776.

Azgad Boswell, son of Laurence Boswell and Carnatia (or Constantia), 'Travellers', baptised at Cottered, Hertfordshire on 23rd November 1777.

Scamper Boswell, son of Lawrence Boswell and Carnation, baptised at Great Wymondley, Hertfordshire, on 27th January 1782.

So certainly Sarah the child on the vagrants pass could have been a young infant born around 1779/1780, which would explain why she could not be parted with the mother, whereas the elder children, if still alive, were left elsewhere.

There is also the fact that Sarah and Woodfine married at Hillmorton, Warwickshire in 1811. Lawrence and his family were travelling the same region in that era. Lawrence's 25 year old son was buried at Knowle, Warwickshire, about 25 miles away in January 1815, and Lawrence himself was later laid to rest there with him in June 1833, his age then given as 75.

It is not a certain identification but my best bet would be that Sarah the wife of Woodfine, was the same as Sarah the daughter of Lawrence.
Bellenger, Sebire, Soubien, Mallandain, Molle, Baudoin - Normandy/London
Deverdun, Bachelier, Hannoteau, Martin, Ledoux, Dumoutier, Lespine, Montenont, Picard, Desmarets - Paris & Picardy/Amsterdam/London
Mourgue, Chambon, Chabot - Languedoc/London

Holohan, Donnelly, McGowan/McGoan - Leitrim, Ireland/Dundee, Scotland/London.

Gordon, Troup, Grant, Watt, McInnes - Aberdeenshire, Scotland/London

Offline Carole Gomez

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #21 on: Thursday 30 April 15 11:22 BST (UK) »
richarde1979 you are a complete genius! Thanks so much for all that information (my favourite part was that Scamper was baptised 2 miles from where I have always lived) - I'd love to buy a copy of your book when you've finished it. I had the Smith one and the The Family Trees of Hercules and Peter Stanley one from the Romany and Traveller Family History Society and they've been super helpful with all my Smith relatives. If it's not too much trouble could you let me know when it's been published, or if there's a pre-publication wait list I can add my name to?
Price & Griffiths (Swansea), Horwood & Harris (Herts/Bucks), Robertson (Aberdeenshire/London), Vamplew (Lincolnshire /London),  Smith (Romani Travellers/BlackPatch), Greig (Aberdeenshire) Grimes (Norfolk)


Offline Liz_in_Sussex

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #22 on: Friday 01 May 15 19:49 BST (UK) »
Hi Carole,

Sorry to gatecrash your thread but I have been following it with great interest!  :)

My 5x GGMother was Betty Bossell / Boswell, who was baptised in Lodsworth, Sussex in 1748.  She was the daughter of Nicholas Boswell / Bossall / Bossell and Mary Kemp.

The name Boswell seems to be spelt differently every time one of them appears on a document.

I am wondering if the Boswell family were in Sussex too as well as in the counties mentioned already in this thread?  One of my DNA matches is a Romany Boswell with Lincolnshire roots, although we don't know whether our link is through my 5x GGM's line or another as yet undiscovered - the match is fairly insignificant and that may be a red herring.

It would be interesting to hear if my mother's paternal - maternal line could indeed have been Romany as we have long thought possible.  I too would be really interested in Richarde1979's book when it is published - that post (up there^^) was amazingly detailed but so well explained!

Thank you,

Liz
Research interests:
Sussex (Isted, Trusler, Pullen, Botting), Surrey (Isted), Shropshire (Hayward), Lincolnshire (Brown, Richardson), Wiltshire (Bailey), Schleswig-Holstein (Isted),  Nordrhein-Westfalen (Niessen).

Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Offline richarde1979

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #23 on: Saturday 02 May 15 12:51 BST (UK) »
Thanks for the interest in the book Carole and Liz. I hope when it is finished the Romany and Traveller Family History Society will want to publish it, will keep you updated.

There are baptisms and various other bits of evidence that the 18th century Boswells did travel in the surrounding counties to Sussex i.e Hampshire, Surrey, Kent, though they are generally found a bit further north.

This is the only source I have which does link them directly to Sussex:

Northampton Mercury 29th September 1760 ‘Tuesday, William Fowler, the father and Mary his wife, Edward Fowler, son of William Fowler and Jane his wife, and Henry Boswell, all travelling gypsies, were brought under a guard of the county militia, from Farnham in Surrey, to the New Gaol in Southwark, for assaulting Henry Lovell on the highway at a place called Rook Down, near Basingstoke in Hants, and taking from him £5 5s 6d in silver. These Gypsies and their accomplices have for a long time infested the counties of Hants, Sussex and Surrey, to the great terror of all persons whose business obliged them to be on the road after evening’ -


I don't have any record of Nicholas Boswell and Mary Kemp as yet, but Kemp was certainly a  surname in use in the 18th century Romany community,  used by the family that also appears in records as Skemp and Scamp. They are linked in records with the Boswells on at least five occasions 1737-1810, in Gloucestershire, Dorset, Surrey, Hampshire and Suffolk.
Bellenger, Sebire, Soubien, Mallandain, Molle, Baudoin - Normandy/London
Deverdun, Bachelier, Hannoteau, Martin, Ledoux, Dumoutier, Lespine, Montenont, Picard, Desmarets - Paris & Picardy/Amsterdam/London
Mourgue, Chambon, Chabot - Languedoc/London

Holohan, Donnelly, McGowan/McGoan - Leitrim, Ireland/Dundee, Scotland/London.

Gordon, Troup, Grant, Watt, McInnes - Aberdeenshire, Scotland/London

Offline richarde1979

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #24 on: Saturday 02 May 15 12:58 BST (UK) »
l
Bellenger, Sebire, Soubien, Mallandain, Molle, Baudoin - Normandy/London
Deverdun, Bachelier, Hannoteau, Martin, Ledoux, Dumoutier, Lespine, Montenont, Picard, Desmarets - Paris & Picardy/Amsterdam/London
Mourgue, Chambon, Chabot - Languedoc/London

Holohan, Donnelly, McGowan/McGoan - Leitrim, Ireland/Dundee, Scotland/London.

Gordon, Troup, Grant, Watt, McInnes - Aberdeenshire, Scotland/London

Offline richarde1979

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #25 on: Saturday 02 May 15 13:02 BST (UK) »
His own looseness with his age is shown by the fact he gave his age as 84 in October 1857, three years younger than his true age, but probably his best guess, but just four years later claimed to the 1861 census takers he was 96, so in his own mind he'd aged himself twelve years in just four!

Just realised I made an error there. Woodfine would have been roughly 77 in 1857, so he  overestimated his age as 84, not underestimated.
Bellenger, Sebire, Soubien, Mallandain, Molle, Baudoin - Normandy/London
Deverdun, Bachelier, Hannoteau, Martin, Ledoux, Dumoutier, Lespine, Montenont, Picard, Desmarets - Paris & Picardy/Amsterdam/London
Mourgue, Chambon, Chabot - Languedoc/London

Holohan, Donnelly, McGowan/McGoan - Leitrim, Ireland/Dundee, Scotland/London.

Gordon, Troup, Grant, Watt, McInnes - Aberdeenshire, Scotland/London

Offline Liz_in_Sussex

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Re: Sarah Boswell / Bozwell
« Reply #26 on: Tuesday 05 May 15 17:51 BST (UK) »
Fascinating!  Thank you so much for that extra information - if Henry Boswell was one of our Boswell's then at least his descendants gave up terrorising Sussex!  I will look out for the Kemp variations too!

Liz  8)
Research interests:
Sussex (Isted, Trusler, Pullen, Botting), Surrey (Isted), Shropshire (Hayward), Lincolnshire (Brown, Richardson), Wiltshire (Bailey), Schleswig-Holstein (Isted),  Nordrhein-Westfalen (Niessen).

Census information Crown Copyright, from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk