William Shepherd & Mary Gilpin married 27 Apr 1616, Kendal - residence?

[RBOD]

Hello,

[SHORTER QUESTION:]
Would anyone with access to full transcriptions/images for the Kendal parish registers from 1607-1616 possibly be able to check whether a spouse's place of residence (e.g. Patton, Strickland Roger or Strickland Ketel) is included for any of the following marriages? I've only managed to find baptism records for these years online. Thank you!

William Shepherd married Marie Gilpin, 27 April 1616
William Sheperd married Ellen Birkett, 29 May 1608
William Shipperd married Elizabeth Jininges, 14 Jun 1607

[FULL QUERY(!):]
I'm descended from a William Shepherd, yeoman of Field End, Patton, who had four children christened at Kendal in the early 1600s: Arthur bap. 15 Mar 1616/7, Elizabeth 1619, Martin 1626/7 and Lancelot 1631. He may also have had a son Anthony and daughter Katherine - but Arthur was the oldest surviving son, and inherited William's property.

William's father Arthur (probably bap.1561/2) had bought Field End from an Allan Gilpin in 1612/3, and the property seems to have been mortgaged in 1608/9 by a Bernard Gilpin, yeoman of Strickland Roger.

I suspect that my William Shepherd married Mary/Marie Gilpin (bap.1592/3), daughter of Martin Gilpin and Katherine Newby of Strickland Roger whose eldest son was a Bernard Gilpin (bap.1583/4). The marriage was 10-11 months before the baptism of William's first child; another of his sons was apparently named after Mary's father Martin; and he lived on land previously belonging to the Gilpin family.

I have a few doubts, though. Firstly, Mary's mother Katherine Gilpin and grandfather Richard Newby do mention her husband William Shepherd in their wills, but I don't think they record his place of residence, and William's only named child is a daughter Katherine (in Katherine's will in the early 1630s - I can't find her baptism). Martin Gilpin was also a member of the family who had been at Kentmere Hall since the 1200s, so when some of William Shepherd's descendants at Patton later became landed gentry and recorded a pedigree in Burke's, I would have expected them to mention the connection - which they don't. At least five separate William Shepherds had children baptised at Kendal in the early 1600s, and it's hard to tell them apart; almost all must have married before 1615, but a William Shepherd of Strickland Roger had a single child recorded, a daughter Margaret baptised in 1619/20 - too soon after one of the Patton baptisms to be one of mine.

Sorry for such a long post - but if anyone was able to help/advise, or stumbles across this at some point researching the same family, I would be very grateful to hear!

Very many thanks.
Ronan

[pinefamily]

Hello Ronan,
I don't have access to or first hand knowledge of the Kendall registers, but I would be very surprised if there was mention of residences in registers of that era. Having said that, you may find that there might be for baptisms or burials, especially if there was more than one William Shepherd.
Are there any wills for the William Shepherds? By looking any wills will help you to form family groups for the various Shepherd families, as well as possibly giving you property names.
Hope this helps.

[RBOD]

Thanks Pinefamily!

The reason I ask is that some transcriptions of early Kendal records are online (http://dustydocs.com/link/39/39192/157228/baptisms-1596-1599-1607-1631-marriages-1591-1599-burials-1591-1599-cumbrian-genealogy.html), including marriages for the 1590s which do often seem to include residence at marriage - so I have fingers crossed that the same holds true a couple of decades later...

I've just about managed to group most of the children from the 1607-1631 baptisms listed on the same site, but a couple of outliers make it hard to be completely sure... Good point on the wills though, thank you - I haven't had a look yet.

[pinefamily]

I had similar issues with some Gloucestershire ancestors in the same era. Two families were living in the same area. By buying any wills pertinent to my search, I built up family units, helping to separate the individuals I found in the PR's. As a bonus, they also pointed me to London, where some of them "disappeared" to.

[RBOD]

Hi,
Just an update in case anyone with knowledge of the Shepherds/Gilpins reads this in the future!

I managed to find a CD containing the parish records I was looking for, so I've answered my own question. The entry is "William Shepherd and Marie Gilpin of Stricklandroger" - which sadly doesn't help very much. Almost every couple in the register is listed with only one place of residence, and judging by another relative of mine who got married the same year, this might just be the bride's pre-marital home. It did help to discount the 1607 & 1608 marriages for William, though.

On balance of probability I still suspect the Gilpin marriage is mine... Judging by my William's land purchases in the 1630s, his hearth tax entries & an extract from his 1676 inventory helpfully mentioned in an article about the hearth tax (http://goo.gl/uNPTbn), he was probably the only man of his name in the Kendal area prosperous enough to be married to a Gilpin daughter. Sadly neither he nor the other William who could have been Mary Gilpin's husband (William Shepherd of Strickland Roger father of Margaret bap.1619/20) seem to have left a surviving will. Mary's father's will from 1629, which could have solved this, also seems to have disappeared - although his widow refers to it, so it must once have existed. It does look like there are wills in the Lancashire Archives for a couple of Mary Gilpin's brothers-in-law dated c.1650, so maybe something will still turn up...
[Edit: I was wrong - William did leave a will after all! There's hope yet.]

Curiously, another researcher uploaded a tree to Genealogy.com back in 2002 that also makes my William the husband of Mary Gilpin: http://goo.gl/OWM02R. It lists six children: the four I have baptised at Kendal, plus Katherine from her grandmother Gilpin's will, plus a mysterious Alice. No sources or dates, so Alice could just be confused with Alice daughter of another William bap.1614 at Kendal, but the children listed for Mary's siblings do mostly look right. Shame I can't find a way to contact the tree owner to ask for their sources...

[fretep]

Are you aware of the research by Dr T. G. Fahy, deposited at the Kendal record office? See the following post ( http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/ENG-WESTMORLAND/2007-04/1176246499 ) for further detail.

[RBOD]

Thanks fretep. I had seen that post (the Nathan Shepherd mentioned in it was my direct ancestor), and I've been in contact with the author of the post, who was extremely helpful - but I hadn't really considered whether Dr Fahy could already have researched the earlier part of the family as well, so that's a very good point! It does sound as if he was pretty thorough... Sadly I don't live near Kendal, so it might be a while before I can take a trip to find out.

[K8T8TES]

Hi RBOD,
I was hoping to leave a message for RBOD regarding this old thread of the Shepherd family of Field end from Nathan through to Arthur in 1612 and the lineage of the later peerage listed in Burkes from Nicholas Shepherd.
I am also directly related to Nathan Shepherd, by Alice and their son, Obadiah b1736 in Long Preston and then following through Richard b1773 Long Preston, Richard b1803 Whitewell - fisherman that later moved to Preesall. His daughter, Joanna, was my gt gt grandmother. 
As I have no access to the paperwork at Kendal I was hoping that you could fill in some blanks regarding Nathan Shepherd and concerning his 'disagreement' with the Wilsons and the reference to his first wife and children. I am presuming this is not Alice! Also the relationship between Nathan  and Joseph Shepherd of York the later owner of Feildend that I have seen stated as his son, but surely can't be due to the dates?  Many thanks.