Quest for origins of John Haycock 1816 Oswestry - 1876 Wolverhampton

[Gadget]

When you do a shared match run with any of the matches that you listed in the first post, do they all match each other?

[TreeDigger]

I still haven't done the trees yet, as this is pretty much a renewed but now investigative endeavor that needs some serious kick-starting. And I thought I 'had' John (though not his mother, it's a repetitive thing) with the Staffordshire Wheaton Aston/Lapley connection :/

My biggest match (54cM) on My Heritage and I do triangulate with one other (45cM) but the latter doesn't show any other shared matches that I have with the first. Guess that also depends on how much DNA, which specific bits, and where in the tree our mutual connection lies.

Having said that, I think my first real effort will be to trace down (or up) the second match's tree to see whether or not I end up in Hordley.

[Gadget]

A few other things that come to mind which you might take on board in your search ~

Marriage certificates don't always record that the father is dead. I've seen quite a few where the father was dead but no mention of this on the certificate.

It doesn't say what kind of gardener the  father was. Some gardeners moved around - as gardeners to estates. Others were more 'jobbing gardeners ' who stayed in one place. Variations of these types could also be found.

If John's father moved to Oswestry when John was young, then Oswestry might have been the first place that he knew.

Also, of course, his father might not have been who he recorded on the marriage cert. I've seen certs where the father's name was fictional or the groom gave his own name.

Gadget

[TreeDigger]

All very good points.

I'm already questioning the John Haycock bap. 1774 Hordley being identical to the John marrying in Shrewsbury to Margaret Jones. You'd think the one baptized in 1778 in Sutton-by-Shrewsbury would be a more logical candidate, and nowhere in the marriage sources have I seen mention of the Hordley father Thomas. Of course it's possible at some point somebody researched the heck out of this specific tree,to come up with this connection, but to me that's a bit of a red flag.

Also, there are a lot of John Haycock(s) mentions in criminal records in the first half of the 19th Century, both in Shropshire and Staffordshire. A criminal past would be a good reason to obscure your background.

All in all this -again- won't be a walk in the park.

-EDIT-

After having plugged in 'my' 1816 John Haycock -who is confirmed to be my 2x gr.grandfather via DNA connections with both descendants of my gr.grandfather George and offspring of his half-siblings- in WATO, the strongest genealogically viable hypothesis continues to place me in the same branch of the family as my highest cM match, a man named Haycock from my mother's generation. This means I'll start with trying to source-confirm the Thomas Haycock & Mary Lythe tree via the branch of their son Robert (1782-1852) who married Sarah Bostock. My match descends from their son Robert (1808-1871). Age wise, my John could very well be a (half) brother.

[JenB]

Popping up in W'hampton in the 1841 census, John was only consistent wrt his place of birth: Oswestry. His DoB, however, changed throughout. In 1841 it was 1816 (25yo),

A minor point:

Bear in mind that in the 1841 census the ages of people over 15 were rounded down to the nearest 5 years, so John could have been anything up to 29 years old at the time of the census, which would fit with the 1851 and 1861 ages.