St Neots St Mary's parish baptisms - WILES

[burrito]

Hello,

Kindly requesting lookups of any baptisms at St Neots St Mary's Parish between 1781 and 1806 of children with the WILES surname. Father may be Thomas or William.

Other possible spellings: Wills, Wyles, Whiles, Wilds, Wild

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[amondg]

Historically in Huntingdonshire it is actually in Cambridgeshire

[jbml]

Hi Burrito.

I've got a LOT of St Neots district Wiles ancestors ... are yours in Great Staughton, by any chance. If so, we are probably related and I may have a lot of useful stuff for you.

Emma Wiles, daughter of James and Sarah, born Great Staughton in 1862 was my great great grandmother.

James Wiles was born about 1828 but I have not managed to find his baptism yet. He was, however, the son of William and Mary Ann (this comes from the censises).

I believe that William Wiles is William Wild, son of John and Mary, who was baptised in Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire on 1 May 1792.

I don't have a baptism for John Wild ... but I do have a lot more notes on these families and the female lines too. If it looks as though this is your family get in touch (you'll need to make a couple more posts before you can use the PM facility) and I'll be happy to exchange notes by e-mail and see how we can help each other out here.


NOTE ... you may not be aware of this but the registers of the nearby parish of Kimbolton were seriously damaged by flood and are all but illegible. There are people working on trying to decipher what is still legible, but progress is very slow. If one of your lines leads back to Kimbolton, you need to be prepared for the possibility that it has to stop there, at least for now.

[burrito]

Hi jbml,

Thanks for your reply. I have seen the Wiles you mentioned in Great Staughton but I think they are the ones who were in records earlier as Wild. There are census records for a William Wiles (ag lab) residing in Great Staughton born in Sharnbrook (one census has London), and there is a baptism record for a William Wild born in Sharnbrook in 1792 to John and Mary Wild, who might be the same one.

The Wiles I'm looking for would be grandchildren of Thomas Wiles (of Eaton Socon) and his wife Mary Maxey, who had two sons, Thomas and William who I think are the ones bpt. in Southoe in 1759 and 60 (in FreeREG). I believe they are the ones married in Ravensden in 1781 and 86. But I've found no baptism records for any of their children except Mary (to William and Mary) in 1788 in Ravensden. Other evidence suggests they later lived at St Neots. Baptism records for that period at St Neots do not seem to be available through the commercial databases (FamilySearch, FindMyPast, Ancestry) and are not indexed in FreeREG.

I did find the will of Thomas Wiles, Gentleman of Eaton Socon (1817), which mentions all his seven children but no names of grandchildren. Three of the daughters have marriage records at St Neots, but no baptism records of children, except for a daughter who had children bpt. at Potton. One of his daughters married the vicar of St Neots, Thomas Thorns, so I suspect he may have baptised his nieces and nephews there but I find no records.

So I'm hoping someone has access to the register for St Neots St Mary's where any other children might be found. I suspect one of these male children of Thomas or William is my direct ancestor.

[jbml]

Yes ... that London reference led me a merry dance and had me stumped for a while, but I think it's spurious.

Great Staughton (and hence St Neots) are just up the road from me ... and I'm very familiar with the village.

Some time I'm going to have to go back to the Huntingdon Record Office too ... when I do, I can try to carry out a few lookups for you if there's anything in particular you want.

Also ... the Norris Museum in St Ives has a remarkably extensive local history collection. I have found some useful wills there ...

[burrito]

The Thomas Wiles and Mary Maxey I'm focusing on were actually married at Gt Staughton in 1754, but I can't see any connection to the William Wiles/Wild who appears there in later censuses 1841-71, since his father was John, and Thomas had three sons, Thomas, Wm., and Richard.

There was a message on this sub-group mentioning a CD containing parish baptisms at St Neots that someone was giving away, so apparently such a thing exists. I'll search for that again and send a PM. Do you think the original would be housed at the Huntingdon R.O.?

As I'm in the US I can't get to these places quickly! So thank you for your offer to help. 

[jbml]

Ahhhh ... a little local gepgraphical knowledge may help here.

Great Staughton is right on the county boundary ... Little Staughton is in Bedfordshire, not Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire) like Great Staughton ... so there's every possibility that you've got some cross-county lines.

The Bedfordshire registers were all transcribed into typed and bound volumes some time in teh twentieth century, and as long as a family stays in Bedfordshire you can make TREMENDOUS progress with these in a single visit to BLARS (the Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Records Service).

The Huntingdonshire original registers are in the Huntingdon Record Office.

If the Wiles / Maxey marriage was in Great Staughton then you can assume that Maxey was resident in Great Staughton but Wiles wasn't necessarily. However, depending upon his occupation it is likely that he was no more than one or two parishes distant.

Does your Wiles line interconnect with the Whitney family at all? Mine does (and my uncle, grandfather and great grandfather all had Whitney as a middle name, which is really helpful).

It's also worth thinking about the transport links when considering possible migrations. St Neots is a remarkably well connected town. It's on the river Great Ouse (navigable from King's Lynn to Bedford; although larger vessels could only proceed as far as Barford Bridge). A little way above St Neots is the confluence of the Ivel and the Great Ouse, and the Ivel was navigable in the 18th century through Sandy and Biggleswade to Baldock and Hitchin.

St Neots also stands on the junction of the Great North Road (London to Edinburgh) and the Cambridge - Northampton turnpike; and had another turnpike running through Great Staughton to Kimbolton and Higham Ferrers.

Great Staughton and Kimbolton are both on the River Kym, which is too shallow to be navigable nowadays due to its having been dammed to create the Grafham Water reservoir; but I am not sure to what extent, if at all, it was navigable in the 18th century.

There was a Roman road running north from Sandy to Godmanchester (opposite Huntingdon on the south bank of the Great Ouse) which passed a little to the east of St Neots; but I think this had long since fallen out of use north of Tempsford in favour of an anglo-saxon ridgeway a little further east; and the Great North Road took a course a little to the west of the old Roman road, but still to the east of the river Ivel.

All in all, then, it is an area rich with migration routes ...

[Galium]

You can buy  downloads of St Neots parish register transcripts from here:

https://cfhs.org.uk/searchbs.cfm?type=&title=&search=+Search+++#stock

Just use the place search for St Neots.

I can see from the Huntingdonshire baptisms index that there are children of a Thomas and Lettitia Wiles, and of William and Henrietta Wiles being baptised at St Neots in the time frame that you are interested in.

[burrito]

JBML: Thanks for the useful information. I have not found any connection to the Whitneys, although I know John Wild m. Mary Ann Whitney. I did notice the Great North Road went right through the area.

Yes, the Maxeys were in Great Staughton while Wiles came from Eaton Socon. This seems to be a pattern, that grooms traveled to the brides' home parishes to marry. And then they tended to move around in the general area afterwards.

Gallium: Thank you for letting me know that, I'm going to try it out! And report back on what I find.