"New" Siblings for my Great-Grandmother and a Mystery

Ada Hobbs and Bessie Hobbs, the only photo I have of any of Ada's siblings.

My grandfather's writings about his family and his mother's family are such a special thing to have. I wouldn't know nearly as much about my great-grandmother's siblings without them, but I have recently discovered two siblings he knew nothing about. And it isn't surprising, there was a lot of loss in my great-grandmother's childhood, it may be something she wished to leave behind in England when she came to the United States.

My 2nd great-grandparents were Joseph Elijah Hobbs and Elizabeth Merritt of Somerset, England. They were married in Frome in 1850 and had four children that were previously known to me, all of whom emigrated to America after their parents deaths in 1868. Emily, born in 1851, Elizabeth Ann (Bessie), born in 1852, Ada, born in 1855 and Joseph Elisha, born in 1859. That leaves nine years between Joseph's birth and their deaths, a long time to go without a birth, so I went to the church records.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a church register entry for a Henry Hobbs, baptized at Holy Trinity in Frome, Somerset in 1863. His parents are Joseph Elijah (thank goodness for that middle name) and Elizabeth. A birth certificate for Henry that I received this week confirms his mother's maiden name of Merritt, boosting my confidence in the relationship.

Five years after Henry's birth, on March 16, 1868, Joseph Elijah, according to his death certificate, died of pulmonary phthisis, or tuberculosis and it was noted that he had been ill for "some years." His death was reported by a Richard Hobbs, possibly his brother, who said he was present at Joseph's death. Just three months later, on June 22nd, Elizabeth died seven days after childbirth. Her death was reported by an Ann Millard, who I believe was her sister, having found an 1842 marriage register entry for Ann Merritt and John Millard.

Now, here is the mystery: a child named Henry Hobbs, son of Joseph and Elizabeth, was baptized two days after Elizabeth died and in the same church she would be buried from a day later. This Harry's address is the same as that on Elizabeth's death certificate but there is no civil registration of his birth or death that I have been able to find to correlate any other information. And what about the Henry born in 1863?

It wasn't unusual at this time for a child to be given the name of an older sibling who had passed before their birth, but I wasn't able to find any burial or death records for Henry Hobbs in that period. I did, however, find a burial record for a five year old Harry Hobbs, a few months AFTER Elizabeth's death and the baptism of the second Henry. This week, I received the five-year-old Harry's death certificate. His father was Joseph, an edge tool worker, which is a match and his death was reported by Ann Millard, the same woman I believe to have been his aunt. His place of death also matches her residence, which makes sense considering the passing of his parents. His cause of death, like that of Joseph, was tuberculosis.

I have heard in lectures that babies could go unregistered due to the fees required and I can only guess that money was already tight when Elizabeth died. That made me think that the baby perhaps didn't live very long and his extended family didn't "bother" with registration, but I would have expected to find at least a burial record in that case. Perhaps as I learn more about the family and the extended family and the customs and records of Somerset, I will be able to discover the fate of this baby and maybe even figure out why he was baptized with the name of his living brother.

Will my Ann White please stand up?

In response to a message from a DNA match, I started looking a bit into my ancestor Ann White of Somerset, England. Ann was my 3rd great-grandmother, wife of Isaac Hobbs of the Hobbs branch that I've been told leads to Sir Edward Baytun. The marriage register entry connecting Ann to Isaac and the baptismal entries of their children are all I knew of her before this and although I'm not sure whether I know more about my Ann a week later, I'm nearly convinced.

The 1841 census of England was the first to record people by name and Ann, recorded in a household in the town of Elm that consists of herself, husband Isaac and six children, is already 50. Her entry in the 1851 census says she is 59, and the 1861 says 70, giving us a birth year, if all are accurate, of about 1791. The latter two census also record her town of birth as Elm/Great Elm.

Ancestry, so "helpfully", has provided me with a hint that takes me to a baptismal record and has even suggested parents for her. But there is a problem. The baptism that Ancestry dangled on that stick took place in Yatton- 30 miles away - and, if you read past the first line of the entry that contains the baptismal date of 17 Aug 1791 and the same parents as suggested by Ancestry, you will learn that this Ann was 26 years old! Sadly, there are at least three trees on Ancestry that have attached this record to the Ann married to Isaac Hobbs.

Going through the baptismal registers myself, I found in Elm, an Ann White who was baptized in 1795. She was the daughter of Charles and Martha White. Is this my Ann? The pieces fit so far, but the evidence is a bit thin. I'd love another document making the connection, but sometimes they just don't exist.

Ann and Isaac's marriage record did not record the names of their parents and the witness names were no help. Charles was a laborer, an edge tool maker, like his sons and generations of the Hobbs family, so was very unlikely to have had a will that might have linked him with Ann and her married name. Ann White is an awfully common name. I wondered if there was anything out there that would provide better evidence or more evidence.

When I was examining the census entries for the Hobbs-White family, I noticed other Whites on the same page. Could they hold the answer? This section of the census for Elm was only about sixteen pages in eight images, so I wrote down the given names of all the men with the White surname who were the right age to be Ann's possible siblings and then looked for baptismal records in the parish of Elm. Sure enough, I found baptismal records that matched the names of most of these men in years that matched their ages in the census, who also had the same parents as the Ann baptized in 1795. 

Admittedly, I have not finished my Somerset county locality guide and I'm still learning my way around English research, especially before civil registration, so it was time to ask for help. Yesterday I posed my question in the "Somerset - Ancestors & Genealogy" group on Facebook. One of the comments on my post was really helpful and also illustrated why a locality guide is so necessary. The commenter told me the men of the White family likely worked at the Elm Steel & Iron Works in Elm or the Fussell Iron Works in nearby Mells. Also, that they may have lived in cottages that were tied to the iron works that would have been quite small for a large family. She noted something I'd missed, that Isaac & Ann's 6-year-old, Ruth, was living with a different family in 1841, a Charles and Ann White. The size of the cottages may have made it necessary for Ruth to live with extended family. This commenter also provided me with a link to some maps of Great Elm on the National Library of Scotland website. She really opened up what felt like a dead-end the other day.

I plan to do some more digging and connecting of dots before I will feel that I have enough evidence to declare Charles and Martha to be my Ann's parents in my public Ancestry tree, but I do want them in my tree for now and I don't want them floating around unattached, so I used a tip I picked up from Connie Knox at Genealogy TV on her YouTube channel. I created the family unit in Ancestry, then I copied the link in the search bar for Charles' page and created a web link in Ann's page which I named Potential Father, then I did the same with a link to Ann's page in Charles' web links.

If my explanation was confusing, or you just want to see the process step-by-step, it's in this video on YouTube in the second to last segment called "Weblink between people."

I'll be sure to keep you updated on the progress of my locality guide and whatever I piece together on the Whites.

Since My Last Post

 

Carl Anderson (rt), his son Axel (lt), his grandson Gilbert (standing), and great-grandson.

Since my last post, I've spent a good deal of my genealogy time transcribing an interview that my great-uncle, Axel Anderson, recorded with my great-grandfather, Carl Johan Anderson, in 1955.

For some reason, a post about the information from the recording just would not come together, but it is the 19th of the month, I really want to stick to a minimum of two posts per month, so I thought I would write about what I've been up to.

One of the challenges posed by the Anderson recording was language. Carl was born in Sweden and there were some words and phrases, mostly names and place names, that I could not make out. There is also a thirty second exchange between Axel and Carl in Swedish. The Genealogical Translations group on Facebook really delivered for me here. A volunteer provided the missing words and names for me and also transcribed the Swedish segment with a translation, all within about 24-hours of my post.

In the past, I have also received translation help from one of the Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness groups on Facebook, but that was for a quick translation of a headstone. This was a little more complicated, so I wanted to go to a group just for translations. I could see after I was accepted to this private group that all of the posts were asking for help with written translations, so I wanted to make my request as easy as possible. The recording was about an hour and fifteen minutes in two files, and I surely wasn't going to ask anyone to listen to the whole recording. I went through my transcription and made sure that each point where I had questions was notated with a I or II depending on which file the audio was on, and placed a time stamp. I then made the text bold and red for English words and blue for Swedish words. After checking the document one last time, I uploaded it to a new Dropbox folder and moved the .mp3 files into that folder, and then I created a link to the folder which I included in my request in the group. Since I was new to the group, I checked the group's rules before making my post and made sure to follow them. And again, in about 24 hours, I had my translations. It was a great experience.

I also had some questions about some of the content of the interview and I took those to the Swedish Culture & Traditions group. The specifics will be a blog post of their own once I do some additional reading, but I'll just say that this group was again very helpful; I had at least a dozen people offering information very quickly.

As for my Hobbs-Merritt line, I've finally stopped procrastinating on making a locality guide for Somerset County, England. It's such an important tool when you start research in a new area, but I have to admit, I find it a bit tedious to put together. And then there's the temptation to jump down rabbit holes when I find a new resource! But, I am making good progress. And thank goodness I have a template to follow; I haven't made a new guide in a while and I'd be lost without it.

I was only able to catch a few sessions live from RootsTech. I did attend a webinar a few nights ago from Amy Johnson Crow about the new full-text searching feature from FamilySearch. That is a very exciting development! I'm looking forward to more record sets in the future.

And finally, I've been playing around more with my mother's DNA matches on Ancestry since sending in my kit and Donald's kit. I was a little worried about Donald not getting results because he had a little trouble that day working up enough saliva, even with all the little tricks, but all was well. It was my DNA that Ancestry couldn't extract!! Hopefully I'm only a few days away from getting my results from my new sample. Thank goodness the second test was free. In the meantime, I've uploaded Donald's data to MyHeritage and Family Tree DNA and I'll start looking at their tools as soon as I can.

Although I feel like I missed something, I think that's all since my last post. I hope I can find material for another post by the end of the month.

Hobbs-Merritt Do-Over

I didn't really rely on someone else's tree to give me the names of my great-grandmother's parents, did I?  Did I??? Ugh, I think I did.

I started my first tree on Ancestry in 2008 and now in 2024, I thought that those names, Joseph Elijah Hobbs and Elizabeth Merritt, came from my grandfather's research and writing, but I can't find any evidence to back that up. I could have taken their names from census records, also, but let's just say it's a good thing I was planning to review all the facts on this branch anyway.

It was hard to put myself back in my 2008 shoes and pretend I didn't know Joseph and Elizabeth's names, so I started a new private tree, just for myself, just adding the information I would have had back then. One thing I have going for me is that I know the names of Ada's siblings who also came to the United States after the deaths of their parents. Although there is no record generated in this country, like a census record, that contains all of their names in one place, the relationships are documented through family stories, obituaries and those newspaper accounts that you don't see anymore, like one that mentioned my great-grandmother travelling out of town for her sister's funeral. This gives me confidence that the hint Ancestry gave me for the UK 1861 Census is correct. It contains my great-grandmother's name and those of her known siblings, along with those of their parents.

It also, very helpfully, confirms that my great-grandmother was born in Poplar in London's East End, which fans of "Call the Midwife" may recognize. This is important because Ada was the only child of this family, that I know of, to be born outside of the county of Somerset. And not a short distance either but well over one hundred miles. That's a considerable distance in 1855.

It also means that I haven't yet found Ada's baptismal record. Not all church registers for Poplar have been digitized according to multiple sources, but now that birth certificates can be ordered and fulfilled online, I was happy to have an excuse to plunk down a few dollars and order my first English certificate.

And there she is. I don't know how I can be so excited about a birth certificate after 14 years of genealogy, but, knowing it would be ready yesterday, I looked for the email from the GRO before I even got out of bed. And did I wait the suggested 24 hours to check the site for it? I did not!

I will try to track down Ada's baptism soon, but for now, I am satisfied that I had the correct names for her parents. Elizabeth's maiden name is further confirmed by the fact that her children lived with two of her brothers in the United States and I have those census records.

I don't know why I've been putting off making a locality guide for Somerset, England, but I got a little kick-start from Legacy Family Tree Webinars this week, watching the recent Introduction to County Research in England by Mia Bennett, so that's what I'll be doing next.

52 Ancestors - Heirloom - My great-grandmother's Bible

Researching my paternal grandfather's maternal lines has meant starting over to a greater degree than I realized at first and I've found myself examining everything, including the few heirlooms I have from this branch.

I've shared photos here before of this Bible that belonged to my great-grandmother, Ada Merritt Hobbs, but it's been quite a while since I've examined it. Probably since I photographed it in 2015. The inscription reads:

Ada Hobbs
Elm
November 1867
E.M.H.

Looking at it again, I realized that this inscription was likely made by Ada's mother, my 2nd great-grandmother, Elizabeth Merritt.

Elm is a town in the county of Somerset in England. Baptismal records show, I believe, that at least two generations of Hobbs lived in Elm for at least part of their lives. Ada would have been twelve in November of 1867, so I wonder if this was a gift for her Confirmation. Although it seems a bit formal to me for a mother to inscribe her daughter's Bible with her initials (E.M.H. for Elizabeth Merritt Hobbs), I can't really say what the custom would have been 150 years ago.

This Bible must have been very special to my great-grandmother, especially since she lost both of her parents the following year and had to leave England not long after to join her siblings in Pennsylvania.

My grandfather was 18 when his mother died, I believe that a lot of Ada's possessions naturally went to her older children, but I'm very glad that this Bible found it's way to those musty book shelves in my dad's house and eventually to me. And I highly recommend examining your treasures every so often. You never know what might "click" after more research.

52 Ancestors - Earning A Living

In 2017 PBS and BBC aired a short reality series called "Victorian Slum House." Despite the title, it was a fascinating recreation of life in London's East End. Each family group that participated was faced with different challenges and viewers had the opportunity to see some of the ways that semi-skilled and unskilled laborers earned a living in the Victorian era; how much they made, how the families lived and what could happen when they were faced with various obstacles.

If you've never seen this series and are in the US, you can still watch the five episodes with a membership to PBS Passport, it looks like they will be available until May and each one is just under an hour.

When I first started researching my family it was enough for me to know that my 2nd great-grandfather, Joseph Elijah Hobbs of Somerset, England, was an edge tool maker and that my 3rd great-grandmother on another branch, Elizabeth Louden, was a straw bonnet maker. I've been able to find a pretty detailed description of how Elizabeth would have made her straw bonnets and a less detailed description of edge tool making, but now I want more detail.

How many days a week did they work? How many hours per day? Did Joseph work for himself, a local smith, a larger factory? Was it noisy, hot and smelly? What kind of income did he earn? What kind of home could the family afford? Did Elizabeth make the bonnets at home? Was it enough to support herself and her three children after emigrating to Canada from Scotland? Did she work around the clock? Did she sell her bonnets directly to her customers, or was she doing piece-work for a local milliner, or was there some other arrangement? Who were her customers?

This type of research is new to me and Google hasn't given me much. Since Joseph Hobbs is in one of the lines that I've already committed to researching this year, I'm starting with a locality guide for Somerset and hoping that this will give me some leads. Once I get into that, I plan to make inquiries at local libraries and archives to see if anyone there can point me in the right direction. I think there are trade directories that I can look for?

Anyway, that is the plan for now, it may change as I learn more, and as I learn, I will share my outcomes with you.

Image from: The New York Public Library. "New England bonnet makers" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1866. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-20ce-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

52 Ancestors - Witness to History

If the last few years have taught us anything, it's that your name doesn't have to make it into a Wikipedia article for historical events to have a great impact on your life. The same obviously applies to our ancestors and will apply to our descendants. Anyone who has spent any amount of time on this planet, has been a witness to history.

In some cases we may have heard stories and anecdotes about those impacts, like my grandmother's choice of wedding dress in the midst of the Great Depression, or my mother's first trip to the butcher after the end of WWII rationing. Maybe they were a little bit closer to events, like my grandfather who worked at the University of Chicago in the 1940s and rode "the night train to Washington" with Enrico Fermi and others on "matters of a secret nature" during the Manhattan Project.

One of the reasons I've decided to research my paternal grandfather's maternal lines this year is to see if I really do descend, as I was told by another Ancestry member years ago, from Sir Edward Bayntun, Vice Chamberlain to Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleaves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr and close friend of Catherine of Aragon. It's not the royal connection that intrigues me so much, but the history. And if there's a historical period that is well researched, it's the reign of Henry VIII.

If Ancestry hadn't shown me my 2nd great-grandfather's bounty application, I likely would never have heard of the Fenian Raids, much less understood the anxiety they provoked in many people living close to the border, possibly including my ancestors. If I hadn't read some of the horrifying details of the Great Famine, I never would have understood the lives, the trauma and even the bequests of some of Donald's immigrant Irish ancestors.

The grinding poverty that pushed my great-grandfather Anderson to come to America was certainly the result of his father's death, but did Sweden's last famine, in the year that he was born, also have an impact? I may never know, but learning about it may still give me some context for the lives of his family. 

I've become quite passionate about digging into the history that my ancestors lived through, the events that shaped them, perhaps even fascinated them as well. I've been keeping my public library busy, my bookshelves full and my podcast queue is never-ending. And just like I'll never run out of ancestors to research, I'll never finish placing them in history.