Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Rabbit!! Lookee Here What I Found. Maybe an Ancestor?

Sometimes all I want to do is search randomly for potential ancestors in the Ancestry.com records.  Today was one of those days.  But I had a plan!

I am trying to piece together the Marshman families of the area around Hilperton in Wiltshire between 1700 and 1850 from the records, especially church and probate records.  My challenge is that I don't know the parents of my 3rd great-grandmother, Ann Marshman (1784-1856) of Hilperton, who married John Richman (1789-1867) of Hilperton in 1811.

I collected church records back in 1993 from the parish registers and Bishop's transcripts, and entered most of that in my RootsMagic tree many years ago.  There are several Marshman families in Hilperton and several other surrounding parishes who are having children in the 1780 to 1800 time frame.  Can I identify the families who resided in Hilperton in 1811 when Ann was married?

In RootsMagic, I selected Web Hints for John Marshman (1747-1841?) and went to the Ancestry profile for him, and clicked Search.  That gave me a list of records available on Ancestry for this John.  There were over 2,000 of them!

Included in those records were 9 entries for John Marshman in the Wiltshire, England, Wills and Probate, 1530-1858 record collection.  Some are for the same year, but there are seven different John's between 1745 and 1832.  I'm in the process of reviewing each of them.

The entry for 1761, who is John Marshman of Melksham, and may be the father of the one I am researching, has a handwritten letter of administration naming his wife Jane and appointing another John Marshman, maltster of Shaw, as one of the administrators.  Here is the Letter of Administration:


Isn't that beautiful?  I think this John Marshman of Melksham is the one who married Jane Crook in Melksham in 1740, and had eight children between 1741 and 1755 in Melksham, including John Marshman (1747-1841?).

So - close, but no cigar, as they say!

Unfortunately, there is no probate record found so far for my target John Marshman who may have died in 1841.  And no death record in the church records or in the Civil Registry in 1841.

Oh well, it was fun going down this rabbit hole, and if it turns out that John and (Jane) Marshman are the grandparents of my Ann Marshman (1784-1856), I will be fortunate to have this record.

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