Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Who Were the Parents of John Richman (1788-1867) of Hilperton, Wiltshire? - Part 5

I wrote Part 1 of this series (on 12 March 2020), and have made some progress in sorting out all of the Richman data available in the area around Hilperton, Wiltshire in the 1700 to 1900 time frame.  In Part 1, I noted that there were a number of families in the Hilperton area that were having children in the 1775 to 1800 time frame that might include my 3rd great-grandfather John Richman (1788-1867), who is my "end-of-line" ancestor at this time.

1)  Can DNA matches help me find the parents of my John Richman?  Perhaps!  It Depends (I hear everyone saying this)!  I formulated a plan to "test" which of my candidate Richman families, if any, have descendants who are DNA Matches with me on AncestryDNA.  

2)  I wrote Part 2 of this series (posted 24 March 2020), and added my first candidate family for potential parents of my John Richman (1788-1867), being John Richman (1744-1808) and Mary Parsons (1750-1817) as the biological parents in my Ancestry Member Tree.  That generated 5 AncestryDNA ThruLines for DNA matches from those parents.  That is evidence that I am related to those DNA matches somehow, but it is not proof that those candidate parents are correct.

3)  Heartened by that find, I disconnected John and Mary (Parsons) Richman as the potential biological parents of my John Richman (1788-1867), and connected the second candidate potential parents - Joseph Richman (1749-1829) and Hannah Mission (1749-1832), who married in 1774 - as biological parents to my John Richman.  


Part 3 of this series (posted 6 April 2020) showed that I have no ThruLines for my second candidate potential parents - Joseph Richman and Hannah Mission.  

4)  Part 4 of this series (posted 16 April 2020) indicated that I have two ThruLines (with 9 and 10 cM shared, respectively) for my third candidate potential parents - 
William Richman (1760-????) and Hannah Picture (1774-????) who married in 1793 (5 years after my John Richman 1788 was born).  


5)  I moved on to the 5th set of potential parents for my John Richman - Charles Richman (1760-???) and Jane --?-- (1762-????) who had children in Hilperton baptized in 1786 and 1787.  

There were no ThruLines for descent from them either.  I looked at the Parish Register records for their marriage and the baptisms of their two children and their surname was clearly spelled Redman (the marriage record) and Rudman (the children's baptisms).  

6)  So I moved on to the 6th set of candidate potential parents - John Richman (1765-???) and Jane Child (1767-????), who married in Biddestone, Wiltshire in 1788.  I have found no records of children in Wiltshire for this John and Jane (Child) Richman. When I substituted them as biological parents in my Ancestry Member Tree, there were no ThruLines.  Here is the ThruLines chart for John Richman 1765 (the chart for Jane Child was similar):

It shows only my line.

7)  I think I have run out of candidate parents who had children in Hilperton in the 1780 to 1800 time frame.  But, there are other candidate parents in nearby towns (e.g., Trowbridge, Bradford on Avon, and others) who might have moved to Hilperton before the 1811 marriage of John Richman 1788.  

8)  My conclusion to this series is:

a)  The most likely set of parents is John Richman (1744-1808) and Mary Parsons (1750-1817).  They have the best opportunity to be the parents - they had children and baptized them in Hilperton, they didn't have another child in the 1788-1789 time frame, and they resided in Hilperton Marsh (where John Richman 1788's family lived after his marriage), plus there are 5 DNA matches descended from  the other children of John and Mary (Parsons) Richman.  

b)  The William and Hannah (Picture) Richman DNA matches (in post 4) are troubling.  They married in 1793, five years after John Richman's birth.   Their first son was named John Crabb Richman baptized in 1795. This family resided in Hilperton near the church, and this William was named in the will of John Richman (1724-1807).  William could have been married earlier to another wife and had John Richman 1788, but there is no record of that.  

c)  I think it is more likely that the two DNA matches that I have for William Richman have an error in their trees, or I have errors in my tree, than my John Richman 1788 is the son of William and Hannah (Picture) Richman!

d)  I don't have enough information yet to draw a conclusion.  My hypothesis is still that John Richman 1788 is the son of John and Mary (Parsons) Richman based on the evidence I have, but that evidence is not conclusive.  I need other records from Hilperton and surrounding parishes, such as the parish chest records.  I know the Hilperton parish chest records exist - Mr. Potts told me so in 1993 when we visited Hilperton and the church, but I haven't been able to see them yet, and I don't think anyone else has either. 

9)  What other records are available for Hilperton?  If any readers have suggestions, I welcome them!

10)  Have you tried doing this "test" with potential ancestors who may be biological parents of your current "end-of-line" ancestors?  If so, how did it work out?


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4 comments:

Brighton Transista said...

Are there any wills available for Richmans in this time period ?Ancestry has completely digitised the Wiltshire wills archive. Good luck.

Randy Seaver said...

Hi Brifhton,

Yes, I posted about the two Richman wills for Hilperton people in https://www.geneamusings.com/2020/02/amanuensis-monday-1788-will-of-john.html and https://www.geneamusings.com/2020/03/amanuensis-monday-1765-will-of-william.html two months ago.

These are son (John) and father (William) and are tradesmen (blacksmith and victualler) in Hilperton. My takeaway from these was that this is a separate Richman group from that of my John Richman (1788-1867), who resided in Hilperton Marsh.

Brighton Transista said...

Ah, should have seen those posts of course! Have you looked at the various Wiltshire indexes on FindmyPast? These are the records held by the Wiltshire family history society I believe - there's quarter session records and memorial inscriptions records sets there among others.

Randy Seaver said...

Hi Brighton (sorry about misspelling!),

I have checked those resources before, I think, but will do so again.

Thank you for the help here.

Cheers -- Randy