General Chat

Have you found ancestors from 'unexpected' places?

I assumed that my father's father had originated on Merseyside, because that's where he and family lived. but no they were essentially from Essex, via Grimsby. His mother's family was from Shropshire.

Another Gt gt gt came from Devon but married someone from London.

What I find intriguing is how the brides and grooms came to meet, understandable when they 'married the boy / girl from down the road' but what brought a young woman from Devon all the way to London in the early 1800s?

Now we think nothing of travel, a journey in a car or train can take us to the other side of the country easily, but 'back in the day' it must have been a huge thing to take a stage coach for days...perhaps from living in the country to living in a busy city.

Have you found ancestors coming from an area you had never considered?

OH has a female ancestor who was born in 1850 and brought up in a small village in Oxfordshire, where her father and grandfather were ag labs.
She married the 3rd generation blacksmith in a tiny village in Shropshire, where she lived until a widow.
I have no idea why they should meet.

I was amazed to find that many of my ancestors came from Essex and Norfolk. I always thought they had always lived in the North East, but many came to Gateshead for industrial work in the 1850/60s when things became hard for agricultural workers. Also, another branch came from Surrey to work as engineers in Sunderland and Consett.
Strange to think that I now live in Norfolk, quite near to my roots!
I, too, often wondered about how people met their partners - I've found that some worked in service, quite far from their family homes, and met their partners in that way.

Hi Rose,

Both my parternal gt grandparents were from Devon and probably met there but they lived in Essex where my grandfather was born.

I suppose you have to remember that a lot of children from large families had to work and the girls were mainly domestics. If they worked for people who had country houses and London houses then maids would go with the family to the London residence for the season. Also when farm work was more motorized lots of families went to london or the outskirts to find other work than working on the land.

There again if a girl or young lads father was a good Tailor and he moved to London or elsewhere for more trade taking family with them.

I do know what you mean though about how they travelled. Don't forget the railways too. Workers for the railways moved about a lot.

Rose I always thought my family where from Manchester and Lake District but having contacted family member on here and through digging myself I found my GG-Grandfather was born in the Isle of Man as were a few others as well, I certainly did not expect that.......

My furthest away is my gt grandmother on dad's side, born Canada, I think that she probably met my gt grandfather when he visited Canada to deal in fish :-)

Mel, btw the snowdrops did well this year :-)

It is absolutely fascinating how people met. Often service, often canals were links, often chapels and denominations.

My parents and my wife's parents were born and raised in Wolverhampton, Colwyn Bay (DEN), Holywell (FLI) and Cowbridge (S GLAM) respectively. Connection was war. Dad served in Signals in Colwyn Bay (based in a garage just off Penrhyn Ave) and fil served in Vale of Glamorgan.

So Hitler was responsible for births of me, OH and our four siblings :-) ;-)

Yes, I thought my grandfather's family was from Southend, but his name had been anglicised, and they were actually from (what was then) East Prussia :-)

One of OH's 'greats' was born in Wiltshire but married in rural Kent. Someone with the same person in their tree said that we couldn't possibly connected until we looked at who she was working as a servant for in Kent before her marriage.

He was a Railway Civil Engineer from Dorset about the time the railways were expanding. We think that his previous posting must have been close to her home village when she was employed, then moved with him to the next location.

With the train, came great ease of movement!!

My g grandad was born in London in 1862 (his father was born in Buckinghamshire, but joined the metropolitan police force in 1851), my g grandma in Suffolk.
G grandad, who worked as a waiter at the Services Club in London married in London, then left his wife - they never had children - and, one presumes in order to totally leave her, he moved to Bournemouth, lived in lodgings and got a job in the Chine Hotel
G grandma (b 1879) lived in a small village in Suffolk. She went to Grimsby to have a baby, then, leaving her child with her parents, went into service (live in) in the Chine hotel. Where, one can only presume they met!!

In 1900, they moved to Southampton, didn't marry, but she called herself 'Mrs P'. He got a job as a steward on the liners, she went on to have 10 pregnancies (9 children). All the birth certificates give her name as Mrs P, so no-one was the wiser.
The family story is that g grandad's first wife was in an asylum - and, in those days you couldn't divorce a spouse if they were in an asylum - I've found the marriage, but not her incarceration.

G grandparents eventually married in 1924 (the year before my gran married), after his first wife had apparently died. On the marriage certificate she is 'spinster' - he is 'bachelor' :-(

Direct lines so far stay firmly in Sussex..........apart from 1 line that was in Hampshire in the early 1800s.

Although as the county boundaries have changed over the years, their birthplaces are now actually in Sussex :-D

My father was born in Lancashire, but always said he had visited relations in Buckinghamshire in the mid-1920s.

We never had any contact with Buckinghamshire ................. but sure enough, there are his father's family and ancestors all the way back to the mid-1700s.

The surprise was my brother going on business up to Durham, looking in the phone book and seeing 2 men with "our" surname. Bro contacted them ............... they were very surprised to meet someone with the same name. Had always thought they were the only ones in the whole wide world..


I start doing genealogy ................... and discover my father's father living in Durham in 1881, with his mother and BROTHER.

hmmmmmmmmmmmm ....................


turns out his father (my gt grandfather) was killed in 1877 falling out of a train in Oldham, Lancashire, leaving his wife with 3 or 4 young-ish children still to care for.

One of his sons had already moved up to Durham to get work ................... so wife and remaining children moved up to Durham.

By 1891, gt grandmother and grandfather had moved across to Oldham ............. to join all the other people from their village (including relations) working in the cotton trade.

I'd like to find out what gt grandfather was doing in Oldham in 1877 when he fell out of the train .................. his nephew identified the body. Was he visiting, looking for work, or ??????


I had really not expected so many of them to have emigrated to Australia in the 1840s and 1850s .................. as assisted migrants.

My dad's mum's side are Cornish going back generations. GG grandparents born there, gran born there - yet my g grandad was born in Barrow in Furness.

The reason? The Cornish Tin mines closed, so the tin miners went up to Barrow in Furness to mine for copper - it seems like whole villages went for a generation - then many came back down again.
My g grandad didn't go into mines, he came back and became a master blacksmith.
His friend (also born in Barrow) came back to Cornwall and joined the Navy.