By Ian Sewell
By Ian SewellFirst off, I must apologise for my lack of reports throughout 2020 this was a combination of factors not excluding the pandemic, time does seem to fly by.
First, we welcome Carey Wells to the society. She has been researching her husband’s family and has found a link between him and Isaac Sewell (1787-1865). This is the family of member Glennis Sewell who has done much research and written her own book on the family and its migration to Australia. I have put them in touch with each other.
Also joined is Anna Sewell who contacted me via the website with regards to Theophilius Sewell who we have recorded as born in Rutland in 1665. This is one of the biggest family trees we have in Rutland (RUTlanA) and I am really please to finally find someone who is in this tree as I have been documenting the Rutland Sewells for some time now concentrating on the record in the 1800s. In order to confirm the data we have with Anna, I checked into the details we had and ran in to a problem. I could find no source records to confirm the data we hold on Theophilius or any of his children. There were plenty of records in Langham and surrounding parishes, but none of them fit what we had. The first online record I could confirm was the marriage of John & Vertua Mary Peak in 1745. Trying to go back I ran in to a rare problem of too many records. I found four possible baptisms for John in Langham and the surrounding parishes all with different names for fathers and none of them William, the name we had in our records. I am not sure where our details for Theophilius and his children came from but until I can confirm them our tree will have to start with John.
It got worse than that, as whilst doing the checking my eye was drawn to another record on our charts, Thomas, b. 1826, son of Thomas & Mary Peake because the birthplace was given as Wing, Rutland. My first thought was that could not be right as Wing is in Buckinghamshire, but it turns out that there is a Wing in Rutland, about 10 miles from Langham. However, when I checked the online records for Thomas to confirm this, his parents are given as John & Lavinia so he can’t be Thomas & Mary’s son. So, this part of the tree, some 30 people had to be cut out, it is likely that he is part of another tree based out of Uppingham, which is close to Wing, which I will work on later.
I checked the rest of the records to see if there was another Thomas who could replace that Thomas and it was very clear that the start of the tree RUTlanC fitted the bill. Not only was the date of Thomas’ baptism 1822 a good fit, the name Peake also started to make an appearance in the family which links to Mary’s surname. It was also in Langham, so no need to go 10 miles down the road to Wing. Further work on that family showed that tree RUTlanE also fitted in as that started with one Peake Sewell born 1809 to Thomas & Mary. Thus another 46 people have been added to the tree RUTlanA which makes up in some way for the loses.
I will continue to work on the Rutland trees to see what I can do to clear up these issues and see if I can add in any of the records I have from the 1700s. It is however very frustrating as the sheer number of records causes issues, as often there are more than one possible record for what you are looking for and the names you think you will be able to link are missing from the records!!