Sunday 29 May 2016

Where and what

Delving into genealogy, I came across twigs from a branch that has the SEADON family of Woolpit, Suffolk.

Apparently, it is a 'chocolate-box' village.

The main industry was brick-making and according to the 1851 census

William Seadon (head of the family, married)  of the Green, Woolpit, Suffolk, England age 42, was born in 1809.

Occupation Brick Maker 

His eight children are either scholars or agricultural labourers and were born in Woolpit.
His wife, Amy came from Stowmarket (Suffolk). 


Thro' the wonders of the internet, I found the Green Children of Woolpit.


Image Copyright Rod Bacon. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. 

Image Copyright Robert Edwards. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence.

St. Mary's records births, marriages and deaths.

Map of the village in the mid 1800s

The clay pits were to the east of the village. The parish church, typical of English villages situated at the heart of the village.

© Copyright Michael Garlick and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence

SEADON family 1851
William 1809 - Amy 1811 - James 1831 - Samuel 1835 - Amy 1837 - Robert 1840
Thomas 1842 - Jonathan 1846 - William 1849 - Elizabeth 1851

12th April 1830
William married Amy Mullinger

11th Jan. 1855 death of William's wife Amy.

This is where one has to be careful, as the village has more than one couple named Amy and William. The William and Amy of my history are SEADON.
Records note another family but their name is SEADEN.
It's oh so easy to become muddled with such close spellings. 

Jonathan is the one I'm going to follow for a while.

Born Feb. 1845/6
Why the discrepancy?

Another stumbling block for the researcher.

Not only do records show birth details, they also show baptisms if you are lucky. Records vary from county to county, with some enumerators being more assiduous than others. Then there's the quandary of census records with 1841 being a particular bugbear. Enumerators rounded years of birth; some can be as much as 5 years out.

Then there are transcription errors such as SEADON becoming LEADON if transcribed by someone that does not recognise the differences between the cursive forms of the capital letters S and L.

Searching by surname brings results and in come cases surname and address brings even more.
I found two sets of the SEADON family in the 1851 census for the Green in Woolpit. William and Amy with their family and a Robert SEADON with his wife Elizabeth both born 1820; living in the same house as Thomas Mullinger (widower). Could Robert be related to William and might Thomas be Amy's father?