William Martin (FFMFF)

[Merry]

Does the marriage index give the fathers' details or the parish for the wedding?

I couldn't find any Duke /Berwick birth registrations, but there is a death of a William Duke in Steyning district in 1839. I've forgotten his age now, but he was in his 40s I think.

[Merry]

It wouldn't be the first time someone has married under a different surname than you might expect! (ie William Duke, carpenter might actually be William Martin - scuppering my theory completely! lol). I have seen examples where every GRO entry is in one surname but every census record is in another for instance. Sometimes it's to do with copyhold land entitlement, but more often just because somewhere along the line there's been an illegitimate birth and a family has been brought up with the 'wrong' surname (and used in everyday life and on the census) but they use what they see as their lawful surname on more official records! Lots of other variations on this theme too. Obviously they didn't consider family historians at all! lol

[marquette]

Originally Posted by Merry

Does the marriage index give the fathers' details or the parish for the wedding?

I couldn't find any Duke /Berwick birth registrations, but there is a death of a William Duke in Steyning district in 1839. I've forgotten his age now, but he was in his 40s I think.

No details like father or witnesses, in this case. The parish is Preston, freebmd says registered in Steyning district.

The name Elizabeth Berwick is unusual enough for me to want to investigate. As you can see from an earlier post, there were several Elizabeths related to each other, but at least two of them were still single in the 1841 census.

Between work and meetings this week, I have not had a lot of time to look further, but I will later this week.

[marquette]

After a long hiatus from seriously chasing up William Martin, I decided to widen my search for his baptism and his marriage.

So, I decided to look for William Martins in the area around Buxted/Rotherfield, where his wife and son were baptised.

I whittled the list down to 3 possibles, so I put in each set of parents as an alternate set of parents, adding in their marriages as I found them. I was hoping I might get some DNA matches, as I have dozens for Elizabeth Berwick's family.

And within a few days, ThruLines was suggesting 6 possibles DNA matches. One is 12cM and the others all 8cM, all based on William Martins mother's maiden name of Sarah Deacon.

Some do seem to be reasonable - one suggested a birthdate of 26 Feb 1786 for Sarah Deacon which I could not find in the Sussex FH database, nor on Ancestry - but it was in the familysearch non-conformist records.

Maybe that's why I cannot find the records I needed. So now there will be a lot of research to follow up these suggestions. I will also be looking at how these suggested DNA matches match up with others