Your favourite ancestor

[Merry]

Ann in Sussex mentioned her favourite ancestor on a thread on research, which got me thinking.....

Who is your favourite ancestor and why? (I'll let you have a maximum of three favourites!!)

[ElizabethHerts]

It changes from month to month - it depends which family I'm researching at the time!

[kiterunner]

My favourite three to research are: Sir Nathaniel Hodges, Walter Horner Brown, and Robert Bristow. All in my maternal grandfather's tree. Not necessarily the people I think I would have liked the most, but the most interesting to research as there is lots to find out about them and lots of databases etc that they turn up in. Also always the hope that I will solve mysteries close to them - who exactly their wife was in two of these cases, and who exactly Nathaniel Hodges' father was.

[Merry]

I have to admit, I can't get excited about any of my father's tree except for one chap who has a double life with two wives at once (and appears in the households of both of them in 1871!), but he isn't my relative - his legal wife is!

On mum's side my three are:

First, my 3xg grandfather, Job Smith. Having a rarer-then-usual first name enabled me to trace lots about him and his extended family with certainty. In his 50s he emigrated to America with his second wife and I would love to know if he was in touch with his first family and also what happened to him.


Second, on another line, my 5xg-grandfather, Nathan Crawley. It took me about 15 years to discover his name and he's still causing problems, but I feel as if I 'know' him. Weird??

Third, my 2xg-grandmother, Mary Smith, daughter of Job (above). She seems like a 21st Century woman trapped in the 19thC.

[Shona]

John McLean - the last person to be convicted of grave-robbing in Scotland before the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act,

http://www.genealogistsforum.co.uk/f...ht=john+mclean

[Asa]

Mine change a bit too but I tend to feel I know the ones who I've worked hardest on, even when there are still mysteries to solve. I suppose it's the amount of time we spend "with" them?

I also feel I know those where there's a lot of info on them - either because they were very well off, very badly off or in trouble with the law a lot. But then place has a lot to do with it so I have a lot of feeling for the Londoners, the Berks/Oxon ones and the Devonshire ones.

I'm particularly interested in the ones I'm descended from more than once - so perhaps at the moment, Leonard Slade (d.1693) and Eleanor Sayer (1626-1684) as I descend from them four times.

[Langley Vale Sue]

I don't know about my favourite ancestor, but probably the one I have most sympathy for is my 4x G grandmother Mary Ann Carter.

She married aged about 17, had a son who died aged 2, two months after the death of her husband. She then married my 4 x G grandfather George Tivers 18 months later in 1810, had one son in 1811 and then in 1813 before she was 30 and whilst expecting my 3 x G grandfather, was widowed again just before his birth. This son died aged 25, leaving a widow and a 10 month old son.

Mary Ann, probably understandably, didn't re-marry but as far as I know she is the only ancestor on that side of my family to have left a will (which I have a copy of) which gives an insight into her life. I'm sure there is plenty more to be discovered about her - which is a task for the future.

[Merry]

Sad story, Sue.

Asa, My feelings are much like yours - I nearly ended up with all Smiths in my top three (the third one from a different branch) because I've 'got to know them' because it's such a challenge researching Smiths!

I think the reason I can't get very interested in my father's family is because they come from places that are not easy to research (Somerset and Gloucestershire) and fall into the 'in-between group' - neither rich nor poor and not in trouble with the law! Before the census era I just have a few BMDs, but hardly anything else.

[marquette]

If I had to choose, I think I would pick Thomas Brazill, my 5xg grandfather. I know lots about him, but want to know more !

What I know - he was born in Norwich, Norfolk in 1766 and married for the second time in 1798. He was a captain of a coastal trader taking mostly Herring down the east coast to London - in 1807 his ship the Rising Sun was captured by the French and he spent 7 years as a Prisoner of War. After his return to England, his only son was born. In 1837 aged 71 years, he undertook to voyage of 5 months to come to the colony of NSW. Unfortunately, he died just three weeks after arriving in Sydney in May 1838.

What I want to know - who was his first wife, what did he do for 7 years as a prisoner of war, what did he do when he got back to England and what on earth made him decide to come to NSW ?

Another favourite would have to be his wife Mary, who managed to raise three daughters on her own for 7 years, only applying to the Trinity Corporation for support in 1812. She lived with her son in Newcastle and died aged 92 in 1865. I wish I could locate "the family vault" where she is supposedly buried at Morpeth NSW.

[ElizabethHerts]

My favourites are the families I have got furthest back with, too.

So, my Quintrell and Andrew families in Cornwall, my Wood and Popple families in Lincolnshire, and ny Jeffcoat and Parrott families in Oxfordshire.