Family History
Climbing trees: essays in family history
This page has nothing directly to do with the site. But since I now spend a great deal of time researching family history, and since some of the discoveries have been riveting, and since this website exists, and since putting the information in the public domain may lead to new facts coming to light, it seems better to post the research here rather than nowhere.
Where does one begin with family history, and where does one end? If possible, I would like in due course to research the families of my four grandparents: Powell and Blenkinsop on my father’s side, (Michell-)Clarke and Neill on my mother’s. I have started with the Neills. And if the other three families turn out to be a tenth as interesting, I shall feel very lucky.
I am also posting a paper on
The Powells of Devynock and Church Lawford, published by the Brecknock Society in 1964 and written by Sir Anthony Wagner, then Garter King of Arms and a distant relative.
The other pieces below are work-in-progress. As new information comes to light, they will be updated. If nothing else, I hope they will show what, thanks to the internet, is now available to be discovered with some tenacity and luck, and a helping hand from the family attic.
The Neill family
The early life of Susan Mary Abbott – the unmasking of Susan as the illegitimate daughter of Thomas Love Peacock. Her correspondence with George Meredith, and questions about Alice Bunce Abbott and Robert & Sarah Garrod. Article first posted: 17/10/11.
The early life of Charlotte Augusta Edings – how the daughter of cotton planters from a remote sea island off the South Carolina coast came to live with William & Susan Neill in London, aged 5. And was her father Joseph David Edings or Henry Montgomery Neill? Article first posted: 17/10/11.
The Powell family
The Powells of Devynock and Church Lawford by Sir Anthony Wagner – how a Welsh family of modest origins migrated to England and became a model of English middle-class solidity. The family tree at the end (which carries the imprimatur of the Garter King of Arms, however biased) says that I can claim descent from both Edward III and Owen Glendower.