Flookburgh - A Connection to the Past

28 Main St, Flookburgh

If only walls could talk, was my first thought as I sat in my room in awe of the floorboards held in place with wooden pegs, not nails, the stone windowsills probably close to half a metre thick and the old dark beams holding the ceiling. I was staying in a very old house built in 1673 on the main road of a village called Flookburgh in the Lake District on the northwest coast of England. The reason for my trip was to get a feel for and learn more about the area where my Townson ancestors had come from.

Floorboards in the house

Flookburgh is unlike the higgledy-piggledy villages in the surrounding areas as its houses were built along the main road. It was historically the main cockling village on the peninsula. Collecting cockles and mussels and fishing in the sands and shallow tidal waters was a long tradition of the area. Collecting shellfish is now done by specially adapted tractors. It is often stated that Flookburgh derived its name from a local flat fish, known as the Fluke, many local people say that Flookburgh wasn't named after the Fluke but the Fluke was named after the village.

Main Street, Flookburgh

It had been a market town of some importance, largely due to it being on the major cross-bay route which connected Lancaster to Furness. Having been granted a charter by Edward I, later confirmed by Henry IV and again by Charles II in 1665, Flookburgh held a market and two annual fairs.

Map showing drive across the north of England and Flookburgh's location

As a prosperous fishing village,  until the end of the 17th century, it had many inns and shops. A couple of disasters possibly led to its demise. In 1669 The Plague was raging in the northwest and the deaths were so great in Flookburgh and caused such terror that bodies were buried in two excavations in a meadow to the west of the village rather than taken to Cartmel Priory, two miles away which was the normal practice. 

On 16 May 1686, a fire destroyed a considerable part of the village, probably near the centre with 22 houses and many other buildings destroyed. Despite this, today nine buildings on Main Street are heritage listed and many more in the surrounding area.

It gave me goosebumps staying in such an old house, which would've existed when my Townson ancestors lived in the village, and being on the main road, they most likely walked past it many a time. It's an amazing connection! In the middle of winter, a few days after Christmas 1716, Elizabeth Townson was baptized in the nearby Cartmel Priory. Her parents, John Townson and Elizabeth Askew were my 6 x great-grandparents and were said to reside in Flookburgh. Elizabeth's brother, John and his wife Alice Greenwood, my 5 x great-grandparents were living in Flookburgh when their first son, John was also baptized in Cartmel Priory at the end of Spring 1740.

Baptism records showed that both families moved around the surrounding area and thanks to my host's knowledge and directions, I could walk to many of these little villages and get a feel for how close together they were. She also lent me a book to read on the history of the area which had been written in 1955 from which I learnt more knowledge of the area. This also led to more explorations over the next two days.

#Flookburgh #Townson #Tounson #Tonson

A Needle in a Haystack

Sometimes trying to find an ancestor is like looking for "a needle in a haystack" which is how I feel researching my Slevin ancestors. Mary Slevin married Patrick George Rodgers at the Gosport Roman Catholic Chapel in May 1834. Patrick was a soldier, stationed at Haslar Barracks. Their first child, Edward, my great, great grandfather was born at the Barracks in April the following year. Being before compulsory registration and with little information on Church records, I had no idea where Mary was from. According to army records, Patrick was born in Antrim, so I thought it was likely Mary was Irish too, but being unable to find any other records of Mary and Patrick after the baptism of their son Edward, tracing the Slevin's got put in the too hard basket until recently. I needed to narrow down the area in the haystack I was looking, so I started with the surname itself.

Slevin was a surname I was unfamiliar with, so was it an Irish name? Research showed it was indeed the anglicized version of the ancient Irish name "O'Sleibhin", descendant of the son of "Sliebh". The original name holder was an associate of Malachy, High King of Ireland in his battles with Brian Boru. "Sliebh" is Gaelic for mountain and denotes a warrior of magnificent stature. Mary Slevin, therefore, was of Irish descent, but the question now was where in Ireland. Could I narrow it down to a County at least? By looking at the distribution map of the Slevin surname (below) from the Griffith's Valuation, the highest concentrations of the name were in Tyrone, Donegal and Fermanagh, as indicated within the red circle.

Slevin Households in mid 19th century Ireland
(from johngrenham.com)

The next step was to explore my DNA matches to see if I could link to Slevin descendants. Because I am seeking matches to descendants of Slevin ancestors, who would date back to the late 1700's or early 1800's, the matches will be small if at all, another challenge. This is really my only hope, for that early in Ireland, very few records still exist. What I also learnt researching this surname is that there are many variations of it's spelling - Sleaven, Slavin, Slavan and others. Lack of literacy and interpreting dialects added to these variations and another challenge for me.

After trawling through matches on Ancestry, My Heritage and FTDNA using all possible spelling variations I could think of, I had 16 matches varying from 8cMs to 26cMs. Most had limited trees which I built out. What did I learn from this exercise?

Firstly, 5 of my matches descended from 3 children of a pioneer couple of Highland County, Virginia, USA, John Slaven & Elizabeth Stuart. John was born in County Tyrone about 1723 and married in 1740 in Virginia to Elizabeth Stuart, who was from Scotland. I need to be slightly wary with these matches as I also have Stuart/Stewart's in my ancestry, which could muddy these matches. However I do have two more matches that trace back to Tyrone, one to Daniel Slevin & Catherine Holland who married in Tyrone in 1844 and to Bridget Slaven & Bernard McCarville, Bridget having been born in Tyrone about 1818. Bridget's descendants ended up in Iowa, USA, whilst Daniel's came to Victoria, Australia. Of the remaining 9 matches all trace back to Ireland, 2 to Donegal, 1 to Fermanagh, 1 to Belfast, 1 to Roscommon, 1 to Monaghan and 3 just Ireland.

Secondly, I learnt very few remained in Ireland, the majority left, 8 to the USA, 3 to Scotland, 1 to England, 1 to Australia and only three remained in Ireland in Donegal.

Through this exercise I did narrow down the area of the "haystack" to search for my Mary Slevin and it very much coincided with the red circle on John Grenham's map above. In fact I have an inkling that it probably is more specifically Dromore in Diocese of Clogher, County Tyrone, as there were a lot of Slevin's in that area and a few of my matches link back to that area or close to it. Therefore Mary or at least her ancestors were more than likely from County Tyrone. This research has provided as much knowledge about Mary as I'm likely to know due to limited records, but it is a lot more than I knew at the start. It is also another story about the Irish Diaspora.

#Slevin

My Rodgers Ancestors

Sometimes there are ancestral lines in your family that you can find very little about. From the time my grandmother told me, as a teenager, nearly fifty years ago, that her mother's name was Henrietta Rodgers, I have wanted to know more about this family. Despite my best efforts over the years and having my DNA done all I could come up with was Henrietta's father's name and his possible parents. After a concentrated effort in the last couple of months, I haven't been able to add anymore names, but I have at least been able to add more "meat to the bones" and confirm the names I had.

Edward John Rodgers was Henrietta's father and he had married her mother, Ellen, about six months after her first husband had died, suddenly, leaving her with five young children to bring up alone. Henrietta was born twelve months later in Jan 1877 in Nairne, South Australia. A marriage of necessity perhaps, but Edward turns out to be a poor choice of husband. Within two months of the marriage, whilst he was running a lodging house in Hindley St, Adelaide, an altercation occurred with one of the lodgers, Mary Ann Nutt, who was charged with unlawfully and maliciously wounding Edward after he rather too forcefully chastised her screaming child. She had attempted to empty a basin over his head and in the process hit him in the eye, resulting in him losing the sight in that eye. Evidence was given that Ellen had told him he should not have chastised the child and that he had pushed her away as well. Mary Ann Nutt was found not guilty.

The further back on a family tree you research, the harder it becomes to find some ancestors, and even rarer to know what they looked like. However sometimes you can be lucky and find a description. This happened when, unfortunately, a warrant was issued for Edward's arrest, six months after Henrietta's birth, for deserting his wife, Ellen and his description appeared in the South Australian Police Gazette, Aug 1877:-

Edward was arrested five months later in Jan 1878 at Caltowie, South Australia. It is unlikely that he ever provided for or saw much of Henrietta, as by May the following year he was admitted to Adelaide Hospital where he remained for 163 days before he died on 29 Oct 1879. He died of exhaustion and suppuration of the knee joint and was only 43 years old. The details on his death certificate were provided by George Witcombe, a cabinetmaker who knew nothing of his marital status, place of birth or time in South Australia as these are all blank. When Ellen died she was buried with her first husband's surname. Hospital admission records, however, show Edward was born in Hampshire and had only been in South Australia for 5 years. The ship he supposedly came on the Earl Craig has proved to be elusive and no record has been found of his arrival. Equally his first wife which he alluded to on his marriage to Ellen, saying  he was a widower, has also yet to be found, but I have had more success with his named father, Patrick George Rodgers.

The baptism of Edward John Rogers (above) in Alverstoke, Hampshire in Apr 1835 show his parents as Patrick and Mary and that his father was a soldier. Patrick Rodgers and Mary Slevin had married in the Gosport Roman Catholic Chapel on 23 May 1834.

Lewis's Topograhical Index 1837

From Regiment Discharge Papers and Chelsea Pensioner Records for Patrick Rodgers, I have been able to learn more about him. He was born in the Parish of Blaris, County Antrim in 1815. Blaris Parish is also referred to as Lisburn Parish as it encompasses the town of Lisburn. Lisburn is on the River Lagan which divides the Counties of Down and Antrim and is only 6 miles(9.6Kms) from Belfast. The parish includes parts of both counties. Patrick enlisted in 86th Regiment of Foot under the leadership of Lieut. General Sir Arthur Brooke KCB at Belfast on 3 Jan 1833 as Private No. 814. Records at the National Army Museum show the regiment in 1827 had its first posting to the West Indies and other British possessions, a posting which lasted ten years. The regiment were also at Haslar Barracks in Hampshire in 1834/35, according to a Conservation Area Appraisal in 2018, at the time when Patrick married and Edward was baptised.

Model of Officer of 86th Regiment

c.1858

The 86th Regiment had the nickname, The Irish Giants. Legend has it, when they first began recruiting for the regiment in Ireland, many of its earliest recruits were very tall. This made me wonder was Patrick tall for an Irishman? On his discharge papers, I found a description (below) that showed he was 5ft 6ins(168cms) tall. Was this tall at the time? The Irish Times (13 Nov 2021) reported the average Irish male born in 1980 is 5ft 9ins(175cms) tall, 3 and half inches(9cms) taller than a hundred years ago. On that premise, considering Patrick's birth was 65 years earlier again, he was probably tall for the time, but definitely not a giant! Both he and his son had dark hair.

Patrick was discharged from the regiment on 22 Aug 1837 after 4years and 232 days of service. A board had granted him a discharge and pension of 6/- per day for 3 months due to him being medically unfit for duty. The surgeon's report said Patrick had an enlarged testicle and obscure thoracic disease. He most likely had trouble breathing when he exerted himself, with the cause unexplained. His conduct report stated he was "a good soldier, much in hospital". What happened to the family after his discharge is unknown.

Sometimes you can find lots of details about an ancestor's life, but have no idea what they look like, but in this instance it has been the reverse, with descriptions of both Edward and his father. It made me wonder if the the mop of brown hair, hazel eyes and olive complexion my youngest brother was born with was inherited from Patrick!

#Blaris

#Rodgers