George HUGILL (joiner of Stockton-on-Tees)

St. Thomas's Church
(photos by Judy Webster, 2005)

On this day 178 years ago (5 Feb 1844), at St. Thomas's Church, Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, England, George HUGILL married Jane BLACKBURN.

George was probably a brother of my 2x great-grandmother Mary HUGILL, who had married John PEACOCK in the same church in 1836. George HUGILL, a joiner of Stockton-on-Tees, was the executor for John's will, but unfortunately that document doesn't specify their relationship.

In census returns, the birthplace of Mary PEACOCK nee HUGILL (born c.1813) and George HUGILL (c.1816-1817) is shown as Hull, Yorkshire.

Today I ordered the certificate for George and Jane's marriage in 1844. I want to know whether George gave the same details then as he did when he married again (as a widower) in 1858, to Helen WRIGHT. According to the 1858 certificate, George was a son of Joseph HUGILL, a joiner.

George HUGILL and Jane BLACKBURN had three children:

* John George HUGILL died from burns at the age of 9 (see Carlisle Patriot, 14 Jan 1854).

* Frederick HUGILL (1846-1926) was a watchmaker and jeweller. He and his wife Elizabeth ROBINSON moved to Bangor in North Wales, but their five children were born in the Stockton area - Jane (she married George William EWART), George Frederick, Helen, Elizabeth and Florence.

* William HUGILL, born 1849. I have not yet researched him.

If you'd like to exchange information about this family, please email me at the address shown in the sidebar.

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This is my Week 5 post for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Amy Johnson Crow has challenged us to do something with the family history information that we've gathered. Even if I don't always stick to the suggested themes, I'll try to post something here each week.

(This post first appeared on https://judy-webster.blogspot.com/2022/02/george-hugill-joiner-of-stockton-on-tees.html)

Photo of Col WEBSTER with Bert and Flossie

Col Webster playing with Bert and Flossie, 2005
(photo by Judy Webster)

Favourite Photo is this week's theme for '52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks'. I chose this photo because it brings back many happy memories of my Dad (Col WEBSTER) and our beloved dogs Flossie (a Border Collie) and Bert (a Smithfield). They were both 'rescue dogs', and hugely important in our lives.

Dad was aged 86 when I took this photo at 'Taminga' (the 32-acre property near Fernvale, Queensland, to which Mum and Dad retired after they left Cunnamulla).

Flossie came to live there in 1998. Bertie joined us for Christmas 2002, when my sister Robyn was "just fostering him from the pound until New Year". (Haha - a likely story!) To nobody's surprise, they fell in love with each other and Bert became the newest member of our family.

That Christmas was rather entertaining. In three days, Bertie ate a chair, an outdoor sofa, two foam boxes, a mat, a dog bed, assorted garden tools, and several toys belonging to Flossie. He was only ten months old, so the chewing phase was in full swing, but thankfully it didn't last too long. And in his entire life, he never chewed a shoe!

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This is my Week 3 post for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Amy Johnson Crow has challenged us to do something with the family history information that we've gathered. Even if I don't always stick to the suggested themes, I'll try to post something here each week. It may just be an 'On This Day' biographical snippet, or an extract from an interesting document, but anything is better than nothing!

(This post first appeared on https://judy-webster.blogspot.com/2022/01/photo-of-col-webster-with-bert-and.html)

Genealogy in 2016: Accentuate the Positive

With the 'Accentuate the Positive' geneameme, Jill Ball encourages us to focus on our recent genealogical achievements, not the things that are still on our 'to do' list at the end of 2016.

• An elusive ancestor I found was my gr-gr-gr-great-grandfather William WEBSTER (occupation: dyer), whose burial was among 79,000 new records added to the Greater London Burial Index on FindMyPast. I subsequently found an image of the original burial register in the London Metropolitan Archives collection on Ancestry.


• A precious family photo I found (courtesy of a distant cousin) was Helen Rebecca CAMPBELL (born Tiree, Argyllshire, Scotland) who married William Tasman WOOLDRIDGE in Tasmania, Australia. There is a strong resemblance between Helen and her brother John CAMPBELL, whose portrait (painted by Alfred Bock) was in the historical museum at Sale in Gippsland, Victoria.


• An ancestor whose grave I found was Carl Ludwig RIENECKER. I somehow missed it when I tramped through Forest Hill cemetery (Queensland), which has several sections separated by bushland. Luckily there is a grave location map linked to the Billion Graves Cemetery Index.


• An important vital record I found was the marriage of James WEBSTER and Mary GIBLETT in Bath, Somerset, in 1817. FindMyPast has an index (Somerset marriages post-1754) but the image of the original register is in Somerset, England, Marriage Registers, Bonds and Allegations on Ancestry.


• A newly found family member shared information about descendants of Annie Louisa WEBSTER (1848-1916) who married William SMITH, a builder in Camberwell, Surrey, England. Some members of that family use the hyphenated surname WEBSTER-SMITH.


• A geneasurprise I received was (1) Dick Eastman, in his famous online genealogy newsletter, recommended my Web page (Using and Compiling Indexes); (2) some of my English relatives were born or married in China (Ethel Winifred HUDSON, Edgar Murray HYND and their children) or died in Africa (Geoffrey Aubie TURNER). The sources I used included Andrews Newspaper Index Cards 1790-1976 and the National Probate Calendar on Ancestry, and British Nationals born overseas and British Nationals married overseas on FindMyPast.


• A 2016 blog post that I was proud of (because I think it will help a lot of people) was '40 of My Favourite Genealogy Indexes and Sources'.


• A new piece of software I mastered was IrfanView (see 'How to save source information so that it appears on an image' and 'Using IrfanView to Label Digital Photos').


• A social media tool I enjoyed using for genealogy was Tweetdeck. I make separate columns for selected people and topics (such as hashtags #genealogy and #AncestryHour) so that I can easily see those tweets. With Tweetdeck I can also schedule my own tweets to be posted when I'm away or asleep.


• A genealogy webinar from which I learnt something new was Publishing a Genealogy E-Book, by Thomas MacEntee.


• I was pleased with the presentation I gave to Toowoomba and Darling Downs Family History Society ('Not Just the Patient: how hospital and asylum records tell the story of a family' and 'Ancestors who moved or vanished'). Just before I left home, I broke my toe, so driving to Toowoomba and giving a long presentation was quite a challenge.


• I taught a friend how to use the full list of all record sets on FindMyPast to gain access to some that (inexplicably) can't be found via their A to Z Search.


• A genealogy book that taught me something new was Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History, by Mark Herber.


• A great repository I visited was the Borthwick Institute for Archives (Yorkshire, England) - but it was a 'virtual' visit, not an overseas trip! Many of the Borthwick's original records are now online as digital images. This year I downloaded several wills and hundreds of parish records via the magnificent Yorkshire Collection and Prerogative and Exchequer Courts Of York Probate Index on FindMyPast.


• A new history book I enjoyed was Shadows of the Workhouse: The Drama of Life in Postwar London (the beautifully written memoirs of Jennifer Worth).


• A geneadventure I enjoyed was a genealogy conference on a 7-night Barrier Reef cruise organised by Unlock the Past.


• Another positive I would like to share is... In 2016 I made a lot of progress because I took a close look at what I'd previously found (or failed to find). I studied certificates again, and suddenly realised the significance of witnesses' names. Taking one ancestor at a time (and then their siblings), I listed the records that were missing from my collection. I obtained certificates, wills, school records and other items that were unavailable (because of access restrictions) when I started family history 40 years ago. I checked what sources I'd previously used, and I looked for new indexes (and digital images of original records) on the Internet and in libraries and Archives.
  
  I'm sure that you, too, will enjoy success in 2017 if you follow Pauleen Cass's superb advice in My 3 Rs of Genealogy Research.

My previous posts in the 'Accentuate the Positive' series were in 2012 and 2013. If you'd like to join in, see Jill's blog.