Smiths in Lincolnshire - A journey into discovering the history of my Smith family who are apparently from South Lincolnshire .... we will see!

James Smith 1826 – 1883

James SMITH was born in 1826 in Whaplode Drove, Lincolnshire, his father, Isaac, was 31 and his mother, Mary (nee Phoenix), was 20. He married Letitia FITZGERALD on April 16, 1855, in Whaplode Drove, Lincolnshire. They had four children during their marriage. He died in March 1883 in Surfleet, Lincolnshire, at the age of 57.

Census Record Search

So by doing a search of UK Census records I can see that in the 1851 Census James is being recorded as working on a farm and in 1861, 1871 & 1881 the record states that he is an Agricultural Labourer.

Strictly speaking only three of the four children were born during their marriage as their first, a daughter called Jessie, was born the year before their marriage.

James died in January 1883 and was “Found Drowned” in the River Welland,Surfleet,Lincs.

Circumstances of Death

The inquest was recorded in the Stamford Mercury of 1 March 1883

Inquest – On the evening of February 22nd two men found the dead body of a man in the brushwood beside the river Welland about five miles from Spalding. The body was identified as that of James Smith of Moulton aged 57. An inquest was held on Saturday, before Mr J G Calthrop. Mrs Smith, of the George and Dragon inn, Pigeon-end, which adjoins the river, deposed that on the night of January 9th the deceased went into her house after 11 o’clock, when he was very drunk. He stayed about 20 minutes, and left to get a lodging in the town. Nothing more was heard of him: and it is supposed that he walked into the river and was drowned. A verdict of “found drowned” was returned.

In 1875 when his wife, Letitia, died they were living nearby at 129 Commercial Road so the George and Dragon (click for photo) in Holbeach Road would have been one of his locals. From the current maps the distance was only 0.3 miles. Interestingly the house next to the pub in the George and Dragon photo looks much like the house that is currently sited on the Roman Bank turning so distance could have been a bit less. Nevertheless you can see from the map and from the photo link that if James turned right out of the pub and walked into Spalding he would have followed the course of the river and would be quite easy for a person who was drunk to stumble in.

Click map to go to large Google Maps version.

It is worth noting that his mother Mary died on 18 February 1883 so at that time James would have been a missing person and it was just four days later that his body was found.

Death Index:- Spalding District – March – Vol 7a Page 232.

Father: Isaac Smith (1795 – 1863)

AncestryDNA Results are in

AncestryDNA results have arrived

So after about 4 to 5 weeks the AncestryDNA results are in. They are kind of surprising as I was expecting a generic British kind of result but seems that I am not exactly a typical Briton.

For a start my Europe West Ethnicity is almost double the average and there is a similar story on my Scandinavian Ethnicity whereas my Great Britain Ethnicity is less than half the UK average.

Not that that will have any real bearing on the Smiths in Lincolnshire but is kind of interesting. Maybe all the best Smiths ie Blacksmiths, Goldsmiths etc originated from West Europe and the Viking regions and those genes have made there way through to the modern day Smiths. Who knows?

My Ethnicity Breakdown vs UK Population

dna-ethnicity-distribution Ancestry also compares my DNA against its Database for other people who have been tested to try and find those with matching DNA.

In this respect it has matched up 23 possible DNA matches with a 2nd and 3rd cousin being people who do have common ancestor with myself and the 21 4th Cousins of which 2 have a high chance of being related and the remainder having what is considered to be a good chance.

There must also be literally be about 450 other distant cousins of which a few have a good chance and the rest moderate.

Many of these have public trees so working from the most likely first there is a chance that reviewing other public trees will help to fill in a number of gaps in my own tree. Now that will be a fun journey.

Lets Open Our World

So whilst the DNA kit is being processed and whilst I get the information together on the Smiths in Lincolnshire I thought it would be worthwhile to look at a recent campaign that included the AncestryDNA test to produce a number of short films promoting a travel website. The idea was that a number of people would have their DNA tested and one would win a chance to travel the world and visit the countries that there ancestors in all likelihood descended from. The video has done the rounds on social media so you may have seen it but worth showing the advert here and then if you wish to know more you can see some videos on a few individual cases.

To start off the Ancestry DNA Kit

So to start this journey I thought it would be a good idea to try the Ancestry DNA kit. I have completed a DNA kit before but that was literally to show the routes that my ancestors would have taken from Africa to the United Kingdom. In this case Ancestry say that they will look for matches of relatives within their trees so that does intrigue me so £100 later (inc postage) I sat back and waited for the kit to arrive.

20160914_073856 And here it is just a couple of days later. Inside we get the tube for the saliva and a blue chemical mixture to mix with the saliva. A bag to put the tube in and then a box to post the item back to Ancestry.

20160914_073949 So the kit has now been completed and posted back to Ancestry and I will hear from them in 6 to 8 weeks for the results.

Hello world!

The objective of this little site is to show the results of trying to follow my family tree on my Surname side. You would think that following the Smiths that this would be quite hard so we will see where our research takes us. Our starting point will be Moulton in Lincolnshire and we also see how far back we will go until we live the county.

So with a new subscription of Ancestry in hand and research that I did 12 years ago in the background I have the chance to start again and redo the family tree and check all of the sources whilst I go along.

Let’s travel back in time ……….