C is for Cottam family of Culcheth

 Culcheth – a funny name to say.  A lot of my maternal relatives lived  in that area. 

My mother’s father Joseph was a Cottam and his father James emigrated from England in about 1852, married and settled in Victoria, Australia, continuing the farmer’s life. 

James ancestral line of Joseph, John, Peter, John, were all born around Culcheth.  

The early Cottam men are listed as yeomen, which meant that they held and cultivated a small landed estate making them freeholders. 

The Cottam family had lived in the Culcheth area from the 1700s and maybe longer, as that is as far back as I can verify at this point of time.  The areas listed on their documents, vary from Croft, Risley, Tyldesley, St Elphin and Leigh.  

Map showing Warrington close to the Lancashire Cheshire border.

The ocean is to the left of Lancashire.

B is for Bridie

Challenge: 

A red-haired woman with the very Irish name of Bridie Flynn arrives in Cork. 

In conversation with locals they say, you must be Irish?! 

She replies… 

 

The Challenge Response:

‘I am Irish - in my bones, my blood and hair, as you can see.  I have the features of my father who has the face and stature of the Flynns.

I come from a line of fighters - fighters for survival.  

My Great, great, great grandfather’s family of eight (like others) was struggling with hunger in the ‘Great Famine’ of Ireland.

A is for Alice Annie. A-Z Ancestor Challenge

Alice Annie Pearce was born into the Pearce family on 03 July 1868.  They lived in Dumbarton, Dumbartonshire, Scotland. 

Her father’s name was William (30 yo) and her mother was Sarah nee Clarke (32). Alice Annie was known in the family as Elsie. She was my Great Aunt, my paternal Grandfather's older sister. She was named Alice after her maternal Grandmother Alice Clarke.

  By the time she was 12 yo (1881 Census), the family had moved to Innerleithen in Peebleshire (abt 1879) and she lived at home there for about ten years.  

Grannie and Grandad Pearce

In August 1912, my Grannie and Grandad Pearce and their five children left Peebles in the border country of the River Tweed, Scotland. The family business was running an aerated soft drink factory utilising the natural spring on their property. But having eight sons meant too many workers, so three emigrated to Canada, and my Grandad to Australia.  

He took up an irrigation block in Victoria, in No 2 settlement, East of Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley.   Wheat had been previously grown there. 

The family of three boys and two girls along with Mum and Dad lived in a tent through those first long rainy months.  They cooked outside over a make-do fireplace, straining the muddy water through cotton to make it potable. Being an irrigation area, they had the nearby channel to wash in. 

The men built fences on the land and prepared it with the help of their horse to start a fruit orchard. 

Watering the rows of trees

1886 - Joseph Henry Pearce

Joseph Henry Pearce known as Harry was born to William and Sarah Pearce (nee Clarke) on 16 Feb 1886 in Innerleithen, Scotland. He was the baby and the tenth child of the family.

The Pearce family. Harry is the little boy on the right front

Ancestors: The Palmer Family Story

The earliest member of my ancestral PALMER family for whom there is definite evidence is John Palmer born in March 1730 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire England. 

He married on 14 February 1763 to Sarah COWMEADOW possibly in Richmond. 

Sarah was born 07 June 1735 in Longney, Gloucestershire to Ann Bullock and Richard Cowmeadow. 

(Don't you love the joining of those two surnames)