Marsden Family: 1841 Census

Marsdens in the 1841 England census.

The 1841 census shows the Marsden family living in England, in the county of Derbyshire, the civil parish (government division) of Chesterfield, the hundred (ecclesiastical division) of Scarsdale, and the township of Walton. They are in the Chesterfield registration district, and sub-registration district, which might help locate further records and locate their home on a map.

Besides all those divisions, the census shows them living at Walton Mill. A website named From the Neolithic to the Sea includes the following information about Walton Mill:

Walton Works was a cotton wick mill, located in Brampton, Chesterfield in Derbyshire. 

The mill was built by Mr Hewitt and Mr Bunting in the 1770's and was known as Walton 'Bump' Mill. It is believed that the name refers to a cheap type of cotton which they produced. 

Disaster struck when in the year 1800, a fire destroyed most of the buildings and outhouses as well as most of the machinery. The steam engine survived the blaze and the mill was rebuilt. It is surmised that the base and ground floor of the mill is of original construction, but the brick work on the upper floors are a result of the fire. An attempt to make the mill fire proof was made as cotton is highly flammable. Through out the years the buildings were adapted, new structures built and removed as needs demanded. 

The partnership of Hewitt and Bunting expanded to include Mr Creswick, Mr Longdon and Mr Claughton between 1806 and 1835. Bushiness changed and expanded so that in the 1840’s and 1850’s the firm was engaged in cotton spinning and doubling, candlewick manufacturing and bleaching. A Mr Barnes, who owned several local collieries and lived in the building which is now Ashgate Hospice, also owned the mill for a short period before its purchase by the Robinsons in 1896. 

The mill closed in 2003 and part of the building is now Grade II listed. It is vacant following closure of manufacturing business. The site has site mostly been cleared.

The census lists Charles Marsden's occupation, as well as that of Eliza Marsden (daughter? sister? niece?) as "Pot. M." Charles Marsden was a potter.

It was a large household: Charles (35) and his wife Mary (35), their children John (13), Ellen (11), Hannah (10), Charles (8), and Mary (5 or 6). Then the ages jump, so the next two girls listed may be daughters, but could also be sister or nieces, Sarah Marsden (11) and Eliza Marsden (15). Next is Joseph Hancock (70), coachman. I believe this is Mary's father, but I cannot yet state that for a fact. The next residents of the household were Ruth Longson (23 or 25), and Charles (10), Robert (7) and Herbert Longson (1). What a busy household! Fourteen people!

The next household listed on the census was the James and Ann Wheatcroft family. The story of that family is an interesting part of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in England. Here is Ardis Parshall's story about them, Sarah Wheatcroft: Service for the Dead.

The final columns on the 1841 census mention birthplace, whether in the county or not, or in Scotland, Ireland or Wales. Most of the members of the household were born in the county of Derbyshire, but the mother, Mary Marsden was born in a different county, her father Joseph was listed as being born in Ireland, and Robert and Herbert Longson were born in a different county.

That is a review of the basic information about the family in this census. If you were to read through the entire census for the area you would find out all sorts of things about the community where they lived, but I will not get into that here.

Questions raised by this census:

• Is Joseph Hancock Mary's father? (Yes.)
• Who are Eliza and Sarah Marsden?
• Who are the Longsons? Why were they part of the household?
• What kind of house did they live in? Does their house still exist? How would I find the location on a map?
• What kind of pottery did Charles Marsden make? How extensive was the pottery industry in Derbyshire? Why was a potter living at Walton Mill, which was a cotton mill?
• What were their living conditions like with fourteen people in one household? Sanitation? Sleeping arrangements? Food preparation and storage?

When this census was taken, Mary had already been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for a year, and her husband was baptized about the time this census was taken. More about those exciting times later!

Coming next: The Marsdens in the 1851 Census

Marsden Family: Ancestry, Part 1

Compiling the records of the Marsden family on Ancestry is an ongoing effort. Ancestry includes a series of "hints" of historical and other information that should be added to each person's entry. I try not to include resources without some confirmation that the record is actually for the person in question and is accurate, or agrees with other sources on the family.

Here is my current family tree on the Marsdens. As you can see, I have not traced the family tree past Charles and Mary Ann Hancock Marsden.

The little leaf icons show that there are hints for Charles Marsden and all of the grandparents in the family.

Here is Charles Marsden's current page in the family tree:

I've already attached a series of hints, including connections to ten other family trees. I always connect to other family trees, if their information looks even generally reliable, so that I get notifications if they add other resources, and so they get notifications when I add new resources. I just looked through all the family trees that I've linked to Charles Marsden, and I don't recognize the names of any of the tree owners. Just one of the tree is thoroughly sourced, but that tree has also added a fictitious wife and child to Charles Marsden. That means that I shouldn't rely on any of these family trees and any work I do on this family will need to be based on my own research.

Here are the sources I have in Ancestry on Charles Marsden. First, his U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900. This is a database compiled by Ancestry from Family Search and other sources, and should not be taken as a definitive source. It could be accurate and based on family records, but it could include mistakes. This record shows the following information:

U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900
Name:     Charles Marsden
Gender:     Male
Birth Place:     En[gland]
Birth Year:     1804
Spouse Name:     Mary Ann Hancock
Spouse Birth Place:     En[gland]
Spouse Birth Year:     1803
Marriage Year:     1826
Marriage State:     En[gland]
Number Pages:     1

The citation is given in Ancestry as follows:

Yates Publishing. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004.

The next record is from the England & Wales Free BMD records. From 1837 to 1915, local English and Welsh government registries made a quarterly report to the General Register Office in London about all the births, marriages and deaths occurring the preceding quarter. The events are listed by quarter, which is why Charles Marsden's death is listed as "Jul-Aug-Sep 1854."

England & Wales, FreeBMD Death Index: 1837-1915
Name:     Charles Marsden
Date of Registration:     Jul-Aug-Sep 1854
Registration district:     Chesterfield
Inferred County:     Derbyshire
Volume:     7b
Page:     311

Here is an image of the index showing Charles Marsden's death. I have changed the contrast so it is more readable. Charles is on the fourth line.

Here is his entry.

The entry states that he died in Chesterfield and that the information is in book 7b, page 311. I have not been able to figure out how to access that information.

Here is the citation information for this record:

FreeBMD. England & Wales, FreeBMD Death Index: 1837-1915 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office.

You don't have to have Ancestry to access this index. It is also available at the website FreeBMD.

Charles Marsden shows up in two English census records. Here are both of them with complete citations. The citations as I have included them here contain more information than would need to be listed in a book or article.

Census Returns of England and Wales, 1841. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1841. Ancestry.com. 1841 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010. Class: HO107; Piece: 194; Book: 10; Civil Parish: Chesterfield; County: Derbyshire; Enumeration District: 18; ; Page: 1; Line: 1; GSU roll: 241296.

Census Returns of England and Wales, 1851. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Public Record Office (PRO), 1851. Ancestry.com. 1851 England Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005. Class: HO107; Piece: 2147; Folio: 596; Page: 10; GSU roll: 87779-87780.

The Marsdens in the 1851 census, page 11. (Lucy and Eliza Ann Marsden.)

And that is enough information for one post. I will look at each of these census pages individually in subsequent posts, and continue with the other resources from Ancestry after that.

To be continued...

New Church History Library Catalog

For anyone interested in Mormon Studies, Mormon history, genealogy, the history of the Western United States, or even history in general, you will want to become familiar with the new Church History Catalog of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I assume this is being released in advance of next week's annual meeting of the Mormon History Association in Calgary, Alberta, which I wish I could attend.

This new online catalog brings together the collections of the Church History Library, a huge database of Family History Books, the BYU Digital Collections, and the Church History Library Collections at the Internet Archives.

Here is an article about the collection from the academic Mormon history blog, Juvenile Instructor. ("The New Church History Library Catalog.") The article notes that the Church is expanding its online digitized holdings, and that:

...over 500,000 documents and images are presently available on the catalog. Additionally, the catalog includes opportunities for historians to request digitization of various collections (providing approval is granted).  Although digitization will come with an attached cost, once completed, the digitized images will be made available to the whole Mormon history community, thus allowing patrons to build the body of digitized documents.

If you have any questions or comments about the catalog or the collections, the Juvenile Instructor article would be a good place for them.

Marsden Family: Early Latter-Day Saints Website

While looking through the RootsWeb entries for the Marsdens, I saw that one was an index to the site Early Latter-day Saints: Remembering the People and Places.

This site is run by a not-for-profit organization called The Historical Pioneer Research Group. It seems to combine the efforts of Mormon-themed genealogical organizations in the Midwest, service missionaries at Nauvoo and other Mormon locations, and historians associated with BYU. It looks like it is a work in progress with requests for further information.

Here are some notable pages:

Mormon Places

Includes everything from Nauvoo to the small settlements that sprang up as the Saints left Nauvoo. This could help trace your pioneer ancestors' route to the West.

Some of the entries have sources and notes; others have none, so the list is of mixed usefulness.

Cemeteries

Includes the records for the Winter Quarters Cemetery. It is very touching to read through the grave records, many them children. Here are the entries for Isabella Hood Hill and a few others:

• Isabella Hill; age 25 yrs., 8 mos., 12 days; wife of Archibald Hill; deceased, Mar. 20, 1847; birthdate, July 8, 1821; grave no. 109.
• Willard Richards Bullock; age, 2 yrs., 1 mo., 6 days; son of Thomas and Henrietta Bullock; deceased Mar. 17, 1847; disease, effects of persecution; birthplace, Nauvoo, Hancock Co., Ill.; birthdate, Feb. 11, 1845; grave no. 104.
• Child; A. O. Smoot's sister's child not reported to me; deceased April 29, 1847; disease consumption; grave no. 144.
• Jacob; age 17 yrs., 6 mos.; servant [slave or former slave] of John Bankhead; deceased, April 7, 1847; disease, Winter fever; birthplace, Monroe Co., Miss; birthdate, Oct., 1829; grave no. 126. [Ed.—This one helped make the identification of an otherwise unnamed slave mentioned in the John Brown diary, so I've added this source to my ongoing Slave List project.]

You can search the website by name and by location. Although it has some limitations (names and places have not been researched, sources have been transcribed by volunteers, etc.) I have added it to my list of sources to I check for every biography I write.

Marsdens in the Early LDS database:

Abraham, Charles, Emma, Hannah Maria, Harriet Zelnora, James, Margaret, Mary, William.

It looks like there are at least two different families of Marsdens who were early members of the Church, and it looks like Charles and James are the only ones in this list from our family. It can be helpful to know about the additional family for sorting through records and newspaper articles.

Marsden Family: RootsWeb

In RootsWeb, there are 25 results for Mary Ann Hancock with spouse Charles Marsden. Each entry shows how much information is included. I don't bother to look at entries that don't show a person entry, family tree, and documentation. (See icons beneath name.)

Here is a summary of the entries with multiple icons:

1-3) Shows a line of descent running through daughter Harriet Marsden Gaunt. Harriet seems to have died in England in 1867. Her widowed husband, William Gaunt, may have gone to the United States, since their daughter Elizabeth Gaunt married John Tavennor Snelson and they had a son, William Edward Snelson, born in 1892 in Salt Lake City, Utah. So Harriet did not make it to Utah, but some of her family did. Trees 2 and 3 show added information that Elizabeth Gaunt Snelson died in Salt Lake City in 1921. All these lines seem to have duplicated information for some of the children. (Trees submitted by 794468, 92052, and a44830.)

4) Shows a line of descent running through James Marsden. (Tree submitted by bevangenealogy25.)

5) Shows descent through Ann Eliza Marsden Hitesman. She went to Utah and married there and seems to have remained there. (Tree submitted by ldshistorical.)

6) Shows James's line again. (Tree submitted byterrijpt1.)

7) Shows a line of descent through Eliza Marsden Brailsford. The family was in Derbyshire at least through 1867. The family tree shows that Eliza died in 1867, but I would need to double check this information since Harriet is shown to have died that same year. Unlikely. The family tree shows that after 1867 at least part of the family went to Utah including Eliza's widowed husband. (Tree submitted bygenlady2.)

8) Shows line through James Marsden. (Tree submitted by greendragonfly.)

9) Wood Family Tree. Shows lines of descent through eight children. This is the first tree that has documented information citing censuses and parish records and other information, so this is the first tree out of all those listed that I would actually cite as a source. (Tree submitted by woody65.)

In previous years I would have used the last family tree as a resource, but now I usually construct my own from primary and secondary sources on Ancestry, checking all the information and lists of children against family records, NewFamilySearch, and published sources. I'll probably check this family tree against my compiled tree to see if it has any additional leads.

To be continued...

Marsden Family Posts

The Survey, Part 1
The Survey, Part 2

Mary Hancock Marsden Emigration
RootsWeb

Marsden Family: The Survey, Part 2

Mary Ann Hancock Marsden

A Marsden cousin just sent a note with some questions about the family, which reminded me that I abandoned the Marsden posts back in December when I was finishing up a research project for my husband.

It's evidently time to resume this project. The timing works, since I'm taking a break from the Eminent Women project over the summer.

Last year I created a primer about Tracing Mormon Pioneer Ancestors using the Richard and Frances Ann Matthews Litson family as an example. I will use that general outline for this family as well.

To restart the project, here are screen shots of my current records on Charles and Mary Ann Hancock Marsden from Brampton, Derbyshire, England. Some of this information is documented. Some of it is from family records and is otherwise undocumented.

These are the current children I have listed in the family records. 

As you can see from the graphics (arrows, Family Search icon), I only have further information for one of the children, Lucy Marsden Green. I assume this is a result of the fact that the father, Charles Marsden, died before the family left for America, and Mary Ann Hancock Marsden died fairly early in the pioneer experience. Not having a family with two living grandparents may have affected how close the family members felt to each other and how much contact they had after a generation or two.

As I have experienced time and time again while writing my series on the Eminent Women, it is very important to track down all the family members back a generation or two, all the siblings, and all the children and grandchildren in order to tell the story of a person's experience. You're not going to understand the family if you just trace back your immediate ancestral line.

We will also learn more about Brampton and Derbyshire, England, as we explore the history of the Marsden family.

To be continued...

Marsden Family Posts

Mary Hancock Marsden Emigration
 The Survey, Part 1
The Survey, Part 2 

RootsWeb

Marsden Family: The Survey, Part 1

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently realized that I do not have much information on the Marsden family. 

I was a little puzzled how to start researching the family until I remembered that I recently wrote a guide to Tracing Mormon Pioneer Ancestors. So I will go through the steps of that process with the Marsden family over the next several weeks.

First is the Survey: a look at family records, FamilySearch, New Family Search, and RootsWeb.

Family Records

In my Reunion file I have the names and some dates and places of Charles Marsden and his wife Mary Ann Hancock Marsden and their daughter Lucy Marsden Green, but no other children in the family. None of the facts are sourced except for the ordinances, which are linked to a prior digital generation of the records of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Ordinance Index.

My RootsMagic file, which is my working file, has several children added from the 1851-1881 England census. Here is a copy of the first page. As you can see, there are several conflicting dates and places.

 

Next is a look into my file box containing family history information from my grandmother. 

The Lucy Green-Marsden file is entirely empty.

Next is a look at my grandmother's file box containing legal-sized documents. There is a "Green, Henry" folder, and it has multiple research notes and family group sheets and pedigree charts. There is also a catalog of Henry Green's letters, but the letters are not included. (Sigh. I am deeply appreciative for all the work my grandmother did, but I am trying hard not to leave my files in a scrambled condition, and since I now have the benefit of the internet I am trying to make all the materials and pictures available in multiple places on the internet, for the benefit of all the descendants of these people.)

And that's all for today. I will continue with a look at FamilySearch and NewFamilySearch and RootsWeb, as well as present the materials from my grandmother's' files.

To be continued...

Mary Hancock Marsden Emigration

 Mary Ann Hancock Marsden

I ordered a copy of a history of James Marsden from the DUP. He was the son of Charles and Mary Ann Hancock Marsden and the brother of Lucy Marsden Green. Some of the information in the history about his emigration and that of his Marsden family may be confused with the emigration of another James Marsden. I am still trying to piece the puzzle together. As far as I can tell, Mary Hancock Marsden emigrated in 1866 on the ship St. Mark. Here is the immigration record, and a link to her entry in the Mormon Migration Index.

Mary Marsden, 59, England, is on the fourth line, followed by Eliza Marsden, 17 or 19, spinster. This record is from the New York Passenger Lists for the ship St. Mark with an arrival date of July 24, 1866. Mary is listed in the same family as James Whinham (Mormon Migration's transcription) or Whonham (Ancestry.com's transcription). I do not know who this is! Time to do some remedial research on this family!

To be continued...