wills are useful, and people are sometimes idiots

As a follow up to the last post [in November of last year, how time flies in a pandemic!], I obtained a copy of the will of John Ayton of Laxfield Suffolk, died 2 April 1845 in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex. This is the individual who I believe was father to Jane Ayton born c. 1792. Reading through the will it names various sons and then finally names John’s daughters and there, listed under her married name of Jane Warner, is Jane. As another proof of her being the correct person, another daughter is named as Elizabeth Ripp. One of the witnesses to Jane Ayton’s married to Charles Lloyd Warner was Elizabeth Ripp. I am now satisfied that Jane Ayton was the daughter of John Ayton and Sarah Simpson and was born c. 1792 in Laxfield in Suffolk. A trip to the archives has been put off by the C19 pandemic but hopefully once things calm down and the archives open, then I shall make the trip to go through the parish records there.

I have another dead end in my family tree that also needs addressing. This is Eliza Lowe who was ‘married’ to John Besch and died in 1850, before the 1851 census sadly. In the 1840 census she is down as having been born in Middlesex along with the rest of the family. Sadly, this may or may not be the case as the 1841 census is notoriously light on actual helpful information. There are a number of Eliza Lowe’s, born c 1800, who were baptised in Middlesex churches but as yet I have no managed to link her to any of them. Unfortunately, other people researching this line have not been to careful of their research. Pretty much everyone on Ancestry who has a tree with Eliza Lowe in it has her name as Eliza Frances Lowe and her parents as William Lowe and Eliza Manley. This is entirely untrue! Eliza Frances Lowe, baptised 1806 in Marylebone, never married and died in 1881 in Sussex. I have followed her through the census and registrations documents and she is named as a beneficiary in her father William’s will where it states she is a spinster. So this is not our Eliza Lowe! Sadly no-one has bothered to look further than the name which is hugely frustrating.

In other news, I have enrolled in the IHGS correspondence course and am working through the first assignment. I have wanted to take the course for several years now and it seemed the time to finally get myself together and do it.


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