EUREKA MOMENT
Peter Craggs thought that his ancestor’s birthplace was an anomaly until he found a link to the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Jon Bauckham discovers more
How a Methodist connection helped Peter Craggs unlock his tree
How long have you been doing your family history?
I first began researching my ancestry over 40 years ago as a result of my paternal grandfather, who had drawn up a family tree because his brother had married my grandmother’s sister. The couples also shared a set of great grandparents and were therefore second cousins, which I found really interesting.
What did you uncover before hitting your brick wall?
I had always assumed that both sides of my family came from the north-eastern counties of England: Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, County Durham and Northumberland. However, while researching my maternal ancestors I found that my great great grandfather, Thomas Brocklehurst, was living in Hull on the 1861 census but listed as having been born in Luton, Bedfordshire. I initially thought that I had found the wrong family, but Thomas’s place of birth was consistent on other census returns.
What was stopping you from progressing your research?
I wanted to solve the mystery of Thomas’s birth and trace the Brocklehurst line back further, but the events would have taken place before the introduction of civil registration and the first modern census.
What was the ‘eureka’ moment?
I ordered the 1848 marriage certificate for Thomas Brocklehurst and his wife Eliza, which showed that Thomas’s father William was a “Dissenting Minister”. After finding William in census returns, I discovered that he had been born in Staffordshire c1784, giving his occupation as “Wesleyan Minister”. So I went to the 2015 Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE show and visited the Methodist Heritage stand. The staff gave me some brochures and details of websites to use.
When I got home, I visited mywesleyan methodists.org.uk, which contains minutes from the annual Wesleyan Methodist Conference, plus lists of ministers and assistant ministers across the country. This allowed me to follow William’s progress through the Church.
I also checked the nonconformist registers collection on ancestry.co.uk, where I discovered baptism records for most of his children with dates and places of birth, as well as the names of grandparents.
Minutes from the Methodist Conference allowed me to follow William’s progress
How did it solve the problem?
Wesleyan ministers moved church approximately every three years, which explained why Thomas had been born in Luton and not in the north-east. In fact, William and his wife Ann Piercy (whom he married in Hinckley, Leicestershire, in 1812) had 14 children between 1813 and 1835, born in Wales, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.
How did it feel when you discovered the solution?
I was proud of William. My mind was drawn to the hardship he must have suffered, raising a large family, regularly moving home and probably not being paid a great deal.
Did you learn anything else?
Although I had succeeded in tracing my 3x great grandfather, I still wanted to learn more about his life. How did William and
William is buried in the graveyard of All Saints Church, Leighton Buzzard, with both his wives Ann manage to move house so frequently before the railways?
I found the answer on a tour of John Wesley’s house, which stands adjacent to his 18th-century chapel on City Road in Islington ( wesleyschapel.org.uk). Our guide explained that ministers’ houses were fully furnished by the Methodist Church, so that when a minister moved, he only had personal possessions to take with him. But what did they do about the children?
Searching through the Conference minutes, I found a reference to Kingswood School in Bath, which Wesley founded in 1748. Intrigued, I purchased a copy of The
History of Kingswood School [1898], which explained that when a boy was admitted, they stayed for about four years. There were no school holidays, because Wesley believed that pupils who went home would be “badly influenced” by other boys! Crucially, the book included a register in which six of William’s sons were listed, showing their dates at the school and their occupations once they had left.
But there was still one brick wall left to solve. I knew that William’s wife, Ann, died in 1838 and had been buried at All Saints Church in Leighton Buzzard, and that William subsequently retired to London and married a woman named Mary Gardner. Despite this, I couldn’t find a burial record for William himself. I had proof that he died in 1866 aged 82, but searched numerous London cemeteries without success.
However, after talking to other researchers, it was suggested that William may have been buried with his first wife, so I visited the Bedfordshire Family History Society website ( bfhs.org.uk) and purchased a CD containing memorial inscriptions for All Saints Church. An entry on the disc solved the mystery: “Sacred to the memory of Ann, the beloved wife of the Revd. William Brocklehurst, Wesleyan Minister, who died on 6 July 1838 in the 44th year of her age. Also of the Rev William Brocklehurst, husband of the above, who exchanged mortality for life, July 4 1866, in the 83rd year of his age and the fifty eighth of his ministry. ‘He is not dead but sleepeth’. Also Mary Brocklehurst, relict of the above, who died Dec 8 1875, aged 81 years.”
I then contacted the church and they sent me a photo of the headstone.
What’s your advice to other family historians who hit an obstacle?
Keep checking websites for new data releases, read family history magazines and join a local family history society – other researchers may have ideas about where to look next.