A family connection to a giant of the 18th century
Alan Crosby tells us how he found a family connection to one of the most famous figures of the 18th century
Every family historian knows what a relief it is to break through a brick wall. When you’ve struggled for years to find the right baptism or marriage, and suddenly you come across the proof you need, it’s a great feeling. But just occasionally the discovery is particularly special because it leads to somebody quite important, or unusually interesting… and that happened to me just a few months ago, to my considerable astonishment.
Just after New Year I was checking on a few of the many ‘loose ends’ on my tree, and had a look at my 5x great grandfather, Peter Swift, who was buried at Poynton, Cheshire, in 1811, but whose children were baptised at St Peter, Burslem, in the Potteries in the 1760s and 1770s. I’ve mentioned them before in this column because one of the sons went to Jamaica and I discovered that he had been (on a small scale) a slave-owner. This was a real shock to me, as well as very interesting from a historical point of view.
‘There, to my delight, was the proof: a begging letter sent by my relative’s daughter’
But I couldn’t find a marriage for Peter and his wife Susannah, and I didn’t know anything about his ancestry, or what he did (except that in his will he described himself as a “bookkeeper”). So, I searched on the two genealogy subscription websites of which I’m a member, and turned up the marriage of Peter Swift and Susannah Cole in Liverpool in 1766.
There was nothing to connect that marriage with my lot in Staffordshire, except that I could find no other with a Peter Swift marrying a Susannah. However, the register has Peter’s distinctive signature and it closely resembles the one on the will… so there are good grounds for thinking that this is the right marriage. If so, I have already found that Susannah, who was a widow, was married to David Cole, a seaman who died a year after they married. And among the witnesses on the administration bond for his estate was – yes – Peter Swift!
But then it got even more exciting. Who was Peter? On the offchance I Googled ‘peter swift burslem’ and up came an intriguing reference to a Peter Swift who was chief clerk to Josiah Wedgwood. Wow! Wedgwood was one of the most important figures in 18th-century Britain – not just the founder of the celebrated pottery company, but a man of immense influence and status.
Further checking revealed a few other online references. But the big question remained – was this ‘my’ Peter Swift? It’s not a very common name, but given that there was one Peter Swift in Burslem (my direct ancestor), why couldn’t there be others – say, a cousin, an uncle or a more distant relative of that name, or even someone who was no relation at all?
So what next? I emailed the Wedgwood Archive at Barlaston near Stoke-on-Trent, and explained the position. The next day came a really helpful reply, with PDF copies of their archive catalogues. And there, to my delight, was the incontrovertible proof… the archive includes a begging letter sent to the company by ‘my’ Peter’s daughter, the widowed Eleanor Watts of the City of Westminster, after the death of her father (she’s named in his will). And it also includes a letter to Peter Swift from one J Wood of Poynton… and this must surely be James Wood, whose son married Peter’s daughter, and who is therefore another of my 5x great grandfathers. So the Wedgwood Archive has a letter sent from one of my 5x great grandfathers to another!
Now, therefore, a trip to the archive is very high on the agenda. I am thrilled to think that my direct forebear was, for over 20 years, Josiah’s right-hand man. All this came about from one of those random thoughts… no systematic agenda for searching, simply Googling a few names and phrases and seeing what comes up. Serendipity – and magic!