My 15-year search for William Parker

Q My brick wall is so solid I am exhausted from banging my head against it! Here is the information I have. My 3x greatgrandfather was William Parker. All I know about him is that: 1) He married Elizabeth Batty at Sandal Magna, St Helen, Yorkshire, March 28, 1831, the day after Banns for 3 weeks had been completed. When searching on Ancestry I noted that his last name was misspelled as ‘Varker’ and someone had changed it to Parker. 2) On his daughter Rebecca Parker’s baptism in 1832 he and his wife are in Ossett.

3) On his daughter Jane Parker’s baptism in 1834 he and his wife are in Ossett Common.

4) On daughter Jane’s marriage certificate in 1861 he is on it, which does not necessarily mean he is alive. I also cannot read what his occupation is/was.

5) I have a tremendous amount of information on his wife, Elizabeth Batty, who went on to have two more husbands, his daughter Jane and her family and his other daughter (my 2x great-grandmother Rebecca Parker).

I have been searching for William Parker for about 15 years now. Can you help me? Kerry Parker

AWilliam’s occupation on Jane’s marriage certificate is ‘Whitesmith’. The internet describes this as a metalworker who does finishing work on iron and steel such as filing, lathing, burnishing or polishing. The term also refers to a person who works with ‘white’ or light-coloured metals and is sometimes used as a synonym for tinsmith so potentially a fairly wide-ranging occupation.

The name William Parker is a common one so, without any information about his age at marriage and no entry for him with Elizabeth and their daughters in the 1841 census, it won’t be easy to track him down.

Establishing what is known

William married Elizabeth Batty on 28 March 1831 and their daughters, Rebecca and Jane, were born on 23 March 1832 and 2 December 1833 respectively. With two children following the marriage in such a short space of time, the fact that there were no further children would suggest that William either died around the time of Jane’s birth or soon after or that he and Elizabeth separated. This is supported by the fact that in 1841 Elizabeth and her daughters are living as a separate family in the household of her father, Benjamin Batty, in Middle Common, Ossett cum Gawthorpe, with no sign of William. Unfortunately, the 1841 census doesn’t give marital status so there is no means of knowing whether Elizabeth was a widow.

Seeking a death/ensuring he is alive

As you rightly point out, the fact that Wiliam is not described as deceased on daughter Jane’s 1861 marriage certificate doesn’t mean that he was still alive so I looked for a burial for William Parker between March 1833 when Jane was probably conceived and June 1841 when the census was taken, thinking that he had probably died in or near Ossett. There was no likely burial online but it’s important to remember that not all records for a given place are online and that although Jane was born in Ossett in 1833 and Elizabeth was there in 1841 it doesn’t necessarily mean the family was there in the intervening years. Looking further afield it was difficult to be precise with no information on his age. Elizabeth was born in November 1799 and baptised in January 1800 and while it is likely that William was of a similar age you can’t be certain that this is the case. Searching for a burial for William anywhere in Yorkshire with a wide-ranging year of birth of 1795 +/- 20 between 1833 and 1841 shows around twenty results, depending on which website you use. Ossett was in the West Riding and many of these burials are within this area so it might be worth trying to rule out most of these by proving that they cannot be your William Parker.

It would be worth investigating monumental inscriptions for the area as this might give an age at death for William which would give you a likely year of birth.

Exploring other church & chapel records

There are a few Parker baptisms in Ossett within a reasonable date range but none for a child called William. Widening the search brings up a great many results and with no defining information there is no obvious way forward though baptisms in nearby Wakefield and the Dewsbury area might be worth pursuing, especially as Ossett was within the parish of Dewsbury until 1866. Bear in mind also that although William and Elizabeth were married in the Anglican Church, Rebecca and Jane were baptised in Ossett Independent Congregational Church so you need to consider Nonconformist records.

What might have happened

With no obvious death or burial and wondering if William and Elizabeth had simply separated, I tried the censuses and initially this did seem promising, though it would have meant that William was leading a double life. The 1841 census had a William Parker, Whitesmith, living in Leeds, some ten miles from Ossett. This ‘William Parker of Leeds, Whitesmith’ married Ann(e) Hodgson in Halifax in 1823. They had two sons, Edmund Augustus in 1824 and Alfred William in 1829, and all four are on the 1841 census in Leeds. Your William Parker married Elizabeth Batty in 1831, had Rebecca and Jane in 1832 and 1833 and is not with Elizabeth and their daughters in 1841. These marriage and birth dates would fit between the birth of Alfred William in 1829 and the 1841 census. However, a comparison of the signatures on the two William Parker marriage documents suggests that these are two different people. There is also a William Parker, Whitesmith, in Lancaster but again he seems to be a different person. In addition, Rebecca gave her son the second name of William which would suggest a closeness to her father, making it perhaps more likely that he had died when she was a child rather than that her parents had separated.

No luck with the newspapers

With William apparently having died while his children were young, I wondered whether his death was accidental but I haven’t been able to find any newspaper reports to that effect and trade directories for the period only show the Leeds William Parker.

Try the family history society

Ossett is only four miles from Wakefield so if you haven’t already done so it would be worth contacting the Wakefield and District Family History Society: see https://wdfhs.co.uk/. The society not only has parish register records and monumental inscriptions but might also have local directories and very local newspapers, any of which might provide the vital clue you need. ME