Was my Surrey forebear actually born in London?
Q I’ve traced my family back to 1774 in Woodmansterne, Surrey, when my 5x great grandfather John Barton wed Mary Trunchin on 15 September. The next day Mary had a daughter, Jane. John doesn’t appear in the village records prior to this. I found a John Barton, born in 1724 in Southwark to an unmarried John Barton and Elizabeth Smith. Is he my relative?
Ray Barton
A It can be dangerous to accept someone as your ancestor simply because he or she has the right name and was born at the right time. This is especially true if his birth parish is quite far away from the parish your known ancestor lived in.
It wouldn’t be surprising if a person who lived in a rural Surrey parish moved to the London part of the county. I wouldn’t expect someone living in the urban area of Surrey, however, to move out to a country area.
As well as the baptisms of John and Mary’s four children from 1774 to 1783, the parish register also has the baptism in 1770 of Mary’s illegitimate son William Truncheon. He later married Charlotte Richardson in 1795, and had about nine children.
The Woodmansterne rector, Rev Gilbert Buchanan, arranged for many local children to be immunised against smallpox in the early 1800s. On page 108 of the register of baptisms from 1797 to 1812 (via Ancestry; ancestry.co.uk), you’ll find text relating to William and Charlotte’s daughter Harriet bringing smallpox back with her from service in Croydon in 1815 and infecting her siblings.
I’m afraid there are rather too many ‘if’s to be able to say with any degree of certainty that your John Barton is the Southwark one. I suggest you look at any 18th-century wills, land-tax records, etc for Bartons or Truncheons/Trunchins to see if there were any living in the area around Woodmansterne.