A few years ago I was chatting with my late father's sister about my paternal grandparents Wilfred JACKLIN and Ivy JACKLIN (née DIXON). My father Ronald JACKLIN was born in 1922 and his sister abt. 1938. I was curious about the age gap and the fact that there were no other children. My aunt suggested she had an inkling there may have been another child though she could not substantiate her claim.

This last weekend I was searching through FreeBMD and noticed many more records had been added for the 1920's. I ran an 'All Types' search on 'JACKLIN' for 'West Riding of Yorkshire' and scrolling through the entries came across one for a 'Wilfred JACKLIN' in 1926. At first I thought I was looking at a record for my grandfather Wilfred JACKLIN b. 1896 then I realised that I was also seeing the name 'DIXON' and it suddenly dawned on me I was looking at a birth for 1926.

The British Census of 1891 records 3 of the Allen sisters, all originally from Little Gringley, Nottinghamshire, now married and living at Aston-cum-Aughton and nearby Treeton. Their respective husbands are all recorded as coal miners.

I am intrigued as to how the sisters found their way to this area. I conject Daniel and Ziller JACKLIN (née ALLEN) were forced to escape the poverty of living off the land at Little Gringley and seek a slightly more prosperous existence in the employment of the mine owners of the South Yorkshire coalfield. Likewise did the other sisters follow? Did they meet their husbands through the mining community or were they already married?

Daniel had left his home county of Cambridgeshire, presumably to seek work as a navvy on the railways or canals, both of which pass through Retford, Nottinghamshire and very close to Little Gringley.

I really need to need to study the relevant census information together with marriage certificates and maybe I can better ascertain when they made the transition from agricultural labourer to coal miner.

Recently I was discussing with my mother the news regarding Harriet ALLEN and Mary ALLEN. We were chatting about Daniel JACKLIN and Ziller JACKLIN (née ALLEN) and if they ever had visits from other members of the family (Daniel and Ziller moved from Bradley Yard, Swallownest, Yorkshire and lived the rest of their lives at Langley Street, Darnall, Sheffield, Yokshire). My mother happened to mention that they brought up a young girl known by the name of Betty, and Betty would occasionally visit. Immediately I recalled the census record shown above which records Elizabeth aged 9 and described as a niece; undoubtedly this is Betty.

I have updated jacklin.info and ashforth.info to PhpGedView v4.1.2 and uploaded my latest GEDCOMs.

I have also uploaded my latest GEDCOM to TNG Genealogy.

I have been waiting quite some time for an easy to use timeline application; well at long last I have successfully installed and configured the Timeline module for Drupal.

This module is still under development, indeed I have installed the development version so there may be a few bugs waiting to be discovered. The timeline is 'clickable' and 'draggable' and if you lose your way simply refresh the page and the time scales will return to default.

• JACKLIN / ASFORTH combined timeline
• JACKLIN timeline
• ASHFORTH timeline

Church of All Saints
Misterton
Nottinghamshire

After walking part of the Chesterfield Canal from West Stockwith towards Gringley-on-the-Hill we decided to return by way of the north Nottinghamshire village of Misterton. This gave me the opportunity to take some photographs of All Saints Church at Misterton and check the headstones for family names. This graveyard is immaculately kept and congratulations must go to the person or persons responsible.

By sheer chance the first headstone I checked was that of one William BUTROID and his wife Rebecca BUTROID (née BOWERING). Click here to view the headstone.

Two recent comments and an email from descendents of William Henry ASHFORTH and Ellen ASHFORTH (née PASLEY) have aroused great excitement. From the details given I have calculated (or to be totally honest I have used the Relationship Calculator tool within PAF) the following:

Susan (surname name withheld for privacy reasons) and Ronald Neil JACKLIN are 3rd cousins. Their common ancestors are William Henry ASHFORTH and Ellen PASLEY

Lesley (surname name withheld for privacy reasons) and Ronald Neil JACKLIN are 3rd cousins. Their common ancestors are William Henry ASHFORTH and Ellen PASLEY

I have replied to the given email addresses and hopefully this will lead to further discoveries for the ASHFORTH and RENWICK lines.

Owlerton, Burton Street, Cuthbert Bank, Roscoe Bank, Shalesmoor and St Philip's Road are districts and streets in the north-west of Sheffield where ancestors from my ASHFORTH line were born; most lived and died there too.

As a very young child I remember being dragged off to these far away places in order to visit the 'rellies', and how one felt like an explorer, cautiously examining an alien environment. During these visits we children would be quickly ushered out to play, usually into the backyard or street, which of course were virtually devoid of motor vehicles and quite safe.

I was born at Hawksley Road, just off Owlerton Green, though I don't recall there being a great deal of 'green' other than that of Hillsborough Park. I was christened at the church of St John the Baptist, Owlerton which remarkably, is still in service as a church, despite the dire developments which have taken place all around.

I remember there were 3 cul-de-sacs: Hawksley Road at the end of which were the gates leading into the southern section of Hillsborough Park, Cheadle Street and I think Cannock Street. What I do remember quite clearly is that for some considerable time only one family owned a motor vehicle. I think this family, a retired man and wife, were named Mr and Mrs Thurlin. I recall they hated us using the gable end of their house for football, tennis and cricket practice, and the risks we took when the inevitable happened and we had to recover the ball from their backyard.

In the midst of row after row of terraced houses, Hillsborough Park was our saviour. We would spend most of our days playing football or cricket, until just before dusk when the toll of the bell would signify the gates would be locked shortly. Not that this mattered much, since as soon as the 'parky' had carried out his duties and was out of sight, we merely scrambled over the park gates and carried on playing until hunger finally drove us home.

Four generations lived in a 3 bedroom terraced house with the ubiquitous outside toilet. My great grandmother Florence ASHFORTH (née Florence FLOWERS), her son and daugher-in-law (my grandfather and grandmother) Ernest ASHFORTH and Emily ASHFORTH (née Emily BELLAMY), my mother and father and me. When my younger sister was born some six years later I guess we were probably officially classed as 'overcrowded'. So at the age of 7 years my family left the ASHFORTH household and moved approximately 3 miles to a newly built house at School Lane, Stannington, Sheffield, Yorkshire.

In the mid 1950's Stannington was still just a village, with a handful of shops, little new development and lots of wide open spaces. A totally alien environment to a young lad from the inner city.

As I have stated before, research of my JACKLIN line was made considerably easier thanks to Gary PARDOE's website Jacklin(g) Home Page. As a result I have not spent a great deal of time researching the family surname JACKLIN.

Today while Googling around I came across a link to Jemima JACKLIN (née Jemima EASY) 1797-1874 my great great great grandmother at Gates Family Genealogy. I have not come across this website before, so I was intrigued to know the connection with Jemima EASY.

My common ancestors with this line of the GATES family are John EASY 1749-1826 and Elizabeth WOOD 1753-1839. According to the information I found on this website John EASY and Elizabeth WOOD's children were:

William EASY 1781-1854
Thomas EASY 1785-1807
Richard EASY 1785-
John EASY 1788-
Simeon EASY 1792-1872
Keziah EASY 1792-1819
Hezekiah EASY 1792-
Ann EASY 1794-1814
Jemima EASY 1797-1874

The source of these names is given as the LDS IG. I always apply a certain amount of scepticism to this source so I hope to be able to verify this information through further research.

A couple of weeks ago I recieved an email via the feedback form on my jacklin.info website.

"My name’s John and I’ve just discovered we share the same great-great-grandfather (John Allen, b Little Gringley c1830)."

"I see your line develops through Zillah Allen, whereas mine comes from her younger brother David (b 1867), my great grandfather. The tree I saw had no other details of him so I will be happy to fill you in."

This is very exciting news.

As Juanita Lewis indicated at our meeting in 2006, and John has confirmed in a subsequent email there appears to have been, at this time, two John ALLENs living at Little Gringley.

"John (christened 13/4/1827) to parents John and Elizabeth.
John (christened 15/4/1831) to parents Thomas and Elizabeth."

Not suprisingly this has lead to some confusion. Hopefully, now I know which line to research, I can make some progress with my great great grandfather John ALLEN.

This news has enabled me to add additional information to my GEDCOM regarding David ALLEN, one of Ziller's brothers.

I'm not sure how I came by this link about coprolite or why it has taken such a long time to find, but since it pertains to coprolite and the village of Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire, I thought I should record it here. My line of JACKLIN's originate from this area; the 1871 British Census records my great great grandfather Daniel JACKLIN's occupation as 'coprolite labourer'.

Wikipedia also has an entry for coprolite.

Today I made some major changes to the structure of 'family history journal' and associate domains of jacklin.info and ashforth.info.

Previously jacklin.info and ashforth.info redirected to internal pages at 'family history journal'; now they point to individual domains and installations of PhpGedView, each with a discrete GEDCOM.

This has allowed me to provide links for 'Jacklin Family Tree' and 'Ashforth Family Tree' from the 'Jacklin' and 'Ashforth' pages navigable using the primary (top) menu of 'family history journal'.

Users who registered for the original 'Jacklin / Ashforth Family Tree' PhpGedView site have been migrated to 'Jacklin Family Tree' and 'Ashforth Family Tree'.

The redundant 'Family Tree' primary link has been replaced with a link to a 'Maps' page.

Added a 'Monthly Archives' module to complement the 'Weekly Archives' module.

It is quite some time since I used FreeBMD and I surmise additional 20th century data has been transcribed, since while searching for Mary Maria MAPLETHORPE I came across a marriage to 'CARTER'. The later marriage returns (I think, post 1912) list the name of the spouse, though only the surname.

FreeBMD returns a marriage for Mary Maria MAPLETHORPE to Samuel DIXON in September 1897 though her name appears as Mary Maria MABLETHOPE. FreeBMD returns a second marriage in June 1913 this time the spouse is shown as 'CARTER'. At this moment in time I have no information regarding when or why her first marriage to Samuel DIXON ceased.

I knew my grandmother Ivy JACKLIN (nee Ivy DIXON) and Kathleen LOCK (nee Kathleen CARTER) were step-sisters but sometimes names in families can be very misleading. My relatives from Marton, Lincolnshire always referred to Ivy DIXON as 'Grannie Carter' and it is only recently as I delved into her family history that have I learned of Samuel DIXON, her biological father.

My family is in possesion of Mary Maria's death certificate in which she is described as the widow of Joseph CARTER. So this gives a forename to 'Carter'. Further searches on FreeBMD returns a birth for one Joseph CARTER in March 1877. This birth was registered in the Gainsborough district. This fits my expectations so I will consider it correct it until proved otherwise.

Just to throw a little spanner into the works, Ivy DIXON's marriage certificate records George DIXON as being her father, not Samuel DIXON as I would have expected. This needs further research.

In this post about High Hazels Park, Sheffield I mentioned I had a photograph of High Hazel Shelter - Members Outing - 1936.

Well, in response to a request for this photograph I finally made time to make a scan and add it to the Photographs section.

In my family there is some debate as to which of these gentleman is my grandfather Wilfred Jacklin. Having examined an enlarged copy of the scanned image I can clearly identify him as being the person, 3rd row from the front, 5th from the left.

Now can anyone tell me the destination of the members outing?

In March of this year during a few days staying at Barton Mills, Suffolk we made a fleeting visit to Wimpole Hall, Wimpole, Cambridgeshire.

Standing within the grounds of Wimpole Hall is the parish church of St Andrew's, which though being very close to the hall, is totally independent of both Wimpole Hall and the National Trust which administers the Hall.

The www.wimpole.info web site provides a valuable archive of Wimpole, Orwell and nearby villages.

This site provides a transcript of The Registers for the Parish of Wimpole, Cambridgeshire and contains several references to JACKLIN.

This extract shows a reference to Daniel JACKLIN being a witness to the marriage of Stephen JACKLIN and Jane WHITBY.

4 December 1858
JACKLIN Stephen, of Whaddon, bachelor, labourer, son of John, labourer
WHITBY Jane, spinster, servant, daughter of John, labourer
Witnesses: Daniel Jacklin and Elizabeth Wright

I thought this might be my great great grandfather Daniel JACKLIN. He would have been 16 years old in 1858; too young to be a marriage witness?

More likely this was Daniel JACKLIN who eventually married Elizabeth WRIGHT at Bassingbourn on 18th April 1863.

Both were descendants of James JACKLIN 1767- and Ann HOWES 1775-1851.