30 Dec 2024

I’ve spent some hours over the past few days on FamilySearch adding sources and tidying up my line of ancestry. I started with the Halls which for the most part aligned with my own records. I added a number of birth certificates and cleaned up duplicates and attached existing sources. Around the end of the 18th century things start to get a bit murky.

I’ve believed for a long time that my 4th great grandfather George Hall was baptised in 1794 in Earsdon, having been born in Hartley to Thomas Hall and Isabella Brunton. He spent the entirety of his life in Hartley as a pitman and this is noted in many baptism entries for his children. He also appears in the 1841 census aged 40 living in Hartley with his wife Margaret and seven children.

The FamilySearch tree agreed with this and gave me more clues about his father Thomas and grandfather George who married Catherine Cowell. It even pointed me to Catherine’s baptism and her parents, Nathaniel Cowell (or Coule) and Elizabeth Robson. For a while these people linked into a tree that went back through minor Norman nobility to Alfhild Gandalsdatter, Queen of Sweden who would have been my 32nd great grandmother… if it were true. However the associations and relationships around the Robson family were a mess, so I spent most of a day tidying them up into something sensible.

Happy with my efforts I walked back down the tree to check if I had missed anything. That’s when I saw the fatal flaw: a burial entry for George Hall in 1796!. Not only that, it gave the parents names as Thomas and Isabella Hall formerly Brunton¹² which sealed the deal. This means the George I had assumed was my ancestor actually died aged about two and all the people above him in the tree are probably unrelated.

Now I need to find George’s actual baptism. He lived his whole life in the mining village of Hartley in the north of the parish of Earsdon. In the 1841 census his age was recorded as 40, which due to the rounding, suggests he was born roughly between 1801 and 1796.

There are a few Hall families active in Hartley at that time:

• Thomas (a pitman of Hartley) and Isabella, parents of my rejected George (1794-1796) and Joseph (1796)
• Robert (a pitman of Hartley) and Jane, parents of Elizabeth (1792)
• Matthew (a banksman of Hartley) and Mary, parents of William (1792) and Elizabeth (1796)
• William (a sailor of Seaton Sluice) and Elizabeth, parents of Mary (1794)

However there don’t appear to be any other George’s in Earsdon. There are some to the south in Tynemouth:

• 23 Sep 1795, George son of George and Barbara Hall³

The Bishop’s Transcript of this entry suggests they were not married:

Geo, son of Geo Hall by Barbara Sanderson⁴

There is a baptism in the neighbouring parish of Horton, just to the north of Earsdon:

• 17 Feb 1799, George son of George and Dorothy Hall⁵

The Bishop’s Transcript of this entry provides more background:

George Hall, born 13 Jan 1799, baptized 17 Feb 1799, 1st son of George Hall of Shank[?] House, Husbandman, Native of Stannington by his wife Dorothy Davidson, Native of Bow[s]den⁶

Shank House is the site of a colliery and the Cramlington Colliery Railroad (map). Stannington is four miles to the north west. Hartley is just over four miles to the south east. Bowsden is 43 miles north in the parish of Lowick, not far from Berwick on Tweed.

There are some Georges much further afield in Newcastle All Saints:

• 19 Apr 1795, George son of James and Jane Hall⁷
• 24 May 1795, George son of George and Ester Hall⁸
• 31 Jul 1796, George son of George and Eleanor Hall⁹

And Newcastle St Andrew:

• 20 Sep 1795, George son of Thomas and Ann Hall¹⁰

There are also some that don’t give a parish, which I suspect are non-conformist entries:

• 24 Nov 1799, George son of Jasper and Margaret Hall¹¹
• 11 Jul 1800, George son of George and Isabella Hall¹² (which appears to be the same as an entry with a location of Robinson Lane-Nc and Saint Georges-Nc, Sunderland, Durham, England¹³
• 18 Jun 1800, George son of James and Ann Hall¹⁴ (appears to be in the parish of Branton¹⁵)

The 11 Jul 1800 entry is actually at the Robinson’s Lane Presbyterian Meeting House in Sunderland. Durham Records Online has the transcription:

11 Aug 1800 George Hall, of Bishopwearmouth, born 11 Jul 1800, son of George & Isabella Hall¹⁶

(Note: the following section is a digression caused by me temporarily confusing Thomas and Isabella with George and Isabella so I researched this family too deeply)

They had a couple more children baptised there:

24 May 1797 Mary Hull or Hall, of Bishopwearmouth, daughter of George & Isabella Hull or Hall¹⁷

27 Dec 1798 William Hall, of Bishopwearmouth, born 21 Dec 1798, son of George & Isabella Hall¹⁸

Bishopwearmouth is just the south of the mouth of the Wear in Sunderland. I have some other relatives from that area (the Todds and Mordues).

Ancestry has a few more children, including images of the register:

Isabella Hall, born 11 Feb 1807, bap 8 Mar 1807, 3rd dau of George Hall, blacksmith, native of Monk Heazelton and Isabella Hall, native of Bishopwearmouth¹⁹

and

Ann Hall, born 29 Jan 1819, bap 10 Jun 1810, 4th dau of George Hall, blacksmith, native of Monk Heazelton and Isabella Hall, native of Bishopwearmouth²⁰

Monk Heazelton is probably Monk Hesleden, twelve miles south of Bishopwearmouth and 24 miles south of Hartley.

I thought I would follow up on George Hall and Dorothy Davidson the parents of the George baptised in 1799 in Horton since they now seem to be the most likely parents of my ancestor. They appear to have married in Bedlington on 6 Sep 1795.²¹ Unfortunately the Bishop’s Transcripts are not available online for Bedlington.

FamilySearch suggests that George and Dorothy may have had other children further afield:

• James, 16 Aug 1801, Bothal²²
• Mary, 4 Nov 1804, Mitford²³
• Ann, 28 Jul 1811, Heddon on the Wall ²⁴
• Dorothy, 26 Mar 1815, Heddon on the Wall²⁵

Bothal is a few miles north of Shank House, to the east of Morpeth. Mitford is about eight miles north west of Shank House, to the west of Morpeth (Stannington is to the south of Morpeth). Heddon on the Wall is 11 miles southwest of Shank House.

The Bishop’s Transcripts for Dorothy’s baptism are online ²⁶ and the mother’s maiden name is not present in the record, so although FamilySearch has linked it to Dorothy Davidson, that may not be accurate. George’s occupation is given as husbandman which corresponds with the George baptism we are considering, although about half the men on the page also have that occupation.

The Bishop’s Transcript for Mary’s baptism in Mitford confirm that she is George’s sister:

Mary Hall, born 23 Sep, bap 4 Nov 1804, 2nd Daughter of George Hall of Edington, native of Stannington by his wife Dorothy Davison native of Heaton. (it’s not clear whether she is 2nd daughter or 2nd child).²⁷

Edington is a hamlet in the south-west of the parish (map). Heaton could be the district of Newcastle, in the parish of All Saints. However there is a hamlet called New Heaton just six miles west of Bowsden, where Dorothy was from on George’s baptism in 1799.

By coincidence the entry above Mary is for a Margaret Sanderson who possibly has something to do with the George Hall son of George Hall and Barbara Sanderson baptised in Tynemouth in 1795:

Margaret Sanderson, born 12 Aug 1799, bap 9 Oct 1804, illegitimate daughter of Dorothy Hall of Earsdon, near Shields, native of Earsdon. This child was born at Earsdon. ²⁷

The baptism for James in 1801 is available at Durham Records Online and gives more information:

16 Aug 1801, Bothal, James Hall, of Willow Bridge, parish of Bedlington, born 16 Jul, 4th son of George Hall (labourer, native of the parish of Stannington) by his wife Dorothy Davidson (daughter of James Davidson, farmer, native of the parish of Cradham)²⁸

Willow Bridge is a farm and works in the village of Choppington (map).I’m not sure where Cradham is. There is a place called Cramondhill just a mile west of New Heaton, so perhaps it is there.

These are the children I’ve found so far, though the discrepancy of 1st son in 1799 and 4th in 1801 seems hard to believe:

• George, 1799 (1st son)
• James, 1801 (4th son)
• Mary, 1804 (2nd daughter)
• Ann, 1811
• Dorothy, 1815

Next I turned my attention to deaths. I’ve already been caught out my missing the burial of the original George so I need to consider these. Here are the burials I found that aren’t automatically excluded due to the person’s age:

• George Hall, 5 Jun 1797, Earsdon²⁹
• George Hall, 17 Dec 1805, Bothal, son of Wm Hall, age 4 years³⁰
• George Hall, 18 Jul 1797, St. Andrew Newcastle, son of Thos Hall³¹
• George Hall, 16 Apr 1796, Mitford, son of George and Margaret Hall³²
• George Hall, 2 Oct 1809, Tynemouth, son of George Hall, age 3 years³³
• George Hall, 12 May 1795, Stannington, son of Geo and Eliz Hall³⁴
• Isabella Hall, 31 May 1818, Felton, day of George Hall, age 14³⁵

None of these seem to match up with the baptisms I found earlier which suggests that people were moving around quite a lot so a child might be born in one location only to die in another.

I also found the burial of an Isabella Hall who I think was a young daughter of my ancestor George Hall:

• Isabella Hall, 28 Oct 1846, Earsdon, dau of George Hall and Margaret Richardson, age 2³⁶

Given all this I’m now of the opinion that George Hall, my 4th great grandfather, was baptised in 1799 in Horton and his parents were George Hall of Stannington and Dorothy Davidson of Bowsden.