Lets start, not at the beginning, but at the end, with his Last Will and Testament.
The following is my attempt to transcribe the probate entry of that Will obtained from The National Archives.
Selina Butler was the daughter of George Butler and Sarah Pomeroy. Sarah was baptised on 26 November 1815 at Thornecombe. She married George Butler on 21 January 1836 when she was 20 years of age. George was 30.
Ancestry has a Parish Map of Dorset, which helps understand the interplay between locations. Beaminster Registration District includes the town and parish of Broadwinsor (Broadwindsor) together with the adjacent parishes of Stoke Abbott, Burstock, Pilsdon, Bettiscombe, Mosterton, South Perrott, Cheddington, Marshwood, Thorncombe, Netherbury, and of course, Beaminster. Some records about people in these areas refer to the registration district of Beamister and others to the Parish, and sometimes the town or hamlet. This is just a complication of locations and interpretations of records.
This is not a story about a single person but about many people called Edward Nash.
The objective is to try and get enough information to definitively resolve which one is my 3x Great Grandfather
Normally one could start with marriage or birth certificates. This time let us start with the last will and testament of Edward Nash Esquire of 6 George Street, Hanover Square, London. The will was written as he was going on a journey, which presumably he was concerned about. It was signed on 31st March 1817. Edward Nash was evidently a wealthy man with two bequeaths of one thousand pounds, together with all the other property and effects. In 2019, the relative value of £1,000 0s 0d from 1817 ranges from £73,760.00 to £5,008,000.00 depending on method of calculation.
Lets start our story with John Tilley born in the 1600's in the New Forest.
This is the earliest Tilley I have found in this branch of my Family Tree.
From here we can explore how his descendants have moved from a small village in Hampshire, England, around the world.
BIRTH Abt. 1807 or 1810 • Southampton, Hampshire, England
DEATH 12 December 1879 • Southampton, Hampshire, England
He is my 3rd Great Grandfather, according to my Ancestry Tree. He is also a common ancestor with two DNA matches.
John James was baptised on 21 Oct 1810 at All Saints Church, Southampton, with his parents recorded as William Brookman and Sarah Brookman.
The Census is a good place to start building up an image of a family. Over the decades you can see it expand and then contract as the children leave home. The groups of people and the additional information about them, such as occupation and place of birth can help identify families with greater confidence than by names and ages alone. This additional information can help with changes of spelling and of location, resolving reluctance. Sometimes place of birth appears to change, but it is often in the same area, just a different granularity. It is also helpful to remember that until the 1911 Census, it is all in the hand of the enumerator. What he heard, and what he wrote down, and some were more conciencipus than others. Particularly, with addresses. Some just the area, others each household with a specific address, sometime still identifiable today. Then there is the legibility of the writing and the transcribers skill. It is still a good place to start.
A large number of the Tilley family emigrated to Australia and it seems they may have been persuaded so to do by Charles Tilley who was then residing in Sydney, a person often mentioned in the passenger records. This mass movement also shares a timeline with the Sydney Gold Rush. Some of the passenger records were annotated £4 Remit Regs which may refer to Persons Proceeding to the Colony under Remittance Regulations as part of Economic Growth stimulus.
This is the equivalent to major heart surgery.
There have been a lot of behind the scene changes, some of which have impacted what you can see and how you see it.
I have been chasing down those changes since the upgrade.
Please feel free to contact me if you find one of the remaining glitches.
