I should be preparing for a dinner party (do people still have dinner parties?!) tonight – for which I did a heck load of preparation for yesterday – but instead I am sat here with a messed up foot (we call it a Dom Special – I fell out of my trainer, and also off the edge of my stone path in the garden). It happens on … well, not a regular basis but more often than you’d think a grown adult would fall over (I once fell off the edge of a flip-flop and messed my ankle up, and once I fell over in a flat field and managed to break both my elbow and my wrist).

But I have been re-examining some inherited research again lately. I mentioned it a while ago as it forms part of my Halliday family work which I considered a bit of a done deal. Only … there were a lot of gaps in the data. Dates and no locations. Parents but no baptisms. Spouses and no marriages. You know the drill by now about double-checking everything, and not relying on other people’s research. Well. Egg all over my face.

I had (past tense) a nice line going from Ann Halliday all the way back to Walter the Minstrel and the War of the Roses. Whoopee. Eesh.

I have nice evidence for Ann and her brother, James, Thomas and John, and their parents John Halliday and Elizabeth Angell. John and Elizabeth married on 12 October 1815 in Sherston [Magna], Wiltshire. More than likely they lived in the tiny scratch of a village called Willesley, on the northern edge of the parish and close to the border with Gloucestershire.

I had also confidently plotted that John was born in 1778 and died in 1869, but in searching for a baptism for him to confirm his parents as *checks notes* William and Ann I not so much fell at the first hurdle as tripped, somersaulted and … well, the fact that I am sat here with my foot propped on a pillow seems to be very apt.

1778 gave me nothing. So I went back to basics. Where else does John appear that would help me pinpoint a possible place and year of his baptism? (We are working on assumption #1 that John’s parents were not non-conformists.)

Marriage – 1815 – no mention of marrying with consent of parents, assume he was at least 21 – c. 1794 – “of the parish” of Sherston
Census – 1841 – age given as 50 (probably rounded down so could be between 50 and 54) – c. 1787-1791 – Leighteron, Gloucestershire, born in county
Census – 1851 – age given as 66 – c. 1785 – living Leighterton, gives Willesley, Wiltshire as place of birth
Census – 1861 – age given as 81 – c. 1780 – living Leighterton, gives Sherston, Wiltshire as place of birth
Burial – 1869 – age given as 91 – c. 1778 – residence given as Leighterton

So we have a connection with Sherston/Willesley but then later lived in Leighterton across the county border (and across what is now Westonbirt Arboretum but was then known as Silkwood). Betty was still living in Leighterton in 1871, and was buried there after her death in 1874.

I could find no John Halliday/Holiday/variant baptised anywhere in Gloucestershire between 1770 and 1800. However, I did find one baptised in Sherston in 1784. And he was the only one. Colour me further surprised when his parents were given as James and Patience.

I then found two sisters for John: Maria and Mary. James and Patience Purnell* married in Sherston on New Year’s Eve 1783, with James listed as a widower. Further research shows that his likely first wife was Catherine, who was buried in Sherston in 1777. They had six children, but only two of them seem to have lived to adulthood: Thomas, who is living in Willesley in 1841 and dies there in 1843 a widower with no children, and Katherine who possibly had an illegitimate daughter baptised in Tetbury in 1793.

(*Patience’s niece, Mary Purnell, married one Ethelbert Neal whose brother, Robert Neal, was my 5 x great-grandfather. A great-grand niece, Elizabeth Purnell, married Robert Holborow Neal who was the half grand nephew [grand half-nephew?] of Ethelbert Neal.)

Working backwards from James, it is likely that he was baptised in Tetbury along with two brothers: John and Thomas – the three names seem to be this family’s William, Joseph and Daniel – the son of James. This James’ wife seems to not be named – a wonderful ‘quirk’ of the curate at Tetbury St Mary at the time – but I believe his parents to be John and Mary who both died in Sherston/Willesley in 1729 but were probably born around the 1680s-ish. But nowhere do I get close to the Hallidays of Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire and the line that leads back to Walter the Minstrel.

I fear that the person I obtained the research from may have been taken in by other, previous, research, and this has – as it always does – ricocheted around the family history world. There is more research to do, as there is only 6 miles between Tetbury and Minchinhampton – but seemingly an insurmountable gap in evidence!