Something Fishy

[Thompson-family]

Duckweed, that part of my family have me rather intrigued as well.

Aspatria & Little Salkeld are very small villages, so there must be some sort of link, what time period were your relations in the various places?

The records for this part of the family don't seem to stack up & there are too many pet names used which makes it even worse for me (& Julie)

[duckweed]

They are at the moment all over the place re dates. The main Armstrongs are in the late 18th but then an Armstrong pops up as a visiting child much later on. I am still trying to find where everyone links up.

Does the name Dand mean anything, or Mounsey, Walker, or Wilson?

It is very complex for me because there are Thompsons in my husbands family and in mine and it looks like they are merging which is quite strange because my husband is not from the area but it looks like his family married into branches of mine 2 or 3 times, and eventually all the Thompsons are going to have a common ancestor.

[Thompson-family]

Duckweed, The name Armstrong is found on http://www.cumberlandroots.co.uk/Aspatria.htm if you haven't found it before

Sorry, Dand, Mounsey, Walker, or Wilson don't mean anything but we have only just started the research.

[Thompson-family]

Righty-ho.

We have found the Aspatria and Gilcrux family registers online, and found Thomas Foster and Ann Briggs married in 1803, both of Gilcrux. Although the records go two generations or so further back, however, we can't find another reference as to their births or subsequent deaths in Glicrux.

However, they had a son, Thomas Foster (seriously, was it the only first name in circulation?) in 1822, along with Mary in 1805, Ann and Jane in 1812, Bridget in 1819 and William in 1824.

Thomas married a woman named Ann in the 1840s-ish (don't get me started), and when our Nelly/Ellen/Ruby was born in the mid 1870s, her "mother" would have been in her mid to late forties. However, she had a daughter (Margaret) who was 19 years older and unmarried in the last census (1871), so we think that it may be that Margaret was Nelly/Ellen/Ruby's biological mother, but that she was passed off as her grandmother's daughter to avoid scandal, which would explain why the records are inconsistent.

On a side note, we now have three generations of Thomas and Ann's. Family reunions must have been like a Monty Python Sketch.