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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Happyhaddock on Monday 02 March 20 12:19 GMT (UK)
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I primarily joined this forum to try find out a bit more about my grandfather's military service, but I'm going to pitch this "long shot" enquiry up into the air just to see if anybody takes a swing at it.
My mother is descended from a long line of artisan craft workers living along the south bank of the river Humber in what is now NE Lincolnshire. She has quite the interest in genealogy which is starting to rub off on me. She says she has traced our family tree in Lincolnshire back to the late 18th century having found bakers, shoe makers and many other craftsmen. By training I am a theoretical physicist but now work as an artist/sculptor, my mother trained as a mathematician but now spends more time with needle crafts, whilst my deceased grandfather trained as a wireless engineer but ended up making jewellery.
Clearly making stuff runs in the family.
Anyway to get to my point; if we go back a few generations into the early 19th and late 18th century the surname Harrison crops up a lot in our family tree, along with forenames John, William and Elizabeth, as do connections to the general vicinity of Barrow upon Humber; My parents still live less than 10miles from there.
Arguably the most famous name in horology (clock making) is John Harrison 1693-1776 who whilst ending up working in London started his career as a carpenter and for some while lived in Barrow upon Humber.
Wanting somebody to be an ancestor is not the same as proving they are but the chance of a family connection seems too strong to ignore. 18th century Barrow upon Humber cannot have been such a large place as to have numerous unrelated families going by the name of Harrison? However we cannot trace our own family tree back far enough to make a link, nor can we trace the famous John Harrison's family tree forward in anyway which makes a definite connection into our own.
If there are folks here with a strong interest in the famous clock maker John Harrison or who know they are descended from him I'd love to make contact.
Cheers
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Hello and welcome.
I'm relieved that you realise that there's no proof that you're related to the famous John Harrison, inventor of the marine chronometer as featured in the fascinating series "Longitude" - worth trying to find if you (or anybody) has not seen it. Harrison is a very common name, especially in Northern England.
Doubtless you've looked at everything you can find via Wikipedia and Google, but there's not much detail on his family, and these folk lived before reliable records were kept. But have you looked at the detail on geni.com? I wish I could report that this is a reliable site, but it isn't - only as good as its informants.
Wikipedia seems certain that he married Elizabeth Barrel (rare surname) then after she died Elizabeth Scott (not). The geni pages, managed by one person, find that he had one son John by Barrel, but he died at 18, then son William and Elizabeth by his second marriage, but that these people and their descendants lived in London. It might be worth contacting the profuile manager (you have to sign up) to find out more.
John Harrison was actually born at Foulby near Wakefield but that doesn't mean his family had no prior connection with the South Humber area - it's not clear why they moved there.
Chris
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I'm increasingly finding a huge number of Harrison's in my mothers research which date around the mid 1800's but nothing prior to 1780's
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Something weird is going on here which is replacing posts with copies of earlier posts... does this forum suffer from known technical bugs?
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I'm going to try and re-post comments I made earlier which seem to have disappeared;
Anyway within my mothers notes I have found an Elizabeth Scot dating back to the end of the 18th century (single "T" but old spellings aren't always that consistent).
What is more the same set of notes from this early period mention a family name of "Ballel" which could so easily be a corruption or simple misreading of "Barrel".
Quite how these tie into our own family tree isn't clear, but I think I need to sit down with my mother and ask her exactly where she has obtained this information and if she still has copies of the original documents/records it came from. I can't formally connect us to THE John Harrison yet, but a gut feeling tells me that it's because the information is muddled at this stage , not that we aren't related.
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John Harrison was actually born at Foulby near Wakefield but that doesn't mean his family had no prior connection with the South Humber area - it's not clear why they moved there.
Chris
He was born at Foulby in the parish of Wragby, Yorkshire, where he was baptized on 31 March 1693, the eldest of five children of Henry Harrison (1665–1728) and his wife, Elizabeth, née Barber. His father was a joiner and was said to have worked for Sir Rowland Winn (d. 1721) at Nostel Priory, Wragby. In 1696 or 1697 the family moved to Barrow upon Humber, Lincolnshire, where Winn owned other estates. Henry Harrison was appointed parish clerk soon after his arrival.
From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Stan
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Something weird is going on here which is replacing posts with copies of earlier posts... does this forum suffer from known technical bugs?
No, but if you are concerned, just use the report to moderator option, and I am sure the volunteer mods will sort, or alert the founders.
JM.
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I primarily joined this forum to try find out a bit more about my grandfather's military service, but I'm going to pitch this "long shot" enquiry up into the air just to see if anybody takes a swing at it.
My mother is descended from a long line of artisan craft workers living along the south bank of the river Humber in what is now NE Lincolnshire.
Anyway to get to my point; if we go back a few generations into the early 19th and late 18th century the surname Harrison crops up a lot in our family tree, along with forenames John, William and Elizabeth, as do connections to the general vicinity of Barrow upon Humber; My parents still live less than 10miles from there.
Arguably the most famous name in horology (clock making) is John Harrison 1693-1776 who whilst ending up working in London started his career as a carpenter and for some while lived in Barrow upon Humber.
Cheers
I accidentally came across your posting, I know nothing about your ancestry but stayed to read because I'm from the opposite bank of the Humber :D
Have you referred to the GENUKI website at all? This is my main "go to" website for general information about a place, which usually includes information about microfilm records of baptisms, marriages, deaths.
On the Barrow Upon Humber page:-
"The Anglican parish church register dates from 1561.
The Lincolnshire FHS has published several marriage indexes and a burial index for the Yarborough Deanery to make your search easier."
.......... there's also a piece of writing and here's part of it:-
"James HARRISON: Born in 1704 James was eleven years his brother's junior and controversy surrounded his role in the construction of the first two chronometers H1 and H2. However, it is likely that James worked on both H1 and H2. As carpenters the church records show that the Harrison's made coffins and also worked on the repair and construction of bell frames and church furniture. Amongst the earliest record of James' work is the sundial, which he made for Holy Trinity Church Barrow in 1732 and which bears his signature."
https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LIN/Barrow
Best wishes,
Rena
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Rena,
Thanks for the link as I wasn't aware of this site
It seems, like so much to do with genealogy, that 19th/20th century records are plentiful but as you start pushing back into the 18th and 17th centuries things soon get "sketchy".
It may be the reason I can't find any clear link between THE John Harrison and my family is simply that there isn't one. However for the time being there's lots of superficial similarities and circumstantial hints pointing towards this and not enough clear information to conclusively show there is no link;- All for the simple reason that we don't know enough about our own family tree in the early-mid 18th century.
Cheers
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Unfortunately it's "Murphy's Law" that there's hundreds of John Harrison's dotted about the land.
Have you approached Lincolnshire archives to see what they have on your horologist query? I see that for some reason they have a "John Harrison Memorial on a 1736 timepiece"
url link:- http://www.rootschat.com/links/01p4n/
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I haven't yet started chasing this in any dedicated formal manner, I'm just skimming through copies of all my mother's old digital research notes; Notes which sadly have been somewhat corrupted as a consequence of the file types not being properly supported by software running on recent versions of Windows... clearly this doesn't help me.
Years back my mother did put a lot of effort into chasing parish records and archives so my first step is to try find time to head back across the country to Lincolnshire to sit down with her to work through all her research to make better sense of what she knows and where she got the information from and look at anything she has on paper.
When I do have time to pursue this in a more thorough manner I'd hope to make some more progress... years back, seemingly in another life now, I used to work as a museum archivist and helped set up a research centre and archive for a national museum so I've some familiarity with how to go about such research.
Cheers
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Thinking generally, I suggest that if your surname can be traced to a smallish village, it is likely that there will be a connection, but you may have to go back several generations to reach a common ancestor. I have transcribed 18th-C registers for rural and urban parishes, and one soon finds a few dozen repeating surnames, often spelt in various ways, presumably attempting to follow the accent of the informant before literacy spread and spellings settled down.
My Tydeman ancestor from Suffolk was from a family that loved to alternate two given names for their sons, which now makes it almost impossible to determine who was who. 'John Harrison' is unlikely to be unique.
If your loss of file access is because those files are 16-bit, you could get simple software to run a 'DOS-box' under Windows-10. I do that for some 1990s databases I still use.
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Whilst no known relationship to whom you seek my Wife’s xGreat Grandfather’s was the Bradford Clockmaker William Sewell.
Whilst researching William we came across a renowned author of clockmaking books.
The author is called Brian Loomes and amongst his many books is one called Yorkshire Clockmakers where John Harrison is listed.
He quotes Henry Harrison Junior as his Father.
There is also reference to a James Harrison, Hull 1834-1858 as a Turret clockmaker and quote....Grandson of THE John Harrison.
I think that the dates actually refer to the period of operation rather than birth and death. James was born in Hull and he is in the 1861 census as clockmaker living with his Wife Elizabeth (Scruton) on what looks like Porter Street.
Hope this helps in some small way.
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The software issue is to do with the fact my mother recorded all her notes in an old package that is now obsolete...
Although somewhat of a tangent my mother began programming computers way back when they were still mechanical rather than being based on silicon micro chips, and later, when enough people started thinking of the term "computer" as a piece of technical equipment rather than a job title for a type of mathematician, she went on to become an IT instructor.
When I queried with her why the data was saved as a basic .txt file full she implied it was to do with this software. So I can open the file in something as simple as MS notepad where it delivers a huge "data-dump" However all the information that sorts the data into any meaningful structure is lost among a mass of additional characters and numbers dotted through this long single file. I can pick out lots of names and dates and locations, but it isn't clear which link to which. This data dump should, however, prove a mine of relevant information should I have to effectively start from scratch researching our family tree, which is unlikely.
So the issue isn't "accessing" the file but reconstructing it. It is comparable to being given a dictionary and told the story is all in there, you just need to sort the words into the right order.
As I say once I've got time to pursue this properly I need to head back to my parents and sit down with my mother to work through all her notes.... She has told me her "holy-grail" that she eventually gave up on trying to track down is a story of an old family bible containing our family tree traced back to 1066 and coming to the UK with William the Conqueror. Sadly that bible is said to have gone the USA in the mid 1800's... Her family name is Watmough (of the Lincolnshire biscuit manufacturers) where we think the connection to the Norman conquest may lie in a branch of the family with connections to Lancashire going by the names of LeScholes, more laterly just Scholes.
Cheers
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There is also reference to a James Harrison, Hull 1834-1858 as a Turret clockmaker and quote....Grandson of THE John Harrison.
I think that the dates actually refer to the period of operation rather than birth and death.
The mid 1800's is a period when records tend to be easier to come by so I'll have to see if I can find any mention of a James Harrison in our family. Assuming the dates you quote of 1834-1858 are not his birth and death but simply the period he worked in hull then common names like James and Harrison without exact dates for birth and death may simple be more circumstantial evidence rather than hard proof, but I'll go looking anyway.
Cheers
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James was born in 1791 in Hull and 1861 census lists him as Clockmaker.
There is a tree on Ancestry tracing back from him which may help in piecing together your future research.
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If your loss of file access is because those files are 16-bit, you could get simple software to run a 'DOS-box' under Windows-10. I do that for some 1990s databases I still use.
I do so wish I'd known that was possible as I lost so much "stuff", which I'd garnered during using my Windows 95 and 98 and then wasn't able to replace.
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Hello Rootschatters
After finding 500+ Trees on Ancestry for John "Longitude" Harrison I decided to research this family for myself.
I find that if the family had money Wills help enormously in tracing families in the 1700s and early 1800s. John Harrison received a great deal of money for his invention so I looked for John Harrison's Will.
He died in 1776 and mentions only two children in his Will - his son William and a daughter called Elizabeth who married John Barton. According to the Will there are four grandchildren. William's children, John, Ann and Elizabeth and Elizabeth's son John Barton. I have found no later mention of William's daughter Elizabeth, only John and Ann are mentioned in William's Will.
2nd Generation John Harrison's children
When we get to William's Will (he died in 1815) he has one grandchild, Elizabeth Barton, the daughter of his late daughter Ann Barton who married John Barton of Pimlico. This John it appears was her cousin the son of her Aunt Elizabeth and John Barton Senior mentioned in John's Will of 1776. William states Elizabeth is 17 yrs old. When Elizabeth married into the Wright family the announcement stated her father was "of the Bank of England".
William also has a son John who was born in 1761. Obligingly, William notes that John's mother was his first wife Elizabeth Atkinson and Ann's mother was his second wife Susannah Hodgson.
William's third wife also Elizabeth (Overton) was still alive but no children by her are mentioned.
Due to the money William's father got for his development of the marine chronometer, the family is now quite well off. There is property in London. William's son John and his granddaughter Elizabeth inherit, with provision made for William's third wife.
Third Generation John Harrison's grandson John
John Harrison 1761 - 1842 did not stay in London but returned to Lincolnshire and then moved to Hull. When he died in 1842 the Hull Packet newspaper notes he is the grandson of John Harrison who invented the chronometer. He was aged 80 according to the New GRO Index.
John was not married when his father died in 1815 but in the 1820s he formed a relationship with Jane Fenwick the wife of Richard Fenwick. This was much later in life than one would expect and no doubt accounts for the confusion we see in the on-line trees. If John had any earlier liaisons he does not mention them.
However in his Will written in 1836 John is quite candid about his relationship with Jane Fenwick and notes that his marriage is "legal under the law of Scotland" i.e. Common Law. He even states that Jane's maiden name was Proctor. (Bonus!) He has three children from this common law relationship, Charlotte, John and Henrietta. John and Henrietta were born at Great Grimsby in 1828 and 1829. I have not been able to track down Charlotte but the other children are with their parents at Spring Street in Hull in the 1841 Census. Also in the household is Ann Fenwick aged 20. The children were all minors when the Will was written and he mentions Guardians for them. They each inherited a house in London.
4th Generation - John Harrison Great-Grandson John 1828 - 1894
After John died Jane Harrison als Fenwick remained in the house in Spring Street Hull with her children John and Henrietta. John became a Civil Engineer. Henrietta died unmarried in 1873 and Jane died in 1878 at the age of 83. John continued living in the same house, unmarried, until his death on 12 July 1894. The Probate Register names an Emma Thornton, spinster as being granted probate. This person may be related to John's sister Charlotte. I have not obtained John's Will.
So it appears there are no living direct male descendants of John Harrison. There may be some from William's granddaughter Elizabeth Barton or his son John's daughter Charlotte but no living descendants called Harrison can exist. There maybe descendants from John Harrison's siblings especially his brother James. When John 1761 - 1842 left a specific time-piece to his son John in his Will he mentions that James was involved in the construction of it.
I love it that William and his son John gave so much information in their Wills regarding who the mothers of their children were. And so candid about the irregular marriage. Not hiding behind an anonymous trust arrangement that would not be a public document. It's almost as if they knew people would be looking for them. I think one thing we can take from this is that no direct descendant of John "Longitude" Harrison emigrated to the USA or Canada.
All the genealogical information I have found comes from Ancestry (PCC Wills), Find My Past (Lincs PRs and Newspapers) and Family Search and a few Internet searches. I have no connection to John Harrison but I thought it would be fun to see what I could find out sitting at my computer in snowy Canada. Please feel free to review the information for yourselves and let me know your conclusions.
Venelow
Canada
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Have you looked on the surname interest list?
There appears to be somebody else who is following a John Harrison, Lincoln, Yorkshire, London.
http://surname.rootschat.com/sit-surnames.php?letter1=H&letter2=3&surname=HARRISON#top_tv
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Hello Rootschatters
After finding 500+ Trees on Ancestry for John "Longitude" Harrison I decided to research this family for myself.
Venelow
Canada
Thanks very much for all this information. I may have to take a look at ancestry and pay whatever subscription they charge to read though what others have found out.
Cheers
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Well as best as is possible given the somewhat confused and corrupted nature of the digital records I have about my own family I've tried to match any names and dates to those given about THE John Harrison but still with no luck.
The earliest Harrison I can find in my mothers records is a Hill Harrison bpd1787 (presumably baptised?) with the names David and Elizabeth in brackets afterwards (presumably parents?) but with no location
later on there is another note without dates or context linking the names David, Elizabeth, Hill and Mary to the surname Harrison... suggesting the family may have later had a daughter.
Thereafter the bulk of the Harrison refences are from the mid 1800's with a John Dimmock Harrison, two different William Harrisons, an example of the oh-so-common John Harrison and a Mrs Raithby Harrison.
In terms of trying to tie things back to THE John Harrison then some of the earliest notes I have about our family are of an Elizabeth Scot whose name gets mentioned a few times around the 1770's in connection with a Benjamin, William and Sussana. Again because of the corrupted nature of my mothers records I cannot place them in any context
THE John Harrison's second wife was an Elizabeth Scott who would have been alive in the later part of the 1700's but again this is no direct proof of any connection to my own family history.
On an unrelated point altogether trawling through all my mothers records has just thrown up a connection to an Italian sounding sculptor (Francisco Degli INNOCENTI) from the early 1800's listed as Living first in Southampton and then in Liverpool. As somebody that makes my living as an artist and sculptor and now lives within spitting distance of Liverpool it seemed an interesting discovery.
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I'm sorry to be off topic here but the John Harrison Lesser watch was the reason that the Trotter brothers became millionaires in 1996. That may be why Harrison is known among younger people.
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Hello Rootschatters
So it appears there are no living direct male descendants of John Harrison. There may be some from William's granddaughter Elizabeth Barton or his son John's daughter Charlotte but no living descendants called Harrison can exist. There maybe descendants from John Harrison's siblings especially his brother James. When John 1761 - 1842 left a specific time-piece to his son John in his Will he mentions that James was involved in the construction of it.
Venelow
Canada
If what you write is true then there may be no direct male descendants, however I have found unverified suggestions of additional male descendants not included in the information you list from wills. However until proven they are merely interesting rumours ...
Nevertheless THE Johh H with his wife Elizabeth Scott had a son William who in turn gave him granddaughters Anne and Elizabeth and a grandson John. The speculation is of them having two other bothers: One called William Harrison would be THE John Harrison's grandson and he supposedly produced more generations of Williams and Johns until ending up with another Anne Harrison born in 1807. Then there is the suggestion that William (1728-1815) had more than one son called John Harrison and that this additional John in turn had a son by the name of Charles.
If you spend long enough on the inter-net you can find people claiming almost anything, however without a clearly laid out trail of evidence you have to question how much faith you place in things that strangers post on the inter-net... However it would appear that William Harrison (1728-1815) may have an extensive list of descendants.
Plus there is also the separate line of enquiry following descendants of THE John Harrisons younger brother James who is known to have worked extensively with John on the early clocks. I've found accounts in a nineteenth century astronomical societies papers questioning if it were James that was actually the more gifted of the two but that John Harrison gets the credit on account of being both the older brother and the more socially forward in terms of promoting their work? James' family seems to progress forward through several generations of bell founders and clock makers in and around Hull.
Pursuing genealogical connections can oh so easily become and addictive pastime!
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Hi, i may have some information i am a direct decsdendant of John Harrison through my mothers side, my great-grandfather is a famous clocksman in Yorkshire. I have uncles and male figures that are a direct decsendant of him, it's very difficult to find the fortune, nonetheless its there. Let me know if you have any questions.
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On an unrelated point altogether trawling through all my mothers records has just thrown up a connection to an Italian sounding sculptor (Francisco Degli INNOCENTI) from the early 1800's listed as Living first in Southampton and then in Liverpool. As somebody that makes my living as an artist and sculptor and now lives within spitting distance of Liverpool it seemed an interesting discovery.
I've come across several Italian sculptors and marble workers in England in 19th century. There was a boom in church building in England.
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You may already have this by now Happyhaddock
Brief outline;
HILL Harison was bapt 9 Dec 1787 Burgh-Le-Marsh,Lincoln to DAVID/ELIZ
He married Mary DALES 01 Feb 1808 Markby
Several children bapt to them Willoughby 1813-1831 (he was a Labourer**) abode Sloothby
1851 we have;
Hill Harrison 63
Mary Harrison 63
Job H Harrison 19 Grandson
Richard Low 4 Grandson
1841 as Will;
Will Harrison 50
Mary Harrison 50
Joh Harrison 9
David/Elizabeths children seem to be bapt Burgh 1786/1787 and later Fulstow 1792/1794/1795
Burial 22 Jun 1799 Fulstow for ELIZABETH, Wife of DAVID , age 37 (1762)
Burial 04 Aug 1840 Fulstow for a DAVID Harrison age 80 (1760)
My gut tells me David married Elizabeth SMITHSON 12 Apr 1783 Fulstow
All easy to find on FreeREG.
Trish :)
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No descendants of John Longitude Harrison in America? Harrison was married to Elizabeth Barrel for 8 years. His second wife, Elizabeth Scott, lived to age 72. Mind you, not all births were recorded in those days and wills might well include those living and/or simply those with whom one was on good terms. Sometimes the oldest son was given the farm or business while younger sons sought their fortunes elsewhere.
Some interesting evidence was left behind by a William Harrison of London who emigrated to Philadelphia with his family in 1794 to engrave some of America's first banknotes. Read about this individual at the following links, and by all means make your own conclusions!
William Harrison is mentioned 15 times in this thesis:
https://core.ac.uk/download/8763936.pdf
William's grandson (Gabriel), who had among other things become a famous Shakespearean actor in New York, was claimed to be a direct descendant of John Longitude Harrison:
https://archive.org/stream/nationalcyclopae05newy#page/218/mode/2up
Items which may or may not have been passed down through and/or donated to the U.S. Library of Congress by members of the Philadelphia family:
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/rbc/rbctos/2017gen21916/2017gen21916.pdf
https://www.loc.gov/item/2006691764/
https://www.loc.gov/item/09019451/
Descendants of William Harrison, the original immigrant to Philadelphia, are included in a document, "Some descendants of William Harrison, engraver, born London, England circa 1750, died Philadelphia, Pa., 1803.":
https://books.google.de/books?id=Ls4BKE8uHC8C&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=william+harrison+engraver+philadelphia&source=bl&ots=KUHed6PPbA&sig=ACfU3U23q95KfjGbKCTtG_RWLDLUQl-1lQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwityLzoiYL3AhXR66QKHWDwDMMQ6AF6BAgKEAM#v=onepage&q=william%20harrison%20engraver%20philadelphia&f=false
Information including newspaper clippings regarding two sons of immigrant William Harrison:
https://de.findagrave.com/memorial/108610361/charles-peter-harrison
https://de.findagrave.com/memorial/116868186/richard-granville-harrison
This William Harrison married Elizabeth Foster on the 28th of January 1772 at Allhallows, London Wall, London, England (Source: England Marriages, 1538–1973). Would this marriage certificate provide the true identity of William Harrison's father? Might some DNA from American descendants of the immigrant engraver be available?