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Welcome to Rootschat.  To answer fairly briefly at this stage, your grandfather seems to have been Douglas Beecroft Hall (rather than Beechcroft).  His ancestors are fairly easily traceable from the census back to 1841.  His parents were John William Hall, b. Bury, Lancs 1848, d. ? 1898, cotton manufacturer, and Mary Beecroft, b. Hyde, Cheshire 1855, d. between the 1881 census and  1887 when her widower re-married.  She was the eldest daughter of Samuel Beecroft, a doctor in Hyde.

Is this enough to be going on with?

Ossibus

Richard, Thank you for this. I had come to a dead end.

The John Burbidge baptised in 1783 seems to have been buried in Barnack in 23 Aug 1788, but his parents John and Alice baptised another John on 4 Aug 1793.

This 1793 John must surely have been the widower who married Elizabeth Smith, spinster, on 17 Jan 1826, and also the butcher who was father of her son John Burbidge born on 9 Feb 1823.

The most likely previously deceased wife of the butcher seems to be the Ann buried on 6 Jan 1822, aged 32, and. also speculatively, she may have been the Ann Lumby who married a John Burbidge, whose mother is named as Alice, at Stamford on 3 Aug 1813.

John son of John and ELizabeth appears in the 1841 census as a Carpenter aged 18, living in Barnack but not with his parents; in 1851, still a carpenter, he is with his wife Jane (born in Stamford) and two sons in Spalding.  He had married Jane Shivers in Thorney in 1847, and the marriage certificate states that John's father was dead.

So it seems that the John Burbidge you discovered to have been buried on 14 Jan 1832 aged 39 must be the butcher.  Since the John Burbidge I am seeking was alive in 1861, you have found the final piece of the puzzle which convinces me that the Barnack butcher is not the man I am looking for.

If you are interested in these Burbidges I have a certain amount more information which I could pass on.  Meanwhile, I am very grateful for your help.

Thank you. mgeneas.  I think this could be my man; I suppose he could have been born in Welford and baptised in Long Buckby, or his family moved from there to Welford soon after and he assumed he had been born there.   

Basically I am looking for the parents of Elizabeth Burbidge Smith, born about 1820, who as a spinster married Henry Doughton Pulford at St James Westminster on 8 Nov 1842, father being named on the certificate as John Richards Burbidge and described as Esquire.

It has been suggested to me that he might have married a Smith widow with a daughter, but I suppose Elizabeth could also have been adopted or illegitimate.

There is an illegitimate Elizabeth Smith christened in Welford on 27 Dec 1818, father not named, mother was Mary Ann Smith.  I cannot find any further trace of the mother, but would be very grateful if you can.  But I expect it would be very hard to pin down paternity to John Burbidge.

If anyone has access to registers for Barnack I should be very grateful for help with the following:

According to IGI, John Burbidge married Elizabeth Smith at Barnack on 17 Jan or possibly 17 June 1826.  In particular I would like to know if she was a widow, if he was a widower, and if he had a middle name.

I think the same John Burbidge was christened at Barnack on 13 July 1783, and that his wife Elizabeth Burbidge was buried there on 8 Feb 1831, and would be very grateful for any further detail on these events.