RootsChat.Com

Thanks to all who have provided such a treasure-trove of information already.  Now that I have so much more background knowledge of Mary Langridge I am becoming increasingly interested in her family the Crouches and Startups of Barming.  It would be great to know if there is a marriage entry for Thomas and Rebcca Crouch that might mention Rebecca's surname as I have not been able to track her down at all.  I'm assuming they were married before 1818 which was when Mary was born.  Another marriage entry that would be useful if it exists is that of Thomas Crouch's grandfather James Startup and his wife Eliza.  Again this seems to have taken place in Barming so any more info on the Startups or the background of Eliza would be great.
    James Startup is listed as a beer-shop keeper, does anyone know whether someone like that would have to be registered or licensed and whether those kinds of records might still exist to provide maybe some more information.
    Also two mysteries have sprung up which I am wondering if anyone can shed some light on.  Firstly I have come across a message in a genealogy forum  in which someone is requesting information on an ancestor Eliza Startup   
who was from Barming and ended up in insane institution.  Could this be my Eliza or is there evidence of several branches of the family name Startup in Barming?  If it is my Eliza does anyone know if records for this hospiatl in Barming still exist and how accessable they are?
    Secondly in the 1871 census Thomas and Rebecca Crouch are listed as living in the village of Trottescliffe and in 1876 there was a murder case in the village involving a child called William Crouch and I am wondering if there was a family connection there.  Can anyone shed some light on these events?
    Any help appreciated!!

I,m searching for some information on an ancestor of mine who appears to have been born in Hastings (or so he claimed in the 1871 census).  His name was John Miller and he would have been born in about 1841.  He spent a lot of his adult life in Kent and the information about that part of his life seems fairly straightforward.

 The Kent section of Rootschat have been amazingly helpful and managed to come up with a potential candidate for our John from the 1851 census.  This John Miller was 9 years old  and living at 22 Bohemia Terrace St Mary Magdalen, Hastings with his father (also John) and his mother Priscilla.  The entire exchange of messages about John Miller and his family can be read in the Kentish section of Rootschat under the topic heading "Looking for a Kent radical and his wife".  Can  anyone  come up with information that isn't duplicating what the Kent people have already found out ?  I will try to get hold of his Marriage certificate but I'm downunder in New Zealand so it will take a bit of time to arrange.  Any help in the meantime would be appreciated  .

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,268491.0.html

I started out searching for the parents of an ancestor Harriet Langridge and didn't make much progress although I received a lot of new information about Harriet herself.  Through rootschat I have found out that Harriet was born in the village of Barming, Kent and this has led me to a potential breakthrough.  The 1841 census for Barming shows that a James and Mary Langridge (the name of Harriet's parents in all the sources we have) were living there with a daughter named Matilda age 2.  Is there anyone out there who can help me make the link between this couple and my Harriet?  Harriet would have been born about 1843
if our family records are correct which means Matilda (if she survived) would be her older sister. Any help would be appreciated .

You're right, I definitely need to give out some more background information so here goes.  I don't have any info on the backgrounds of Harriet and John (i.e where were they born etc.) which was why I was finding  them so elusive. However this is what I do know: John and Harriet Miller emigrated to New Zealand in 1874 with three children Catherine (10), Charles(2) and William (2 months).   The Kent Union, with its executive in Maidstone, had already sponsored  the emigration costs of about a thousand labourers and their families.  In early 1874 sixteen families from the parish of Burham near Rochester were sent.  They were farewelled from the Walnut Tree inn in Burham and set out for Portsmouth. One of these sixteen families (most of whom were unemployed  brickmakers) was the Millers.  This ties in with the baptism entry for little Charles which lists St Mary's as their parish church  and that is the name of Burham's parish church. What I don't know is whether John and Harriet's families were natives of Burham or whether John and Harriet had moved there looking for work.  Catherine's daughter could only remember her mother referring to the fact that they came from West Malling.  Those are the only facts we know in the family.  Any help in filling in some of the gaps would be very welcome

 :)Thanks for checking up on these extra details.  I'd actually suspected that with so obviously a foreign name  the transcriptions might be a bit dubious. I'll do a bit of extra research using these new variations and see what I come up with.