I note that this an old thread and hope it is still active.
I am presently also tracing the BELL family of Wolsingham. My connection is nigh on impossible to trace, but one has to try. There is no short way to tell this story, but it will be worth your while to read on, as it all comes together
My surname is HOW and my 3g grandfather John HOW, was registered as the son of Henry How, the Blacksmith in Sarratt, Herts, just up the road from me. However, when I took a Y-DNA test, there were no HOW matches at all, but a host of BELLs from around Cumberland.
John HOW was baptised in 1761 and shown as the son of Henry How and Ann Prenties. Henry and Ann married a month later, which suggests that Henry was not actually John's father, but that his father was a BELL.
A Robert Bell was buried in Sarratt 6 months before John was baptised, and as BELL was not a common name around here, it now seems likely that he was descended from the BELLs of Cumberland.
Only a few weeks ago, I found autosomal DNA matches for several separate people in New Zealand, who are descended from a Robert BELL of Halton Castle, near Hexham in Northumberland. Ancestry shows our probable relationship as 5th-8th cousin, which would put it around the early 1700s, which fits perfectly with my Robert BELL in Sarratt.
I recently found the Parish registers for Halton Chapel online. They are very detailed and beautifully written. They give a Robert Bell 1809 as the third son of Mary Charlton of Halton, native of the parish of Ovingham, and Robert Bell - Husbandman of Halton, native of the parish of Wolsingham. Thus although he gives his birth place on the census as Halton Castle, he is actually from Wolsingham. A few months later there is a Jane Bell, 1st daughter of George BELL of Halton, also native of Wolsingham. It appears that the BELLs. It seems likely that the BELLs of Wolsingham were landowners and Farmers that owned land a few miles away in Halton.
I then found Robert the younger with his wife Mary in 1851. They are at West End Farm, Kirklevington Yorksire, where he is a Farmer of 500 acres. Along with 4 children is a cousin called Mary Charlton who is a Governess, born in Friern Barnet, Middx. That makes her the daughter of Mary Charlton's brother. Sure enough in 1841 she is at Sopers Pond Farm near Potters Bar, and a couple of miles from Barnet. Her father is Ralph Charlton, Mary's brother. Now, Ralph is not a common name, so the fact that Nigel's grandfather also has Ralph in his name, and that he is born at Edmonton, near Enfield, suggests there may be a connection there.
Hopefully the Halton Chapel register will help make sense of a lot of the threads on here.
Now all I need is a few more autosomal DNA matches from descendants of the BELLs of Wolsingham. Does anyone on this thread have a DNA test online at Ancestry?
Regards
Phil HOW, in Croxley Green, Herts.
