Happy New Year!

Happy 2013 to all Swinfields or those who are part of the wider “Swinfield family”. I hope that it brings all that you would wish for.

As we enter yet another New Year, we all tend to look back on the past and especially what we have done over the last twelve months. We should also look forward to the future and set ourselves goals to be achieved. What have we learned through our work on the Swinfields and what more is there still to do?

I hope that I have both informed and entertained you with the Swinfield Blog. It will have been successful if you look forward to receiving each issue and enjoy reading it. I have tried to produce articles as regularly and often as I can so that there has been something new for you to learn about our family. I will endeavour to keep you informed of new developments and discoveries this year too. As I have already dealt with the history of the main lines of the family in the 19th and 20th centuries, my contributions will mainly centre on the earlier story of the family. I aim to tell you about what is known of the Swinfields of the 17th and 18th centuries. In addition, if any of you would be willing to contribute stories about your relatives, just send me the copy and I will “put it up”.

Through Andrew Swinfield's efforts, a mailshot was dispatched to all Australian Swinfields listed in White Pages. Although not inundated with replies, we did receive some very valuable responses and significant new information from previously unknown branches. A worthwhile project.

Indeed, that has resulted in one new male, Maxwell Henry Swinfield, commissioning a DNA test. We await, with great anticipation, the test results when they have been processed. It would great if other Swinfield men would join in. There are some families from which we have no participants. I contacted about 20 men in December 2012 who I had “targetted” as those who I would dearly love to contribute samples (purely for valid genealogical research reasons). Sadly, none responded by paying for a test, despite there being a much reduced rate available through the FTDNA Christmas sale. Perhaps they will in 2013!

I would also love to collect as many photographs as possible of anyone who is, or has ever been, named Swinfield. The written records will probably always be with us but the faces of our ancestors and relatives are far less durable. We need to gather them together before they are lost or thrown away. These could be pictures of those who are living or those who are no longer with us. If you have any images that you are willing to share with us all, please send them to me now, telling me who they are, how they are related to you and, if possible, when and where it was taken. You could start me off by e-mailing me a group photo of yourself, your brothers and sisters (if you had any) and your parents. I will happily become custodian of the new massive Swinfield family album.

Geoff  Swinfield (born 1951), Tom Swinfield (born 1984),
Ben Swinfield (born 1985) & Reg Swinfield (born 11th January 1925) 

As an example, on 11th January, we celebrated my Dad's 88th birthday. Reg Swinfield was born in 1925. Here he is with his me, his son, Geoff Swinfield and two of his three grandsons, Tom and Ben Swinfield, taken in the Half Moon at Sherborne, Dorset. Very rarely do four Swinfields gather together in one place which sells beer! It was something to record and commemorate!

My sincere wish for this New Year would be to have a Swinfield family gathering. I have long been hoping to organise an event where anyone and everyone who has our surname or has used it in the past (or may do so in the future?) can convene. There we could meet up with long-lost cousins and exchange information. Just think of the photo opportunity too! It would clearly attract most people if it took place close to Leicester where the majority of Swinfields still live. To get it off the ground, I do need help from those who live in that area. Where and when could we hold it? Do you know of a venue which would accommodate up to 100 Swinfields? Would you be willing to help me to fulfil my New Year's resolution?   

DNA Tests for Christmas?

I have talked a lot in this Blog about the use of DNA tests to answer questions about the relationships between the various branches of the Swinfield family. They can be a great tool to supplement the paper and parchment documents for our ancestors which we, as genealogists, use to put together a family tree.

My grandparents' grave - St Michael's churchyard,
Yorktown, Surrey

Genealogical records such as birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns, parish registers, wills and gravestones provide us with the “facts” about our ancestors' lives but they often do not tell the whole story! As has been discovered and illustrated during this series of the articles, to be read here, although they are documents which purport to provide a record of the important events in the lives (and deaths) of our relatives, they are often far from truthful. Every time one of our forebears provided information to the relevant authorities, whether the state or the church, he or she may have “bent” the facts or just lied. They often altered their ages, invented names for errant fathers, or hid illegitimacy.

Genetic inheritance cannot lie to us. It provides an accurate account of the real ancestors who donated the code which makes us who we are. If we can read the blueprint, we sometimes find clues, especially in the male line (like mine), which tells us that a branch contains hidden illegitimacy. After all, we only have our female ancestor's word for who was the true father of any of her children. We can compare men, using the Y-chromosome tests, to see how closely they are (or are not!) related. This has already told us a lot about the Swinfield lines from which we have samples. We were even included in an article, published in The Guardian last Saturday, about genetic tests which are being done on the possible body of Richard III.  

DNA Worldwide test kit

I have very recently “targeted” 18 male Swinfields who are representatives of six major branches of the family from which no one has yet been tested or where more samples are needed. I have sought their participation to see if any are prepared to take advantage of a seasonal cut-price offer which is currently available through FamilyTree DNA. Until 31st December, the price of a 37-marker test is just £75 ($119), a saving of over £30 off the normal price. To date, only two have replied, wishing me well with the study, providing genealogical information, but declining to pay for a test.

So if you are still looking for that very special and personal present for your beloved Swinfield male for Christmas, what better gift could there be? What's more, if you test one member of a family, you will get a result for his father, brothers, sons and even his grandsons! They all have the same Y-chromosome. You would also contribute significantly to our knowledge of the wider family's history so it would be a much- appreciated present for me too!

Click here to order now

Happy Christmas and a great genealogical New Year!  

Geoff

Part 24: More answers, more questions

Exciting new information has now been found about the Swinfield family of Earl Shilton. This adds significantly to the story of Thomas and Sarah, who had married on 25th January 1829 at Trowell in Nottinghamshire, and their family.

In earlier parts of this Blog, I have told the story of this colourful couple and their children. One of them, William (1841-1905) was to become my great-grandfather. Their first child, Jane, was baptised at Earl Shilton, Leicestershire, which was Thomas's home parish, less than two months after the marriage, on 8th March 1829. Sarah would have been at least seven months pregnant when they were married. Only two further children were baptised. They were Mary and William in 1836 and 1838. William was to die at only 10 months. Two others, Ann and Richard, born in 1831 and 1834, have no recorded baptism. Clearly this was not a happy union as by 1839 Thomas was living in Nottinghamshire with another woman, Maria Cooper, with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth. Meanwhile, Sarah was cohabiting with Thomas Brown and she had two illegitimate children, presumably by him, named as Joseph in 1843 and Sarah in 1845. She was still living with Thomas Brown at her death in 1862!

By June 1841, Jane Swinfield was languishing in Millbank Penitentiary, London, apparently aged 13. In Part 3 of the Blog, I reported how she had been tried by the Leicester Quarter Sessions on 4th January 1841 for larceny and sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia. This week, the latest addition to FindMyPast's extensive collection of databases, a collection of British newspapers from 1750 to 1900 was put online. Of course, the first thing that interested me was, “What Swinfield articles are included?” Brief accounts of her trial and conviction were published in the Leicester Mercury on 9th January and the Leicester Chronicle on 16th January 1841. These tell us that, at the age of only 11, she had stolen some quite valuable property from her mistress, Charlotte Bugg, in August 1840. She was eventually pardoned and released in August 1841.

Leicester Mercury - 9th January 1841

In Part 16, I wrote about what appeared to be her death in the OldWindsor Union Workhouse on 23rd November 1854. She had died aged only 26 of phthisis. There is no other woman in my database who could have been this deceased and, of course, there are no surviving records of the Workhouse for that year. Imagine my surprise when I discovered (thanks to Joan Rowbottom of the Guild of One-Name Studies who completed the Market Bosworth marriage challenge) that a Jane Swinfield, aged 20, had married in Bagworth church, Leicestershire, on 26th March 1848. This is the parish where her two brothers, Richard and William, were working as coal miners in 1851, but were incorrectly given the surname of Hewit. As Jane's father was recorded as Thomas Swinfield, FWK (framework knitter), there is no doubt that she was the child christened at Earl Shilton in March 1829. Her husband was Joseph Rudens, a collier.

1848 Marriage of Jane Swinfield at Bagworth 

Neither Jane Rudens nor Jane Swinfield can be identified in the 1851 census. Her husband, Josh Rudings was a 40 year-old married coal miner in Bagworth, who with his widowed mother, Sarah, was lodging with a family called Kilnam. Where was his wife of just three years? Her death is not recorded under any variant of her husband's surname. Had this marriage broken down too and had she wandered away as far as Windsor, where she was to die as a “spinster” in 1854?

Leicester Mercury - 21st August  1847

The Newspaper Collection includes one more delight. On 21st August 1847, the Leicester Mercury reported the deliberations of the Earl Shilton Petty Sessions held four days earlier. The Overseer of the Poor presented Thomas Swinfield, currently living near Arnold, Nottinghamshire, for deserting his wife. After pleading not guilty, he claimed that she (Sarah) had lived “in a state of adultery for the last eighteen years, and had six illegitimate children”. Sarah admitted that to be true and the case against Thomas was dismissed with costs payable by his wife. There are clearly two sides to every story.

It would appear that the marriage of 1829 had broken down almost immediately and that Jane was probably their only legitimate child! Thomas has sought solace with Maria Cooper, the Chartist movement, and eventually spent the last 40 years of his life in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  

Part 23: A new tree from Australia

I am pleased to have received another and very productive communication as a result of the letter which was sent out to the Australian Swinfields.

One of those who received it was Raymond Francis Swinfield of Rozelle, New South Wales. He is part of Family 3,being the great-great-grandson of the immigrant William Swinfield (1804-1876) by his first wife, Sarah Ballard, who had died in England three years before the family left. 

Marriage of Daniel Swinfield in 1869

William's son, Daniel Swinfield (1842-1877), born at Hartshill in Warwickshire, travelled to the other side of the World with his family and was to become Ray's great-grandfather through his son, also named Daniel (1877-1905). The family settled in Sydney and worked as gardeners, engineers, plumbers, carters and storemen. I have received detailed information, copies of documents and even photographs of his ancestors from Ray over the years. Once again, he took the time to send me an updated tree with the latest additions.

Daniel Swinfield (1877-1905)

His brother, John Anthony of Tennyson Point, who is now also in his late 70s, has provided me with a copy of another part of their family tree, which was sent to him some years ago. This documents a whole branch which I did not know of until now! It had been compiled by John Campbell Swinfield (1912-1995), also of NSW and records himself, his eight brothers and sisters, and their descendants. They were the children of John Swinfield (1873-1961) and his wife, Margaret Prior (1882-1961). John was a postal worker and the family lived in the areas of St Leonards, Redfern, Bankstown and Marrickville. John was another son of Daniel Swinfield, born in England in 1842.

I now have knowledge of 15 grandchildren of John and Margaret, of whom 9 were born as Swinfields. This is just the new information which I had been hoping for!Indeed it has allowed me to link Penny Swinfield, who joined the group in May, back to John and Frances Swinfield of Wolvey, who married in 1755. What a result!

There must be others who have that sort of information which I would love to have from YOU.

Part 22: The Story of Family 5

Having used DNA tests to confirm the probability that the Swinfields of Family 3 & 4 and those of Family 5 have a common ancestry, the question now is where do they “join up”? Is the link between these two major lineages in the 17th century, the 15th century or as early as the 1300s, shortly after Swinfield was chosen by our distant ancestors to be used from then onwards as our hereditary surname?

Marriage of John Swinfield at Wolvey in 1755

In Part 7 of this Blog, which I have now been writing since the end of August 2011, you will find what is known about the origins of Family 3 & 4. Its story can currently be extended back as far as the marriage of John Swinfield and Frances Collins at Wolvey in Warwickshire on 25th August 1755. They had five children baptised in that parish church from 1756 to 1781. It was their last son, Thomas, who is the earliest known ancestor of not only all living Swinfields who were born in Australia but also many other English people with the surname whose male ancestors did not choose to travel to the other side of the World. You can read more about those parts of the Swinfield lineage in other episodes of this Blog.

Those of us whose descent is via Family 5 and its numerous branches in England can trace our ancestry back to the parish of Earl Shilton, Leicestershire, in the first decade of the 19th century. In Part 1, I outlined our descent from Thomas (1808-1893), who is “on paper” my great-great-grandfather. Thereby, as avid readers who have been paying close attention will know, hangs another story! He and his brother, William Swinfield (1813-1885), who married Elizabeth Kenny at Cosby in 1832, are the progenitors of everyone on this tree.

Kirkby Mallory church 

Ashby-de-la-Zouch church  

Their parents, Thomas Swinfield and Sarah Toon, had married at Kirkby Mallory in 1803 and were to be buried at Earl Shilton in 1833 and 1821 respectively. Thomas, who was christened on New Year's Day 1770 in the church of St Helen's in the town of Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire, was the only son of John Swinfield and Jane Radford, who had married there two years previously. John's sister, Alice, also married in that church just five months earlier. John buried his wife in 1809 but he survived until the ripe old age of 81, before dying in April 1820.

Inside of Ashby church 

Smisby church 

John and Alice were both baptised in the neighbouring church of Smisby, where they had lived when they married, which lies across the county boundary into Derbyshire. He was christened on 13th August 1738 and Alice was named in 1744 by their parents, John and Mary Swinfield. John senior lived until 1788, then being laid to rest in Smisby churchyard. They had produced five known issue.

Marriage of John Swinfield at Norton in 1732

Norton-juxta-Twycross

It is probable that John Swinfield married Mary Meacham some eight miles to the south in the church of Norton-juxta-Twycross, back in Leicestershire, on 30th May 1732. To date, I cannot identify a convincing candidate for the baptism of this man in the very late 17th or, more likely, the first decade of the 18th century.

So how close did the earliest known ancestors of these two major Swinfield lineages, both called John, live about 1720? They were about 15 miles apart as the crow flies across the fields of north-west Leicestershire. Did they know each other and were they near kin?

Part 21: Swinfield DNA update

We have the result of another DNA test which adds significantly to our knowledge of the relationship between the larger branches of our family. Andrew Swinfield of Sydney, New South Wales, commissioned a 37 marker test through Family Tree DNA. The results are now in. You can see and compare the results that we now have on the Swinfield DNA &Genealogy page hosted by FTDNA. What do they tell us? I have discussed these results in detail there.

To summarise what we know, we now have three men who have been tested. They are:

Andrew John Swinfield                       born 1957   Sydney, NSW          Family 3A         
Derrick George Joseph Swinfield        born 1928   Leicester                  Family 5F
Paul Frederick Swinfield                     born 1957   Crayford, Kent         Family 4 & 13

Andrew & Derrick match at 29 of 32 markers

Paul & Derrick match at 31 of 32 markers

Andrew & Paul match at 34 of 37 markers

Wolvey church

Only two of them are known to be related through genealogical records. Andrew is the 4^th cousin, once removed, to Paul, both being part of the extensive family which is designated as Family 3 & 4. They both descend from Thomas Swinfield and Elizabeth Hackett who married in the parish church of Monks Kirby, Warwickshire, on 21^st August 1803. They named their children in the neighbouring church of Wolvey from 1804 to 1820 before moving on to Mancetter where they named their last three sons from 1822 to 1827.

Andrew’s ancestor was William (1804-1876) who emigrated to NSW in 1848. He is the forebear of all living Swinfields in Australia. Paul’s great-great-grandfather, George Swinfield (born 1825), remained in England after his two oldest brothers, William and John (1806-1874), travelled to the other side of the World.

Derrick is part of my branch of the Swinfields, Family 5, an equally large lineage. Unlike me, through the unfortunate illegitimacy which resulted in my great-grandfather, in 1841 (see Part 6 of the blog), he would appear to have a “typical” Swinfield Y-chromosome. He has inherited this from his direct male ancestors. His almost exact match with the two representatives of Family 3 & 4 strongly argues that the two largest pedigrees are branches of one much larger family tree. If only records had survived from that early, it would be possible to show that all those named Swinfield descend from a single ancestor who assumed our surname in about the 13^th century when names became hereditary. 

It would appear that the "Swinfield haplotype" is:  

DYS	Value				DYS	Value
393	13				448	19
390	24				449	30
19	14				464a	15
391	10 or 11				464b	16
385a	11				464c	16 or 17
385b	14				464d	17
426	12				460	11
388	12				GATA-H4	11
439	11				YCAlla	19
389a	13				YCAllab	23
392	13				456	15
389b	29				607	14
458	17				576	19
459a	9				570	17
459b	9 or 10				CDYa	35
455	11				CDYb	36 or 37
454	11				442	12
447	24				438	12
437	14

We now need to test men from other branches to see if they have the same haplotype too. Volunteers please raise your hands! 

A letter to Australian Swinfields

Since my last blog in early May 2012, Andrew Swinfield of Sydney, New South Wales, has volunteered to send out a letter to all those Swinfields who are listed in Australian White Pages. It was hoped that its content, composed as a joint effort between Andrew and myself, would encourage a positive response and elicit many replies, offering new information about the ancestry of and the relationships between those who share our surname in the Antipodes.

The problem with research in NSW is that only indexes to births to 1906 can be searched online. This means that there is a large gap, of more than a century, between the last available birth registration records which can be accessed from England, all of whom would now be dead, and those who would be alive today. Who are the parents and grandparents of today’s residents in NSW and those who have migrated to other states of Australia? Of the 43 Swinfields, for whom there are telephone listings, 33 still live in NSW. The other ten are spilt between South Australia (4), Queensland (3), Western Australia (2) and just 1 resident of Victoria.

After the letter went out in very late May, we waited expectantly for a great response and continued to wait! Disappointingly, only three people chose to reply. I am still waiting for one, Greg Swinfield, to provide greater detail of their part of the family after he has collected data from his close relatives. Meanwhile, he has sent me a great photograph of his family (taken in the 1930s?). I hope to learn more from him soon. Others may still reply but I am not holding my breath!

By far the most informative reply to date was from Leslie Ernest Swinfield and his daughter, Cheryl Cooper. They had received in 1989, a copy of a Swinfield genealogy which had been compiled by Barbara May Glass nee Swinfield. She had collected information about “Family 3A” by contacting living members at that time. This adds greatly to our knowledge of this major branch of the Australian family in the 20^th century. Cheryl and Les have updated their own line for me, bringing it right up-to-date. 

Barbara included an intriguing statement in her narrative: "The Swinfields were very talented people but their liking for alcohol prevented many from reaching their potential in life. They were also very tall, one known to have reached 7' in height." How many of us fit that description?   

The circular letter proved very worthwhile for just this one new contact and all the information which it has produced.