Truth shall prevail.

Two of my biggest passions are genealogy and Victorian History.  Recently I completed a post-grad in Victorian history where I was able to indulge another slightly smaller passion - an interest is religions in general, and Mormonism is particular.  This indulgence took the form of an essay on Mormonism in Victorian Britain.  

Imagine my excitement (!) when I discovered that my husband had Mormons in his family tree.  It's a fairly distant link, but hey, if the BBC can make a whole programme about a soap actor being a direct descendant of Thomas Cromwell, then I can get a blog post out of this discovery.

Let me take to back to Berkshire in the early 19th century, specifically to the area between Reading to the north, and Basingstoke to the south - and the villages of Stratfield Saye and Mortimer.  Here we find the Edgerton family.  The direct ancestor is Judith, now Dollery, born in 1757, the eldest of 11 children born to Thomas Edgerton and Margaret Thorpe, and 5x great grandmother of my husband.  For the next 3 + generations the direct line stays in Stratfield Saye until they relocate to the Lambeth area where they stay put practically to the present day.

However it is the descendants of Judith's brother that we are interested in, specifically her niece, also called Judith.  Judith the younger was born in 1815, in Mortimer, nominally Church of England.  In November 1831 she married James Harrison, also born in Mortimer, a bricklayer.  They went on to have at least 8 children.  (A gap between the birth of the first and second suggest at least one death)  In July 1851 James, by now a master builder, dies. Judith relies on her skill as a dressmaker to provide for her family, and it is while working for a family in the area that she meets her second husband, Richard Warwick, who was a gardener, although apparently a shoemaker by trade.  They married on 14th March 1859, at St Mary's, Reading - the parish church, despite the fact that they were baptised Mormons by this stage.  Presumably at this time a couple would need to marry in an approved church or chape.


Many mormon converts left England for the US to join fellow Saints and  their dream of building Zion. In 1860 Judith's eldest son, Henry James Harrison, born 1834, left England, via Liverpool for America.  He was going to Utah in the company of other "Saints".  He left Liverpool on 30th March on board The Underwriter, and arrived in New York on 1st May, a journey of six weeks.  He was with other saints from Farnham - including the family (Burningham) of his future wife - siblings Alfred, Jams and Sarah.  By researching the Burningham family it is possible to speculate when the Harrison family converted to Mormonism.  In both a family history record by a Burningham descendant, and in a poem written by Alfred we discover that Mormon Elders establish a mission in Farnham in 1857.  Alfred, who worked as a mason with Henry at the Aldershot Barracks, converted along with other siblings, and eventually his whole family but one became Mormons.  Perhaps  Henry attended meetings with Alfred and introduced the rest of his family to this new faith.  Interestingly Alfred's poem also details persecution of his family because of their conversion.

Travelling to Utah this early in the church's history makes him a Pioneer, and the records of his journey west to Salt Lake City can be found here.  From this information it would appear that his journey was funded by the Perpetual Emigrating Fund.  According to the ship's manifest his voyage cost £4.  Conservative estimates suggest that in today's money the ticket would have been in excess of £300.  The record of the early part of his journey west from Nebraska can be found here in his diary.  The diary finishes in July 1860.  However we know that the Daniel Robison company, of which Henry was a member, arrived in Utah on 27th August.  Immediately Henry and the Burningham brothers travel to Bountiful, the second city to be founded in Utah to carry out building work.   On 6th October 1860 Henry marries Sarah Elizabeth Burningham.  The family settles in Bountiful, when Henry continues as a house builder.  They went on to have eight children.  Sarah died in 1887.  In 1898 Henry marries Mary Baugham, a widow.  Henry dies in 1921.  His obituary can be found here.

And what of the rest of the Harrison/Warwick family?  Richard Warwick, Judith and her children Annie, Sarah, John, Charles and Thomas made the crossing to New York on 14th May 1861, aboard the Manchester.  The journey took six weeks so they must have arrived sometime around the end of June.  There are no records of which company they joined to get to Utah, but family histories held by the Pioneer Memorial Museum state that they crossed the country by train and ox cart, and were settled in Bountiful in 1861.  Richard dies in 1898 and Judith in 1899.  The children all marry and have large families, many of whom still appear to reside Utah.

Waltzing Matilda

When my mum's cousin Kevin emigrated to Australia in the late 1970s, a few of the older members of the family commented that a relative had gone to Australia many years earlier,  had not been heard of since, and .."had probably died in a bush fire"...  A little bit of research and we can now guess why nothing was heard from the original emigrant:

David Harrison, son of Thomas Harrison and Mary Magdelene Hoggarth was born in Egton on 6th Dec 1875. He started out as a shoemaker, following his father's trade.

[David - possibly stood next to his father.  Picture c.1892, Glaisdale]

 However at some point he left shoemaking and like so many men of his generation he found work in the growing railway industry, and in the 1901 census we find him boarding in York and employed as a railway policeman. In 1904 he married his second cousin, Violet Isabel Davison, and they settled in Darlington where we find them living at 1 Brinkburn Road in 1911. David is now a fish fryer. At this stage they have one child - Hilda, born in 1908. There appears to have been another child who died. They  subsequently had a son called Ronald, possibly born in 1913. By 1915 the family are living in Sydney, Australia. We know this from David's divorce petition, the details of which were published in the local papers:

“You can get!”
 Adding insult to injury.
 Two co-respondents .

 David Harrison petitioned Mr Justice Gordon in the Divorce court today, for a dissolution of his marriage with Violet Isabel Harrison on the ground of her adultery with Percy Christopher Anderton and Charles Bryant, both of whom were joined as co-respondents. The parties were married at Darlington, Co Durham, England in August 1904 and came to Australia some years later. In September 1915 Mrs Harrison went for a trip to America on the Steamer Niagara. The co-respondent Anderton, who was a friend of the family, was also a passenger. Mrs Harrison returned in May 1916 and in the following June a child was born of which she told her husband Anderton was the father. Petitioner provided a home for his wife and children, but in December 1918 he found her living at McDonaldtown with Anderton. “I have the man I love” she said when her husband remonstrated with her, “and you can ‘get’ “ In March 1919 petitioner said his wife was living with the co-respondent, Bryant, at Elizabeth Street, Croydon. His Honor found the misconduct proven as against Bryant, and made a Decree Nisi, returnable in six months. Mr Toose (instructed by Mr J W Abigail) appeared for the petitioner.
 Evening News (Sydney) Friday 3 December 1920

Violet married Charles Bryant in 1921, having given birth to a son, also called Charles, a year earlier. Her daughter by Percy Anderton, Violet Winifred, was adopted by a family called Foster.  Violet died in 1958.
David disappears from the records after the divorce.

Welcome

Welcome to my genealogy blog. Research and stories for the names HOLMES, ROE, HARRISON, HOGGARTH, WHITELEY, BEAGAN, MCGOUGH, KEATING, SHOVLIN and NOLAN. That's the North of the title, with a healthy dose of Irish thrown in. The South will be represented by BURSILL, ROBINSON, LEMMER and ALLEN. We will also visit Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.

Not an expert - just an enthusiastic hobbyist. But always happy to help a beginner.