New Stedman History pages

 General Interest, News  1 Response »
Jun 232012
 

I have been revising my Stedman History pages that had been posted on my original stedmanfamily.org site and moving them to this site. Please feel free to check them out and leave comments here with updates or corrections.

The focus of the pages will be the History of the Surname, History of the Families in the UK to 1800, and History of the Stedman Families in Colonial America. These pages will be a work in progress for a while so I really am interested in your comments…

When I have moved all of the existing pages over from the old site that still have value, I will be shutting the old site down and moving the stedmanfamily.org domain to this site.

Thanks,
john.

Mick Jagger is not a Stedman Descendant!

 News  3 Responses »
Jun 152012
 

In May 2003, an email was sent to the Stedman email list documenting the Stedman lineage of Sir Michael Phillip “Mick” Jagger. The lineage seemed good and, based on the records easily available at that time, it could be mostly well proved.

There was one step in the lineage which was vague. Oops… Florence Mary Ann Ensley Pearson supposedly married an Alfred Scutts about 1910 and had daughter Eva Ensley Scutts who married Sir Mick’s father in 1940. Eva supposedly was born in Australia. The fact that his mother was a Scutts and the family name Ensley flowed through the family seemed to make it safe even though we could not find a marriage record for Alfred and Florence nor a birth record for Eva.

Let us skip ahead to 2012…

I can now say that the genealogy I have published for almost ten years showing Mick Jagger as a Stedman descendant was WRONG!

I have been reviewing and updating a lot of the UK genealogies that I worked on years ago to add in all of the newly available census, BMD, etc. records now available. You will see from the genealogies the result of this effort. I have not had to correct too many of my genealogies, but I have to make a public statement and apology about this one. This one stands out because it is such a public line that gets mentioned a lot. I would guess that at least 100 RootsWeb and Ancestry trees must also have this mistake. I fear that many of them got this from me.

I have now updated this genealogy on-line. Below is a summary of what I now believe to be the correct genealogy to be.

Eva Mary Ensley Scutts was born 6 April 1913, and her birth was registered at Marrickville in New South Wales, Australia. Her parents were reported to be Alfred Henry and Gertrude Jessie Scutts. Eva Ensley M Jagger died in May 2000 near London. Her death registration index gives her birth date.

Alfred Henry Scutts (1879-1963, s/o Alfred Charles Scutts and Mary Louisa Gardiner) married Gertrude Jessie Archer in Kent in 1901. They had 4 sons before departing for Australia in July 1912, arriving Sydney in September 1912. One of the sons, Percy died in 1936 in Sydney. Percy’s death notice in a Sydney newspaper made note that Alfred and Gertrude must have been estranged because she was back living in Kent. Eva married in Kent in 1940, and Gertrude and the other three sons died in Kent between 1964 and 2004.

Gertrude Jessie (Archer) Scutts (1879-1964) was the last child of John Archer (1836-1882) and Ensley Bailey (1841-1907). Gertrude’s oldest sister was Mary Ann Ensley Archer (1860-1923) who married Harry Steadman Pearson (1858-1917). Their youngest daughter, Florence Mary Ann Ensley Pearson (1889-1951), did not marry Alfred Scutts but married Ernest E. Page in 1917.

So you know how the Stedman connection comes in… Harry Steadman Pearson is a grandson of Capt. James Stedman and Mary Catherine Edgecombe and great-grandson of Phillip Stedman (of Sevenoaks, Kent) and Susannah Tarbut.

In laying this correction out, I may have made the discovery process seem simple. It wasn’t. I first needed to work up Alfred Scutts’ genealogy in England. It was my good fortune that Alfred Scutts is not a common name! I also had to review all of the details I had for Florence’s family, including finding people in the 1911 census. From this, I discovered that Florence had married in 1917 in England so I was fairly certain she had not gone to Australia. I needed to find when Alfred went to Australia and what was going on with his family there.

I had to prove that Gertrude Jessie Archer and Mary Ann Ensley Archer were related. They were born so far apart that Mary Ann was married about the time Gertrude was born.

Then I had two great contacts in Australia locate the birth registration for Eva (1913 NSW births are not yet released on the web site but are available from some old CDs) and other details of the family in Australia, including evidence that at least part of the family had returned to England before Eva was married.

I stress, when I am teaching genealogy techniques, to find the names of spouse parents. All too often when understanding a spouse’s family, you will learn about hidden cousins.

This example also teaches that family legends might have a grain of truth in them, and, when researching family legends, it is important both to find the correct genealogy and to find out what might be the basis for the legend.

Let me give a shout out to Warwick Anderson and John Graham in Australia and Nick Stedman, David Stedman, and Carl Russ in the UK for their help with this analysis. And help with other issues that I will report from time to time.

John Lisle
Nashua, New Hampshire

All Stedman Genealogies Updated

 News  3 Responses »
Jun 072012
 

I have uploaded new genealogies for both the Stedman families of North America tree and the Stedman UK tree this evening.

I have updated numerous families in both groups, including adding additional photos and documents.

In the UK families, I have made a major addition of the Stedman-Osborn family of Coldwaltham, Sussex. I have included much excellent work contributed by a family member in the UK, including copies and some transcription of 18th century wills and other documents that prove this family’s rather remarkable history.

I have also continued to fill in gaps in the extensive Ardingly, Sussex / Sevenoaks/Rochester, Kent family. Several family lines have been added that had been missed previously, especially among the descendants of Philip Stedman, son of Nathaniel Stedman and Mary Parsons. These updates are a work in progress as we are searching for some evidence in Kent that might link some lines that had been previously held as parts of different families.

As always, more work has been done on some of the Harper’s Ferry, WV, Steadman families with the discovery of a line that had not previously been connected. An excellent researcher in Ohio provided some excellent, and some times surprising documentation of that family line.

And more updates to the South Carolina Steadman families. My wife and I spent some time in the Greenville, SC, library and the Old Buncombe County Genealogical Society library in Asheville in April and were able to find a wealth of new data that I will be a while in assimilating. If you are travelling in that area, both of these facilities have a wealth of information that you may not be able to find anywhere else.

I have even added some 1940 census data although later this year when it is fully indexed that will balloon!

Please note that I am mostly doing major development on UK families at this time as I have so much that needs to be done. Ancestry and FindMyPast have published several major databases of parish records that are helping immensely to reconstruct 19th century families, especially in the London area.

I could go on and on. Please click on the Family Trees tab above and explore.

AND, if you find something that is wrong or incomplete, please fill in the comment box and tell me about it in details so I can get it updated. I value your input and take that as my first priority. I try to get your updates entered within a week unless they involve a major work effort.

Thanks again for stopping by,

John Lisle
Nashua, New Hampshire

Welcome to the Stedman Family Organization!

 General Interest  No Responses »
Jun 072012
 

Welcome to the Stedman Family Organization Genealogy site where we try to have the most comprehensive registry of Stedman family data anywhere. Of course, we research families who use all spelling variations of Stedman, Steadman, Steedman, Stidman, and so on.

Our goal is not to provide you with a comprehensive family history as that would be impossible. What we do try to provide is a large collection of well documented, reconstructed family frameworks that you can use. We use vital records, parish and church records, cemetery records, census, published histories, and even compiled genealogies in creating our registry. When we use your genealogies or others that we find, we do extensive checking to assure that the data is corroborated with independent documentation. If someone shares a Gedcom with us, we do extensive checking to assure all of the data meets our standards before we add it to our registry.

But we are not perfect. We make mistakes and hope you tell us about them!

We periodically update the online genealogies. We usually include in an update, as with the current updates, some work in progress so that our research partners can review in detail what we have added.

One question I get asked all the time. “Are we related?” The answer is mostly a simple “NO!” However, you might be related to my wife Carolyn. About 20 years ago, I got started with Stedman research because of all the family lines we have, it is the only one with New England roots and, as we live in New England, we thought it was easier to research in our home area. It has been a great adventure as it has taken us all over the country and we have met fascinating folks in person and by email from all over the world.

Please click on the “Family Trees” Tab above and search for your Stedman relatives. Please feel free to register for an account that will get you some extra viewing privileges and let me know what you are interested in. Then go exploring! The site is always being upgraded.

This blog will be updated periodically with news of what we are working on along with some historical information about the Stedman family by myself and a few other contributors. If you have articles you would like to see published, please contact me by email.

Thanks for stopping by,

John B. Lisle
Nashua, New Hampshire
Stedman Surname Registrant, Guild of One Name Studies (London)
Founder and Administrator of the Stedman Surname DNA Project
Administrator of the RootsWeb.com Stedman surname Email lists.