Stedman Family Organization

Followers of my Stedman work over the years will note that I have avoided doing a lot of the Stedman genealogies in Scotland. This is in part because I do not have good access to primary documentation from Scotland without paying the outrageous fees requested by Scotland’s people. (I am half Scottish myself…)

A primary work that I have tried to transcribe into this genealogy has been the 1858 Barton-Steadman genealogy by John Stedman of Bath. This work has many critics. From that, several trees have been drawn. I have made a PDF of a tree I was sent about 2005 and you can view it here :

Barton-Steadman Family Tree.

I have received a number of other documents on the Genealogy of the various Steedman families in Scotland. An important recent addition has been extracted from David Marshall’s “Kinross-shire and Its Owners” that is in the Kinross library. I have received a photocopy of that document from my colleague David Stedman in Wales. This work presents some serious differences to the 1858 John Stedman of Bath (JoB) work. I have not yet been able to process this at all and convert it into a modern genealogy I can present to you on this web site, but at least I can share the source material and welcome your help in sorting this out. Kinross-shire and its Owners by David Marshall.

Lastly, I have documented a link that I am sure is wrong. Hopefully, this last work will help sort this out correctly. Robert Steedman, son of James Steedman and his cousin Janet Steedman was probably not the husband of Margaret Lambert, as published in many genealogies. We now believe that it was another Robert Steedman. There is evidence suggesting that Robert, son of James and Janet, died young. He was also part of the Barton-Steadman family (if you believe JoB…). DNA evidence from two Steedman men (one in Canada and one in New Zealand) gives them different DNA from what we see for presumed Barton-Steadman descendants. (Hopefully, David will elaborate on that comment…) We have another DNA match to this family that I still have not been able to connect into this family and may come in from an earlier generation.

As you may deduce from the additions I am making to the UK Stedman/etc genealogies, my current interest is in fully documenting the UK Stedman families of the 19th and 20th centuries. That way I can determine how many lines trail back to the 1700s where sorting out families is more difficult. I want your help with your research, especially into the Scottish families, to try to make sense of what now seems to be a jumble.

Thanks for reading…

john.

Winter always seems to be a busy time for research, and this year has been no exception. We dodged the worst of the recent Nor’easter – no loss of power or internet! We still have over a foot of snow on the ground. I posted these updates now in case we are not so lucky with the next storm.

This update has small and medium additions and updates throughout the genealogies from readers who have sent me updates in addition to a few major projects.

I was contacted by a descendant from Vermont whose Stedman family is part of the large Ardingly/Sevenoaks, England, Stedman family. I was able to massively update the whole family of William Stedman and Sarah Ann Whiting of West Malling, Kent, England. They had seven children: 2 died young, one moved to Guernsey; one daughter married and moved to Rhode Island. One of the sons, George Stedman, whom I had previously thought to have died young, had a family that have now been traced for up to 5 generations in England. Daughter Ellen died as a young mother; one daughter removed to Guersney; the other married and raised a large family in New Zealand. Alfred was the last child and his father died when he was an infant. He spent about 20 years in Guernsey before returning to England. Two of his daughters married Larg brothers and moved to New York; one of his sons moved to New Zealand; several died young in Guernsey; and one (Alfred John Stedman) married his uncle’s widow.

As I have said many times, a lot of my research is driven by the DNA results we get. Such is the case this month. We got an almost surprising match. A descendant of Rev. William Golding Stedman of Colchester, Essex, England and a descendant of the Pakenham/Thruston, Suffolk family turned up as a close DNA match. The Suffolk descendant has a large ancestry.com tree of the two families, but we have still not found a provable link between the families.

We decided to take on a long term project to update those families. With this update, I am posting a major update the Essex side of the family. We have now proven that Rev. William was a son of Thomas Stedman and Olave/Olive Golding of Mount Bures and Colchester, Essex. I have posted a transcription of his Will. Thomas was a son of Thomas Stedman and Mary Cole of Mount Bures and that Thomas Sr. was a son of James Stedman of Bures Hamlet whose 1779 Will (also found and transcribed) proves part of a large part of the early family. I believe that James was born in the early 1700s and is the link into the Suffolk family.

In doing the research, we found the records and especially the Parish Records available on-line (for a subscription fee) at the Essex Ancestors site to be invaluable. If only all of the English Counties could provide similar information! We learned a bit of geography in doing this. The river Stour splits the town of Bures with part of it (Bures St. Mary) in Suffolk and Bures Hamlet in Essex. The Parish for Bures Hamlet is St. Mary in Bures St. Mary so the records are only available in the Suffolk records office. Consequently, there are details and clues that have not yet been looked at.

Based on my analysis, at least two Stedmans – brothers – were in the Parish. The other had two children who did not marry. James had three documented sons: Thomas, John, and James. We have only a sketchy understanding of James’s family. If anyone has details, please advise.

Lastly, on this extended family, I moved the family of Barnard Stedman from the American family tree to the UK family tree as we now have evidence – but not proof!! – that Barnard was a son of John Stedman and Bridget Booty of the Suffolk family and who was known as Barnett in the parish baptismal record. Barnard married Charlotte Watson in Ixworth, Suffolk, in 1822 and about 1830, he and his family seems to have immigrated to Prince Edward Island, Canada. They subsequently went to Boston in 1851, and thence to Illinois where they died. I have just received an extensive genealogy of Barnard’s family that needs to be reviewed.

Let me say a few words about the Suffolk family as there is a raging controversy about its origins. David Stedman, my colleague in Wales and our expert on DNA and the early Stedmans, points out, quite rightly, that Stedmans have been recorded in Suffolk for hundreds of years; however, it would seem that most of the families seen there in the last two hundred years descend from two (or more) brothers who seem to have shown up in the 1600s, and they have been documented in various sources – including the 1858 Barton-Stedman Genealogy – as originating in Kinross, Scotland. Dave makes the point that the 2 DNA samples we have do not match the DNA of any suspected Barton-Stedman descendant. However, Some of the naming suggests a connection to the Barton-Stedmans, and one researcher has seen a letter that talks about the Scottish brothers who came to Bury St. Edmunds. Stay tuned…

Now, lest you think I spend all of my time researching in England, I did one project among the Nova Scotia Steadmans. I have completely re-worked the family of Joseph Steadman, son of William Angus Stedman and Mary Emaline Trueman of Moncton, New Brunswick. I have had family papers and photographs, shared by descendants of this family, that tell a wonderful story for this family.

I did another side project on Dorothy M Stedman that I will describe in a separate post.

These are just the highlights. Please check out your family and see if I have made any updates. Or check out the “What’s New” Page to see the detailed changes.

john.
Nashua, New Hampshire USA
13 February 2013

For July, I have made updates both for the software and the genealogies.

For the software, I have updated WordPress to new version 3.4.1. I have also updated TNG to the the update version 9.0.3. The WordPress update requires adding a mod to TNG to handle paging pages.

I will be updating the WordPress-TNG plugin over the next few weeks to handle better the integrated login feature. This feature will allow you to register with WordPress and be automatically registered with TNG. While I am testing the changes, you may see short interruptions in site access.

Please note that I have been adding several Stedman history pages to this blog. This will be an on-going activity as I attempt to consolidate the information on my old Stedman family sites onto this one. In most cases, the move requires major updates to the old pages.

I have updated both the American and UK genealogies.  Along with numerous updates and corrections that you have sent in, I have begin adding some Scottish content thanks to some great help from an excellent researcher in Scotland. I will likely be adding some histories to the site dealing with Scottish families over the coming months. If you have anything to add to this discussion, this would be a good time to get in touch.

Between this Scottish researcher and David Stedman in Wales who works with me on the DNA project and is becoming fluent in the ancient family references, it is very likely that the early history of the Stedmans in England and Scotland and the Bartons in Scotland will be seriously re-written. David is beginning to think that the history written in the John Stedman of Bath (1857) “Memoir of the Barton and Stedman Families” may not be very solid.

I am continuing to re-work and extend the genealogy of the Stedman family that Mick Jagger is not part of. This is an on-going project to try to bring most of those lines to at least 1911. I have a new contact on a branch of this family that went to Australia who hopefully shall bring that line up to date.

Lilly Tennessee (Steadman) Parris (1845-1930)

One of the largest projects that I have been involved with takes me back to the Spartanburg, South Carolina Steadman family. A contact connected me with the family line of Lilly Tennessee Steadman. She was a daughter of Bryson Henry Steadman and his first wife Nancy Nelson. She married William Henry Parris and had 14 children! I have begun to document this family which has added so far hundreds of new members to this already large family. I have images of the Bible pages and some photographs that will be catnip for the many researchers of the Bryson Steadman family. Most of the pictures will be coming later this week.

Good Searching!

John Lisle
Nashua, New Hampshire