The Allday Brothers

I like to do research the same way I like to travel. That is to say, I seem to spend a lot of time exploring the little side streets, alleys and hidden lanes instead of sticking to the highway!

I was sorting out some Fletcher census records the other day and the name of Richard Allday caught my eye. He married Elizabeth Fletcher, daughter of Robert and Muriel Fletcher. Richard and Elizabeth feature rather prominently in the Fletcher family story due to a long and drawn out litigation involving significant bequests to Elizabeth from her Uncle Richard and also her parents. (That is really another story!) However, the reason Richard Allday waved a flag at me was that I had only a few days before looked at two other Allday gentlemen who had married two Walford sisters. Sarah and Ann Walford were daughters of William Walford and Sarah Tomes of Long Marston (Marston Sicca). They are in my first cousin line but 5 x removed. The marriages all seemed to take place within a few years of each other and the Allday -Walford marriages took place in the same church - Halford, Warwickshire. Out of idle curiosity, I wondered if the Allday men were related and if so, how closely.

After a bit of scrummaging around, I am quite confident in saying that the three Allday men, Richard, Thomas and Joseph were brothers, born in Birmingham between 1796 and 1803. Interestingly, the censuses reveal that they were movers and shakers in the meat industry. Richard was a farmer and cattle dealer, Thomas was a butcher and Joseph's wife Ann ran a 'celebrated' tripe house and coffee shop! Talk about paddock to plate! The families must have had a relatively close relationship with each other as sometimes children from one family are living in the home of another family at census time. This is particularly the case for Joseph and Ann who don't appear to have had any children of their own.

 Joseph went on to become a prominent and controversial Councillor in Birmingham, starting as editor of a 'scurrilous weekly periodical' The Argus, which took as its motto " Yes, I am proud. I must be proud to see men not afraid of God, afraid of me!" Funnily enough, this little side trip into an almost unrelated family connection is leading me out into some more familiar territory. It appears that after his wife Sarah Walford died, butcher Thomas Allday remarried a woman from Quinton in Gloucestershire called Helen Southam. Her father was Thomas Corbett Southam who appears as an executor, overseer and beneficiary in several Fletcher and connected wills. Another trail to follow!

Synchronicity!

When I first started researching several years ago, I got sidetracked onto a line that was only very indirectly associated with the family. I was interested in a man called Cotterell Corbett, who built the farmhouse that my grandmother Isabella grew up in. According to my mother, who has visited the house, Honeybourne Manor Farm House itself was built in 1831 (this is carved into the guttering). On the lintel of a door into the dining room is the following verse: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in - Thus runs the ancient proverb. This house was built by Cotterell, and now belongs to Robert." [The Robert mentioned would have been Robert Fletcher]

 The Cotterell Corbett of Honeybourne Manor Farm was a son of Michael Corbett and Rebecca Ashwin and was a second cousin several times removed of my Grandmother. I got a bit carried away and at one stage checked relationships and was getting things like "so and so is the uncle of the husband of the sister of......." Quite ridiculous really! I put it all aside and got back to more relevant research along the original Sheaf lines. Or so I thought....

Last weekend, after following up some more of the Fletcher/Smith family both Mum and I (who are in different states might I add) came up with John Smith marrying Muriel Corbett in Lower Quinton in 1708. Bells started to ring wildly and I searched through the data base and found that this was a marriage I already had discovered in the irrelevant Corbett line! Suddenly the woman who was the aunt of the cousin of the sister of the uncle blah blah blah was my 6 x great-grandmother! And the lesson from all this? If you do the research, keep it! Who knows how it might tie in.

Muriel Smith

A breakthrough! For ages I have put off investigating the family of Muriel Smith, who married Richard Fletcher, because of the fact that she was a Smith! Not that Smith is anything but a fine and honourable name, I was just daunted by the idea that it would be difficult to sort out. Anyway, after some email correspondence with my mentor (thanks Mum!) I took the plunge. I had known for a while the name of Muriel's father was Robert, but other than that - nothing. Some research into old wills led me to Preston on Stour, and the parish registers there confirmed her father as Robert and her paternal grandparents as John and Muriel. Her father Robert married Elizabeth Cleeve at Whitchurch in Warwickshire and then it appears they moved to Charringworth near Ebrington. It was here that Elizabeth, Muriel's mother, died in 1764. Muriel was only about 3 at the time. I cannot find another marriage for Robert - I am almost certain he remained single for the rest of his life, 'til he died in 1797. His will leaves everything to his daughter Muriel, and then to her five children. To my delight he inserts a phrase that her inheritance is to be hers alone and that her present nor future husbands not have anything to do with it! The only missing piece in the story of Muriel is her baptism. I have looked closely through the images of the Preston on Stour registers to no avail. I have done searches for her baptisms at both Whitchurch and Ebrington but as that is not throwing up anything useful in the transcriptions I will have to look at the images for those too. If that is not successful I will have to think again!