And Family Tree
What is Geneaology/ Family History?
An obsessive hobby, in which we seek out our ancestors, often getting distracted by the personal stories we discover.
In recent years there has been a great increase in people researching their family histories, perhaps due to the fact that many of us move away from our ancestral towns, villages and families. We may also have more spare time to research.
There is plenty of information online, although sorting through it all can be a minefield. Family History is a fascinating and absorbing subject, and it is extremely easy to get side tracked by what is discovered. There are so many facets, such as personal stories, national or international history, the military, transport, industrialisation, agriculture, or geography. More recently science has enabled us to look into the DNA and genetics of our ancestry.
We may be proud to discover a famous – or perhaps infamous ancestor!
Most of our ancestors were ordinary people, they each have a life story to discover, and a bearing on who we have become. I am proud of the fact that my ancestors from all parts of England, (and one branch from Ireland), were agricultural and industrial labourers, miners, brick makers, chair makers, builders, shop keepers and cutlers amongst other things, and these and countless other ordinary folk are the people who really built Britain!
Our Research Journey
How I, and other members of the family became interested in family history, where our interests have taken us. And just how much of an absorbing, fascinating and obsessive hobby, family history can be.
Having been interested in history, and listening to stories about my relations for as long as I can remember, I suppose ‘research’ began at about the age of nine. A TV programme, ‘Why Don’t You…..’ suggested looking into our ancestors. So with the help of ‘Nana’ I drew up a basic family tree on a bit of scrap paper, of my maternal ancestors. Grandma helped with the paternal side. Twenty years later we used the information to make a start as our researching began more seriously.
Around 2000, I began creating a Family History research website, entitled ‘Sanderson Bradfield and Beyond ‘. At that time most of the research centred on my paternal ancestry, in the small Yorkshire village of Bradfield, just outside Sheffield. The website mainly consisted of research data.
As time went on, and our ancestral research widened, it became clear that this title didn’t cover my maternal ancestry which was from the south of England, so a subsite called ‘The London Generations’ was created.
As an amateur website maker, with a hectic family life, keeping it up to date became more and more difficult, so it was disbanded, for a while.
Now, twenty years later, with a little more time, and more information, it seemed a good time to recreate a more up to date site. With the help of an extremely computer-literate nephew, and input from my parents, the original information has been added to. In the intervening years, much more information has become available online in other sources, so it seemed more sensible to weave the facts we already had, into a series of histories, of people, places and events, rather than just a series of facts. Structuring the site has proved complicated, due to my ancestry being from all parts of England, and generally no common theme to work with. We hope it holds useful stories and information, and it has certainly been fun to put together.
My father, was born in Sheffield in 1940 where he lived until 1957, when he moved to London to start an engineering apprenticeship.
His father William Arthur Sanderson was born in Stannington (now part of Sheffield), living there until his death in 1996. My ancestors before him lived in Bradfield, a small village to the north west of Sheffield, and gradually moved into Sheffield meeting up with my Grandmothers family also from the Sheffield area. When Grandma moved away from Sheffield in 1999, our family’s direct link with the area was broken after more than four hundred years.
Having never actually lived in the area, we spent many a holiday in the area visiting my Grandparents, enjoying a picnic or picking bilberries on the moors. When we started our investigations we presumed that SANDERSON was not a particularly common surname, but as time and research has gone on, we have come to realise that although quite local to the area, there are and were a lot of them. Research before 1837 (introduction of civil registration) has been made more difficult by vague entries in the Parish Registers and inconsiderate parents who had a limited stock of Christian names! Whilst research is generally easier in a small area (as all the records are at hand) the large number of individuals with the same name makes sorting them out rather difficult!
Early contact with another researcher led us to believe that the SANDERSON name is either Scottish or Norwegian, and a corruption of ‘Alexanders Son.’ The Sandersons arrived in the area around late 1300/early 1400’s from the North East of England. So far, we have managed to prove our line back to 1750 and we are aware of earlier ancestors but cannot prove the link at the moment.
Around about 1987, my father bought his first computer. Grandad suddenly became interested in family history research which was surprising, as up until then, he had never mentioned his family or ancestors. He began copying Sanderson extracts from the Bradfield Parish Records at Sheffield Archive Office. My father then began to database the information. Since then we have gradually added to this with the help of census extracts, poor law records, and information from the National Birth, Marriage and Death indexes. When I bought a computer in 1998, I continued databasing the information we had collected.
Over the years more and more information has become available online for researchers, particularly ancestry.co.uk and Family Search, which is monitored by The Church of Jesus Christ of The Latter Day Saints organisation in Utah, USA, and has literally billions of records from all over the world.
Finding information about the SANDERSONS has been fairly easy as they have lived in and around Bradfield since at least the 1500’s but my mother’s family have been less straightforward as they have not come from such a compact area.
The HARVEYS can be traced back to Wiltshire in the mid-1700’s but had moved to Fulham in West Middlesex by the mid 1800’s, where they began marrying with folk from all around the country who had also moved into the London area. For example, TRANTER, AYLIFFE, FROST, LOVELL, POTTER, from Stokenchurch, Wiltshire, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Kensington and other areas.
I am now beginning research into my husband’s family (WEATHERILL) in Norfolk and Windsor although we believe the Weatherill family originated from the North of England.
Family history is such an absorbing and obsessive hobby, each new discovery leads to more questions or general historical background to investigate. Sometimes certain individuals or families prove of interest, and we have included personal background stories on this site.
Whilst we do our best to ensure that the information collated is correct, by checking and double checking as much as possible, it is by its nature an unprovable jigsaw. In some cases assumptions have been made, where we are working on research to prove or disprove relationships. We shall continue to keep updating the information as research progresses.
The Family Tree
Generation 1 (1)
AMS 1965 BMD (private)
Generation 2 (2)
MDS BMD (private) CWH BMD (private)
Generation 3 (4)
William Sanderson BMD Esme Gillott BMD Charles Harvey BMD Winifred Tranter BMD
Generation 4 (8)
Vincent Sanderson BMD Nora Thompson BMD George Gillott BMD Alice Darlow BMD John Jr Harvey BMD Sarah Ann Ayliffe BMD Frederick Tranter BMD Florence Frost BMD
Generation 5 (16)
Albert Sanderson Elizabeth Dyson
David Thompson Mary Barker
Charles Gillott Mary Ann Hinchcliffe
George Darlow Ellen Sneyde
Stephen Harvey Jane Cowdrey
William Tranter Maria Jane Potter
Harry Frost Caroline Lovell
Generation 6 (32)
Joel Sanderson Eliza Sanderson
George Dyson Amelia Furness
Ralph Thompson Elizabeth Priestley
Samuel Barker Jane Parker
Joseph Gillott Mary Heeley
Unknown Ann Hinchcliffe
Thomas Darlow Mary Lee
Thomas Sneyde Margaret McCardle
Daniel Harvey Elizabeth Pearce
John Cowdrey Jane Page
William Ayliffe Hannah Dash
John Paginton Hannah Weare
John Potter Maria Squires
Thomas Henry Frost Dinah Dawson
Joseph Lovell Elizabeth Shepherd
Generation 7 (64)
1 George Sanderson 2 Martha Ibbotson
3 Thomas Sanderson 4 Mary Ann Siddons
5 John Dyson 6 Sarah Wilde
7 George Furness 8 Elizabeth (Priest)
9 David Thompson 10 Mary (Henderson)
11 Peter Priestley 12 Mary Watson
13 Samuel Barker 14
15 Parker 16
17 Gillott 18
19 Heeley 20
21 Unknown 22
23 Henry Hinchcliffe 24 Rebecca Jackson
25 Darlow 26
27 Lee 28
29 George Sneyde 30 Ketty Healey
31 McCardle 32
33 Harvey 34
35 Pearce 36
37 Cowdrey 38
39 Page 40
41 Thomas Ayliffe 42 Rachel Bell
43 Dash 44
45 Paginton 46
47 Weare 48
49 Thomas Tranter 50
51 Richard Tranter 52 Sarah Sears
53 William Potter 54
55 Joseph Squires 56
57 Frost 58
59 William Dawson 60 Eleanor Briton
61 Joseph Lovell 62 Elizabeth Raine
63 Daniel Shepherd 64 Mary Orford
Generation 8 (128)
1 Joseph Sanderson 2 Sarah Helliwell
3 Richard Ibbotson 4 Ann Birkhead
5 Jonathan Sanderson 6 Elizabeth Barnes
7 Edward Siddons 8 Hannah Douglas
9 Mark Dyson 10 Ann Hemsworth
11 Wilde 12
13 Furness 14
15 Priest 16
17 David Thompson 18 Elizabeth Hides
19 William Henderson 20 Ann Pigg
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
118 Dawson 119
120 William Britton 121 Jane
122 Robert Lovell 123 Elizabeth Veven
124 Joseph Raine 125 Elizabeth
125 Henry Shepherd 126 Mary Brown
127 Orford 128
Generation 9 (256)
1 Jonathan Sanderson 2 Mary Bramhall
3 Helliwell 4
5 Ibbotson 6
7 Birkhead 8
9 Barnes10
11 Siddons12
13 Douglas14
15 Dyson16
17 Hemsworth 18
19 Wilde 20
Generation 10 (512)