J M W Turner

[stephensaffin]

Can any one help me at all in linking the family tree to that of the famous artist Turner, i expect that this may have been a theme that may have cropped up before as everyone wants to be connected to someone famous.
However let me lay down the facts. one of our descendants believes that the family is connected as having a book that has been passed down the generations, presumed once belonging to the artist.
From looking at Turners ancestors via author Selby Whittingham coming from South Molton and north Devon, the names shared by both trees are Widgery, Pridham, and Lake.
Our tree (see Carl Dunn on ancestry or genes reunited) centers around the marriage in 1874 of Emma Dunn, (born 1854 in Cheriton Fitzpaine. Mothers ancestors being Snell, Wreford from South Devon around Exeter, and Fathers ancestors Dunn Gould Pridham Lake Widgery from South Molton and north Devon) and James Palmer Baker(Fathers ancestors being Baker Butler Lilley from Canterbury, and Deal/Margate Kent, and Mothers ancestors Palmer from Spaxton Somerset) Hairdresser (Turners fathers proffesion) in Margate (Where Turner lived with mistress Mrs Booth) then lived in Chelsea at 9 Markham Square owned by William Colley (Turner lived close by) to have first child Clara in 1875. They then moved to 9 Little Clarendon Street, Oxford.
They had a child Muriel, oxfords first female dentist, who passed on the book to her daughter Helen, then on to her daughter Hilary.
Can any one join up the dots to create the bigger picture at all?
Sincerely,

Stephen Saffin

[daleaway]

One of my cousins claims Turner in her family tree, but as she has no interest in genealogy, I think this information must have come to her from one of her cousins on the "other" side of her family. They were Robinsons who lived in Hampstead, London, but are no longer there.

Her late mother once said to me "I wonder what happened to those big landscapes of his that we used to have in the drawing room in Hampstead?". But as she had made her life in New Zealand since the 1940s, she no longer knew or cared. I thought, someone in her London family must be living it up on the proceeds! (But I may be doing them an injustice...)