The confusing Richard Page(s)

[biggirlsblouse]

Greetings! The weather is cooling down so the family history is coming out again. I've been confirming things in the "Page" side of my family tree (my sister gave me a 'double-dare you' challenge to get the family from Northamptonshire to Darbyshire. (And seeing as the same family has held Haddon Hall in Derbyshire for 900 years, I am pretty sure that family myth is busted!)

But there's nothing quite like a challenge, so I have been delving into the Pages again regardless. I think I might have have got myself in a *bit* of a pickle, though. Or not. But probably... There's a whole lot of Richards, and a Joanna who might be an Ann, although she is possibly a Joanna who is also known as Ann, and is either a child bride or was baptised as a ten year old.

So, from the start:
Jane Page (my great grandmother) b 1871 in Crick (married Hubert Smith, four kids)
Jonas Page (great great Grandfather) b 1827 in Crick (married Mary Ann Haddon, eight kids)
Richard Page (Richard #1)(GGGGF) b 1797 in Crick (married Elizabeth Hobbs, eight kids)

So far so good, starts to get a bit confusing now...

William Page (4GF) baptised in 1762 in Yelvertoft (married Elizabeth Watts, eight kids) In my records (no idea of the source) I have him born in 1755. He died in Crick in 1813 at the age of 50 - which makes the 1762 d.o.b more likely, but grain of salt there as well - he was 35-41 and marrying a 17 year old, so he might have lied about his age. But I can't find Elizabeth Watts' baptism records to confirm (her age is from census and death records)

Richard Page (Richard #2) (5GF)b 1722 in Clay Coton. My records have Richard married to Joanna Castell (baptised 1737 and m 1761) and having eight kids - all in Yelvertoft) BUT when I looked further into these kids, most of them have "Ann" as the mother, and not Joanne.I can see Ann being a diminutive of Joanna, but looking at the Northamptonshire parish records, there is definitely an Ann (d 1789) and a Joanna (d 1774/5)AND not one but THREE Richard Pages that died in Yelvertoft in 1800, 1806 and 1809. Richard and "Ann" started having kids in 1749 and kept going until 1770. I can't find a marriage for Richard and "Ann".

Then there's Richard #3 - (6GF) My records have Richard #2's dad as Richard b 1703, and there is Richard Page born in Crick in 1703 (Parents are Richard (#4) and Sarah) BUT the only Richard Page born in 1722 and in Clay Coton belongs to Jonathan and Jane - and I can't find them either!

(Thank you for making it this far, I promise I am almost done!)

My questions are:
1. Joanna and Ann - are they the same person or two people, and if they're two people - who is Ann?
2. Are there gaps in the records for St Margaret of Antioch in Crick (I'm thinking gaps between 1710 - 1780 where there's either quite a few records missing or all the Pages moved somewhere else?
3. Do I go with the most logical and stick with Richard #3's dad as being the Crick one rather than the Clay Coton one? That's the only time Clay Coton appears anywhere in my tree, so it's a bit random.
4. If yes to Q2 and Q3 - is there any way of discovering the records for St Margarets to see if I can fill in some more blanks?
5. What if everything that comes before Richard #1 is a load of old cobblers and I need to go back to square one?!

Jodi

[suemalings]

Have you proof that Richard and Elizabeth are the parents of Jonas? I see there is an entry on Family Search showing the Christening of Jonas.

[Jomot1]

You say:

Richard and "Ann" started having kids in 1749 and kept going until 1770. I can't find a marriage for Richard and "Ann"

I can see Jane (followed by others) baptised in Yelvertoft in 1749, but before that there is a Charles Page baptised 9 Aug 1747 at Clay Coton, Northamptonshire, parents Richd & Ann.

I don't know if its the same person, but the 1771 Northamptonshire Militia Lists include Charles Page, Yelvertoft.

I know its a bit of a distance, but there is a marriage on 30 Jul 1746 at Balderton, St Giles, Nottinghamshire between Richard Page & Ann Glover. I don't see any baptisms to them in Nottinghamshire so they may be worth considering.

There are some earlier baptisms in Clay Coton to Richard & Alice Page, who may be the Richard Page & Alice Apprice who married in Desborough in 1731.

[Jomot1]

You say:
I know its a bit of a distance, but there is a marriage on 30 Jul 1746 at Balderton, St Giles, Nottinghamshire between Richard Page & Ann Glover. I don't see any baptisms to them in Nottinghamshire so they may be worth considering.

I've also just found this, from a spreadsheet I downloaded years ago entitled Northamptonshire Marriage Index STRAYS:

27 Apr 1747 Richard PAGE of Clay Coton & Ann DAULBY of Swinford, by Licence. Misterton, Leics. Transcript.

[Jomot1]

BUT the only Richard Page born in 1722 and in Clay Coton belongs to Jonathan and Jane - and I can't find them either

Marriage 21 Sep 1709 at Draughton, Northants - Jonathan Page & Jane Pierson both of Naseby married by Banns.

[Pam Downes]

My questions are:
1. Joanna and Ann - are they the same person or two people, and if they're two people - who is Ann?
2. Are there gaps in the records for St Margaret of Antioch in Crick (I'm thinking gaps between 1710 - 1780 where there's either quite a few records missing or all the Pages moved somewhere else?
3. Do I go with the most logical and stick with Richard #3's dad as being the Crick one rather than the Clay Coton one? That's the only time Clay Coton appears anywhere in my tree, so it's a bit random.
4. If yes to Q2 and Q3 - is there any way of discovering the records for St Margarets to see if I can fill in some more blanks?

Jodi

There doesn't seem to be any missing years, but I haven't gone through every single page.
Ancestry have an All Northamptonshire, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1532-1812 dataset. When you open it, on the right-hand side of the page you have a 'browse' facility. Select Crick, then try parish registers first, and you get various dates. There's one for 1711-1793. You do have to go through the pages one at a time. From a quick look, it seems that all the baptisms until October 1788 are at the beginning of the register. Burials from 1711 begin at image 73. Baptisms begin again at image 128. Marriages begin image 135. Difficult to tell whether marriages in that register end in 1755 or 1758.
New marriage registers were introduced in 1754, and those registers will be found in the Northamptonshire, England, Church of England Marriages, 1754-1912 dataset, which again has a browse facility. The newer marriage registers should say whether the bride and groom were spinster/bachelor/widow/widower, and also the parish they were living in at the time of marriage. (Not necessarily the parish where they were born/baptised.)
While Bishops Transcripts should be a copy of what is written in the parish registers sometimes they are not (entries omitted, different names), so you should always check the BTs as well.

5. What if everything that comes before Richard #1 is a load of old cobblers and I need to go back to square one?!

Then that's what you have to do.
In my early years of doing family history I thought I was being very good when recording all the entries for one surname in a particular parish. (This was in the days when mass indexing was just beginning, and the only thing available on the internet was the 1881 census.) Fast forward at least five years, and I'd forgotten where I'd got to on this family so I decided to start again. (I knew where to look and it was a small parish.) I found that in seven entries I'd made five mistakes when transcribing, so after that I double-checked every entry for every person in my tree. (In those intervening years I had become a much more accurate transcriber, and had learn important things to check, such as bachelor/spinster/from which parish/married by banns or licence, variant spellings, etc.)

[biggirlsblouse]

Have you proof that Richard and Elizabeth are the parents of Jonas? I see there is an entry on Family Search showing the Christening of Jonas.

Sort of? Jonas' parents are Richard and Elizabeth on the baptism records, on the marriage certificate for Jonas and Marianne Haddon -his father is also Richard (shoe maker). I can't find Jonas in the 1841 census, but I did realise that Jonas and James look similar when written in cursive, so I may have missed him. In the 1851 census, I found Jonas (aged 24) visiting an Elizabeth Page who was the right age to be his mum, along with someone who had the same (married) name as his sister. So, I put two and two together and came up with probably...

[biggirlsblouse]

I decided to go back to the start again with these pesky Pages (ignore my previous post, I am half right and half confused!)
Jane is definitely my great grandmother, and her dad is definitely Jonas, so I thought I would start tracking back from him.
Jonas was born in Crick in 1827 to Richard (who is a shoemaker) and Elizabeth. I originally couldn't find him on the 1841 census, then I found a 10 year old Jonas living with John and Mary Page - Richard has a brother called John who is married to Mary; and I remembered about the weirdness with ages in 1841, coupled with if it's his uncle, he (the uncle) probably took a guess at how old Jonas was.
Then on the 1851 census, he was "visiting" Elizabeth Page (possibly grandmother) and Elizabeth Hancock (possibly aunt) and he was in the "mareen services" - I did spend a bit of time trying to locate Jonas in some kind of maritime service, but no luck so far. Jonas is still missing in 1861, but is a farmer in Crick in 1871 (living at the Royal Oak). He takes over the Red Lion in Crick in 1877, marries Mary Ann Haddon, has several kids including Jane and that bit is history.

My original thoughts had Jonas' parents being Richard(1) and Elizabeth, and Richard(1)'s parents being William and Elizabeth BUT I have found some Alt.Parents for Richard. John and Mary Page had five kids in Crick - including a Richard and a John. This John was also a shoemaker, which strikes me as being a bit more likely to be Richard(1)'s father. But I don't think the dates line up very well...and I'm stuck again with John Page - he got married in Kilsby to Mary Russell, and the marriage details say he was from the parish of Crick.

More digging, I guess!

Jodi