Thanks to the fact that the Irish government simply shredded all the census records from the 19th century, hunting for Irish Ancestors usually involves insane amounts of luck, friendly parish clerks or airfare to the emerald isle… but finally there is a real live site with the 1901 and 1911 Irish census on them. Of the dozen or so Irish families in my lineage that made it to America only two were still in Ireland as late as 1901, but they were the ones I knew least about, the Reeves of my maternal grandmothers father and the Reid of my maternal grandmother’s mother. The Reids were from Derrygarve in Northern Ireland and the Reeves from Ballyhogue in Wexford in the Republic. Added a few siblings to each and another generation back and a whole other family to the Reeves. I determined that my great-grandfather lost his mother, Catherine Whelan, at a very young age and the family simply disintegrated afterwards with everyone peeling off to America around the turn of the century with the exception of the youngest Michael Reeves and my 2x great grandfather remarrying and starting an entirely new family thereafter. Looking forward to someday figuring out how those half cousins fared.
Typed in ‘Joshua Goddard’ and Saddleworth and up pops a digitized version of the comprehensive parish register of St Chad’s C of E in Saddleworth that includes the marriage and christening records of Joshua Goddard’s entire family from St Ann’s in Lydgate, the local chapel. Included are the name of his father, the married name of his mother and the christenings of three siblings. Lucky Google search, eh? Kept me up till 3AM last night though. Not a smart idea with a busy day at work planned. I’m going to need to make checklists as soon as I get in, drink a steady stream of caffeine and accept that it’s gonna be a low brain-power, automaton day thanks to my genealogy addiction. The Flyers also contributed to my late start. Go Flyers!!!
Over the last two weeks I have been scouring the LDS’ free FamilySearch.org website and plucking all the Ouseys in Great Britain from the IGI (International Genealogical Index). In the process I discovered the records of my GGGG Grandfather’s parents… well at least some of them.
First I discovered the maiden name of John Ousey’s (born circa 1785) wife Ann from the marriage index from the Chapelry of Lees which I have found is almost interchangable with the antiquated name of Hey. Her surname was Goddard and she was married to John on September 4, 1809. I quickly found Ann’s birth info as well (June 1784) and her parents names, Joshua Goddard and Mary Holt, both of Saddleworth parish in Yorkshire.
I also determined that John was born in Ashton-under-Lyne with the rest of the Ouseys, solving the mystery of why there was a lone Ousey living in Saddleworth. Apparantly it was love that drove him up the road.
John (born abt 1785) is most likely either the son christened in 1876 of James and Mary Ousey of Ashton or the son christened in 1877 of Joseph Ousey and Lydia Garside. I’m leaning toward James and Mary because of the christening date but will need more than a hunch before I’ll add them to the tree. It would be easier if it were Joseph and Lydia because they are more unique names and there are at least two and maybe three differant sets of James and Marys in the Ashton area in the second half of the 18th century that I will have to disentangle. I’m hoping a well researched family tree pops up about now.
Pulled off a quick visit to the Middletown Presbyterian Church on the way home from work on May 28. Found the grave of Alice (Ousey) Broadbent and her brother William Ousey within 30 seconds of looking. First row right off the the parking lot with the enscription facing the church building. No new information on the stone and it was so weathered that I couldn’t read the information that I did know anyway.
On top of that my cell phone camera kept telling me I was low on memory so I did not get a shot of it. Maybe some day I’ll swing by with a real camera.
Among all the mysteries solved recently, one more was born.
A mystery “John Ousey?” (question mark in the original transcription) from Den Lane Saddleworth was buried April 8, 1828, supposedly aged 28 years and supposedly “son of” “John Ousey?” (again with the question mark).
This would have been when Ann and John would have been about 15 so I suspect transcription error with repetition of the year or a cousin living with the family that happened to share a common family name.
The weird thing is that there was a John Ousey born in 1826 and still living in 1841 according to the UK census so it couldn’t’ have been that 1826 John who was interred. It also couldn’t have been Alice’s son John Ogden Ousey. I have his birth certificate from 1845.
A mystery for another day.
Having recently uttered the wish that I had access to the parish records of St. John the Baptist in the old village of Hey near Oldham, I was pleasantly surprised to suddenly find at least some of them.
I purchased a few pay as you go credits from http://www.findmypast.co.uk a little while ago. The site is useful as it is the only easily accessible source for the 1911 UK census, but I have found little use for it otherwise.
But when I started searching parish records for Manchester and Oldham on the site, lo and behold, there was my family – burials only – but enough to prove that Ann Ousey of Hey was alive long enough to give birth to all three of the sons and the one daughter of John Ousey that I was aware of. She died at the age of 44 in early August of 1828 , the same year that some records indicate that William was born.
Burial records also have a habit of divulging unknown tragedy and these were no exception. I found that the early family was larger than I had known but that it was also hit hard and early by child mortality.
There was a James Ousey of unknown age who died in October 1810 when Ann and John would have been in their mid twenties and about the same time that Alice was born.
There was also a Thomas Ousey who died at age two in March of 1816 when the couple would have been about thirty-four years of age.
So I have finally been able to verify that John and Ann started their family sometime in the first decade of the 1800’s and after a horrendous early period where it seems only Alice survived there was a burst of boys in the latter part of the 1820s which was cut off when Ann died. John died 10 years later leaving Alice to take care of her three surviving brothers. Of course there may have been a sister or two born early on who went on to get married before the 1837 start of organized record keeping but I haven’t been able to find any surviving Ousey lads born in Yorkshire, although given the wishy washy definition of what was Lancashire and what was Yorkshire in the Oldham area, perhaps I will have to give the bordering towns a closer look. The most likely potential relatives may be the Ouseys over the hills in Royton. I seem to recall a lot Jameses and Thomases and Johns there as well.
My kingdom for the birth records of St John the Baptist in Hey!
Looking at Alice Ousey (born about 1810) as a sister or half-sister of my great-great-great-grandfather instead of his mother has made all the difference in my research. Free from looking at Alice as simply a young widow, I started over again, looking for the basics, and those little Alice’s that seems close but not quite right suddenly made all the sense in the world. That mysterious ‘Alis Ousey’ that I so easily disregarded many months ago before I fully understood the significance of the village of Hey in my family’s history now makes complete sense. I am not looking at a GGGG Grandmother named Alice but rather one named Ann who, along with husband John must have died sometime before the 1841 UK census, leaving her daughter Alice to care for brothers – or- half brothers William, John and my direct relative Joseph.
Once I erased the picture of a poor widow out of my head, I was suddenly receptive to the possibility that my Alice may have sought love even after giving birth to John Ogden Ousey out of wedlock in England and bringing the baby to America to start the Delaware County branch of the Ousey family.
Sure enough… there is Alice working on the banks of the Ridley Creek (probably at Willam T Crook’s mill) in the 1850 census and while reviewing my brother Jack’s earlier family history work I suddenly notice the obvious . Alice has married a James Broadbent (from 2 doors down in the same census.) I assume the date of the marriage (1854) is wrong because the next thing I find is that ‘Alice Brodbent’ has died in 1851 and rests in peace at the Middletown Presbyterian Church Cemetery in grave number 490 along with one William Ousey who is listed as 28 years old. William is born in 1828 so I suspect a transcription error.
The young John Ogden Ousey disappears from the US census for 2 decades, although a John O Broadbent does appear without a father or mother, first as one in a mass of Broadbents in Philadelphia in 1860, then again in the employ of another family in 1870 before John Ogden Ousey reappears in the City of Chester, married to Mary Lord. I am not sure if this John O Broadbent is John Ogden Ousey but I am sure that his step-father for a brief period of time was James Broadbent which makes it a possibility.
Then I make another tragic discovery. According to the 1850 Census Mortality Schedules, a 9 month old girl named Alice Ousey has died of scarlet fever in Nether Providence township in May of 1850. Whether this is another child of Alice or a child of William’s I do not yet know.
One thing is clear. In just a few days Alice Ousey has made a journey – in my mind – from an almost impossibly young widowed mother to a sister or half sister with a heroic amount of responsibility placed on her shoulders after the death of her parents. She is rewarded for her fortitude and for the arduous process of resettlement in America with a tragically short marriage and an early death. Clearly, a visit to the Middletown Presbyterian Cemetery is in order to see if Alice and William’s stones contain any more information than the WPA project has recorded. RIP cousin Alice. A whole bunch of Delaware County Ouseys owe you a debt of gratitude.
Tracing my own surname, OUSEY, back to England was relatively easy compared to some of the other names I am still stumped on. My father’s father, John, was the son of William Lees Ousey Jr. and he was the son of William Lees Sr.
This was as far as living family members could take me. I quickly determined on Ancestry.com that William Lees Sr. was the son of Joseph and Ann Ousey, whom I found still single living about a mile apart in a grouping of small villages in what was then Rochdale Parish in far western Yorkshire.
In the 1841 UK census ‘Joe’ Ousey lived with a presumably single/widowed mother Alice and brothers John and William on Den Lane (still there) in a village called Hey (not still there) which has since been absorbed by the larger nearby village of Springhead, a suburb of Oldham.
Ann Lees (hence the middle names for the two Williams) lived with her family less than a mile away as the crow flies in a quarrying village named, appropriately, Stonebreaks.
Joe and Ann were married in 1849 and I found on the marriage certificate that Joe’s father was named John.
Fortunately for me, John and Alice were among the very few Ouseys living in Yorkshire at the time Joe was born. The vast majority of Ouseys were clumped not far over the Lancashire border to the south in Ashton-under-Lyne and a bit further south from there over the river Tame into Staleybridge in Cheshire. If they had lived there I would have had many more Johns to investigate. As it was, I had only one and I knew he had passed away or divorced. I soon determined that it was likely the former.
First Ousey Mystery: The only problem with the John Ousey above was that he was 54 years old in 1839 which would have made him 38 when Joe Ousey was born in 1823 (the year of birth listed on his headstone) while supposed mother Alice was listed with a birth date of 1811 in both the 1841 UK census and the 1850 US census. She would have been 12!
Possibilities:
1.) Alice married a 38 year old man at age 12 and had her first child at the same age. It’s possible, but as the English would say ‘Not bloody likely.’
2.) Completely wrong John who just happened to live in the tiny village of Hey. This is also not likely. Marriage certificate says Joe’s father is John and he was born in Yorkshire.
3.) Alice birth date is wrong in multiple census documents. Unlikely… they are consistent.
4.) Alice is not the mother at all but a sister or other relative of John and both mother and father of Joe, William and John have passed away by the 1841 census. This theory would explain why the Ousey family of Hey stopped growing suddenly after 1828. Perhaps mother Ousey passed in 1828-29 and John Ousey passed in 1839. Then unmarried relative Alice moved in to take care of the boys.
This last one is my current working hypothesis, especially given the fact that Alice later has a child out of wedlock and names him John Ogden Ousey. Not many parents repeat names, even if children die. I am assuming she had a romantic affair with John Ogden of Hey, single and about the same age as her, but wasn’t interested in tying the knot.
By 1850 a still single Alice, William, and the baby John Ogden Ousey have moved to Nether Providence, Delaware County, PA and the single John Ogden is still back in Yorkshire. John Ogden Ousey later becomes the patriarch of the Delaware County branch of the Ousey family while Joe and Ann, through arriving in the city of Chester with a slew of other English mill hands, quickly follow fellow Saddleworth lads John and James Dobson to their new mill on the banks of the Schuylkill River in Falls of the Schuylkill (later East Falls) in Philadelphia County.
Next step to solve this mystery is to find my John Ousey of Hey in some other record, determine how Alice is related, find him a suitable wife in records somewhere and hopefully tie them into one of the large Lancashire Ousey families. A possibility would be to locate Alice Ousey’s resting site in Delaware County and see if that brings up any information.
Second Ousey mystery… Joe’s oldest brother John does not seem to make the trip with them to the US or at least to Pennsylvania. I cannot find a marriage for an appropriately aged John Ousey after the 1841 census in the UK nor a death certificate for an appropriately aged man. I am at a loss and need to investigate this more closely.
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