Dorset censuses

Since much of my 19th-century Skivington genealogy was located in Dorset, I finally decided to purchase a set of CDs with the contents of the UK censuses for 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871.

I believe that purchasing these CDs—expertly produced by a small private company—is a less expensive and far more user-friendly solution than subscribing to one of the companies that provides you with access to censuses through the Internet. But I've reached this conclusion primarily because my 19th-century preoccupations are focussed essentially upon the single county of Dorset.

The researcher still has to spend a lot of time and effort in locating relevant individuals. In the case of my ancestral relatives named Legg, I've more or less given up researching, because there were hordes of them in Dorset at that time. Maybe, if I were courageous, I would decide to get further involved in research concerning these Legg folk, with the help of big family-history websites that we used to refer to as "message boards"... which I tend to avoid these days. But I've discovered that my great-great-great-grandmother Eliza Legg, when she married Charles Skivington, had two out-of-wedlock sons of which Charles wasn't the father. And I'm wary of the inevitable rock 'n' roll that would accompany an incursion into Eliza's family background. So I'm inclined to let sleeping Dorset rockers lie.

Wiped-out generation

In my recent post entitled Latest deductions from Skyvington research [display], I explained that I've been grouping together all the Mormon references concerning surnames such as Skeffington, Skevington, Skivington, etc, and painstakingly sorting them by year. The immediate goal of all this work is to home in on individuals who might have been the immediate ancestors of my earliest clearly-identified patriarch: George Skivington, born in Belchalwell (Dorset) in 1670. I've often imagined that there might have been some kind of rupture not long before the birth of this "Belchalwell George" (as I call him). On the one hand, George's parents had no doubt moved to Dorset from a neighboring region. And, in so doing, they had probably replaced the old Skevington spelling by Skivington. Since George was a relatively uncommon given name in 17th-century England, I would imagine that my "Belchalwell George" probably descended from a family context in which that name existed already. Now, that set of likely constraints helps to narrow down the domain in which I'm searching.



In my article of 15 August 2007 entitled Midland ancestors [display], I spoke of my excursion to a charming little town called Turvey in Bedfordshire, which was the home of a big family named Skevington in the second half of the 16th century. I've always been persuaded that these folk were the ancestors of my "Belchalwell George", and this is my main line of research at present. Besides, there were Turvey individuals named George Skevington. Finally, at the end of my recent processing, when I was able to sort all the Skevington records by date, I was surprised to discover a big packet of Skevington burial records in Turvey for the year 1608. It's a finding that would have never struck me previously, when I was dealing with records in a casual manner. It was only when I had grouped together all existing records, and sorted them, that this observation suddenly hit me in the face.


Clearly, for almost an entire generation of a family to be wiped out in the space of a single year, there was only one possible explanation: the Black Death, or bubonic plague. I spoke already, in my article entitled Dressing up [display], of the beak outfit worn by plague physicians in the 17th and 18th centuries.

I have reasons to believe that this plague calamity played a role in causing a handful of young Skevington survivors to move away from Turvey, maybe down towards Dorset. And, in so doing, their links with the past were no doubt weakened. In the turmoil of this upheaval, it would not have been unusual that the spelling of our ancestral name should change, in certain cases, from Skevington to Skivington.

Latest deductions from Skyvington research

As every genealogical adept knows, the quality of the Mormon IGI database [International Genealogical Index] is truly amazing… particularly when we realize that the faith-based research efforts of the members of the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are motivated by beliefs that most of us look upon as totally ridiculous. Insofar as I see things in this way, should I therefore consider myself as a perfidiously dishonest double-dealer when using the Mormons' data to pursue my own kind of research?

No, not at all. If each citizen, in his daily preoccupations and activities, were to make a point of refraining from exploiting resources that had been created or obtained in ways that didn't necessarily conform to his personal convictions, then he would be condemned to sitting passively on his backside and waiting for events in the world to metamorphose magically into his ideal vision of reality.

There has always, however, been a curious weakness in the style of presentation of IGI entries. [I haven't checked whether this weakness has been corrected in the latest version of their search tool.]

The problem—unless I'm dumb—is that it doesn't seem to be possible to obtain a list of all entries sorted by date. This was annoying in that I wanted to know at what dates we start to find church records for individuals named Skeffington, Skevington, Skivington, etc. So, I decided to play around manually with the various Mormon IGI entries, using the excellent BBEdit text editor, with the intention of processing and examining all the available data... which has taken much time. My findings are summarized in the following chart:

After primitive Latin-inspired versions of the name—such as Sciftitone (Domesday Book of 1086) and Sceftinton (Leicestershire Survey of 1125 and Leicestershire Pipe Rolls of 1165 and 1192)—the earliest "modern" spelling was undoubtedly Skeffington, which appears in a Mormon IGI record dated 1315. The spelling with "ev" instead of "eff" appears a century and a half later, in 1478, and the "e" vowel is replaced by an "i" for the first time in 1563. The respective volumes of the various spellings present in the Mormon IGI are no doubt significant in a rough way. As you can see, there's a large package of Skevington entries, particularly for the 17th and 18th centuries, whereas the volume of Skivington spellings remains relatively low.

At a concrete level, what these deductions mean is that I might expect to find a Y-chromosome match, one of these days, with a fellow whose surname is Skevington. As for a match with a Skeffington, I've already more-or-less ruled out that likelihood, because I'm convinced that all the ancient male lines of that name ran aground (if I can be allowed to express myself in that fuzzy manner). In any case, for the moment, I would appear to be the only male individual with a Skeffington-based surname who has had his DNA tested.

Second thoughts on a skeleton

WARNING: Technical genealogical stuff.

Two months ago, in my article entitled Family-history shock [display], I revealed that I had just stumbled upon a skeleton in the family closet: a Skyvington record on the website of the Old Bailey (London's 19th-century criminal court).

I had the immediate impression that the 26-year-old condemned fraudster, referred to as William Skyvington, was surely the father of young Ernest, my future grandfather whom we called Pop. I explained that it was hard to imagine that Pop would have deliberately concealed such information from us. I preferred another explanation. Ernest's father would have been released from the notorious Newgate prison in the spring of 1899, and his wife Eliza Mepham died of tuberculosis just six months later. Maybe, in this tragic context, Pop's father had decided to build himself a new life, elsewhere in England, while leaving his son in the cozy cocoon of the Mepham family in Islington (northern suburb of London). So we might imagine that, if Pop failed to tell us what had happened to his father, this was simply because he himself was totally unaware of these events.

Over the last few days, in the spirit of my recent article entitled Painted myself into a genealogical corner [display], I have started to tidy up my Skyvington genealogical archives. Among other things, I was determined to unravel the elements of the new identity assumed (in my imagination) by Pop's father. Well, as of yesterday afternoon, I was forced to admit that my reasoning was erroneous. I still have no facts whatsoever concerning the destiny of Pop's father, who was mentioned for the last on his wife's death certificate, where he is described as a commercial traveler. But I've now examined sufficiently the archives to know that our William Skyvington cannot possibly be confused with any of the individuals I had in mind when I suggested that he might have taken on a new identity.

I'm now inclined to consider that I made a mistake in thinking that the William Skyvington condemned at the Old Bailey for fraud was indeed Pop's father. First, there's the age discrepancy. At the date of the Old Bailey trial, in October 1898, our William Skyvington was 29, as attested explicitly by a birth certificate established at Plymouth. So, the 26-year-old man at the Old Bailey was almost certainly another individual, because it's hard to imagine that an age discrepancy of that magnitude would slip through. It's easy to make an arithmetic error of a year, in either direction, but an error of three years is unlikely in administrative circles. Besides, I see that Pop's father is designated on his birth certificate as William Jones Skyvington and, on his marriage certificate, as William Henry Jones Skyvington. If he were the individual condemned at the Old Bailey, then why is there no mention of a second given name?

If the fraudster named William Skyvington were not in fact my great-grandfather, then what was his identity? We need to find a Skyvington male born in 1872. Such an individual exists: a certain Albert William Skyvington, about whom I know little for the moment. He was probably one of the 17 offspring of Oliver Skyvington [1847-1925], the Bournemouth milkman, married three times, whose descendants live today in Canada. This Oliver was indeed raised (along with his brothers John and Atwell) in the Dorset context of my ancestors at Iwerne Courtney, but I've never yet set out to determine their exact links to us. I had imagined that this task would surely be taken up by their New World descendants. Motivated by the Old Bailey anecdote, I now intend to examine these questions…