#52 Ancestors - A New Year, A New Start - FIRST

FIRST

Hmmm, so my last blog post is from January 2018 and is marked START.  And that was also the END.  I didn't accomplish ANY of my genealogy goals and honestly didn't do much research during the year.  I made some initial contact with the Mayflower Society and continued enjoying my membership in the Marco Island DAR.  And that's where it ends.

So it's January again - same goals, and a fresh start.  I'm no longer going to number these posts - as there really is no sequence to follow.  But I will continue to use the prompts from Amy Johnson Crow.  And this week the prompt is FIRST.

I've always told my children that ALL their ancestors were in this country before the Revolutionary War.  And I honestly thought that was true.  Imagine my surprise when I found a whole line that arrived in the 1840s!

Several genealogy accounts that I follow recommended doing a spreadsheet of ancestry by birthplace.  It looks something like this:

 

This is from Kathryn Creeden's blog called Kathryn's Quest.

I made a similar chart for my family going back 6 generations.  It was amazing to see where everyone was from.  And for the most part it was true that our family was in this country by the early 1700s.  But it turns out that all of my mother's mother's grandparents were born in England between 1835 and 1850.  All 8 of these great-great-grandparents of mine migrated with their parents after 1840.   Thus I have maternal great-great-great-grandparents who were the FIRST to arrive in the United States of America.

Let me tell you about two of them: Richard Slater and Ann Corbridge from Lancashire, England.

Richard Slater
1811-1893

Richard was born in Little Bowland, Lancashire, England on 26 September 1811, the youngest of 9 children of Thomas Slater and Margaret Cutler.  His family had farmed there since approximately 1720.   Little Bowland is about 7 miles from Chipping, England.

Richard married Ann Corbridge on 29 September 1834 at a little church in Chipping.  It's looks like a lovely place.

                            

Ann was born in Thornley, Lancashire, England on 16 November 1812, the 7th of 11 children born to William Corbridge and Ellen Bolton who had also married in Chipping.

Ann Corbridge

1812-1902

Ann & Richard sailed to the United States in 1841 with 4 of their children, including my great-great-grandfather, Thomas (presumably named after his grandfather).  They came to join members of their new faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint, and initially settled in Nauvoo, IL.  

In 1846, after having another child, they were driven from their home.  Most members of the church relocated to Iowa.   They had another 5 children while trying to survive in Council Bluff Iowa.  In the 6 years they were in Iowa, Richard served with the Mormon Battalion and was away from home for at least a year.

The family traveled across the plains in 1852 and settled in Utah, though Richard also worked in Wyoming and Idaho.  They named the town Slaterville, which still exists west of Ogden, Utah. Two further children were born in Utah.

I wish their pictures were more happy - but such was the way things were then.  Amazingly only two of their twelve children died in childhood.  Both Richard and Ann are buried in Ogden, Utah.  I found it interesting that Ann's funeral was conducted by a minister of the local Episcopalian church.  I would love to know the story behind that!!