OK so the prompt is - who, out of all your relatives and ancestors, would you invite to Dinner and why?
The most common answers for this week are probably going to be either BRICK WALLS so they cam be interrogated over where they come from, or NOTABLES just because they are famous.
Well I have 2 responses to this weeks prompt. One is of course a brick wall. The other is a dinner that has already happened where I found a new relative.
So my first invite to dinner is a woman named Jennifer Wilson whom I met at a dinner way back in 1996. I have written details of the dinner and what the conversation was about on her profile. She was an ex-wife of a distant cousin of my fathers, one whom I never met.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wilson-39539
Jennifer Wilson
The second person I want to interrogate over Dinner is my 3x great grandfather John Burrow. This man has been a brick wall for me now for over 25 years!!!
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Burrow-404
John Burrow
The first place John was seen in the records is in Milverton, Somerset, England in 1817 when he married Amy Hancock. On the marriage record, he is identified as a SOJOURNER or someone just passing through. NO home location and NO parents mentioned.
I have all the children who were baptised in Milverton after that date. The first one, William was baptized 5 months after the wedding. so whether or not he was actially John's biological child, I have no way of knowing.
Anyway John and his family were forcibly REMOVED to the town of Ottery St Mary in Devonshire in 1824, under the Poor Laws Act - because John was not a skilled worker. He was usually identified as a labourer or an Ag-lab.
So in 1824, John, Amy and 5 children moved to Ottery St Mary. I have a copy of their removal orders. 2 more children were baptized back in Milverton after that date which means the family must have gone back to visit and show off the new grandchildren to Amy's family. The Hancocks had been living in Milverton since the 1600s, so they were solidly established there. It must have been a huge and upsetting wrench to Amy to be forced to move away from her home town all the way to her husbands old home in another county.
The 8th and last child in this family, was the only one baptised in Ottery St Mary.
John died in 1839 - 2 years after birth, marriage and death certificates became mandatory, but 2 years BEFORE the first census in 1841!!
I would like to interrogate him over dinner and find out WHERE he was born and WHO his parents were. Because even after 25 years, I have still found NO CLUES.
I do have a family in the parish of Ottery St Mary that I SUSPECT may have been his family. But with no solid proof, I cannot add them to the tree.See below link for details.
https://scannersuniverse.neocities.org/john_burrow.html
This is an old post about John Burrow with possibly more details that I wrote way back before Geocities closed down.
I have done everything under the Genealogical Standards of Proof, and I do beleive that this family is John's family, but without any shred of evidence, I just cannot add them to the tree no matter how much I would like to.
So my 3x great grandfather is whom I would like to Invite to dinner for a Friendly Interrogation!!