Families eh? Who'd have them! Today has been a search the Satchell day. Julie doesn't have much of a family as her parents were both only children (strictly speaking her father was a twin whose brother died aged 8). So her lineage is limited. Or so we thought. I spent a day on the computer searching every Satchell connection in Dorset and Wiltshire where Julie's family have lived for 300 years. Frustratingly there is an unconnected branch of Satchells in Swindon who between 1840 and 1900 have almost identical names and dates of birth, a minefield of blind alleys. But by 10pm I'd honed down these main families: on her father's side, Satchell, of course, and a fascinating delve into Hurst (occasionally given as Hursk) from 1860's (which ends about 1700 with an unmarried birth -shocking!!), and on her mother's side, the Pontings. Through the Pontings we traced lines back through Ponting but also into Angell and Moore. By the end of the day this spider's web of Family History had been drawn. It remains then for me to sort this out and make it legible. All those people who were somehow connected with Julie.
One fascinating aspect of this was a Nathaniel Satchell, born Broad Chalk in Dorset in 1841. He was a railway policeman and then a railway signalman. Married to Elizabeth Allingham, (born 1834) in 1861 they moved about and eventually ended up at Congresbury in Somerset. He died in 1894 and is apparently buried in St Annes Churchyard, Hewish. Elizabeth died in 1895 and also buried there. St Annes Churchyard is less than 2 miles from where Julie now lives. I feel a visit coming on to find the graves if they still exist of her great great grandparents.
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