I am a figment of my own imagination!

[The Rhymer]

I'm forever grateful that so far DNA has confirmed the assumptions I made 20 years ago, but it might not have worked out that way since very few of my ancestors made wills.

You made assumptions?!

Peter, I am shocked

 

[Pauline]

But he can't have married Mary Keeton - whoever she may have been - as the Garland-Keeton marriage took place in 1806, and William and Ann had Elizabeth in 1807 and Thomas

Taking account of the 1841 census, have you looked into the William and John Garland baptised in Sleaford in 1814 and 1815? Their mother is given as Mary, so if your William Garland married twice, maybe he married a Mary between 1809 and 1814.

However, I wouldn’t want to discount the possibility that the mother’s name was entered incorrectly in the Leadenham register. I’m not saying it was, only that it’s a possibility to consider.

 

[Pauline]

Who registered the deaths of William Garland and his wife Mary? Are there any clues there?

 

[The Rhymer]

Who registered the deaths of William Garland and his wife Mary? Are there any clues there?

Mary died in November 1858 of old age; the death was registered by an Elizabeth Wallace who doesn't appear to be related to the family. The death was at the address they were living at for the 1851 Census: Jermyn Street in Sleaford. I can't see anyone on Jermyn Street with that name; it seems quite a long street.

William died in the Union Workhouse in New Sleaford in April 1871, so the informant was the Master of the Workhouse who got his age wrong, making him 88 at death instead of 85. William also died of old age (and probably not enough food, given where he ended up).

So no help in either case, unfortunately.

 

[The Rhymer]

Taking account of the 1841 census, have you looked into the William and John Garland baptised in Sleaford in 1814 and 1815? Their mother is given as Mary, so if your William Garland married twice, maybe he married a Mary between 1809 and 1814.

However, I wouldn’t want to discount the possibility that the mother’s name was entered incorrectly in the Leadenham register. I’m not saying it was, only that it’s a possibility to consider.

It took me a while to understand what you were saying there (as they say over here, I'm very intelligent, you just have to explain things to me very clearly and for a long time). I had both the other boys in my tree but I spent a good part of the day deleting Garlands all over, including them.

Neither Ancestry nor FMP have a William/Ann marriage, nor a later William/Mary marriage than Garland/Keeton in 1806 which would bring us back to my original question at #1. I could swallow one mistake by the minister in Leadenham, but two's a bit much ... unless she reminded him of his sister Ann, which is something we'll never know. But the lack of other possible marriages, and no burial for an Ann Garland between two possible marriages, does make me think that you might well have a point.

I messaged someone on Ancestry last week, as Mary Keeton's mother re-married after her first husband died and, at the ripe old age of 41 (for then) produced a healthy boy who lived and married and had issue. I wondered if there would be a DNA match if Mary's mother was in both our trees, but she said that anything more than a 3 x great gf/gm would leave so little trace as to be negligeable. Peter will know what to say about that. She was going to ask the actual owner of the tree (a son), but hasn't got back to me yet.

 

[peter]

I messaged someone on Ancestry last week, as Mary Keeton's mother re-married after her first husband died and, at the ripe old age of 41 (for then) produced a healthy boy who lived and married and had issue. I wondered if there would be a DNA match if Mary's mother was in both our trees, but she said that anything more than a 3 x great gf/gm would leave so little trace as to be negligeable. Peter will know what to say about that. She was going to ask the actual owner of the tree (a son), but hasn't got back to me yet.

Although a match between two specific 5th cousins is slightly odds against - just under 1 in 3 according to the table in the Masterclass - anyone who has tested at Ancestry will have many thousands of matches with people who are 5th cousins or more distant. So your Ancestry contact is being overly-pessimistic. Send her a link to my DNA Masterclass - she'll thank you for it one day.

 

[Pauline]

I had both the other boys in my tree but I spent a good part of the day deleting Garlands all over, including them.

I'd be inclined to put them both back in, especially since your William Garland appears in the 1861 census as father of John. John Garland married Ann Barlow in Sleaford in 1839. William Garland appears to have married twice, although both times as a bachelor! He married first Ann Clark in 1842 (she was buried a few months later) and then Maria Smith in 1843, both marriages in Sleaford. I think this William's signature is pretty similar to the William Garlant* (sic) who witnessed Elizabeth's marriage.

But the lack of other possible marriages, and no burial for an Ann Garland between two possible marriages, does make me think that you might well have a point.

That a marriage doesn't show up at Ancestry or FMP doesn't mean there wasn't one. Not only might a marriage register may be missing or not online, neither site has perfect transcriptions, so a marriage may be there but not show up in a search. The lack of a burial of a previous wife is significant, but it would be advisable to browse the registers for both Leadenham and Sleaford between 1809 and 1814 to confirm that a possible burial hasn't been lost in transcription. And while, with the Leadenham baptisms, it was not unknown for mistakes in registers to be repeated, it does complicate things. But on the whole I think the 1806 marriage in Metheringham has to be at least a possibility, even it does take you back to where this thread started.

EDIT: *The signature of the William Garlant who witnessed Thomas's second marriage also looks similar.

 

[peter]

I spent a good part of the day deleting Garlands

I suspect most family tree programs will allow you to cut off a branch - mine certainly does. You never know when the information will come in handy, even for the purposes of elimination.

 

[The Rhymer]

I have put them both back, Pauline, as half-brothers to Elizabeth and Thomas for the time being.

For a while they seemed to use Garland and Garlant interchangeably, and then split into two separate families, the Garlands and the Garlants. Sometimes it was simply the enumerator who got it wrong. I've spent all day on them and their descendants, yea, even to fourth cousins once removed (Peter will be proud of me if I can upload them on to my relations page!) I was rather distressed with Charles Garland, son of John and Ann, née Barlow, and his - possibly - concubine, who had, amongst others, two girls, two years apart whom they called Mary Ann and Annie Maria. Mary Ann spent not one Census night under their roof, yet they didn't farm out any of the other children. Very strange, I thought, especially with the similarity of the names.

I would love to go to Lincoln Archives for a few days - unless they are geared up to mobile phones rather than print-outs, as I found the last time I was in England, at Christmas 2019/20, just before Covid. But I don't have a mobile phone, so I'm a bit stuck in a situation like that And, due to falling for a Frog when I was at university and us marrying and moving to France, I'm a bit far away to pop into Lincoln ... sigh. admittedly closer than our Anglophone friends down under et al, but not close enough to swim it.

P.S. I'm allowed to call them Frogs because I live here amongst them and have helped swell the population by three extra tadpoles, now fully developed into true Frogs and annoyingly French, despite being half British.