This week I took a trip to the Nottingham Archive. We were actually taking a spa-break for my husband's birthday and there's a spa hotel in Nottingham; it was too good an opportunity to miss!
Gainsborough, the town I am from, is on the connecting point of three counties; Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and Nottinghamshire. Although my ancestors haven't moved around a lot (except that one lot who went to Wales and back) their records are stored in distinctly different places because of the county borders. A lot of parish records have been put onto microfiche, but have not yet been indexed or digitised, so the only way to really see them is to go to the archives and physically view the records.
My great-great-grandmother, my maternal grandmother's paternal grandmother, was called Elizabeth Ullyatt. She married my great-great-grandfather William Cobb. Before my visit to the archive I thought I knew her siblings and her parents, but when I looked at the Southwell Parish registers (she was baptised there, I knew) there were TWO Elizabeth Ullyatts (Ullyatt being her maiden name) born within three months of one another, both in Westgate, Southwell, both with mothers called Mary. The only distinction between them was that their fathers were called William and John.
This threw my planned research (find the marriage of Elizabeth's mother and father to try to find Mary's maiden name) into disarray, because I now needed to confirm that I had the correct Elizabeth.
I noted down all the other siblings for both Elizabeth b 1839 and Elizabeth b 1840, and then tried to find Elizabeth and William Cobb's marriage. I was pretty sure that this should be in Southwell too, and that it happened in 1862. I couldn't find the marriage in Southwell, nor in any of the Newark churches (which was my second thought). With hindsight, I should have looked for the baptisms of some of their children...
Since then, I've returned home, and Ancestry have had one of their free weekends. I've been able to prove that "my" Elizabeth is the 1839 one, with William being her father.
I know that Elizabeth married William Cobb in 1862. On the 1871 census the other Elizabeth Ullyatt is still living with her father, John, under her maiden name of Ullyatt. Elizabeth Cobb is living with her husband William. So, since the other Elizabeth is John's daughter, "my" Elizabeth's father must be William.
Elizabeth Ullyatt was baptised on 20th December 1839 in Southwell. She was the youngest of six children born to William and Mary. In 1841 Elizabeth is only one year old when the census is taken, and her mother Mary describes her birthplace as "At Sea".
I don't know when William Ullyatt married Mary, though the first child I've been able to find was John, born in 1828. Mary's age in 1841 is listed as 40 (though that census rounded to the nearest 5 years for adults) so she was probably about 27 when he was born.
I haven't so far been able to find a marriage for Mary to William Ullyatt - so I don't know her maiden name. I don't even know whether they got married in Southwell where their children were born!
For now, this is a mystery which will remain unsolved, but at least I've been able to confirm which of the two Ullyatt families I'm looking at! It's possible that John Ullyatt is a sibling of William, so that's something I might look at in future.
