A mystery (partly) unravelled

All of us in GFHS love a mystery.  So we were delighted when one of the other partners in the Heritage Hub showed our Centre volunteers this half-finished patchwork quilt.

As you’ll appreciate this isn’t the sort of thing which happens often - we usually start with a person rather than a piece of stitching - but we always enjoy a challenge.  After all, the quilt represents many hours of hard work by its maker so we wanted to see if we could discover a bit more about her.  It is always so satisfying to uncover the stories of those people who have slipped through the cracks of history and been forgotten.

So, where do you start with a puzzle like this?  We were very lucky because this quilt came with a handwritten note which suggested that it belonged to Elizabeth Tilton who married John Cripps in St Mary de Lode church, Gloucester in 1852.  Now we were on much more familiar territory so were able to check the marriage register which is available on the Ancestry website - this website is free-to-view in our Family History Centre.  The register gave us the name and occupation of the bride’s father: John Tilton, builder - a big step forward.

The note also suggested that the couple lived in the Cotswold villages of Elkstone and Winson.  This led us on to the census returns, again available on line, which provided details of Elizabeth’s year and place of birth:  around 1820 in Little Somerford, just over the county boundary in Wiltshire.

Now we were flying!  Many Wiltshire records are available online so we were able to check the parish registers of Little Somerford without leaving the Heritage Hub.  And we found a family which matched our information.  John Tilton, carpenter, and his wife Hannah, of Little Somerford had three children:  Elizabeth, baptised in 1820, Harriet, baptised in 1824, and William, baptised in 1826.

We continued the search to see if we could find any evidence of a connection with the future Mrs Elizabeth Cripps.  What we found came as a bit of a surprise.  Tragedy struck the family -  Hannah Tilton was buried in September 1826 while John Tilton was buried a few months later in March 1827.  John made a will leaving everything to his brother William in trust for his young children.  Although this will doesn’t include the names of all his children, John did leave his 'watch and working tools’ to his son, also called William,  .

Our next step was to discover what happened to the orphaned Elizabeth.  This is proving to be a bit of a challenge.  So far we’ve found that her brother William was living with his grandparents in Little Somerford in 1841 and eventually moved to Salford.  Her sister Harriet married in Stroud in 1847 and then emigrated to the USA.  However Elizabeth herself is still a mystery at the moment although we haven’t given up hope of tracking her down..

Visit our Family History Centre to see what mysteries we can help you unravel!