Walter of Wales, England, Barbados and Australia

Hoe Place, Woking - owned by several members of the Walter Family

My Walter family history spans several centuries across England and a few of its colonies. The stories of their lives reflect the social history of the times, and some of the courage and daring that forged progress towards to the modern English-speaking world. The portraits give an opportunity to step into worlds with very different ethical and moral viewpoints, leading to some actions that we decry now, and others that seem totally absurd. The influence of money and power thread through the stories and family relationships with all shades of commitment and conflict.

'Walter' would not normally be an easy family surname to trace back through the centuries. The pivotal role of Richard Walter who travelled to Barbados in the years around 1655 and his son John, who married Lucy Alleyne leading to the 'Alleyne' name being prominent in ensuing generations has facilitated research into this fascinating family.

Ellen Parr of Ormskirk (1815-1845)

or...using photos in researching family history...

According to the death certificate of my great great grandmother, Margaret Wignall (1838-1884), her mother was Ellen Parr. Margaret had left her hometown of Ormskirk, and emigrated to Australia in 1870.

In researching Ellen, our family were lucky to have to some photos left by Margaret's daughter, Ellen Walter (nee Veitch). Some of these photos relate to the Wignall side of the family, which is another story. 

But this post starts with a photo of Peter Newton Halliwell. 


The only clue about who or where this photo came from was a note on the back of the photo, 'Peter Newton Halliwell, mother's cousin' and that it was photographed by D Jones Art Studio, 66 Bold Street, Liverpool.

It took some major improvements to internet databases to finally locate Peter Newton Halliwell, born in 1856, in Rufford, Lancashire, England, the son of William Halliwell, a grocer and miller born in 1826 in Ormskirk, and his wife Mary Newton. I also had photos of William (referred to as mother's uncle) and Mary Halliwell (mother's aunt), amongst the photos, so I figured that I must be on to something, although my further investigations showed that they weren't 'uncle and aunt' but rather William Halliwell would have been a cousin as well.

After establishing that William's wife, Mary was from Lincolnshire, I found William's parents, Richard Halliwell and Alice (nee Parr). They were married on 25 Feb 1824, at St John's Church in Liverpool. Richard was a flour dealer, and Alice was from Ormskirk! Alice was born about 1807. 

Ellen Parr married John Wignall, a baker, in the same church on 10 November 1835, and the witnesses at the wedding were Richard and Alice Halliwell. I concluded that Alice and Ellen were most likely to be sisters. 

After an extensive search mainly on the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk, I decided that Alice must have been the daughter of William Parr and Ann, baptised on 1 Mar 1807, in Ormskirk. I have recently confirmed Alice's father, after finding the will for William Parr, in 1829. The will mentions his wife Ann, and leaves his estate, under 300 pounds, to be shared amongst his children, with 20 pounds to go to his grandson, William Halliwell. William would have been about 3 years old at the time.

William Parr, an auctioneer, also had a daughter, Eleanor, born on 26 June 1815 and baptised on 3 September 1815, in Ormskirk. Ellen Wignall (nee Parr), my 3rd great grandmother, was 29 years old when she died on 29 May 1845. While I have not found conclusive proof that Eleanor Parr and Ellen Wignall and are one and the same, I am satisfied that it is a reasonable conclusion given the evidence above.

A postcript: I have recently been tracing the Parr line further, after visiting the Lancashire Office, and ruling out some Parr families in the Ormskirk area. Tentatively, I am proposing that William is the son of James Parr and Eleanor Philipson, and born in Lathom, near Ormskirk in 1779. 

The Trip of a Lifetime - Part 1 Ormskirk

After talking about doing a family history trip back to the UK, finally earlier this year I set out on my adventure. I didn't take my husband - archive offices and cemeteries were not going to be his thing.
Not being a lover of driving, I chose public transport as the way to get around for the 6 weeks I was away. My plan was to spend most of my time in a few key locations where I wanted to do family research and immerse myself in the places where some of my ancestors lived, and finish up in London. 

First stop Ormskirk, in Lancashire... my WIGNALL ancestors. I explored the market town, walked from Ormskirk up the hill to Aughton, and also visited the Lancashire Record Office in Preston.

These were my research goals:
- to find the baptism and therefore the parents of my gr gr gr gr grandfather, John Wignall in about 1787.
- to find out if his son, John Wignall, married a second time to Elizabeth Barton in 1846, after his wife Ellen Parr died, and just prior to his own death.
- to find out if William Wignall, curate of Aughton, was related to my Wignall family.

The Windmill Inn in Mill Lane

I stayed just around the corner from where my great great grandmother, Margaret Wignall aged 2, lived in 1841 with her parents, in Mill Lane in Ormskirk. 
Margaret's early life was very sad. Her grandmother died in 1839, her grandfather in 1840, her mother, Ellen (Eleanor) Parr in 1845, her father John Wignall in 1846. She had only one sister, Ann, that I have been able to find, and Ann died in 1852, aged 16. By the time Margaret was 14, she had lost all of her closest family.  

St Peter and St Paul Church at Ormskirk

When I went to the Lancashire record office, I found the will of John Wignall yeoman of Ormskirk in 1846. It confirmed that John did indeed marry Elizabeth. He left his estate under 300 pounds to his two daughters, Ann and Margaret and the interest to his widow, so long as she looked after his daughters and remained his wife.

Page I of the Inventory of John Wignall (1787 - 1840)

I was hoping to find out more about Margaret's grandfather, John Wignall, born in about 1787, a miller and farmer of Aughton, who died in 1840. John Snr died intestate. I found his administration, which was gave a window into his life, as it included a 3 page inventory of all his belongings. I didn't find any other clues to his parents.

As for the Rev William Wignall, I confirmed from the wills of his siblings that he was one of the sons of John Wignall, the clockmaker. Whether the Ormskirk clockmaker family and my Wignall family are related is still a question.

Margaret Pratt Finlay (abt 1826 - 1896)

Margaret Pratt Finlay has been one of the more elusive of my female ancestors.
Immigrating from Edinburgh, Scotland to Sydney in 1841, she married Henry Humphries (later Humphreys), a convict transported from Essex. They married on 9 December 1844 at St Anne's Church of England in Ryde, New South Wales. On her marriage certificate, Margaret's name is recorded as Margaret Pratt.
At the time, Ryde was still a rural area, and Henry and Margaret had an orchard in Watts Lane in Ryde and were respected early settlers to the district. They had 10 children, 6 girls and 4 boys, all living to adulthood.
Like most Australian death certificates, Margaret's death certificate provided helpful information:
 - she died at Watts Lane in the Municipality of Marsfield on the 11 September 1896, at the age of 70 years. Her father was John Finlay, a stonemason, and mother was Jean Douglas. She was born in Edinburgh in Scotland and has been in NSW for 58 years. She was married in Ryde, to Henry Humphreys, at the age of 19. Finally, at the time of her death, she had 9 children living and 1 male deceased.

With all this information, it shouldn't have posed too difficult a problem to find Margaret's baptism in Scotland, but not so...
A marriage for John Finlay, stonemason and Jean Douglas (spinster) took place on 27 August 1832 at St Cuthbert's church in Edinburgh, which seemed to be the right one. However, if Margaret was either 16 at the time she emigrated to Australia, or 70 at the age of her death (hence born abt 1826), clearly her birth was well before the marriage of her supposed parents. We couldn't find a baptism for either Margaret Finlay, Margaret Pratt or Margaret Douglas that seemed to fit with the information we had.
Attempts to locate John and Jean Finlay in either the 1841 or 1851 Scottish census also hit a dead end.


Finally, last year, I fell upon an intriguing entry in Australia Trove. It was Margaret's funeral notice in the Sydney Morning Herald, and it mentioned that the funeral would leave the residence of her brother-in-law, Mr Vicars! This was new information indeed and lead to some quite unexpected new findings.
Slowly I pieced together the following information:
- Mr Vicars was in fact William Vickers, who is also a witness to Margaret's will.
- William Vickers had married Georgina Young Finlay in 1887 in Ryde. William was Georgina's third husband. She first married Thomas Barton in 1863 in Chippendale in New South Wales, and then Eli Pickersgill in 1867 in Sydney. (Strangely, Margaret also had a daughter Georgina who married 3 times as well)
- Next, I discovered that Georgina Young Finlay was born in Sydney in 1841. She died in 1914 in Croydon Park, New South Wales, the daughter of John and Jane (a common alternative to Jean).
- Finally I found the immigration record for John Finlay, age 30, mason, Jane age 28, Elizabeth age 3 and Robert age 1, arriving in Sydney on the 'John Barry' in 1837.

I still haven't found Margaret's baptism, but at the moment, I presume that Margaret is most likely to be the illegitimate daughter of Jean (Jane) Douglas, and that John Finlay is her step-father.

I still have lots of questions to find out about Margaret.

1. What is the significance of the Pratt name?
2. Who looked after Margaret in Scotland after her mother went to Australia?
3. When did Jane Finlay die? (I think she may have married Edward Russell in Sydney in 1855, but haven't been able to identify a death record for her yet).

My family history

I have been researching my family history for about 15 years. I regularly upload developments in my research to the Worldconnect Australia and Beyond Database at Rootsweb.com. All my ancestors came to Australia (mainly Sydney) between 1835 and 1870, from England, Scotland, and Ireland. I have a Welsh connection from way back in the 16th Century. 

I still have lots of brick walls. I would be delighted to work with anyone who has the same dead-end to try to make progress.

I am always open to review my research. Some of my conclusions are based on circumstantial evidence or conjecture. Please let me know if you have evidence which can either prove or disprove a link I have made.

My database expands whereever my research goes, but the main families I am researching, and their place of origin before they came to Australia are:

ALLEYNE - Kent and Barbados

AX / AXE - Somerset, England

BAIRD - Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland

BALE - Abbotsham, Devon, England

BIRD - Woking, Surrey, England

BRAY - Gwennap, Cornwall, England

BRUCE - Unst, Shetland Islands, Scotland

CLARINGBOLD - Deal, Kent, England

CLEWLEY - Cannock, Staffordshire, England

COLLIS - Alton and Ellastone, Staffordshire, England

CROSTON - Maghull, Lancashire, England

DIXSON - Deal, Kent, England

DODDS - Port Glasgow, Renfrew, Scotland

DOHERTY - Clare, Ireland

DOUGLAS - Edinburgh, Scotland

DRYBURGH - Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland

ELDRIDGE - Sandwich, Kent

HEUGH - Airth, Stirlingshire, Scotland

HUMPHREYS / HUMPRHIES - Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, England

LANDELS - Ladykirk, Berwickshire, Scotland

MCCORMICK - Dunbarton and Renfrewshire, Scotland

MCCULLOCH / MCCULLOUGH - Antrim, Ireland

MILLER - Dundee and Edinburgh, Scotland

MURRIN - Stowford, Devon, England

RALPH - Isle of Thanet, Kent, England

REDDAWAY - Sampford Courtenay and Belstone, Devon

SCATTERGOOD - Ellastone, Staffordshire, England

SCOBIE - Airth, Stirlingshire, Scotland

THOMAS - Breage and Falmouth, Cornwall, England

THOMAS - Helston, Cornwall, England

VEITCH - Edinburgh, Scotland

WALTER - Wales, England, Barbados

WIGNALL - Aughton and Ormskirk, Lancashire, England

WOODMAN - Portsmouth, Hampshire, England

4 generations of the Thomas family including Hannah Thomas (nee Reddaway) and Charles Henry Reddaway Thomas