An Allis family in India

One family that caught my attention recently was from India.
William Allis, a private with the 74th Highlanders, had a child with Katheriamal (there are a number of spellings) who he married shortly afterwards in Bellary, Karnataka, India. Katheriamal anglicised her name to Catherine.
They married in 1859 when William was said to be 24 and Catherine 20 years old. When he died in January 1882 William’s age was given as a precise 51 years and 10 months which suggests he was about 29 when he married.
Catherine died in 1887, age 47.

They had seven known children with one not surviving infancy.
The family continued to live in India and their descendants are probably still there today.

The origins of William are unknown except that his father was also William. There do not seem to be suitable candidates for William’s baptism in various records for Scotland or England.
The 74th Highlanders have their origins in Scotland and, from Wikipedia, were in Bermuda from 1828 until December 1829 when they returned home. There followed a tour from 1834 in the West Indies and Canada returning home in 1845. They then sailed for the Cape in 1851 moving to India in 1854.
The highlanders left India around 1864 but William had transferred to the Royal Artillery and stayed on taking an army pension.
It therefore seems likely that if his father was in the army he was born at home.

Any other angles on his origins would be appreciated.

Thomas Alys of Heckington ( -1539)

An early Allis (and Ellis) family in the south of Lincolnshire

Thomas Alys of Heckington, Lincolnshire left a will dated 8th December 1539 in which he left to his children William, Elizabeth and Thomysyn. His wife Margery was also named.

It is not clear whether his mother and father were alive at the time as they are also mentioned.

The children were all under the age of 20.

It is presumed that he was taken ill when he made the will as the subsequent inventory made after his death was dated the 20th December 1539. In this he appeared to be quite well off with a value of over £54 of which most was agricultural stock.

The origins of Thomas are unknown as are the details of what happened to the children. However while most families appeared around Nettleham this is one of the few to be seen elsewhere in Lincolnshire at a very early date.

Update:  The son william died in 1551 and his heirs were his two sisters but the family were now Ellis (from "the notice of the Ellises").
It is also believed that Thomasyn married George Allen in 1577 (From the visitation of the county of Lincoln in 1562-4)

This somewhat mirrors a family from Belton at about the same time of which more later.

Allice, Alice, Alles, Allis families in Scotland

There are several families in Scotland which may or may not be related.
The spelling used is predominately Alice or Allice but with other assorted versions of the name including one quite large family from Kinross that was Alles.

The parish records found go back to the early 1600s and civil registration started in 1855. Although scattered, the centre of activity appears around Auchterarder in Perthshire, with families in Kinross, Alloa and other nearby towns and villages.

There are also immigrants from England and Ireland.

There are several cases of Alles and Allice becoming Ellis to add to the difficulties of following the branches.
The Alles family from Kinross in particular often became Ellis at times. This line has also solved the mystery of the Liverpool and Cheshire Alles family

These families will be added to the tribalpages family trees in due course.

The baptism of Elizabeth Clipsham or Clipson 1799

Is this a wrongly recorded entry in a parish register?

There is an entry in the West Barkwith, Lincolnshire parish register for the baptism of Elizabeth Clipsham on the 20 October 1799.
Note that Clipsham and Clipson were used almost interchangeably for their family name. The parents are shown as Richard and Ann Clipsham.

This appears to me to have been wrongly recorded in the register and it should be Richard and Mary (Garratt).
Reasons:
Richard married Mary in 1797 and their eldest daughter Mary was baptised a year later. Following her is Elizabeth and then continuing fairly regularly through to 1812. There were no other Clipsham families in the parish at this time.

No suitable Richard Clipsham marriage has been found to an Ann.

There were relatively few Elizabeth’s baptised in a suitable time-frame. There was one in Nettleham in 1804 to Antony and Elizabeth, and others in Scamblesby and Harmston.

In 1822 at the marriage of Mary Ann Clipson to John Allis, Elizabeth Clipson was a witness.
In 1824 at the marriage of Elizabeth Clipson to John Fewster, Mary Ann Allis was a witness (as was her husband John).

Taking all into account this seems to have been a slip of the pen by whoever recorded the baptism, but as it is in the transcribed records for the parish may be causing some problems in tracing back on the Fewster line.

As an update to this, after viewing a number of parish registers in Essex a few cases of mis-recording have been seen. As an example at Romford for an entry for John and Elizabeth Frost in 1731 - a note at the bottom of the page dated 1762 notes that John searched the rgister and stated that that the entry was incorrect and his wife's name was Mary.

The Clipsons appeared in West Barkwith around 1722.
There is an interesting note against the burial of Nicholas Vicars on 24 December 1719: In all probability more than ninety years of age as he himselfe said, he guided Oliver Cromwell over Market Raisin moor in his return from the battle of Winceby (as best as I can read from the register)

Some more mis-indexed or mis-transcribed names

Some more mis-transcribed Allis names from a recent search when compared to the parish register image.

A list of 6 Allice gave two “Allens”, two Allins and one “Allice”
A list of 4 Alles gave three “Allens” and one that couldn’t be read.

Those were fairly standard especially where the handwriting is poor but one new way of mis-transcribing was seen with a list of 12 “Ales”
This yielded one William Ales in London. One entry was for “New”, one “Elles”, and one “Coles”.
The rest were Eales and Sales where, as an example, the name was indexed as Johne Ales which when looking at the parish register was actually John Eales.
Another example: William Henrys Ales which was William Henry Sales.

Under the surname Alice where one or two were real, some that weren’t were: Oliver (the parish register was very clear), Hill, James, Castle and a number where the person had a first name Alice but the first and last names have been reversed.

I wonder how many people I can’t find because of this type of problem. It pays to be creative with searches…

The curious case of Rebecca Lehman

It’s hard to tell if this is a case of a mistaken name that has been copied over and over, or if there is more to the story. However…

Rebecca Lehman (c1801-1849) always shows up in on-line genealogies (at Ancestry and Familysearch etc.) as the wife of William Allis and mother of Caroline who married Joseph Leesley and emigrated to Nebraska, USA.
Their children were baptised in the Bratoft, Toynton and Leake area of Lincolnshire, England with the first born in 1825 at Bratoft.
No marriage for a William Allis to a Rebecca Lehman has been found.

The parish register for Bratoft, Lincolnshire on 3 June 1824 shows the marriage between William Allis and Rebecca Louth. Both sign the register and the entry is very clear. Both were also single when they married. Assuming Rebecca was born around 1801 (based on her age given at her burial in 1849), there is a Rebecca Louth baptised at Addlethorpe, Lincolnshire (about 5 miles from Bratoft) in 1802 but there is no equivalent event for a Rebecca Lehman. I am therefore convinced that this should be Rebecca Louth but I don't know the original source for Lehman.

Does anyone know how William’s wife came to be a Lehman and not Louth?

From Lincolnshire to Colorado

One branch of the Lincolnshire Allis family moved to Colorado in America in the 1880s. It is not known what prompted the move but they were from a family of nine children (of which one died in infancy). After their father's death in 1880 the family appears to have split and in 1881 the eldest son George Allis had moved to Hogsthorpe about 6 miles south of Beesby with his sister Mary and brother Charles where they are farming 72 acres at "Marsh Retreat". Meanwhile William is living with his sister Rachel in Alford and their mother is farming with Emma and Alfred at Beesby and John is working in London.

Two of the brothers, Charles and John Allis sailed to America around 1883.It seems that they didn’t head straight for Colorado but they did settle there by 1887 in Douglas county some 30-odd miles south of Denver.
Charles leased some land in the Greenland area, later buying it. In 1908 he built a reservoir still known as the Allis reservoir which may be seen on Google Earth [at about 39° 7'57.63"N, 104°51'9.89"W]
They operated a meat market as well as the ranch which was said to be of about 1700 acres by 1899 (5000 acres reported in an English newspaper).
More details of their enterprise and photographs of their ranch may be seen here
http://larkspurhistoricalsociety.org/?page_id=824
Their ranch is still known as the Historic Allis Ranch and their are further details here
https://www.douglas.co.us/museum/vex13/index.htm

Their brother George moved out from England to join them in 1896 with his wife Annie and two children, but died suddenly in February 1899 of pneumonia.
Annie was from London and George met her possibly via John who was working in the area. By 1891 they had moved to Leicester where he was a butcher before finally emigrating on board the Majestic from Liverpool, arriving in New York on the 29th April 1896.

After George’s death Annie remained in the Monument area of Colorado.
John Allis fell ill at the start of 1901 and Annie married him in the January. It was said that the care she gave him prolonged his life but he died in the March of 1901. Annie remarried a year later and moved to California.

Charles continued to thrive and lived until 1927. He married Wilhelmina Steimle in August 1901 in what was said to be a major social event for the area, and they had seven children becoming prominent citizens in the local area.

Once the railways had opened up the interior of America there were various schemes to attract settlers, some operated by the railways themselves along with emigration groups in England.
In Colorado the climate was said to be dry, sunny, and bracing and the soil suitable for a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as raising sheep and cattle.
The journey from New York was almost entirely by railway. In 1890 the fare from London to New York (from Reynolds Newspaper 13 Jul 1890)was £3-16s in steerage, and the train fare from New York to Denver was £8-12s-6d or a total of £12-8s-6d. The journey could also be taken via Liverpool and Halifax, Nova Scotia with onward train via Montreal, Ottawa, Detroit and Chicago to Denver for a total of £12-4s

Sourcing of records (continued)

To add to the pain of finding records and adding sources that had been forgotten, it was decided to improve the standard of citations given in my TMG (The Master Genealogist) event sourcing. Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Mills (now in its 3rd edition) appears to be the standard to follow. Its style is based on the Chicago Manual of Style but with considerable extensions for citing the many varieties of sources used in genealogy.

There appears to be considerable differences of opinion in how much detail to add to sources in genealogy software packages. Certainly there should be enough to allow someone else to find the source material at a later date if possible.
An experience in trying to find the original material used in a book about the history of a Lincolnshire village was a lesson. The book dates from the 1930s and at that time some of the material was not deposited at the county or national archives. Nonetheless, after a time all of the material that was of interest, except for one item, has been discovered. There was just enough guidance but more would have been useful.

Evidence Explained starts with some fundamentals of citing sources - when to use italics, quotes, semicolons etc. - and builds from there. It does seem extraordinarily finicky at first and at a personal level it will depend on what you intend to do with your genealogy records as to how much time you invest in the art of citations. As I want to publish my family history it seems useful to make it look a little more professional than it was.
I know that in my branch of engineering it is relatively easy to spot the beginner by the way diagrams are drawn, or reports written, and so on.
However, when seeing how long some of the source citations get to be especially when the record is on-line via a record provider and then quoting a further repository makes one want to take short-cuts. For example, would it be reasonable to cut out much of the citation for a census entry where there are several on-line providers carrying the same record and the indexing makes the record easy to find at any of them? (Just give the TNA reference and family name for example?)

These questions are still be worked on but I take much more notice of the detail of sources given in books than I used to.
Anyway, much of what is in Elizabeth Mill’s book has been taken on-board, and it has proved to be very useful.

It has taken a lot of time re-organise the sources in TMG but the end results in reports are looking better for it.
I will eventually to get back to some proper research but the time spent on learning a lot of new tricks is hopefully worthwhile.