The Mansfield-Alliss family of London

The family of William Henry Mansfield and Harriette Bentley Austin

Yes, where does Alliss come into that?

 

Looking through the GRO birth index are seven children registered as Alliss all with the Mansfield middle name, and all with their mothers maiden name as Austin, between 1858 and 1875. These haven't been linked to any other Allis family so we made a start to see where they came from.

Harriet and Louisa were twins born in 1858 (who both died in 1860), Mary Ann in 1860, John 1862, Eliza 1868, George 1870 and Albert in 1875.

A quick look at the census returns showed them to be using only MANSFIELD but with children registered as ALLISS. Where, how or why did this family acquire the Alliss name?

Some records viewed:

The parents of the above children were Henry William Mansfield who married Harriette Bentley Austin on 24 December 1850 at St Giles, Cripplegate, Middlesex. His father was William Mansfield, a brush maker.

In the 1851 census at St Lukes (9 Clarence Road) in the household of William Mansfield are:

William age 50 a brushmaker, born Clerkenwell

Esther age 56, born New York but a British subject

Henry age 21 a gold cutter

Harriet age 21 his wife

William their son age 1 month

There are very few marriages of Mansfields to an Esther, but one at about the right time is Esther Ann Mumford in 1821. An Esther Mansfield died age 70 in 1861.

The family of Henry and Harriet Mansfield are seen in the 1881 census.  Walter age 16 is a son not shown in the GRO index as Alliss

Mary Ann Mansfield Alliss married William Samuel Storrar in 1877 and her father’s name is shown as William Henry Mansfield Alliss and one of the witnesses was Harriette Mansfield Alliss.

Walter married Selina Pickering in 1890 with his mother as a witness and just using the Mansfield surname.

In May 1898 George Mansfield Ellis married Elizabeth Cannings (?) nee Smale and he gives his father’s name as Harry Ellis, a jeweler. A George Mansfield Alliss born in 1900, as shown in the GRO index, has his mother’s maiden name as Smale.

George and Elizabeth are seen in the 1911 census with Alma aged 12 (registered as Alma Louisa Ellis in 1899), George age 10 (registered in 1900), and Albert William age 4 (as Mansfield-Alliss in 1907).

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Going back to the 1841 census for Holborn (HO107/670/3) we see

William Mansfield age 40, a toothbrush maker

Ether Mansfield age 45, his wife, born in foreign parts

Henry Allis age 10

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This would appear to be the start of the Mansfield-Allis line. Was a Henry Allis adopted by the Mansfields who did not seem to have any other children? There doesn't seem to be any candidates in parish baptisms for Henry (except one in Loughton, Essex but he is accounted for). Adding the Alliss name into the children's births was then a throwback to Henry's origins.

Thus it seems that this family were Mansfields except when it came to registering children's births (some of them anyway). The later generation sometimes included Alliss in marriages too.

An interesting tangle of a family line!

Update: Thanks to Mike, one of that family line for generously providing much more information, although Henry Alliss is still something of a mystery.

Handwriting course

After transcribing some old wills it occurred to me to recommend this free on-line course which I worked through some time back.
It is  "English Handwriting Online 1500-1700"

which can be found here
https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/

I found it to be well structured, starting with relatively easy examples and getting progressively harder, and was suitable for reading documents found in family history research. It really helped my ability to read older documents. However as with all these things you do have put the time in and work through all the examples,  but it was well worth it.

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…