{"id":6661,"date":"2018-03-11T17:47:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T21:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=6661"},"modified":"2018-11-20T10:27:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T15:27:10","slug":"too-many-wills-not-enough-wills-52-ancestors-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/too-many-wills-not-enough-wills-52-ancestors-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Many Wills, Not Enough Wills – 52 Ancestors #9"},"content":{"rendered":"

My emigrant ancestors on my mother\u2019s paternal side were William Denman and Ann Boorman (my 4-g grandparents).\u00a0 Both of these families named sons William with great regularity.\u00a0 Ann Boorman\u2019s father was William Boorman and as it turns out his father and grandfather were also Williams.\u00a0 (Ann also had a brother named William.)\u00a0 I am writing this partly to complement the post<\/a> by cousin Claudia on the same 52 Ancestor topic.\u00a0 She wrote about William Boorman (1719-1790) primarily.\u00a0 This William Boorman, Ann\u2019s grandfather, was a wheelwright in Staplehurst, Kent and left his house and land in Staplehurst to his son William by his will.\u00a0 Thus this younger William is connected to the older one.<\/p>\n

We also have the will from Ann Boorman\u2019s father William, who cousin Claudia names William III in her post.\u00a0 This William Boorman (c 1746-1824) was also a wheelwright, as his father and reportedly his grandfather before him.\u00a0 This meant that he had an estate to leave, so there was a will.\u00a0 I have written about this<\/a> before, a couple of years ago when I posted the transcription I had done.\u00a0 This William Boorman also\u00a0 named his children and left various bequests to them, including to his daughter Ann Denman in America.\u00a0 So on Ann Boorman Denman\u2019s side we have a pretty clear lineage leading back to England.<\/p>\n

William Denman, husband of Ann Boorman, has a less-well documented\u00a0 parentage.\u00a0 Although there are Denman researchers who put events together and make assumptions, there is little satisfactory evidence.\u00a0 For example, there is a pedigree, produced by a Denman researcher that shows my grandfather William Denman as the son of a William Denman and Ann Marten, that William being the son of William Denman and wife Sarah (no surname), and that William a son of a William Denman, and that William a son of a William Denman.\u00a0 Too many Wills!\u00a0 But also a richness of wills, with each of the earlier Williams having left a will naming a son William.\u00a0 The sole exception was William Denman who married Ann Marten and might have been my William\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pete Chapman \/ St Peter’s Church, Cowfold, West Sussex<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The William Denman (bef 1681-1739), who would have been my William\u2019s grandfather by this thinking, left a will with wife Sarah as executrix.\u00a0 The first bequest in his will (which I have transcribed) left all his farms and lands in Capel or elsewhere in the county of Surrey, to his eldest son William.\u00a0 Also named were his other children, including an unmarried daughter (Ann Denman) and a son Samuel\u00a0 who might have been a minor at the time of the writing of the will.\u00a0 The parish of Capel is about 2.5 miles from the border of Sussex county.\u00a0 What is not clear is how and why William Denman who was living in Cowfold, Sussex at the time he wrote his will, had farms and lands in Surrey\u00a0 County.\u00a0 This William had apparently lived in Cowfold parish for some time and was likely buried at the church there, St. Peter’s.\u00a0 His mother Hannah Garston Denman was buried there.\u00a0 The three parishes associated with this family Cuckfield, Bolney, and Cowfold are adjacent to each other west to east.<\/p>\n

There has been no will found as of yet for this William the eldest son.\u00a0 Since it would seem he must have had property, it is odd not to find a will.\u00a0 Further, if this William was a member of the Baptist community at Ditchling where my William was said to be born, the will or other land records should exist in Sussex county archives.\u00a0 So far they haven\u2019t appeared to exist.\u00a0 The fact that William and his wife and family were members of the Baptist community at Ditchling makes records more problematic as a result of loss of some of the church\u2019s records.\u00a0 As mentioned earlier, there were also a great sufficiency of William Denmans in the general neighborhood at any given time.<\/p>\n

So in the end, although I have evidence for Ann Boorman\u2019s family line, and for the marriage of William Denman and Ann Boorman, I have no strong evidence for William\u2019s parentage.\u00a0 I can only hope that where there\u2019s a will (or a Will) there\u2019s a way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My emigrant ancestors on my mother\u2019s paternal side were William Denman and Ann Boorman (my 4-g grandparents).\u00a0 Both of these families named sons William with great regularity.\u00a0 Ann Boorman\u2019s father was William Boorman and as it turns out his father …<\/p>\n

Too Many Wills, Not Enough Wills – 52 Ancestors #9<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[378,386,18,316],"class_list":["post-6661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-52-ancestors","tag-boornan-family","tag-denman-family","tag-sussex-england"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6661"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6668,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6661\/revisions\/6668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}