Do you experiment?

If you like that sort of interconnection, maybe I should own up my links to "the Sharmans of Ixworth". My 2xG grandfather Martin Marriott had three brothers who married women called Sharman from Ixworth 1830-40, and when I first looked I found two were sisters and one might be as well. Prompted to look again at this, I can now confirm that all three were daughters of Robert Sharman and Dorothy Nunn. Looks like blatant one-upmanship to me.

This unfortunate woman bore fourteen children, of whom three married "my" Marriotts, and eight died aged ten or younger - with the last five all dying as babies.

If the Sarah Sharman you have found is the obvious one in the Ixworth records, she is the sister of that Robert. That would raise age/date issues with her baptism 1760, marriage 1676, and death 1803 aged 47. You would have judge those to be credible as records for the same woman.

 

Stuart - thanks for this - This thread started with an Ancestry tree error with Elizabeth Payne listed with siblings all born in Barrow when she was born in Ixworth. You seem to have uncovered another one. My Sarah Sharman is born in Ixworth but according to the Ancestry trees her father, Enoch, and all her siblings come from Burgate. I find your family more credible. It also explains why one of my new Common Ancestors Thru Lines breaks down in the middle. Will add to my investigation. John

 

In my first entry on this post I mentioned William Pain and Sarah Sharman, Elizabeth's actual parents. William is shown in around 250 family trees, a significant number have him as William G Pain (or Payne) and the majority show him dying in Kirtley, Suffolk in Sep 1773. The rest have no death information, or dying in Ixworth on the same day. I found a tree with the actual burial record (held under Norfolk) and it is for "William, ye son of William Pain", the 'ye' being mis transcribed as "G". This William was baptised in 1756 to William and Elizabeth Pain, in the same source, dying aged 17.

 

John - can I add to what you say about the Paynes of Kirkley, that Kirkley is the other end of Suffolk from Ixworth (it's now part of Lowestoft). The two parishes are over forty miles apart, so it was always unlikely the families would have any connection. William Paynes are quite common, so there are plenty available across Suffolk for tree-builders who aren't too fussy. Once one death has appeared in a tree, the echo-chamber effect spreads it to a lot more. A lot of trees are made like that, which is why they need to be treated with great scepticism.

As to why the Kirkley parish registers are in Norfolk RO, that's more of a puzzle. They were transferred there in 1980, which is just after the parish was renamed and presumably the church rededicated (another church was closed). So I guess that a load of documents were archived, and some perhaps belonged with the diocese (Norwich). But why didn't Norfolk RO offer the PRs to Suffolk RO? That seems a little sneaky, doesn't it?

 

Stuart, thanks, I know about the proliferation of William Paynes or should I say Pains, Paines, Payns or Peyns (all seen in my searches) From the DNA cousin results it seems that the Ixworth William is a relation/descendant of the William Payne, bailiff of Hengrave Hall, eight miles away (rather than the forty of Kirtley) through the 17th C William Payne whose occupation has been converted from 'farmer' to 'comber' in his will transcription. It is either a long way to the Suffolk Record Office, or a long wait for ancestry. hmmm

 

The Parochial Registers and Records Measure 1978 does specifically provide that:

So it's up to the bishop to decide if each county RO should be the repository for that county's parishes' registers (though the RO does have to agree). Where (for example) the whole of two counties are within one diocese, you'd certainly expect both to be that diocese's record offices. In this case it's just ten parishes I think that are in Suffolk, so it might not have seemed worth the trouble. Of course the Church's geography had nothing to do with counties in any case, and parishes quite often straddle county boundaries.