Archive for November, 2008

Monthly Archive
Friday, November 21st, 2008

The testament of Margaret Watmough of Chorley 1543

It is amazing how ancient manuscripts, apparently hidden or mislaid in antiquity, can come to light centuries later. Sometimes they are discovered bound into later books or even used as part of the binding. My favourite story relates to Cologne cathedral which was left incomplete in medieval times, but in 1814 Georg Moller came across […]

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Monday, November 17th, 2008

The Watmoughs of Blackrod, Lancashire

One  of the earliest settlements of the Watmough family in Lancashire was at Blackrod, a small town between Bolton to the east and Wigan to the west. An enormous number of Watmough children were baptised at the parish church of St Katherine’s, Blackrod, over the centuries, but quite a number of these were to families […]

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Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Family Migrations

I thought that a map would be useful showing the locations of of some of the main Watmough, Watmore and Whatmore families past and present. The map shows definite links between family via a continuous line, and speculative links via a broken line. The dates beside each place name are approximate. For places with early […]

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Thursday, November 13th, 2008

The testament of a widow of Burnley

There were Watmoughs at Burnley in Lancashire since very early times and from  their use of ‘Alexander’ and ‘Lawrence’ as Christian names, it seems very likely that they were closely related to the branch of the family at Prescot, from which I descend.
Geoffrey Whatmore, our family historian, spent a lot of time looking through the […]

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Sunday, November 9th, 2008

John Goddard Watmough - hero of the Battle of Fort Erie in 1812

I was surfing the net a few days ago when I came across a pamphlet about a member of the Watmough family. The title of the pamphlet was ‘A Brief Sketch of the Services of John G Watmough During and Subsequent to the Campaign of 1814 and 1815 when an Officer in the United States’. […]

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Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

Thomas Watmore of Curdale Farm, Cleobury Mortimer

A very large number of Whatmores can trace their tree back to Thomas Watmore of Curdale Farm at Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire. The farm is still there with the farm house, which Thomas would have known, nestling into the hillside.  It is an unusual building with a terrace in front of the main rooms with […]

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