Canton Family History

A happy New Year to all readers!

My Christmas post included two further offers to take DNA tests, both from different and well-separated branches of the very large PM line (first certain ancestor in Pembrokeshire, Martletwy). This was marvellous news as these tests will provide most useful base information. Moreover, a female member of another key line, GL (descendants of John Canton FRS, born Gloucestershire), is going to approach close male relatives about taking a test.

Altogether, these were great Christmas presents!  Thanks to all who wrote to me about this.

News also came from Family Tree DNA that the first two test kits had been received at the laboratory. The predicted date for results is mid-February, though I imagine this is so as to be covered for unforeseen delays and that, in fact, we can hope for them rather earlier. It looks as if 2008 will hold a lot of new Canton information.

Just before Christmas I was in London at a family event and spent a few hours at TNA (the National Archives), this time looking at some Canton Divorce Petitions of the 1920s and 30s - just three in total. The TNA references are: J77/2665/2758,  J77/2293/1825 and J77/3322/1489. The online catalogue gives brief details of the parties involved.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

You can order copies of the papers online, or I am able to pass on details to anyone researching these lines (PL, GL/A3 and GL/A4). Bear in mind that divorce then, and indeed not so long ago, involved ‘guilty’ parties and a certain amount of dirty family linen. In terms of family history this is, of course, very interesting!

[Added later] For a detailed account of the problems attached to divorce in the not-so-distant past, read

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/wpbz.htm

I hope to be at TNA for a few days in late February/March (subject to it being open at the specific time) and would be very glad to meet London-based readers over coffee - do get in touch.

A very happy Christmas to everyone and I hope you enjoy this item:

You probably know that the Christmas card was a Victorian invention - here you can see an early one, published by Robert Canton, Lithographer, as well as his trade mark: http://www.scrapalbum.com/xmasp3.htm

Christmas Cards in Shire Publications <www.shirebooks.co.uk >  has three of Robert Canton’s cards as illustrations.

Robert William Canton was born about 1821, but not baptised until 1825 at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, the son of William Lawrence Canton and Mary Brown. His father was the eldest grandson of John Canton, FRS, the 18th century scientist. Robert was his parents’ third son and the third child out of 11. In 1844 he married Anne Hurst Wright - they had only daughters so there are no Canton descendants of this line.

Robert Canton died 5 June 1893 in Wandsworth, aged 72 according to the GRO Deaths Index. His will, dated 20 Oct 1876, names him as Robert William Canton of Nos 22 & 23 Aldersgate St, City of London, Printer and Publisher (trading as and sometimes known as Robert Canton only)  and was proved to his ‘beloved wife Anne Hurst Canton’ on 4 Jul 1893.

MAIN BRANCHES OF THE CANTON TREE

In Canton Connections No. 2, I published an outline of the main known Canton lines, to help with indexing, and this list was then published in each subsequent issue. At present, it refers only to Canton lines of which the earliest known origin is in Britain and Ireland. I concocted a simple system, using letters based chiefly on the county/country and parish of origin attached to each earliest known ancestor in a particular line.

The system worked well during the life of the magazine and I haven’t found it necessary to change it. I wrote optimistically, ‘if/when we are able to attach one branch to another, it will not be too complicated to modify their “labels” further’. This has happened once, as far as I can tell, in that the then X-labelled Cantans of Kent became firmly PM/K. (Really, this should be just part of PM/J but it has been useful to distinguish them still.) 

More amalgamations may come about in the future – who knows what DNA testing may bring! 

The following are the chief lines identified so far:·     

• GL Gloucestershire (Stroud)/London. These are the descendants of John Canton, FRS, to a great degree London-based for two centuries. They form a very numerous branch, needing subdivision which it is easier to define by letters and numbers related to people, not places, in view of mobility within London. (London-based Cantons not yet connected to this line appear as XL).·First come the sons of John, FRS:
• GL/A descendants of William. This is a particularly prolific line, William having four sons with many descendants. Therefore this line is further sub-divided as:
  • GL/A1 descendants of William Lawrence
  • GL/A2 descendants of Nathaniel John
  • GL/A3 descendants of Charles James
  • GL/A4 descendants of George Augustus.
• GL/B descendants of Thomas
• GL/C descendants of John (if any)     
• GO Gloucestershire/Others. These include Cantons in several parishes, including Stroud, which have not been connected to the family of John Canton, FRS.·     
• I Ireland (sub-divisions unclear as yet).·     
• PA Pembrokeshire, Amroth.·     
• PB Pembrokeshire, Begelly.·     
• PC Pembrokeshire, Cosheston.·     
• PF Pembrokeshire, Freystrop; later Nolton Haven.·     
• PJ Pembrokeshire, Jeffreston (early residents, quite separate from PM/J).·     
• PL Pembrokeshire, Lampeter Velfrey.·     
• PM Pembrokeshire, Martletwy (including Coedcanlas). A very large branch, needing subdivision on occasion for extra clarity:
  • PM/J Jeffreston
    • PM/K Kent (19C) - often as CANTAN - is a sub-division of PM/J
  • PM/P Pembroke;
  • PM/R Reynalton, with further subdivision PM/NZ New Zealand
  • PM/S Stackpole.·     
• PMn Pembrokeshire, Manorbier.·     
• PR Pembrokeshire, Rhoscrowther.·     
• PS Pembrokeshire, Slebech.·     
• SE Sussex, Eastbourne.·     
• X Miscellaneous unidentified lines other than in London.·    
• XL Unidentified lines based in London. 

For new readers: Canton occurs as a surname in several countries of the world other than Britain and Ireland, with a variety of ‘meanings’ and I have not attempted to deal with them here, but this may change.

Postscript: Our first three tests, in date order, are from lines PM/S, PR, PL.

Recently on the Guild of ONS mailing list someone sent these links:

Records of Sun Fire Insurance are at the Guildhall Library, see
http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/fire.htm and
http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/sun.htm
For the GL lines (earliest known ancestors in GLS, later in London) these are records worth a look: Nathaniel Canton (1785-1865) and George Augustus Canton (1790-1860) appear among the insured parties, and there are fascinating references to one or more buildings named Canton Cottage, East India Road, Poplar (sometimes Canton Place etc) - I hope we could find out more about this.

Also via the Guild mailing-list, for early Australian electoral rolls see http://www.ancestry.com.au/

The index has over 40 Canton entries, though a given individual might appear in up to half a dozen entries, e.g., John Thomas Canton. The first time I tried to see full details I seemed to be told I should have a different subscription - but the next time the links worked. It’s a great deal of useful information.

 In my last posting I wrote briefly of my Canton great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather but failed to post this photograph of them. (Even now I have only managed a thumbnail, which I hope you can see.)  From the left: Alice Georgina (1887-1941), wife of Sydney John Peters, her father William Henry Canton (1867-1932), her grandfather James (1843-1930) and her baby Dorothy, taken in 1913. Alice was my grandmother’s sister, killed tragically in Plymouth in the Blitz. Her younger daughter Grace is still a dear member of our family. 

As I said last time, I don’t qualify to take the Y-DNA test, so need descendants of James and William Henry to stand in for me! Unfortunately, I have lost touch with key cousins - e-mails have bounced - so I am hoping someone reading this will offer to reconnect me, though I will be finding time to write individual letters in the weeks to come.

I’m sorry not to have signed the last posting - I somehow thought it was done automatically. For any new readers, I’m Sheila Rowlands and have been a keen family historian since the seventies, researching not just Cantons in a registered one-name study but all the ancestry of my three children. I used to be a teacher, with History as my subject, latterly lecturing on Welsh genealogy in University of Wales Aberystwyth extra-mural and summer schools, but now retired. With my husband John I have written books on Welsh family history and surnames.  I never feel jaded about the subject of my own family research as there are new discoveries all the time. The possibilities that genetic genealogy/DNA testing offers form an exciting new dimension.

Sheila

Although I have been researching Canton family history since the 1970s, and registered the name with the Guild of One-Name Studies in 1980, I have never grown tired of delving into all types of records for even the most trivial information about these close or distant connections of my grandmother. Suddenly, after a house-move which made me look long and hard at the very large number of lever-arch files and folders which have accumulated (some of it on computer, but by no means all), I realised that the time had come to try to tie up at least some of the loose ends.

Most of the lines relating to my own family or to those of my many correspondents peter out in the 17th or 18th centuries. Like a high proportion of Canton descendants, my roots are in Pembrokeshire, where the surname has existed since the 12th century and where it appears over and over again, intermittently and largely disconnected, throughout the centuries up to the earliest (not very early) surviving parish registers.  For the most part, wills and other obvious sources have been searched - it’s not impossible that more remain to be found but is there time for me to find them?

This last year or so, I read a series of articles in the Journal of the Guild of One-Name Studiesby Susan C. Meates which brought home to me the possibilities of DNA testing for families like these - not just the Pembrokeshire (PEM hereafter) ones but also a large branch which appears in 17th century Gloucestershire (GLS), which happens to have had strong trading links with PEM, Irish lines (PEM Cantons were among the earliest Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland), and some mysterious Cantons who appear in Bermuda registers. And, hopefully, many more.

So the grandly-named Canton Surname Project (CSP) was set up a few months ago, aiming to test  (Y-DNA testing of the paternal line)  as many people with the surname as possible. My idea was for it to remain dormant until I was straight after my house-move. Well, of course I’m still not ’straight’ but time is going on faster than ever. In the past few weeks I have sent out a series of explanatory newsletters to the people I know with e-mail. I also began writing letters to people without e-mail, sending them a package of information. Members have be male and have the surname Canton, or one of its variants such as Cantan, Canten or Cantin; however, all of us should benefit from the results of tests.

All the effort paid off yesterday (17 Nov 2007) when we signed up the first Canton, whose test kit is in the post.  Two others have also committed to taking part. These are very early days for our project but it is exciting to contemplate the results it may produce. 

Details of the CSP and its progress will be available at: www.familytreedna.com/public/cantonsurnameproject and informal updates (as well as other items of Canton interest) will apear on this blog.

In the meantime, we really need more Cantons to step forward, from any line, anywhere in the world. Right now we are looking especially for descendants of my great-great-grandfather James Canton (1843-1930) of Pembroke and of my great-grandfather William Henry Canton (1867-1932). 

For details of the Canton One-Name Study, of which this is a part see www.one-name.org/profiles/canton.html