Finding John Mann’s family: a case study

Posted on 11th Jun 2026 by English Ancestors

John Mann was born 26th December 1792 and baptised four days later at Norwich St Michael at Thorn. He is my 4x great uncle, but for years I knew nothing more about him. He seemed simply to have disappeared. Eventually, a set of military discharge papers came online via FindMyPast.¹ Through them I learned something really exciting: My 4x great uncle John was at the Battle of Waterloo!

A close reading of the nine pages of his discharge papers provided the following information:

He enlisted with the Royal Horse Artillery in 1807, when he was fourteen (…so that’s where he went!)
He served at the Battle of Waterloo as a Driver (meaning he rode a horse, working as part of a team that pulled cannon, ammunition limbers, and wagons), after which he served in France as part of the Army of Occupation
All other service was in England and Ireland; no dates or locations were given
On 1st July 1820 he was promoted to the rank of Trumpeter
He was discharged on 30th September 1832 after treatment in the Royal Ordnance Hospital following a fit of palsy fourteen months earlier, in Dublin.
There were testimonies from several high-ranking officers: John was held in high regard.
One tantalising piece of information was a comment from Lieutenant Colonel Whinyates, who stated that John had a large family and had ‘brought them up in a most creditable manner’.

Tantalising, of course, because I had absolutely no idea of any of their names, nor where they were born, nor even how many children there were. Since the discharge papers are dated 1832, these children were clearly all born before the introduction of Civil Births, Marriages and Deaths, and before the first name-rich decennial census in 1841. Clearly, the marriage, too would have taken place before these changes.

My research objective was to use all these clues to find John, his wife, and all his children

But where to start?
John Mann is a common Norfolk name. The only search parameters I had were “John Mann” + “born Norwich 1792” with effectively a nationwide search. The search was further compromised by a tendency for modern transcribers to get this surname wildly wrong. e.g. Although original spellings are always Mann or Man, I have seen it indexed as ‘Cooke’.

One more document was on my radar. There was a John Mann of the right age with the right birthplace living in Leeds at the time of the 1851 Census. There was no evidence at all to confirm that this was my John Mann, and in fact my assumption was that it was not. John was the brother of my 3x great grandfather who had been a silk weaver in Norwich, migrated to Blubberhouses in Yorkshire for work, and eventually moved to the Leeds area for work at a large mill in Holbeck. It seemed too tidy that his brother John, having led quite a different life, would coincidentally have ended up living just a mile away in the same large northern industrial town, for no apparent reason. If I were to be able to accept this as my John Mann, definite corroborative evidence would be needed.

A stroke of luck: locating the 1841 Census entry
The eventual location of the 1841 Census entry for a John Mann and family in Leeds permitted further research. It had not previously been identified because it had been indexed on Ancestry.co.uk as “Marson”. This document was key: all later discoveries about John and his family flow from it.

John Mann (age 45, occupation: ‘M[ale] S[ervant] & Army P[ensioner]’) was living at Brick Street, Leeds, with Mary (45), Emma (15), William (15) and John (10). William and Eliza Hallawell (both 20) were at the same property. Birthplaces are significant: John senior’s birthplace was England or Wales but not Yorkshire, while John junior was born in Ireland: his age and birthplace fit with information on John senior’s Discharge Papers which indicate he was in Ireland prior to and until July 1831. Everyone else was born in Yorkshire.²

This was almost certainly the same couple previously identified in the 1851 Census: John Mann (58, occupation ‘Groom Pensioner’) and wife Mary (54), residing 21 Brick Street. Therefore John, born Norwich, c.1793, now receiving a pension, had worked with horses in a military capacity. Mary’s birthplace was Pontefract. Age discrepancies are explained by the 1841 census instruction to enumerators to round down the ages of people over fifteen years to the nearest five.

Information flowing from death records
Neither John nor Mary being located on the 1861 Census, both were found on the General Register Office (GRO) Death Index and local cemetery register (Beckett Street), and also a photograph of the headstone. John, 58, died 17 September 1851, and was buried 21 September. Still resident at Brick Street, the occupation recorded was ‘servant’. Mary, dying 30 August 1857, was buried 2 September. She was 62/63 and widowed. Both were buried as Nonconformists.

The headstone image³ provided further useful information:

Son John died 17 June 1849, aged 18. This ties in with the 1830-31 birth in Ireland.
Grandson Arthur William Cudbartson died 4 September 1855
Walter Ernest Hallewell died 6 March 1857, aged 17 months.
Hallewell being the second surname at the family home in 1841, this suggests the Eliza Hallewell on that record is the oldest child of John and Mary, and that William Ernest is her son. It also suggests Cudbartson as the married name of daughter Emma. All new information from the headstone was verified by GRO Birth and Death Indexes. Both birth records indicate mothers’ maiden name of Mann.

These suspected marriages were then confirmed by parish register entries (online digital images of original documents).

Eliza married William Hallewell 18 July 1840 at Leeds
Emma married Charles Frederick Cudbartson 8 April 1849 at Leeds
Son William married Elizabeth Taylor 15 March 1847 at Rothwell

Pontefract: baptisms
Armed with marriage details we can now identify Eliza, Emma and William in the 1851 Census. (Online digital images of original documents.) This provides us with the actual birthplace for each, which of course is not available on the 1841 Census. The various entries indicate the birthplace for all as Pontefract, Yorkshire.

This new information regarding specific birthplaces facilitated location of baptisms:

Eliza: Eliza, 25 June 1820
Emma: 10 Nov 1822
William: 11 April 1824

All three baptisms took place at Pontefract St Giles/ St Mary. The marriage of John Mann and Mary Dawson is recorded at the same church on 6 September 1819. As noted above, Pontefract is also Mary’s birthplace.

Apart from son John who died 17 June 1849, aged 18, and is known to have been born in Ireland, only one more son has been identified as the child of John and Mary. A birth record for Alfred Robert Mann was located on the GRO Index. The mother’s maiden name of Dawson is correct. Alfred Robert died in August 1840, aged fourteen months. The ‘abode’ recorded on the burial record is Brick Street, which matches the 1841 and 1851 Censuses. The baptism and burial services at St Peter’s Wesleyan Chapel, are consistent with the move to Nonconformity, suggesting John and Mary’s own religious burial records may also be found here.

Detailed examination of the Pontefract registers reveals no further children for John and Mary there. This might point to miscarriage, stillbirth, simply no pregnancy, or removal to Ireland, where son John was born, 1830-31. Without a precise location, no attempt has yet been made to locate John’s or any other baptism/burial in Irish parish records. Indeed, any such records may not have survived. If there were other children, their births would have predated the introduction of Civil Births, Marriages and Deaths; and given that the movements of John and his family are not fully known, finding all additional children could not be guaranteed. Certainly, no other children survived to adulthood.

Using the same records to develop John’s military timeline
The Pontefract baptism and marriage records outlined above also provide information about John’s Royal Horse Artillery career. Not only do they suggest he was stationed there for the years the children were born; the register entries themselves record details of his progress within the Royal Horse Artillery. Only Emily’s and William’s baptisms record John as Trumpeter. This supports evidence on the Discharge Papers of his promotion on 1 July 1820, and that was six days after Eliza’s baptism.

These records evidence that John was stationed in Pontefract from before September 1819 to some time after April 1824. Wider examination of Pontefract baptism registers from 1818 to 1830 shows that between 1820-1825 forty-eight babies of fathers serving with the RHA were baptised. After this, baptisms reduce to just four in 1826-27, and then none. This could point to mobilisation to Ireland circa 1827.

Ongoing research
It is interesting that this research into John started with a little information on his military Discharge Papers – just enough clues to permit corroboration of, and following through on, the information on the Leeds Census documentation. That information, followed up with newspaper reports, military records and wider reading, then enabled the placement of John within a specific Troop during the years after Waterloo and before his discharge in 1832. What has not yet been possible is locating him within a definite Troop at Waterloo, although this has been narrowed down to two. Within the next year I plan to do more research focused on the Royal Horse Artillery troops to try to locate him at a specific place in Ireland, and also to try to find out more about the two troops at Waterloo. After that I would like to visit Waterloo. The circle would be completed if this information also helped me to locate a baptism for son John in Ireland and perhaps any other births of children at the same location.

However, for now, I’m happy to have achieved something that, initially, I didn’t think would be achievable. I have followed up on a single phrase on John’s discharge papers: that John had a large family and had ‘brought them up in a most creditable manner’, and I have tracked down him and all those children. One thing I wish I knew, and never will: did John and his brother Thomas (my 3x great grandfather) each know the other was in Leeds? I like to think they might, but both arrived there by complete coincidence and it’s entirely possible that they lived a mile or so apart for eight years without ever knowing the other was there.

This is the resulting family tree. Click for a better view.

John Mann, Royal Hospital Chelsea: Soldiers Service Documents 1760-1854, Original data: The National Archives WO 97/1249/78. Source: www.findmypast.co.uk ↩︎
John Marson [Mann], 1841 England Census. Original data: The National Archives, Class: HO107; Piece: 1347; Book: 2; Civil Parish: Leeds Town; Enumeration District: 24; Folio: 20; Page: 2. Source: www.ancestry.co.uk ↩︎
John Mann, Family burial plot, UK and Ireland Find A Grace Index entry with headstone photograph, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/234824558/john-mann ↩︎

Evidence: part 2

Posted on 1st Oct 2019 by English Ancestors

In my last post I wrote about different types of information that we might draw upon to build our family trees: original and derivative records, and primary and secondary sources. If you haven’t read that post, you might want to read it now. Today’s offering builds on it, by considering:

How can we use these types of evidence together to build a conclusive case?
When can we be sure we really have the right person and the facts straight?
How much evidence is enough?

There is no straightforward answer. Some advise you should aim for three pieces of evidence. I don’t agree. Sometimes one piece of evidence is so conclusive it’s all we need. Quality is more important than quantity. Other times we find ourselves conducting an ongoing investigation that can take years.

What follows is two case studies that illustrate my own experience of building a hypothesis, finding possible answers, and eventually finding that one final, convincing piece of information.

Case study 1: Who are Joseph’s parents?
As an inexperienced genealogist I came to a brick wall with one of my lines. My 3x great grandfather was Joseph Lucas, and census records indicated he was born around 1787. Joseph’s baptism record provided his father’s name – also Joseph – and from there I was able to find Joseph senior’s marriage, his wife’s name (Anne) and the names of all their children. Since Joseph senior died before censuses commenced I had no way of knowing his age. Several Joseph Lucas’s were baptised in the parish, all within a few years, and any one of them could have been my Joseph. With nothing to indicate the name of his father, how could I narrow them down?

One of the potential baptisms, in 1754, interested me because of the father’s name: Nathaniel. My 4xG grandparents, Joseph and Anne, had a son with the same name. Checking all the children of this older Nathaniel and his wife Sarah, I found that alongside their son Joseph (potentially my 4xG grandfather) they too had named a son Nathaniel. In fact, six of my Joseph’s twelve children shared names with the children of Nathaniel and Sarah. Given the importance of naming traditions, I thought I was on to something. But there was a catch. That 1754 baptism was Nonconformist. What’s more, Nathaniel’s family lived at the opposite side of Leeds from where I knew my Joseph raised his family. Two far more experienced researchers insisted I was wrong, one on the grounds of the Nonconformity; the other citing geography: ‘These are the Woodhouse Lucas’s; ours are the Hunslet Lucas’s.’ Consulting online trees, I could see that this was a problem no one had solved.

This coincidence of names was too much for me to let it go, but it was only a hypothesis, requiring further proof that I didn’t have. I did add Nathaniel, Sarah and all their children as the family of my 4xG grandfather Joseph, but knowing that others thought I was wrong, I didn’t want to take the line back any further. I left it for several years.

By the time I came back to look at this line I was more experienced, knowledgeable and confident. This is what happened next:

First, I found the baptism of Joseph’s wife, my 4xG grandmother, Anne. Her father was called Leonard… the same name she and Joseph gave their first son. So if they named their first son after Anne’s father, surely their second son, who was Nathaniel, was indeed named after Joseph’s father…?

Next, I found a record for Leonard senior on the Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices’ Indentures, 1710-1811. Anne’s father Leonard, it turned out, was a master tailor… just like Joseph was. Might Anne and Joseph have met as a result of Joseph learning his trade at the side of Anne’s father? I’ve never found a record proving that Joseph was apprenticed to Leonard, but from wider reading I knew it was not uncommon for apprentices to marry the master’s daughter; and Joseph’s marriage to Anne is at exactly the right time to coincide with the end of Joseph’s apprenticeship.

Consulting a map of the period, I could see that Leonard’s home in Chapeltown was less than a mile from Woodhouse where Nathaniel and Sarah were raising their family – a reasonable distance for their son to walk daily during his apprenticeship.

Initially, the baptism records I used for Joseph and Ann’s children were transcripts, found on FamilySearch. Now I found the originals on Ancestry. Looking at each one, I now saw that the earlier children were born in Chapeltown, consistent with the couple living with Leonard while Joseph developed his skills following apprenticeship. Using these same baptism records, I was able to work out exactly when Joseph and Anne moved from Chapeltown to Hunslet, which is where Joseph set up his own business, and where their descendants would remain for the next few generations.

There was no longer any doubt: my 4xG grandfather Joseph Lucas is the son of Nathaniel and Sarah Lucas, baptised in a Nonconformist chapel in 1754; and later abandoning that practice. All of this was worked out using primary sources: the original records (baptism, marriage, apprenticeship) and the map. Initially, the derivative records (transcripts of the baptism records) gave me sufficient information to develop my hypothesis, but had not provided the detail that enabled me to see where Joseph and Anne were living when each child was born. That alone would have provided some important evidence (that Joseph was not originally from Hunslet) when I first started to formulate this hypothesis. Wider reading, including an understanding of the apprenticeship system both generally and in Leeds (where the system was slightly different) enabled me to draw conclusions from the apprenticeship record.

One final piece of evidence has come to light recently: a DNA match with a distant cousin further back along the line from Nathaniel and Sarah.

Case study 2: The Symondsons of Starbotton
My 8x great grandfather is Thomas Symondson. He married my 8x great grandmother Agnes at St Mary’s church in Kettlewell in Yorkshire’s Wharfedale on 19th February 1674/75, and their first child, my 7x great grandfather Lister Symondson, was baptised in the same church on 21st July 1678.

Thomas’s own baptism cannot be found. Based on his marriage year of 1674/75, a birth year around 1645-1655 seems likely.

Looking at other online trees connected to Thomas and Lister, one tree in particular caught my attention. It was compiled by someone with a wide interest not just in this family but in the whole of the area known as Wharfedale. Over time, this person is working through every register from all parishes within Wharfedale, and transcribing them. The result is not only an online tree at Ancestry, but also a dedicated (free to use) website including every person ever traced within Wharfedale (all 408,794 of them!) and a list of their key life events with dates. A life’s work indeed, and of the highest quality. In other words, everything on the tree and the website has been compiled from original records (primary sources), but what I was seeing was derivative.

On this tree and related website, Thomas is listed as one of five sons: Lawrence, born 1639 in Giggleswick; Christopher, born circa 1640 in Kettlewell; Lister, born 1641 in Gisburn; then Thomas himself, born circa 1649 in Kettlewell; and finally Anthony, born 1656 in Kettlewell. Baptism records for Lawrence and Lister indicate that the father is Christopher Symondson.

From wider reading (secondary sources) I knew that the period in question was a turbulent one in English history. Referred to as the Interregnum, it is the period commencing with the execution of Charles I in 1649 and ending with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. During these years responsibility for the registration of births, marriages and burials was removed from the clergy and given to a ‘Parish Register’. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the clergy resumed their role in keeping the registers. However, many of the registers of the Interregnum were not handed back to the incumbent or, regarded as invalid, they were destroyed. The result is that although some of the records of the period survive, many do not. This is almost certainly the reason for the missing records for this family, and if so they would never be found.

From the records that have survived we know that Lawrence and Lister are brothers, and their father is Christopher Symondson. It is also clear from naming patterns that there is a family connection between this Christoper, Lawrence and Lister, and my 8xG grandfather Thomas, who would go on to name his own sons Lister and Christopher. But is that relationship one of father/son/brother? Or could it be a little more distant, for example cousins? What I needed was some form of 17th century evidence that would magically link Thomas to any one of Christopher, Lawrence or Lister, as their son/brother.

Reader, I found it! 🙂

Lister left a will. On 23rd February 1693/94 Lister willed his entire estate to his wife Mary, and after Mary’s death to their only daughter Barbary. In the event of Barbary’s death without issue, the estate would pass (with some conditions attached) to ‘my brother Thomas Symondson and his heirs’. The will was signed in the presence of three men, each of whom signed or left his mark. These three men included Thomas Symondson. (As a potential beneficiary of the will, today this would render the will invalid, but it seems in 1693/4 this rule had not yet come into being.) As luck would have it, I already had a sample of my 8xG grandfather Thomas’s handwriting. In 1678, at the time of his son Lister’s baptism, Thomas was churchwarden and it was he who prepared the Bishop’s Transcript of all baptisms, marriages and burials in the parish for that year. I therefore have a whole page of his handwriting, together with two samples of him writing his own name – once to indicate the father (himself) of the baptised child Lister Symondson, and then to witness the truth and accuracy of the register. By comparing the handwriting on these two original records I can see that the Thomas Symondson who witnessed his brother’s will and the one known to be my 8xG grandfather is the same man, and by extension, my 9xG grandfather is Christopher.

*****

One final note: I wouldn’t want to you to think all my genealogical problems are solved. In these two examples – and many others – perseverance paid off. But I do have many more examples of brick walls that have so far proven insurmountable. Some of them will eventually be solved, I’m sure, but sometimes we do have to accept, finally, that the records no longer exist.