Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

I'm trying to find the extended family of Phoebe Stirrup b. 25 Oct 1807 at Warrington, Lancashire. Her parents were Thomas Stirrup & Mary Cloweth who married 2 May 1799 at Runcorn, Cheshire, England.

There is a Thomas Stirrup born to William & Phoebe Stirrup at Burtonwood in 1776. Perhaps he was the Thomas who married Mary Cloweth and William & Phoebe are my Phoebe's grandparents.

These are new finds back into her family. The names of Siblings, Aunts and Uncles are required to match with her own childrens names after she was transported to Australia under the alias of Elizabeth Harrison. We already know we have the correct Phoebe because she gave her mothers maiden name (Cloweth) as a middle name to her 3rd child. It would be nice to set everything in concrete by finding additional family names and especially names that match.
Three children
1) Charles Harrison .....
2) Harriet C ........
3) Henry Richard Cloweth ....

Regards, Rob

Hi and welcome to the forum. I hope you connect with some of the other Stirrup researchers on the forum, meantime I'll check my CD when I get home to see if there are any details that might be useful.

Hello and welcome aboard.
I expect you have this info, just thought I'd list it anyway.
Anc## have a record in their Criminal Registers Oct 1824 date of trial Lancashire for Phoebe Stirrup, under her name it also says Jane Webster.
Sorry cannot access with my subs
Good luck
Tina

For the peeps
Have a look at this for more info

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.ph ... msg2673108

Hi Tina and thanks for the reply

I've been searching for the real identity of convict Elizabeth Harrison for just on 2 years now. In Australia she was apparently always known as Phoebe and her 1st child’s baptism it is recorded as Phoebe Stirrup alias Elizabeth Harrison.

Her 3rd child to second Husband was named Henry Richard Cloweth McAlpin and on a land purchase contract she claimed her maiden name was Cloweth.

Trying to establish her birthdate indicated 1806 so since I had no luck finding a Phoebe Cloweth born anywhere near that date I searched for Stirrup and settled that the 1806 Burtonwood birth was my best bet and proceeded to research siblings, aunts, uncles & grandparents looking for people she may have named her own children after. Nothing has ever lined up.

Recently I discovered a new Phoebe Stirrup born 1807 at Warrington and her parents marriage revealed her mothers maiden name as Cloweth. This solves the mystery of the 3rd child’s middle name and convinces that we now have the correct Phoebe Stirrup

I know about the Elizabeth Harrison trials that lead to her transportation but as yet have had no luck in determining which Phoebe Stirrup was involved in the 1824 trial. I will need to research it looking for a place of birth or residence to determine (with a bit of luck) which one she was.

In the mean time I'm trying to establish the siblings and grandparents of this 1807 Warrington born Phoebe Stirrup.

If this sounds confusing to you then imagine trying to trace her through the years where she has used an alias, mothers maiden name and 3 married names where one of which was spelt 4 different ways.

Hers was a fascinating life full of intrigue and mystery.

(Your link was to my parallel posting on Roots Chat)

Rob

Sorry to post a negative response, but there is a great emptyness on my CD for anything resembling a Phoebe Stirrup or the name Cloweth.

Hi Rob
Thank you for details. What a super sleuth you are and what a fantastic story about Phoebe.
It looks like 1807 birth is correct.
Let's hope our crew can help.
All the best

Tina

ps I was amazed how many Phoebe Stirrup's born in the area. Popular family name.

Hi All
Lancs OPC have Phebe baptised at St Elphin's.
I cannot find any other kiddies with Thos & Mary as parents in the time frame or district.

No matches in there for surname Cloweth.

familysearch labs.site has a marriage for Thomas to Mary at All Saints Runcorn 1799.
Cloweth perhaps a Cheshire surname?

Tina

Added
There's a John Cloweth 20 bn Lancs piecer in Pilgrim St Manchester 1841.

"If" Thos bapt to Wm & Phobe in Burtonwood is correct and seems a good possibility due to mother's first name, he has bros Peter 1783 & Henry 1778.
I can find Henry in Warrington in 1841 & in Windle St H in 1851(bn Burtonwood)
1851 has a Margaret servant in St H bn Burtonwood 1804.
(forget Margt she's the dghtr of John & Martha also spelt STERUP)

Sorry Rob not of much help.

Tina

Mary A. I am so used to drawing blanks when researching this line that I'm not surprised at all by your CD containing nothing.

One good thing about the net is that new information is continually available so I have learnt to have patience and to look again in 6 mths.

Tina. It seems that the family moves about quite a bit as I have found in Lymm Parish Cheshire 2 possible brothers:
John born. 27 Mar 1800 & dated. 20 Apr 1800
Peter born. 13 May 1805 & dated. 9 Jun 1805

Strangely this free Cheshire parish transcription website failed to reveal their parents Runcorn wedding.

The above dates are confusing to me. Should I presume that where it says "dated" that this means the date when they were baptised and the entry was recorded in the baptism registry??

Now to your finds Tina
(Please accept that I'm in Australia and abbreviations are of unknown places to me). Your abbreviation "St H" what does it mean?

Where did you find your Wm & Peter and the birth dates. Remember that the Thomas & Mary marriage took place in Runcorn 1799 so you must be referring to siblings to Thomas

As for Margaret ... I throw nothing away especially when it comes to different spellings. I have a draft tree where I enter all of them until I can either prove or disprove them ..... in fact I should call it a grapevine as it bears so much fruit .... I often go back to browse it to see if anything matches newer information or to find rotten fruit that I can discard with confidence.

Thanks for your continued input, Rob

My cheshire info comes from (I don't think it is complete yet)
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~cprdb/

Tina wrote:Hi Rob
Thank you for details. What a super sleuth you are and what a fantastic story about Phoebe.

Tina

I've been lucky enough to stand on the shoulders of many other fine researchers before me. In fact the 1807 Phoebe find was the work of one of them which I struggled to confirm was indeed correct (I never trust Family Search or Ancestory records and only use them as indicators)

Not such a super sleuth now eh .... lolol ... But I like to be thorough.

Rob

I've changed your link, if you use the same one I've put it removes the bar across the top you don't need.

Guess where Tina is ?

St H means St Helens, not too far away from the area you are looking. You can get an overall view of things if you use www.maps.google.co.uk.

The Lancs OPC site Tina mentioned is the Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Site

and the Pilot Search she mentions is on the http://www.familysearch.org site under "Search Records" then "Record Search Pilot". You may have already come across this.

Well that is interesting .... I have used Family Search so many times and have never noticed "Record Search Pilot" before. I'll have to study up on it to discover just what it is.

I found that Lancashire Online Parish Clerk Site just prior to making this discussion posting. It is extremely well done and easy to manipulate for the newbie.

As for Tina being in Perth WA you have to realise that it may as well be another country over there as it is 4000km away. I think she may be newly arrived as there are a lot of British that have settled over there. Just how far would you get across Europe if you were to travel 4000km (you'd be in Turkey). Actually Perth is a very nice spot to be and their economy is doing fine too.

Actually I've gotten very used to using Google Earth to look around at just where places are. In Australia it is good because their "Street View" has been completed in most places so you can have a fair look around at places.

Now to our search .... if these people are Phoebe's siblings and uncles & parents it appears that the family moved from Runcorn in 1799 to Lymm 1800 through to 1805 and Warrington in 1807. Not that great a distance so I believe the whole extended family will be around a similar distance from Warrington as to me it appears to be the principal town in the area.

All I have to do is find them and somehow connect the dots to join them along family lines.

As a side line there was a convict in Australia called Henry Cloweth (or a name so close to it) that lived close enough to our Phoebe to have known each other. One day I'll have to search to see if they were cousins.

Regards, Rob

Hi Rob
Thanks for great replies
My apols...for my shorthand.........and not listing the exact sites.
I honestly thought you would have already used them
Many thanks Mary yet again
Yes, I noticed the marriage wasn't in Ches transcripts.
In LDS I found Peter & Henry poss sibs of Thos going through the batch number. I can explain in detail if needed.
Very interesting about another convict near to Phoebe.
Not exactly new to the Wild West Rob, almost 40yrs.
10 pound Poms..........
I'm wondering if Ed.Off would know if the marriage in Runcorn could be looked up?? I don't think it will list fathers but the witnesses could be useful.
Tina

Hi Rob. I am also researching Stirrups in Liverpool. You added a query on the end of mine the other day. They are a devil to find arent they? Although my William died in Liverpool in 1849 age 36 according to his death cert I've no idea where he was born-or who his parent were. I suspect it might have been round the Warrington area as they all seem to originate from there. I've not come across a Phoebe. I wish I had I'd love to find somebody else researching the same family!!

The Cheshire site mentioned above does not show the marriage in Runcorn for the simple reason they haven't done any transcriptions of Runcorn yet.

It is not the easiest site to use but you can find a list of churches included. The expression dated refers to the date of baptism the other date being that of birth.

It could be that it is all one family that moved about. I wonder if the actual records give an occupation for the father? That is sometimes useful for following a family around.

The ways to see the Runcorn Parish register would be Runcorn library (I think), Cheshire Record Office, possibly Warrington Record Office (I don't know if they have that register on film). It might be worth an email to Runcorn library to see if they would have a quick look for you as you have the date. A copy of the film could be ordered to your local LDS centre. The other alternative would be to ask for a look up on someone may be going somewhere near you never know!!!

Is there an occupation for the father anywhere? If so what is it? Then I'll see if I can think of a way of finding whether they did move around these 3 places.

Hope this helps

Hilary
Ed Officer

Hi Linda

Everybody (Stirrups) seems to come from the Lancashire & Cheshire area so I was about to try to create a Stirrup family tree of 1700 - 1830 to try to link everybody together.

Census information doesn't go back to that era which leaves me no option but to do it all from parish records

Luckily the Lancashire parish records are apparently all available freely on the net and Cheshires records are in the process of being completed so it will basically be a task of logging down all the stirrups and sorting out the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle even though many pieces will be missing and they may be very big pieces indeed.

Yes I would LOVE to have another researcher involved in this. I'll send you a PM with my direct addy


Hello Hilary
Many thanks for confirming those items.

Apparently Phebe's father Thomas was a labourer which was probably the reason for their continued relocations. I imagine he worked on building sites so wherever his friends found a new work site he would follow.

I am working on a timeline of births of possible siblings to try to make sence of it:

2 May 1799 Parents Thomas Stirrup married Mary Cloweth in All Saints, Runcorn, Cheshire.

27 Mar 1800 Birth of John Baptised 20 Apr 1800, St Mary the Virgin, Lymm, Cheshire.

6 Nov 1802 Baptism of Mary at St Mary the Virgin, Leigh, Lancashire.

13 May 1805 Birth of Peter Baptised 9 Jun 1805, St Mary the Virgin, Lymm, Cheshire.

25 Oct 1807 Baptism of Phebe at St Elphin, Warrington, Lancashire.


Please remember that these are only "possible" siblings to Phoebe

Oh ... does anybody have any ideas on how to trace her mothers family... "Mary Cloweth" It appears to be a very rare name and possibly a misspelling. (how I miss not being able to search Runcorn where she was married)

Regards, Rob

Please be aware that not all Lancashire Parish Registers are available on the web. There are very many that are not. You may wish to get a film ordered at your LDS centre. Also remember that not all transcriptions actually transcribe everything that is actually in the register

Is your man an agricultural labourer/farm labourer or just labourer?

Not sure if the laws regarding place of settlement were still in use at this time. It might be something you wish to look into.


Hilary
Ed Officer

From a find in the Lancs Transcripts he is listed as "labourer". Yes I admit that this could mean anything but I'd imagine that as a farm labourer the work would be very seasonal and little need to travel around that far whereas I'd imagined construction work would have him moving from site to site. I'll accept being corrected on this assumption.

There is another Phoebe Stirrup b.1806 in Burtonwood. Here is her family so we don't get confused:

Husband: William Stirrup. Birth: About 1769 Of, Burtonwood, Lancashire,
Wife: Alice Stirrup. Birth: About 1773 Of, Burtonwood, Lancashire,

Children
1. Mary Stirrup. Christening: 13 DEC 1795 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
2. William Stirrup. Christening 1 OCT 1797 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
3. Peter Stirrup. Christening 5 JAN 1800 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
4. James Stirrup. Christening: 05 JAN 1800 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
5. Pheobe Stirrup. Christening: 29 JUN 1806 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
6. Ellen Stirrup. Christening 1 MAY 1808 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
7. Margaret Stirrup. Christening: 2 JUL 1809 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
8. Thomas Stirrup. Christening: 15 SEP 1811 Burtonwood, Lancashire,
9. Martha Stirrup. Christening: 28 NOV 1813 Burtonwood, Lancashire,

My knowledge on her mother "Mary Cloweth" is minimal. The Cloweth name is an unusual one and in the early part of last century was restricted to a small area in south Lancashire, Astley and Leigh (C.W.Bardsley: "Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames").

Regards, Rob

I have a copy of the Lancashire Parish Register Society volume 155 The registers of Leigh 1701 - 1753. As this covers the area you mention for Cloweth I had a look. There is no Cloweth but it groups together the surnames Cleworth Cleworh Cluorth Cluworth which may help with the search for ancestry of the name Cloweth which I guess is an altered version of Cleworth. At a time when people couldn't read or write and had very local accents you can imagine how it got altered.

Searching on www.lan-opc.org.uk with Cleworth gives many hits.


Hilary
Ed Officer