The ITV show has brought back memories for me of Cilla Black researching her Welsh ancestry on the BBC Wales programme "Coming Home" sadly it's no longer available on You Tube. Her Irish ancestry is more complicated and you have to go back to her great grandfathers to find Irish-born ancestors. One of her ancestors, her great grandfather John Pim, a marine fireman, was from County Wexford. He married Ann Eliza Barnes whose father was also Irish-born at Our Lady's in 1888. On the 1891 Census John Pim was working as a fireman on SS Gulf of Corcovado on the River Clyde in Scotland. John and Ann's daughter Ellen Pim married Joseph Henry Blythen who was from Wales.
Cilla's father's birth may have been a late registration. John Patrick White was born on 31 Oct 1904 but there is no matching birth index in this quarter. There is one however for Q1 1905. His death index gives a birth date of 15 Dec 1904 which suggests the family gave the registrar the wrong date of birth to avoid a fine for late registration and this wrong date of birth was taken as fact. The baptism record below from St Sylvester's not only gives the correct date of birth there's also a note that has been made by the priest about John Patrick White's marriage to Priscilla Blythen in 1936 at Our Lady's. So we know for sure that this baptism is for Cilla's father.
Here is a family tree mostly supported by records I found on Ancestry and information that appeared in the "Coming Home" TV programme:-
Blue
Last edited by Blue70 on 24 Aug 2015 15:50, edited 4 times in total.
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Names - Lunt, Hall, Kent, Ayre, Forshaw, Parle, Lawrenson, Longford, Ennis, Bayley, Russell, Longworth, Baile
Any census info in this post is Crown Copyright, from National Archives
