RACHEL WATTS IS FOUND

Rachel Watts married Samuel Chittock or Chiddock in 1820 at St. Helen's church in Norwich. She was a starcher. She had lots of children. She died in 1845 from asthma. She was buried in the Chittocks favourite burial spot - St John Timberhill. That's all we really knew about her.

I spent many a fruitless hour pouring over Norwich registers trying in vain to find her 1802 or 1803 baptism. Norwich wasn't lite with Watts. Along with her husband and another Norwich ancester, Thomas Paston, she was one of those elusive baptisms. Most frustrating...

There were one or two interesting connections. At St John Timberhill, there was a John Watts Bacon who married Maria Chittock, daughter of the baker James Chittock who lived in the neighbouring parish St Michael At Thorn, (one of those Blitz hit churches where the registers went up in smoke, and where the Transcripts were sparse and the only one which did not have a safety copy struck when the war broke out...)

I have long been a fan of witnesses. Those lovely people who put their signatures or marks on the marriage register entry, or on the bottom of wills. They have time and time again helped me solve many a family mystery - even when I can't find a baptism entry I can place my ancester with the correct family, or confirm a find. So I embarked on a search of every Norwich Watts marriage in the hope of finding Rachel Watts or Rachel Chittock as a witness and go from there. I did a lot - as much as my patience, not infinite, could manage. No joy.

Back at the turn of the century, I spotted a Rachel Watts baptism, Swanton Abbott in the IGI. Their coverage of Norfolk is quite good. But where this one was baptised in 1801, there was found a Rachel Watts marriage in the 1830s in nearby Tunstead so I not unreasonably dismissed it. What I didn't know then was that just because the IGI has an entry or two for a parish does not mean they have transcribed the whole lot. Postwick, Loddon and Dickleburgh spring to mind. They had stopped at the end of 1812 in this particular parish. They hadn't touched the next volume for Tunstead - 1813 onwards, you know, the ones with the nice grids. Had I known that and looked I would have seen a second Rachel Watts, baptised in 1813. She was the one who got married to James Garrod in the 1832. Her death confirms the maths, as it were. Rachel Watts of 1801 Swanton Abbott was still up for grabs. As it were.

So the other day, I attacked, as it were the Watts again especially when I found a George Bacon getting married to a widow and one of the witnesses was a Margaret Watts. This was in Tunstead, near Swanton Abbott. What is so special about Margaret Watts? Well, Rachel Chittocks' eldest daughter is called Rachel Margaret. I always thought I wouldn't be surprised if her mother was called Margaret judging by the unimaginatve way our ancestors named their children. I thought this was a good lead, if nothing else.

I did a lot of grubbing about on the internet using Free Reg which I only recently discovered, the IGI, Norfolk Transcriptions and so forth, and investigated the Tunstead / Swanton Abbott Watts and slowly became convinced that this was it... I became 99% sure, in fact. I've had elegant theories stamped on and chewed up in the past and welcome it, sort of. I traced the family that this Rachel was born into. They moved about and settled in Coltishall, which, funnily enough, one of my brothers has done to the disgust of his eldest son!

As I was chasing up the marriages of various sisters, I nearly spat out my tea when I saw this:

21. 08. 1836. William Fox marries Jemima Watts. Witnessed by William Hewitt and Rachel Chittoch...

At least, that's how FreeReg interpreted Chittock, or perhaps the clerk of the parish back in 1836. It's moments like these that makes all this family tree stuff worth it. No wonder it never showed up when I did a Chittock search on Free Reg. Most of the names they've got I've already found during a big Chittock push a few years back.

In a few days, I'll put up the bare facts of William Watts and Mary Trowse, her parents. This part of Norfolk is simply thick with Watts, and there does require a good thwack at the primary sources to fill in the gaps but we could push them back well into the seventeenth century.

That makes a change, doesn't it?

But here's a curious thing... The widow of Robert Chittock in Norwich who I once thought might have been Samuel's father, and who is certainly the bkaer James' brother, married in 1802 to a William Norton. One of the witnesses was a Trowse. Eighteen years before Samuel's marriage but interesting all the same, as is the fact that several Bacons marry into James' family, and a future Bacon wedding was witnessed by Samuel's child Charles George and his wife. That particular Bacon was a baker. James does have a son called Samuel, born 1810.

I can't help feeling the net is closing in on our Samuel. Perhaps he's been there all the time.