Annie Jones Discovered in New Ancestry Manchester Records

Thanks to Chris Paton's British GENES blog earlier today I have already found my OH's 2x great grandmother's baptism in the latest release of Manchester records on Ancestry.  So thank you Chris!  I'm still having to log on via Firefox to comment on posts, but I have attempted to thank him on his blog.

This family has always been one of my more troublesome lines, the surname being Jones and Annie's place of birth varying between Pendlebury, Salford and Manchester depending on which census return you read.

Baptism of Annie Jones, 15 March 1871 at St Mary's church, Eccles (from Ancestry)

The address on this baptism record, Newtown, Worsley, tallies beautifully with the 1871 census return for the family.

1871 census for Engin Brow, Newtown, Worsley, Lan - edited (from Ancestry)

Annie is shown here as age 2m, that is two months old, and born in Pendlebury, Lancashire.  Her parents are Edward Jones aged 23, a coal miner from Staffordshire, and Martha, listed on the census as a Cotton Weaver, aged 18 born in Salford.  The family are living with Martha's mother Mary Bailey, a 63 year old widow, also from Salford.

Edward and Martha married in August 1870, so even conservative counting on fingers shows that Annie was on the way before the wedding.

The marriage on 1st August 1870 of Edward Jones and Martha Bailey at St James, Pendlebury
(certificate from personal collection)

Despite the family's address in 1871 being Worsley Civil Parish I had a fair amount of trouble finding Newtown on a map as it turns out to be nearer Pendlebury than the actual village of Worsley which is about 4 miles away to the west.



Map snip (1893) showing relation of Newtown to Pendlebury (from Old Maps)

Engine Brow is in the centre of the map snip above, just off the main road, near the Bleach Works. 

The family appear to be fairly mobile. Newtown is about 2 miles north of Pendlebury and Eccles is about 3 miles from Pendlebury and to the south. Of course they may have chosen to have Annie baptised at Eccles to disguise the fact that she had arrived so soon after the marriage!