Fergus O’Connor Lefever was born about 1842 in Bishopsgate, London the 5th of the 7 children of Frederick Lefever and Jane Chipman. He married Sarah Ann Bailey born about 1840 in Spitalfields, London. According to a tree on Ancestry I am distantly related to Fergus, but that is research for another day. Fergus and Sarah married on 26th August 1860 at St Matthias Church in Bethnal Green. Between 1861 and 1888 when Sarah was 48 years old they had a total of 17 children. Unfortunately, as was fairly common at this time, 8 of the children died before the age of 3 and all except one dies before their second birthdays. I have found that six of their children survived until adulthood and married. The remaining 3 children I have yet to find any additional records for other than birth or baptism records and so I suspect that they also may have died in childhood. […]

After some more research I have found out Charlotte Rigby and Charlotte Haydon are related. I created the families in a new project in Family Historian and using census records I built the John Rigby and Sarah Morter families. Sarah Rigby, born in 1838, was the third of 12 children born to John and Sarah between 1835 and 1862. I have not shown all of the 12 children in the above image to keep the tree simple. A larger version of the tree can be seen by clicking on the image, it will open in a new window. In May of 1860 Sarah married James Haydon and I have traced three of their children the youngest of which was Charlotte born in 1876. In 1894 Charlotte married James Price (1861-1895) and they had two children. In 1910 Charlotte then married Charles Lefever. I cannot find a church record for this marriage but have found it […]

In my research today I came across an interesting family as shown above. Charles Abraham Lefever is, unusually for this study, a distant ancestor of mine as we share his grandfather Charles Lefever as a common ancestor so that makes us 1st cousins 3 times removed. On 25th December 1874 Charles married Charlotte Rigby in Hackney, they both lied when getting married as they are shown as over 21 years of age on marriage but Charles was 19 years old and Charlotte was 17 years old. They then went on to have 5 or 6 children, there is a 6th child in one record but I suspect this is just a common usage name rather than her registered name. I have, as yet, been unable to confirm a date of death for Charlotte as there are several who died between 1884 and 1910. In 1910 (quarter 2) Charles married Charlotte Haydon, he was then 55 […]

I have just added in excess of 250 new records to the GB recordset. These new records are mainly from the 19th century. As a result of these new records being available I have been able to link a lot of single individuals into families and also to de-duplicate a number of records. Should you find any errors please let me know.

In my research today I came across an Emmaretta Lefevre born in Rotherhithe, London in 1864. She is the eldest of four children of John Henry Lefevre and Emma Wilsdon. It is an unusual first name that I have not come across before but doing a search on FreeBMD turned up 71 girls of that first name between 1837 and 1905 but none post 1905. Another thing of interest about Emmaretta is that on 27th December 1906 she married Frank Lefevre Coard. Frank was born in Hackney in 1863 the son of John Coard and Ellen Lefevre. Frank must have taken his middle name from his mothers’ surname. I now need to see if I can find any relationship between John Henry Lefevre and Ellen Lefevre.

On FindMyPast I found a new transcriptions recordset ‘Results for Essex Marriages And Banns 1537-1935’ and in this set of transcriptions I found an entry for Isaac Lefever. I searched on FreeBMD, Ancestry and FreeReg looking for other copies of this marriage without success. Homosexuality, let alone a homosexual marriage in a church in 1902, was a criminal offence so I knew that there was something wrong with this transcription. More searching after discussion with a friend resulted in me finding this parish register entry on Ancestry As can be seen the transcription on FindMyPast could be considered a work of fiction. Isaac is Isabel Lefever is Lefevre Haronton is Hawnton Date of the marriage is 30th March 1902 not 30th April 1902 The church is St Mary of Eton in Hackney Wick not St Gabriel in Canning Town Unfortunately, there is no image to go with the transcription on FindMyPast. There is an image […]

I have just updated the Channel Islands record set with 5 new entries from the early 1900’s. I have also updated the Great Britain record set with an additional 30 records mainly from Liverpool in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

I have done a data update for the Lefever UK records dataset. I have added in excess of 120 new records. A large number of these are from the Dutch Reform Church in Austin Friars, London from the 1700’s. There are now over 4200 individuals in the dataset, there are still some duplicates that I need to sort out. There are another around 120 individuals that I have data on but I believe that they may still be living and as a result their data is not shown.

Whilst doing the research on the Kent marriage records I came across this unusual parish register entry. I presume this was a double marriage and the couples acted as witnesses for the others marriage and women then signed with their new married surnames.

I know that this site has been a bit quiet of late I have been very involved in things other than my surname study. However, I am now back to my research and have updated the GB dataset to include more records mainly from Kent in the 18th and 19th century.