maddergenealogist

After my last post, I realised that I really should make an effort to post more regularly – but how to force myself to do it?

Last year, on Twitter, I kept noticing a hashtag #52ancestors – this was a challenge to genealogists to write about 52 of their ancestors in 52 weeks.
This has now finished, but they are starting again see here.

I will take up this challenge!

I will be blogging on Madders, not all my own, plus some of my other ancestors.
Optional themes are being given for each week’s ancestor – Week One is Fresh Start.

My first Ancestor has to be William Madder. The person who first got me interested in family history, over 40 years ago now.

William Charles Madder was born in Brooke in Norfolk and baptised there on 18th September 1815.
He died in Ipswich on Christmas Eve 1890.

A simple person to research, you might think. Most of his adult life spent in the period of Civil Registration and regular Censuses.

You would be wrong.

He never used the forename Charles, but was known as William, George or Benjamin. Apart from Madder, he also went by the surname Smith.

He had ten children and he moved from place to place, leaving descendants of various names scattered across Eastern England (and Canada).

His life can be tracked by the list of sources I have used to research him:

You can read about William’s time in the Bury St Edmunds Beer House in my previous post about using on-line newspapers.

Next weeks theme is “King” and the post will be about one of my non-Madder ancestors.