Family History Puzzle

Fitting the Puzzle Pieces Together

Unlike some of my ancestral lines, the Barkers and Bacons came to the States later in our history. As a result, we have many unidentified cousins in the UK yet to be found. Little by little, however, we are making connections. This blog is created to share what we know in order to find those lost cousins. Our John and Rose would have wanted it this way.

As a teenager I attended Barker reunions in mostly held in Kaysville, Utah, because this is where John Edwin Barker and Rose Hannah Bacon established their home. My grandpa, John E. Barker, Jr., and his siblings gathered with their families to honor ancestors and heritage. With the last of the children of those siblings now dwindling to just a few cousins, it is time to share our memories to a wider group, the descendents of Charlotte Barker Chapman, Annie Alice Barker Weaver, Mahala Eliza Barker Hall, Lucy Ann Barker Curtwright, Luella Barker Robinson, George Frederick Barker, John Edwin Barker, Jr., and Ruth Winona Barker Williams.

For many years Belva Hall Francom and Viola Chapman McEwen were foremost in dedicating their time to researching family history. They did so without the benefit of computers, Internet, databases, blogs, e-mail and other digital methods of storage and communication. They did it by traveling to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints genealogical center in Salt Lake City, combing the catalog for books and films, and corresponding by postal mail with genealogists and church archivists in England to collect data. At the passing of Belva, Vickie Prows and I obtained the generous of permission of the Francoms to photocopy her records. By the time Viola died, the LDS Church was in the infancy states of Family Search and her work was put online by her son David. To these dear ladies we owe a debt of gratitude.

As I began my own original research in the 1970s, I spread before me the work of both ladies. There were wills, church and civil records along with family group sheets that did not entirely fit together. The family's last verified names were John Barker christened 13 August, 1732, in Bolsover, Derbyshire, England, and his wife Mary Bell who were married 26 May 1757.  Viola had compiled a general history of Barkers in the Derbyshire area. She also distributed a family group sheet of John Barker born about 1706 and his wife Anne Barker born about 1710 including their children John Barker (1732), Elizabeth Barker (1736), and Anne Barker (1744). Belva had painstakingly typed her searches including the transcripts of Bolsover wills taken from microfilmed copies of the originals for Elizabeth Barker, 11 October, 1849; John Barker, 12 October, 1812; Francis Barker, 22 April, 1790; Francis Barker, 23 May, 1766; John Barker, 12 April, 1810; Margaret Barker, 28 April, 1814. While some of the puzzle pieces fit, others did not.

I continued to do family history work over the decades. A lingering feeling that the wills fit into the family of John (1732) Barker kept bring me back to examine them only to be driven away each time in greater confusion. Having joined the Derbyshire Family History Society, I came in contact and began corresponding with Mike Spathaky in 1991 who had compiled a Bolsover surname database largely from Bolsover Court and other land records.This database is now found on the Genuki site. In one letter Mike stated, "Barker is clearly the most common surname in Bolsover in the seventeenth century...This is why wills, where they exist, provide so much better evidence of relationships across generations than parish registers, especially where there are several people of the same name around."

In frustration I dumped all my records on Mike in the hope that someone more familiar with Bolsover and its people could look at the data with a fresh eye. A short time later and with utter delight I opened up an envelope from England to find a neatly handwritten pedigree of my Barker line. It appeared that John (Mary Bell) Barker who we thought to be the son of John and Anne Barker was really the son of Francis and Mary Barker. The John Barker christened in 1732 found on Viola's group sheet was  All the pieces fit together but in a different order than originally thought. Until the time that the wills fit our pieces together, the family had produced family group sheets using only church records. Because Barker in great numbers lived in the Bolsover area over hundreds of years, only wills could pull together the correct ones. For this vision I am beholden to Mike. Now, through the wills we see that wills at Shittlewoodside  and Coppice in the farm at  Woodside Coppice which Viola had researched. When I visited Bolsover with my sister and brother-in-law, Amy and Brent, I was able to take a picture of the farmland previously owned and cultivated by our ancestors
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Looking towards Woodside c1990s

Undoubtedly the earlier John (abt 1706) and Anne Barker (1710) married in April 1727 with children John, Elizabeth and Ann, are indeed our people as well. Perhaps they are the descendents of Humphrey Barker and Hannah Cantrill. Mike's records show that Derbyshire was teeming with Barkers.Both John Barker lines are found on the Family Search web site. My brother, John, and I have in recent years been attempting to put together related Barker family group sheets mainly from other wills. We have been privileged to see that temple work has also been done for these side lines as we feel they are cousins of one degree or another.