Crest: Redshaws Family Butchers, Repton.
The Redshaw family has been a thorn in my side for many years, ever since I acquired a GEDCOM file for the family from various parts of Leeds. It soon became apparent that there were many inconsistencies in the data.
I have loads of paperwork that I have kept over the years and now that I am getting on a bit my wife has asked that I get some of it tidied up, by which she means binned!
I have been nibbling away at the Redshaws on and off for a while, but reading through old emails and research notes has set me off once again.
I recently went through my database in an effort to clean it up somewhat and I removed, all the families that were not directly related to the Williams side. Many Redshaws were included in this tidy up. Luckily, I had the foresight to save the data to a separate file.
After more research, I believe that I have found a missing connection and have now re-installed all the Redshaws that I removed!
I was never happy with the sudden appearance of “Smith” as a middle name and I believe that many researchers have made an error, or just copied data from other trees without doing their own research, something that happens all too often.
It all boils down to the fact that there were two John Redshaws born in 1795. The one everyone knows about was the son of John Redshaw and Hannah Davison. I have seen the Smith middle name given to him in many instances and I am convinced that this is incorrect.
The true John Smith Redshaw allegedly appears to be the illegitimate son of Martha Redshaw (b 1777). She was the daughter of Thomas Redshaw and Martha Booth, and sister to the John Redshaw who married Hannah Davison. I can only assume that the unnamed father was a Smith – either by name or occupation!
To my knowledge, the Smith middle name only occurs in Martha’s descendants, and there are lots of them. Quite why it was carried down from generation to generation beats me unless it was Martha’s wish that the world knew something about who fathered her son.
The result of all this is that I have been moving individuals from one family unit to another and am still at it. It doesn’t help when you search for the marriage of one of John Smith Redshaw’s sons, Henry Smith Redshaw, and find he was transcribed as “Retcher”. A somewhat unusual “write what you hear” episode.
Anyway, I’m still on the case and I have updated the websites with all my “new” information. I have also added a Redshaw Family Tree to the new website.
If anyone reading this has any further information on the Redshaw family, please get in touch.
By the way, John Smith Redshaw was my sister-in-law’s 1st cousin 5 times removed!
