I have updated both of the Stedman trees today. The North American tree is a minor update with mostly a number of corrections. However, the UK tree has many significant updates.
This update will have updates to :
Bristol, England area Stedmans: This connects to the Herefordshire Stedmans that went to Wales to mine coal. There are references to the mine tragedy that took many lives. It also connects to an Edward Colston Deverell from Bristol. This name has special meaning in June 2020 as a statue of Bristol slaver Edward Colston in Bristol was torn down and dumped into the sea as part of the Black Lives Matter protests there.
Cranley/Cranleigh (Surrey) families (incomplete, work in progress). Cranleigh is a border area between Surrey and Sussex. When I was starting my work on UK Stedmans, I had a lot of trouble with these families. Fortunately, with the new sources of BMD records, FindMyPast and Ancestry parish records, and transcriptions from the Sussex Family History Society, I have started to make headway in sorting these families out. I got distracted by other projects but I will return to these families.
Ancestry of Rugby player/Coach Graham Steadman (Doncaster Steadmans). A side question about Graham Steadman prompted what I thought would be a simple (HA!) review of his ancestry. I had a stumble with his grandfather Charles Graham Steadman that I have written about previously. With that sorted out, I was able to track them back to the border area between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. This is obviously a much larger family and some focused work on the Nottinghamshire families is in order. Please recall that some experts believe that Nottinghamshire may be one of the early origins for Stedmans.
Dewsbury/Mirfield/Ravensthorpe Steadmans. This came from an inquiry by a member of the Stedman Facebook Group about his family that came from area around Mirfield, Yorkshire. I had had a partial family developed that looked like it might have been part of Scot or North Western English family. After considerable work, I have concluded that the “patriarch” of this family – George Steedman/Steadman (c.1806-1840) was mostly like the George Steedman baptized in Finningley, Yorkshire, a likely a close relative of the Nottinghamshire Steadmans of Graham Steadman. Another reason to do a project on the Notts Steds.
Another gentleman presented me with a probable Barton-Steadman lineage. Probable in that we do not know at this time which Robert Steedman was named as the father of the bastard child Robina Steedman in her baptism record.
And another previously undeveloped (by me!) Barton-Steadman branch descended from John Cunliffe and Margaret Steedman. I knew about their marriage, but I knew little of their descendants. I have now begun to fill in an interesting story that starts in Scotland; goes to Leipzig, Germany, then back to Scotland then on to England, India, South Africa, Canada, and California and Nebraska.
Another aspect of this update is that the links to FamilySearch are now working.
I hope that you enjoy this update.