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Issue date: 28/08/2023
The Tree, click for bigger image.
Go direct to the Jamaican history
This is a history of two families:
The descendants of Richard Maitland (d.1778), originating in Britain
(with no demonstrated Scottish link, though one must exist), who moved to
Jamaica and then back to England, via China and married into the Parkes
family from the English Midlands. Antony
Maitland comes from this family.
And
The descendants of Henry Owen (1792-1845), originating in England who
moved to Canada (as Kirk-Owens) and reappeared in England married into the
Chadwick family of Ireland and Canada. Alice
Maitland comes from this family.
Over the years, I have been asked many times how I started on the
histories of our families. I suppose, like many genealogists, the interest
developed later in life. It all began in about 1990 with my looking at a
history of my father’s maternal family, written by his uncle, Bert Poole, a
work which was commonly known in the family as “Bert’s Begats”; along with
this was a handwritten tree of the Maitland family. I drew these out on an
early CAD programme, which accentuated the missing three quarters of our
families, so I set off looking for them. The first sources were my father,
who knew about his uncles and aunts, which linked to the handwritten tree; he
also, through the works (Josiah Parkes and Sons), had a good idea of the
Parkes family (my mother was always rather vague about her family). Alice’s
mother, Betty, knew quite a lot of hers and Rex’s family, but not in a very
organised way – her memories took quite a lot of unravelling! The big surprise
was the discovery that my GGG grandfather, Francis Maitland was a man of
colour from Jamaica. This discovery came about fortuitously: his marriage in
St Clement Danes, London, was in the Mormon’s database. I went to the Record
Office to look at the original, and they suggested looking at the burials,
and there he was: still no mention of Jamaica. His will made mention of
Manchester and St Elizabeth, which then meant nothing to me; however, his
death duty register described him as being of Jamaica. By good fortune, the
Mormons in London had all the Jamaica Parish Records on microfilm, and away I
went!
When I began this research, the world Wide Web was just starting (in
1991, people outside of CERN were invited to join this new web community),
nothing was available online. My early English work was carried out on census
records on microfilm in the basement of the Public Records Office in Chancery
Lane, before it moved to Kew. The post 1837 birth marriage & death
records were found from large index volumes, and parish records from
microfilms in local record offices. The major 1st reference for
pre 1837 births and marriages was the IGI database created by the Church of
the LDS, then available in microfiche form, by county. I used the ones at
their London centre in Exhibition Road.
I was an early user of pc’s, having had a lap top computer by 1989. I had
my first web domain name by mid 1990’s, and, over the years, my website has
yielded many interesting contacts. The internet of course now has an enormous
amount of data on it, but for deeper and accurate investigations,
particularly in Jamaica, one still has to refer back to original paper
records. These are, in the main, now gathered into sensibly organised record
offices. I have enormous admiration for the 19th & early 20th
century researchers who had to work from original records, scattered around
the countries. Much seemed to have been done from other usually privately,
published works. Many parish records have been indexed, the early ones,
especially in Jamaica, by the priests, who were probably not over worked! This
work was written from the start to be readable on the internet, so contains
some links which may appear a little strange in a printed version.
Jamaica has become the area I have spent most time on: my research has
extended to cover the lives and history of the early Jamaican planters and
their properties.
On the face of it, other than the fact I was born in Egypt, Alice’s and
my backgrounds appear to be very normal middle class English, with suitable
school, social and home backgrounds. Once one delves into the families, it
suddenly becomes much more complicated and exotic, with me even having slave
ancestors!
Of Alice, my wife’s family, I knew little other than the rather jumbled
remarks of her mother, born Betty Chadwick, (but who had a number of married
names having had 4 husbands!). Her Chadwick family, it later transpired had
been documented in a similar manner to our Pooles by one Edward Chadwick, a
copy of whose work I was able to photocopy in Canada. Other sources revealed
detail of her father Rex’s Kirk Owen family.
As it turned out, between Alice and I, we have vary varied and
interesting origins: of our parents, only my mother was of “standard” British
stock, even though we ourselves would be regarded as being so. The Maitlands,
of unknown Scottish origins have wandered the globe for about 300 years,
ranging between pre-Revolutionary America, the Caribbean, the Far East and,
in my case Egypt. The Kirk Owens and Chadwicks, Alice’s father and mother,
were Canadian born, of English and Irish origins. My mother’s Parkes family,
by contrast, have never been more than about 50 miles from Wolverhampton,
starting as journeymen and labourers, moving with 19th Century
industrialisation.
I was born in Cairo in 1945, but resident in Great Britain all my life.
My father’s family have been wanderers for many generations; our connection
with the Scottish Maitlands is unknown, but dates from no later than the
early 18th Century via Jamaica. My mother's family, in complete
contrast, are from the English Midlands, all originating within 50 miles of
Wolverhampton. My autobiography
is a part of the Maitland volume.
My wife Alice’s parents were from Canada though she was born in London in
1956. Her father's side emigrated before the 1st World War from the Liverpool
area and the English Midlands. Her mother's side emigrated from Ireland to
Ontario in the middle of the 19th Century. Alice’s
biography is a part of the Kirk Owen volume.
The work divides naturally into 4 volumes, two for my parents and 2 for
Alice’s parents. Within each volume are a number of parts, initially by
grandparents, but with a degree of latitude depending on the detail known
about each family. The four volumes are:
The Maitlands, whose earliest member was one Richard Maitland, a merchant
mariner. He first appears with his will in 1740, and for the next nearly 40
years sails the ocean blue, in later years between England and North America
where he died in 1778. He may have been related to the 18th
Century Maitland Merchants in London, but there is an indication of his being
Irish and therefore likely to have been of the Maitland’s of SW Scotland,
although there are DNA indications of an origin near Aberdeen. His
descendants passed through Jamaica for a couple of generations, an area which
I have researched extensively using original sources.
The Parkes’s, a family which as said before, all originated within about
50 miles of Wolverhampton. They were a typical example a Midlands industrial
family where artisan craftsmen expanded their activities, drawing in others
coming in from the country in search of work, either in the new manufactories
or into the mines being developed. There is some evidence of the families
moving as mines contracted and other areas opened up.
The Kirk Owens were late immigrants (early 20thC) to Canada, Rex’s father
and mother coming from respectively, Liverpool and the English Midlands. One
coincidence is that Rex’s mother Dolman was born in the outskirts of
Wolverhampton. Both the Kirk-Owens and Dolmans were, like the Parkes,
families whose fortunes improved in the industrial 19thC cities.
Lastly comes the Chadwick family. They were Irish, the first member
arriving in Canada in about 1840, with the Hendersons a little later. The
Chadwicks were probably English planters, perhaps from Lancashire, moving to
southern Ireland in the 1660’s. Later, in Ontario, Canada, a Chadwick married
a daughter of the Stewarts from Northern Ireland. These Stewarts had married
a daughter of the Pakenham family, a sister of whom became the Duchess of
Wellington. By another coincidence, her brother’s agent in Antrim was John
Armstrong, great grandfather of my father’s mother, the American Eleanor
Poole.
Thus, 2 families, closely connected in business in one generation,
rejoined on the doorstep of a house in Herefordshire in 1975. In the
intervening 170 years, the Stewart/Chadwick family had gone to Ontario,
British Columbia & London, while the other side had gone to Illinois,
Japan, China, Surrey and Wolverhampton.
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