Chicken Family Tales

In the News Local newspapers can be a source of long forgotten stories about ancestors who are not usually thought of as "famous". One such is this story of young Thomas Chicken. Thomas was born in 1879 in County Durham, the son of a coal miner. By the age of 12 he was working as an assistant to a newsagent, selling newspapers at the railway station. On 14th January 1892 the big news of the day was the death of the Duke of Clarence, second in line to the British throne. Newspaper sales were brisk. Young Thomas sold a paper to a Mr Wood, a farmer. As soon as he handed over the paper he dashed away down the platform to make another sale. A little later Mr Wood approached him and said that he'd given him a shilling and expected eleven pence ha'penny change. Thomas rooted in his pockets, examined the money he had there and said that he hadn't received any shillings. Mr Wood then went to Thomas' mother and eventually brought a policeman to the door, claiming "...

  New Year's Day Birthday New year, new day, new baby. My GG-Grandfather, Stephen John Chicken, was born on 1 Jan 1812 and baptised 3 weeks later. Within 3 months of his birth the French army was led by Napoleon into an invasion of Russia and before Stephen John's first birthday had been defeated. Tchaikovsky celebrated that event in his 1812 overture. Back home, on the day of his birth Bishop Barrington of Durham ordered troops to break up a miners' strike in Chester-le-Street, less than 10 miles south of Hebburn where Stephen John was born. His father, Thomas, was an engine man in the Colliery so knew of the hardships which had led to the strike. Did he hear of the troops being sent in the midst of celebrating the safe delivery of his second son? Did he perhaps know some of the men involved? This was the Regency period in England, with King George III in the grip of severe mental illness and his son George acting as Regent.  As a result of the war with France Britain ende...

Website Goes Live  There's now a website for all my Chicken research, whether or not I can directly relate it to my own ancestry at present. The Guild of One-Name Studies enables this for me and I'm very grateful because my own website creating skills are very tiny indeed.  It's a work in progress and I hope it's going to grow over the coming months into something that will enable other Chicken researchers to contribute information and to find material that helps their searches. The first tree up there is my own family.  My father's direct ancestors were coal miners and stayed in the County Durham Coalfield in North East England. Branches moved outwards from there, including some of the Featonbys (related through Anne Chicken b 1808) who joined the gold rush to Victoria, Australia; some of the Ritcheys (related through Mary Chicken b 1840) who went to Canada in search of a better life; David Chicken b 1864 who moved South to join the Metropolitan Police; William b...

 Thinking about some of the wonderful women in my family tree today. My mother, who left the family home in Ireland at the age of 14 to come to England to a job arranged by her Aunt. She'd never been outside County Roscommon and now left not just the county but the country. The Geordie accent must have been a huge change from the Irish one she was used to! She went to live in hospital accommodation with people she didn't know and didn't see her mother, sisters or brothers again for years. She took everything in her stride including WW2, marrying and having children, financial constraints, disability, illness and widowhood - nothing stopped her living the best life she could and being an amazing grandmother and great-grandmother who's still missed. My maternal grandmother who brought up 6 children in a 2 roomed cottage with no running water. My paternal grandmother who watched her husband and sons leave for the pit each morning never knowing whether an accident would mea...

 Gone Too Soon Doing a family tree, looking back in time at the history of a family, always makes me reflect on how lucky I am to have survived thus far and how immensely lucky I was to have my mother survive to her mid-nineties. So many of the people I find have died young, some of them too young to have left an impression anywhere other than in their parents' hearts. Disease, poor housing, air pollution caused by the industry in which their fathers worked, all played their part in shortening young lives and some families suffered many losses. Life was incredibly hard compared to what I've experienced. I've also been surprised at the number of distant relatives who were involved in the armed forces, when growing up I had no idea that was the case. The relatives I knew about were miners, a reserved occupation, so they couldn't join up even when they wanted to. Some survived their service and went on to  have a family life again. But at least one didn't. Cedric Willi...

  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - A Challenge Week 8: I can Identify For many years my research into my father's family line stopped at the marriage of Thomas Chicken to Elizabeth Carter by banns on 5th Sept 1807 in the parish of Jarrow with Heworth. They were the parents of 4 children over the next few years, including my GG Grandfather, John. But who was Thomas? There was no clue in the marriage record that I could find, but it was only the Bishop's Transcript, not the original parish register. However, in the baptismal entries for their children Thomas was described as "of Tanfield". In my ignorance I thought that was where he was living at the time so didn't pay too much attention to it. A distant cousin whom I never managed to meet sent me some information that he had about a Thomas Chicken, baptised in Nov 1782 in Ryton, son of George Chicken. He believed that this was our ancestor. Meantime I found a baptism of Thomas and John, twin sons of John Chicken of Fryer...