CLOSE one-name study

Image: Betty Wills / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0) On the St David's Day weekend I had to choose a Wales-focused topic for this blog post!  The following item is based on an article I wrote in 2015 for the Glamorgan Family History Society journal.   In the course of my CLOSE one-name study I have been researching a family which migrated to the Cardiff area from Gloucestershire in the 1840s, no doubt attracted by the availability of work associated with the coal industry.    Gloucestershire origins The family which moved to the Cardiff area from Gloucestershire in the mid-1840s consisted of William CLOSE, b 19 Feb 1819 in Stoke Gifford, his wife Sarah THOMAS, b 1815, and their two sons Edwin, b Marsh Common 1843, and Jesse, b Marsh Common 1844.   Sadly Sarah died of typhus fever in 1845 at the age of 30, and in 1849 William married again, to Caroline REED, producing two more children: Kish, b Cardiff 1850, and Louisa Mary, b 1854 in Cardiff.

On February 14 th , the obvious people to feature from my CLOSE one-name study today are three members of one family named Valentine CLOSE.   Valentine CLOSE (1747-1822) At the head of the family is Valentine CLOSE (the family possibly originally used the German surname CLOSS) who was born in 1747 in Neukirchen, Hessen, according to submitted records in Familysearch.org – yet to be verified from original sources – although his March 1822 obituary gives an age of 76, indicating a birth year of about 1745. Neukirchen    - photo by Judith Kieling – google.com/maps Thanks to a lengthy obituary in the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, Volume 30, details of his colourful life have been preserved for posterity.   Valentine was born of Christian parents belonging to the Lutheran church.   At the age of about seventeen, in order to escape military service, he left home, as the Evangelical Magazine reports, “with, at most, but the partial consent of his parents” with

              I’m sure I’m not the only family history researcher who finds it difficult to keep focused on one thing at a time. As a “one-namer” I often resolve at the start of a session to note all the occurrences of the CLOSE surname or variants in a particular record set, but more often than not, I find that something of interest prompts me to wander away from the intended pathway.   Here’s just one example of today’s wanderings whilst searching for a suitable subject for my next blog. Checking anniversaries My first decision was to check my CLOSE website   for special anniversaries (e.g. 100, 150, 200 years) falling on or near today’s date.   Looking through that list, no names jumped out at me as individuals with an interesting back-story that I could write about.   Basic births, marriages and deaths are unlikely to engage a reader’s attention. Leaping back from 1870 to 1861 My next thought was to look through my collection of newspaper reports about CLOSEs for an

Since recent news has been dominated by the departure of the UK from the European Union on 31 st January 2020, my thoughts this week turn to some CLOSEs (and variants) in my one-name study born in continental Europe who left their homeland and appear in England & Wales census records.   Census data The following table shows the number of people in each census 1851 – 1911 giving a birthplace in continental Europe.   1841 is not included, since county of birth was not named, although of the 8 people named CLOSE (or variants KLOS, KLOESS, KLOSZ, CLOS, CLOOS …) whose birthplace was ‘F’, six have been identified as European-born from later census entries. So where exactly were these people born? The following graphic gives an overview of their birthplaces as indicated in the 1851 to 1911 census records.   Some of the foreign-born CLOSEs were British subjects from families of merchants or diplomatic staff.   The graphic makes it very clear that the vast majori

Ephraim CLOSE In the course of a one-name study one comes across a good many interesting characters, and in following up their stories one can also learn about the conditions and key issues of the times in which they lived.   The first thing that makes Ephraim CLOSE stand out is his relatively uncommon name.   The study has uncovered   just five people in England named Ephraim CLOSE from just two families, each well separated from the others by geography, age or both, making identification a good deal easier than it is for the hundreds of John, James, Elizabeth   or Mary   CLOSEs in the study.   Holy Cross, Avening geograph.co.uk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ Ephraim CLOSE was born in 1808 [2] was christened in Avening church, Gloucestershire, on 19 March 1808, the son of William CLOSE, the Avening parish clerk, and his wife Mary (formerly TRUMAN) [3] . Ephraim worked as a stone mason [4] , living for most of his life in the Cotswold village of Aven