Eds Adventures in Genealogy

The Fordham family This page tells the story of my paternal line, the Fordham family.  The family name itself is derived from one of three English villages of the same name, one in Cambridgeshire, one in Essex and one in Dorset.  The village name comes from Anglo Saxon english meaning ford (the shallow point of a river where you can cross) and hamm meaning a pasture or meadow.  I have traced my branch of the Fordhams to the village of Hadstock approximately 20 miles from the Cambridgeshire village of Fordham. Family legend One family legend (and almostly definitely unprovable) I received from my father was that one of our Fordham ancestors was second in command to 11th century Anglo Saxon resistance leader Hereward the Wake who fought against the Normans after their conquest of England in 1066.  However unlikely I enjoy the fact that Hereward and his follows were the source of many of the later stories of Robin Hood and his Merry Men - which wou...

This page tells the story of one of my wife's paternal ancestral lines, the Cartners. The family name originates from the same German source as the word gardener, however originally it referred to a market gardener which was someone who grew food on a small patch of land. So far I have found the following variants of the name; Cartner, Gaertner, Gartner, Kartner, Cartener, McCartner, McCartener and McCarton. Looking at the parish registers from the 1600s shows only 10 Cartners, all of which were in the Northern English county of Cumberland bordering Scotland. 6 were in Rockcliffe in the ward of Longtown & Rockcliffe, north of the city of Carlisle and just south of the Scottish parish of Gretna Green. 3 more Cartners were found in the nearby Cumberland village of Beaumont and one just south of Carlisle in the village of Dalston.  Between 1700 and 1750 the number of births on parish registers jumps to 72. Of these the vast majority, 69, were born in Cumberland. ...

Henry “Harry” Wood CARTNER (1897 - 1956) Harry's childhood My wife's great grandfather Henry Wood CARTNER, better known as "Harry", was born on the 13th of April 1897 at Bank Street, Longtown in Cumbria (formerly Cumberland). Harry had a brother two years older than him at the same address when he was born. Longtown is an English town very close to the Scottish border. His father, James, aged 33 was Scottish but was born only a short distance across the border in Half Morton. He was working as a railway labourer but had been living in Cumbria since at least 1881 as he was an indoor farm servant on that years census. His mother was Margaret "Maggie" CARTNER nee WOOD was also 33. She too was Scottish but came from further away from Harry's birthplace then his father. She was born in the coastal village of Cullen in the North of Scotland. It is likely that she moved to Cumbria when married to be close to her husband's work and fa...