Diamonds and Murder?

Murder, fraud, transportation and the old Pawn-broker’s shop

Martha from Massachusetts wanted to learn about her English ancestors and had heard rumours passed down the ages about one or two bad sheep and a murder. She had been told that her ancestors hadn’t crossed the Atlantic of their own volition but by order, to avoid the death penalty. Was any of this true?

The stories had some truth in them but had become mangled over the years.

Martha also wanted us to follow her ancestors back to the early 18th century as she had lost track of them before their Lincolnshire origins.

The tour of Martha’s ancestral heritage took us back to 1710 and to old churches and villages with in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire and then we took her through the delightful town of Stamford right down to the street and front door of her great great grandfather’s jeweller’s with the story embellished by numerous Victorian birth, marriage and death records.

It turned out that her great great grandparents were witnesses to the conduct of a murderer and so the suspicions along those lines were allayed.

Not so the rumours of transportation. One of her family members was indeed handed a seven-year sentence of transportation to America where he started his new life to be followed by future generations of Martha’s family fifty years later. As well as this information, we provided images of the actual ship of transportation, old and contemporary photos of the pawnbroker’s shop and a tidied up version of an old family photograph.

Future visits to England, and especially Stamford, were taken with even more zeal!