| I told you to have a drink handy! He's done nothing wrong though, well, I don't think so anyway! By this time we were almost exhausted! It was hardly credible, but the records were there for all to see. It had explained something else also. The census returns of 1841 and 1861 had always seemed odd, the ages of the children were somehow not right. What we didn't find out until later was that Harriett, Sampson and Hannah were Sampson's children. James inherited them when he married Hannah. What a housefull!....James was twice a widower, a husband, a brother in law, a father and an uncle! All under the same roof! Now you see why James was special. Well done Jim, we really enjoyed sorting all that lot out! As I have said before, there are no records before 1762 at Bucknall, and the first record relating to a Cordall is the marriage of John and Ann. In the years that follow the records only show the births, marriages and deaths of that one family, as it expands over the years, so we think that the Cordalls were newcomers, immigrants from elsewhere, probably arriving around the mid 1700's. Where did they come from? Well, first of all we had to accept that from now on we were on unsafe ground, we could prove nothing, but curiosity being what it is, we began to look for any clue to help in our search. We examined hundreds and hundreds of documents and I began to think that we were stuck forever in that other world, The Past. I wondered if we would ever see Charlie(our dog) again! One thing was for sure, we couldn't depend on the name Cordall, it had changed too often, we had to keep an open mind! James Cordall's marriages were left behind, slowly we trudged on, surely a clue was there, waiting to be found! It was! |
| Cordall Story....Part Five.... |