John Dawson - Genealogy

I have put a lot of effort into researching my family tree, including many visits to the old Family Records Centre in London to consult the Census returns from 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, and 1901. Also trips to the wonderful Essex Record Office for Parish Registers, Hearth Tax Registers, etc.

The principal surnames which occur in my family are:

  • Hickling / Hicken / Hickin (from Leicester and Hull)
  • Graham (from Hull)
  • Whitbread / Whitebread (from the Roding villages in Essex - Abbess Roding, Beauchamp Roding, Leaden Roding, White Roding, Berners Roding, Margaret Roding, and the neighbouring villages)
  • Claydon / Clayden    Blowes / Blows    Asser / Assur (from Essex)
  • Manning (from Westminster, London)
  • Skinner    Reddington / Redington (from Essex)

For a complete list of surnames, see this link.

I use Family Tree Maker on my PC to store and print family trees; this is a very widely-used program, and produces excellent results. It is also able to export family information in GEDCOM format, which is readable by most other genealogy programs. I also use the program GED2HTML which displays GEDCOM files in a form suitable for viewing on the web.

The GEDCOM version of my family tree is available from me.

Here is a painting of my great-great-great-great-grandparents Joseph and Sarah Asser outside one of our family homes, "Coopers" in Abbess Roding, Essex, painted by my great-great-great-grandmother Jane Whitbread (née Asser) in 1830.

I have also collected more than 300 names of other individuals with the above surnames, while browsing the Censuses, and have built them into about 70 mini-family-trees, also using FTM. The information spans all the above surnames, for the period 1760-1900 approximately (almost all from Essex). Please email john@rabancourt.co.uk if you would like me to search those trees. Remember that you should verify for yourself any information which I provide (I accept no responsibility for getting your family history wrong!)

I have prepared a table of Essex Strays from the Norfolk Census of 1891. There's probably a lot wrong with it, but it may help some researchers. Please check all information you use from my site! ("Strays" are people living in one county, but born in another.) My article based on that table has now appeared: 'The Accuracy of the 1891 Census Pilot of Norfolk', Computers in Genealogy, Vol. 7 No. 5/6 (March/June, 2001), pp. 248-254.

My article entitled: 'ACAD - A Cambridge Alumni Database' appeared in Computers in Genealogy, Vol. 7 No. 8 (December, 2001), pp. 363-375.

There are transcriptions of the 1722 and 1784 Pollbooks (voting records) of Bedfordshire, which should be used with great care, as they are full of errors (in the original, and doubtless in my transcription!)
1722 Pollbook of Bedfordshire: 2206 names
1784 Pollbook of Bedfordshire: 2002 names

Good luck with your own family research! If you need help, try Abacus Genealogy Research.