Good Morning. Greetings from the Frederick Meredith Descendants Group, Australia. I am the Vice President of the FMDG and I am hoping for some guidance from the forum members here, please. Our ancestor, Frederick MEREDITH was a member of the First Fleet to Australia in 1788. Frederick was attached to the Flagship of the Fleet, the HMS Sirius. Frederick does not appear to have been in the Royal Navy prior to the Fleet, although was able to gain a berth as a member of the Navy as the Fleet was being prepared. Frederick became a very well-known and respected member of the colony at Sydney Cove and was a foundation member of the new country of Australia, or New South Wales as it was then known. His history and that of many of his descendants, many of whom have figured prominently in Australian society since then are well documented. Frederick's background in the U.K., however, is almost entirely unknown to us, although there are undocumented anecdotes and family traditions that have been handed down. Leaving those aside for the moment, Frederick himself gave, in the Navy muster record of the First Fleet, his place of birth in England, as Denham, Wales. This, you can imagine has caused much confusion over the years. To cut a long story short, most recently, I have made enquiries of the Buckinghamshire Family History Society as to a birth record of a Frederick Meredith there in or around 1763, as there is a Denham in that county. The formal response is that there is no such birth record in or around that date, and that the Society is of the opinion that Frederick was not a Bucks man, especially as Meredith is a Welsh name, as we know. We next notice that there is a district adjacent to the town of Ludlow called Dinham. We are uncertain as to whether people in those times would have regarded that district as part of Wales or part of England, or whether Frederick himself, if he was from the Ludlow area, bearing a Welsh name, himself in fact regarded himself as having been born in Wales. We realise this is all very general speculation, but would there be anyone on the forum who could perhaps point me in the direction of finding a birth record, should one exist for a Frederick MEREDITH in Dinham or Ludlow or Shropshire in or around 1763. On an associated perspective, Frederick's grand daughter in fact married one Jeremiah Warlters who we know most definitely was from the Shropshire/Herefordshire area, the family apparently being quite an ancient one in the border area, with associations, I believe with their burial site in St Lawrence's(?) Church, Ludlow.
Thank you for taking the time to read my enquiry. Any information or feedback that anyone could provide would be most appreciated. Please feel free to email me separately if preferred. Thank you.
Kind Regards
Paul Gallagher, Vice Pres, FMDG, Australia.
Paul
I think that the key to your enquiry is clarifying the birthplace of "Denham".
Is this something that is clearly, and unambiguously, visible from the source document?
Or, is it something that has been perceived from the (probably) qualified legibility of a 250 years-old record?
Are you able to post a copy, or a link to, the original document - so that we can lay fresh eyes upon it and thus perhaps bring a different perspective to the interpretation.
Peter
Hello Paul
Was Frederick his first name or middle name or just a name he liked. I have found doing my family tree for years that they called themselves different names. My mum is Hazel but she is known as Pad. Another relation was James Orchard Meredith but he was called Archibald on his army records. So on and So on....which can make life one long nightmare....
Are the Meredith in Denham? Around that time,if so then he might be from there but under another first name and of course birth dates can be somewhat out.
Also was he church of England or was his family Methodist,Chapel,Presbyterian etc as if they did come from Wales it might be they are something else. My Meredith are Methodist and they came from Bettisfield which in those days only had 20 house but had 2 Chapels and a church.
If your relation did come from Denham maybe someone on Ancestry etc could be looking up the same line or if he went they to work as a apprentice from a early age the could be those records somewhere or maybe a settlement order for his family.
Hope these ideas help.
Regards
Debi
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Paul,
Apologies if this is stating the obvious but have you tried different spellings of the Meredith surname? My maternal ancestors originate from south-west Shropshire with several Merediths marrying into the family in the 19th Century, with the surname sometimes being spelt as Meridith in Census and Parish Register records, and even a Meredeth.The Meredith's who married into my family appear to have their roots around the Shropshire/Radnorshire border (e.g. Llanvair Waterdine) and possibly from deeper into Radnorshire. I have not come across any from the Ludlow area.
Regards
Phil