Hello
I have been tracing my family tree for some years now and have made reasonable progress (7000+ people).
The majority come from Lancashire and I'm fairly adept now at finding my way around the parish records of that county.
However, my gggg-grandmother was Maria Onnion(s) born probably in Shewsbury, certainly Shropshire in 1787. I beleive she had a sister Emma b. 1798 also in Shropshire.. By the mid 1810's both were living in Eccles / Salford area of Lancashire, having married at the ancient church of St Mary's the Virgin in Eccles.
I can find no trace of either of the parents or indeed any other Onnion family member.
Can anyone help or at least give me a pointer about where I can look at Shropshire records of the time? I'm pinning some hope on the fact Onnion(s) is a fairly uncommon name - although someone will probably tell me that Shropshire in the early 19th century was alive with Onnions!!
Any help, much appreciated.
Hello Steve,
Thanks for this.
I am completely in the dark when it comes to researching Shropshire records, though those details would seem to fit somewhat.- I'll plug them all in and see what comes out.
If my geography is correct Wombridge is around 15 miles to the east of Shrewsbury - probably close enough to site Shrewsbury as place of birth for the 1851 census?
I will look at the other sites you suggested
Thanks again
Simon
There are three Shrewsbury parishes where baptisms may well be missing from the IGI for the required period: St Alkmund's, St Julian's and Holy Cross (the Abbey).
If you are unable to visit Shropshire Archives you can ask them to search for you. £5-00 minumum, possibly £20 / £25 per hour. e-mail archives@shropshire.gov.uk. Allow for Christmas.
Thanks for this
I actually live in Ludlow so looking myself shouldn't be too much of a problem
Thanks for all the advise
Simon
Well, as now a Salopian, Simon, you may agree that with Wellington having been the market town next door and next west of Wombridge, it is rather unlikely that someone born in Wombridge would mistake Shrewsbury as place of birth.
Just as a matter of interest, I had several Onion(s) marry into my Dodd family from Shropshire/Staffordshire. Some emmigrated to the USA and changed their name to Anians. Apparently their accent was so strong thats the way most American clerks were writing it down so they stuck to it to avoid having to make corrections all the time.
Rather than "vegetate", some more modern members of the family of Onians - "stress on the second syllable, please" - originating at Weo and Rowton in Stokesay parish, apostrophised themselves into O'Nians.
(A copy of the extensive work on that family by the late Gerald Devey is deposited at Shropshire Archives).
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Hi Simon
I'm not seeing any Onnions baptism records from around that time in Shropshire at FamilySearch (one online source of Shropshire records, though with patchy coverage), but there are some Onions records (including the baptism of an Emmah Onions on 17 Jun 1798 at Wombridge, parents James and Alice; was she perhaps the 20-year-old Emma Onions who married William Corfield at Eccles on 6 Jan 1818?). Maria, presumably, was the Maria Onnion who married James Berry at Eccles on 6 Apr 1812. I don't see a Maria On(n)ions baptism in Shropshire in the right time frame; but there are a few baptisms for girls named Mary Onions in Shropshire in the 1780s (none with the same parents' names as those of Emma above).
Another source of Shropshire parish records is the Shropshire, England Extracted Parish Records collection at Ancestry, which again is patchy, with some overlap with the FamilySearch coverage, and which of course is only accessible if you have a subscription (or access via a local library or Records Office). Records in that data set seem to be almost wholly Onion / Onions / Onians.The only ones with the forename Maria seem to be from the early 1600s and they may be Latinised versions of Mary.
Mel Lockie's website has online copies of the Shropshire Parish Register Society PR transcripts (from which volumes Ancestry's data set is derived) and is a good source of pre-1812 Shropshire PRs, but again coverage is not complete. You need to check each volume individually using Edit and Find or Ctrl and F to search the page for occurrences of the desired name - and variants of it.
The spelling of the name probably varied, especially early on. Records in the Shropshire Burials Index for example are mostly for Onions, but variants such as O(n)nian(e)(s), Onion, and Onnyons also occur so you may need to be a bit creative in your searching.
Ultimately, the best source of records is Shropshire Archives where you can search copies of the registers on fiche - a process which is quickened by having a fairly good idea of the parish and time period when the event in question took place. If Maria was born in Shrewbury itself, the process is complicated by the existence of several parishes (St Chad's, St Mary's, St Alkmond's etc).
I'm not sure if any of this helps particularly - but good luck anyway!
Steve
The Atcherley family history site