Ford Park Cemetery revisted

Plymouth

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

 

Ancestry

Also on this day, I hiked across town to the Ford Park Cemetery again. On the way I stopped at a grocery store to buy a banana. Cereal seemed a bargain at one to one & a half pounds a box. In Victoria they’d probably be $4.50 - $6. The banana cost only 17p!  

 

I was surprised when I submitted the form at the cemetery that the women did the search then and there. The result was also surprising. The vault of my great-great-great-grandparents, Thomas and Mary Maddick Stevens, is at the front of the property, close to the street.
 



It’s a double vault and there are two markers. I never would have found this on my own because I barely did when standing right in front of it. The office woman explained that these people would have been related or at least known one another but there are last names I’ve never heard of: Ambrose, Acford, Martin, Barker and Dingle. The one named Martin is Thomas' sister - Anne Stevens married to Solomon Martin. The print-out shows names of only people who are buried there. I wrote what I could see but some of it is unreadable. Interestingly, there is no mention of Robert White Stevens who, we thought, was supposed to be buried here.

It was also odd that Mary Maddick Stevens wasn’t mentioned but she was named on the stone so I reported that to the office. The woman there said I did them a favour because the info was on the computer; they just didn’t know where she belonged. Someone is in the process of transcribing this information.

They do tours of notable people so she was interested when I mentioned that Thomas had been mayor of Plymouth. She asked that if we ever figure out the reason for the double vault to please drop them a line. I don’t know how we could ever figure that out, unless we discover they’re family members - sisters who married and got different last names, for instance. One of the Pardews is named on the Stevens stone.

#7 on my list - Angelina Green Stevens (don't know where the name Green came from) is one I would have liked to have met. There she was, listed in censuses as living in Horrabridge, Devon, which, granted, is only 11 miles north-ish of Plymouth, but her life seemed quite different from the rest of the family. She boarded with a couple as a gardener and poultry keeper, then lived with the head of a private school, and later was in a cottage, living on her own means.

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On the internet I found a picture of a separate stone for Elizabeth's husband, George Acford, who died February 7, 1845 at age 40. 

Who are these people and how do they relate to our family? We may never know. I thought perhaps that Elizabeth was someone in our family but it seems not.

 

On the internet I found this:
George Acford, born about 1806 in Devon. Grocer. Married to Elizabeth Hutchens, November 25 (my Glenn's birthday), 1832, Stoke Damerel (now a suburb of Plymouth). There is a Mr. William Thomas Hutchens in the probate for their daughter Selina. Well, who the are the Hutchens? The plot thickens.

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In the vicinity of the vaults were stones with names that appear is my family, Hearder and Pepperell, though these might not be related. I took photos of them anyway, just in case.