Abraham Amos' parents - part 2

A while ago I traced the parents of my 3great-grandfather Abraham Amos, determining them to be Thomas Amos and Amy Dunn. Since then, I have continued pushing the line back, and have gone back quite far--to the seventeenth century--on one of the maternal lines. Recently, however, in a Google search for something else, I stumbled across an apparently well-researched genealogical site that threw my conclusions into doubt.

The site is called Faded Genes, and is a project to trace the ancestry of some Kentish soldiers who died during WWI. Two of my 2great-grandfather George Amos' nephews, Ernest Richard Amos and Fred Amos, are featured. They are sons of his brother Thomas, and therefore share his ancestry on their paternal side. The information on the site agrees with my research that their grandparents were Abraham Amos and Isabella Cock. It also agrees with my research on the Cock family, and even gives me a hint that one of the Simon Cocks may have had a second marriage I didn't know about. However, when looking at the Amos line I had a great shock.

The line read " Thomas AMOS, born Abt 1795. He married Mary [maiden name unknown – marriage not found]." My initial reaction was that the researcher simply hadn't been able to find out as much as I had. Abraham's parents were Thomas and Amy; likely the mistake of Amy for Mary was the cause. But then I continued reading. Children were listed:

i          Jane AMOS, born Abt 1817, baptized 6 Apr 1817 at St Augustine, East Langdon (Kent).

ii         Margaret AMOS, born Abt 1820, baptized 6 Feb 1820 at St Augustine, East Langdon (Kent).

These were not the siblings I had discovered for Abraham. Yet they were baptized in the same parish he was, making them more likely candidates than the group I had found. But if his parents were Thomas and Amy, and these girls' parents were Thomas and Mary, the likelihood was surely decreased. I had to refer to my sources.

And that was when I realized that I had no primary source for his baptism. I had only an index entry. The "England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" database at Ancestry, which cited the "England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975" database at FamilySearch, which cited FHL microfilm 1,786,622 was my solitary source. It claimed that his baptism had taken place at East Langdon, Kent, on 7 April 1821, and that his parents were Thomas Amos and Amy. Surely in all my digging through parish registers I had verified this record? But a search through my Evernote account, where I store all my in-progress documents, proved that I had discovered only that East Langdon is not a parish included in FindMyPast's "Kent, Canterbury Archdeaconry Parish Registers Browse, 1538-1913," where I have been finding original images of so many of my family's records.

St. Augustine's Church, East Langdon, where Abraham Amos was baptized no matter who his parents were.
Nick Smith / St Augustine's church / CC BY-SA 2.0

So now, since I couldn't see them in the usual place, it was time to figure out where I could see images of East Langdon's parish registers. I could find them in none of the databases at FindMyPast, nor at Ancestry. FamilySearch had only Bishop's Transcripts and transcribed excerpts. I searched the catalog of the British National Archives and Kent Archives. A guide, provided by the Kent Archives, to the locations of parish registers in Kent indicated only Bishop's Transcripts for East Langdon. After about two days of using all my spare time to search every possible repository I could think of, I came to the conclusion that the original parish registers must have been lost. Even the databases covering East Langdon used the Bishop's Transcripts as their source.

And these databases had me worried. The one at FamilySearch, as I had discovered before, recorded Thomas and Amy as Abraham's parents. But the "Kent Births" database at FindMyPast gave his parents as Thomas and Mary. This was disheartening and inconclusive. Even though I have seen errors in Bishop's Transcripts in the past, in this case it would have to serve as my best possible source. I would have to consult it. That meant visiting my local FHC, which I would not be able to visit until Sunday afternoon. It was going to be a long, suspenseful week.

Finally Sunday arrived. When the time came, I hopped into my car to make the drive, just as my phone buzzed to remind me of a workshop I was supposed to attend, which had nothing to do with genealogy. With a heavy heart, I turned my car the opposite direction. The suspense would have to last another hour. It turned out to be an hour and a half before I was able to dash to the FHC, checking my clock and noting that I had only an hour and twenty minutes to solve this mystery. Had I spent a large quantity of time and effort climbing the wrong family tree? Would I have to add an editor's note to my recent blog post about the Shrubsoles that further research had proved that they were not actually my ancestors? Soon I would find out.

Within two minutes of entering the building, I was seated at a computer, and scrolling through images from the appropriate microfilm, searching for the beginning of the section filming East Langdon. It took a little while to find; East Langdon was quite far into the roll. But not too long after locating the right item, the 1813 baptism of a child with the surname Amos appeared. His parents, however, were named William and Ann. Perhaps he was a cousin, but that would have to wait. A few more images passed, and then came another Amos baptism. Ah, now we were on the right track; this was for Jane Amos, the supposed sister of Abraham. In both the FindMyPast and the FamilySearch databases, as well as the tree at Faded Genes, her parents were Thomas and Mary. The real question was the names of the parents on Abraham's record. The Bishop's Transcript, though--the source of most, if not all, of these of these entries--provided a surprise. Jane's parents were Thomas and Amy! That possibility had never entered my mind. I had felt certain that either Abraham was the brother of Jane and Margaret, and not the son of Thomas and Amy, or that he was the son of Thomas and Amy, and not the brother of Jane and Margaret.

Quickly, I looked up the information I had on Thomas and Amy's children, and saw that Jane and Margaret would fit nicely into that gap I had noticed between the births of Abraham and his older sister Susanna. Perhaps all my research would not have to be scrapped after all. Margaret, too, and Abraham, all were the children of Thomas and Amy according to the Bishop's Transcripts, despite databases claiming their mother's name was Mary. And thank goodness for that, because tracing a Thomas and Mary Amos through Kent would be a far more difficult task than the more unusual combination of Thomas and Amy. Plus, I can still claim to be a descendant of numerous John Shrubsoles. Now, if I could just find Thomas' parents...