The easy way or the hard way?

Let's start with three-times-great-grandpa Charles Culpin, born today in 1811 in St Ives, son of Charles & Catherine (nee Sutton). Regular readers will be unsurprised that he became a blacksmith; he married Sophia Kington, of Great Gransden, at All Saints, St Ives, on 26 March 1834 and they begat four children, in Hemingford Abbots, before Sophia died in May 1844. Then, with the aforementioned four children to look after, Charles sought a new bride and, late the following year, he married Sarah Whatford in St Ives.

Three more children arrived over the next eight years, all easily identified by their mother's maiden name amongst their christian names - don't you just love it when they do that! Charles died on 4 May 1869 and was buried in Broadleas cemetery, with the following headstone: Thy Will be done. Sacred to the memory of Charles Culpin who departed this life May 4th 1869 in the 58th year of his age. The sweet remembrance of the just shall flourish where he sleeps in the dust.

Slightly more distant, in "relative" terms, was James Moore, my g-g-g-g-grandfather, who married Elizabeth Warnes today at St Mary, Wymondham (the Norfolk one). Eleven children became of this union and the family was in Carrow Road, Thorpe, near Norwich, in 1851 (excluding their daughter Ann, my 3xgt grandmother, who had just married and was living in Thorpe Road, Blofield - presumably just up the road).

James was a Maltster's man (I have only a loose idea of what that is) and at least two of his sons took up the same profession. I need to do some more research into this particular branch - I suspect I was put off earlier by the sheer number of Moores in Norfolk, but I shall not be beaten!!

And finally: you might need to sit down for this one. This is the "hard way" of the title - Francis Langford married Mary Murfitt today in Stretham in 1860 and thereby complicated my family tree no end. Mary is related to me in her own right and Francis is related three times: Mary is my first cousin three times removed; Francis is "husband of . . . . " plus my third cousin twice removed and my eighth cousin three times removed. I'll repeat that last one: eighth cousin three times removed!

Francis & Mary lived in Berry Green, Stretham, until his death in 1897 but their children (nine of them) gradually moved away as they grew up; three to Sheffield and four to London (youngest son Isaac died in infancy). Even then there were no local jobs for the children!

More soon.