Methodists & Crump Meadow Pit, HALE family (General)

by peteressex , Saturday, April 19, 2014, 07:52 (3865 days ago) @ Jefff

Jeff, I'm grateful because in this springtime of my senility I'd completely forgotten our exchange of October 2012.

Dorothy Hale in the 1913 wedding photo looks a little older than you might expect for someone born 1899, but the one you've spotted from Dinglethorpe, Lydney, does seem a likely candidate given that she was baptised at Springfield (as Lydney "Prim" now is.) This would make her a senior Sunday School member or even a budding Sunday School teacher at the time of the wedding, and my Grampy was the Sunday School Secretary.

So, I sez to meself, perhaps the other girl, Elsie Brown, was of a similar ilk. But no joy so far. There's no baptism of an Elsie Brown in the Lydney Primitive Methodist registers indexed on here, although there's one baptised 1897 Alvington and another 1899 Coleford. An Elsie Brown was married at Lydney in 1920 but not at the "Prim." Soundex turns up an Elsie Brain baptised at the "Prim" in 1892.

There are some bundles of old records of Springfield church (as it now is) in Gloucestershire Archives, as you will know from the 1959 letter I mentioned recently about my Grampy's efforts to keep the Eastern United Colliery open. I don't recall there being any old Sunday School registers, but next time I get to Gloucester I'll have another look.

So cheers for your help. At the moment we might have the Hale, but we haven't got the Brown, despite the fact that as I discovered just now, and as you're keenly aware, among the most common surnames there are abundant Smiths and Joneses from the Forest but surprisingly few Browns.