James POWELL...1785 Shoe Maker Brains Green (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Sunday, April 30, 2017, 13:15 (2766 days ago) @ jane gould

Many thanks Jeff. This is really helpful, because it shows that Ann, wife of John Powell, who was living at Hewler's (not Uler's!) farm, came from Maisemore. I amalso assuming that John and Ann are parents of Elizabeth. Hopefully I should now be able to find her birth and parents. I am attempting to following my mother's line back into the mists of time as far as I can.

You're very welcome Jane, if you've not tried it in the past the FamilySearch site is often very helpful, once the filters etc are "mastered", its especially good at offering variations of name spelling. On that subject, as you're probably already aware (apologies as I have no idea what part of the world you're from), even nowadays when the broad Forest dialect is largely dying-out, the name Hewler's would be pronounced Uler's as we drop the "h" s.
THAT SAID, I can find just one HEWLER in the FoD database, and Rodway's not TOO far from your Brain's Green area so may be linked, I suspect you've already seen this in your researches.

Record_ID: 216251
Entry_Number:
Year: 1638
Month: Nov
Day: 13
Surname: HEWLER
Forenames: John
Residence: Rodley
Age_at_death:
Officiating_Minister:
Event: Burial
Cause_of_death:
Memoranda: sonn of James Hewler
Notes:
Register_Reference: P354 IN 1/1
Page_No: 68
Parish_Chapel: Westbury on Severn
Soundex: H460

I'll also post this transcript into your old thread abt Hewler's Farm, I guess it was transcribed after you posted it.
http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?mode=thread&id=8812

Ref the spelling of Hewler's Farm, sometimes modern placenames which make sense to us are actually relatively-recent cleaned-up versions of older names which were sometimes completely different. A lot of this happened when the first O.S. maps were produced and the Army surveyors were asking local people what a place was called and mis-heard or mis-spelt what they were told. An example is how the First Edition from 1831 shows Brain's Green as Bryant's Green, hope this link works, use mouse to zoom into the area just south/below the big "L" near the centre/bottom of this map. We assume this was an error as later maps show Brain's, but then again how accurate was the local knowledge of their true history in the early 1800s, perhaps Bryant's was correct ?
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps/sheet/first_edition/sheet43

That map doesn't mark Hewler's Farm, unlike this later one from 1881.
http://maps.nls.uk/view/101453691

Good luck Jane with your continued researches, hopefully searching for the BMD records of the various people listed in the Census' I found will create family groups whick link into your tree.