Langley Family (1754
onwards)
As you
will see below our earliest Langley ancestor (to date) was born in Derbyshire.
His son Joseph then moved to Dudley in Worcestershire, and that branch of the
family stayed in the Black Country from then on, working as miners. Our Great
Grandfather William Evan Langley lived in Hednesford near Canock in
Staffordshire, he too was a coal miner who married Sarah Elizabeth Ray and they
had (we believe) over ten children, one of which was my Grandfather William Evan
Langley (jnr).
There is a
mystery which is still unresolved, surrounding the surname LANGLEY (on my
mothers side of the family). We have had some success researching this line of
the family, and we discovered that my 5 x Great Grandfather Robert LANGLEY, who
was living in the parish of Lilleshall in Shropshire, was in fact born in the
parish of Hope in Derbyshire!
Whilst at the
County Record Office in Shrewsbury, my sister asked to see settlement papers for
the late 1700's, and as luck would have it Robert LANGLEY's settlement
examination paper was amongst them. This was a real find for us, as it stated
that he was born in Hope, derbyshire, and that his fathers name was Godfrey, it
also gave the names and ages of his children and his
wife.
A trip to the
record office in Matlock (Derbyshire) was arranged, and my brother, myself and
my sister went together to share the workload! We had a pretty disheartening
day, with no Langleys to be found for the relevant dates or places, but my
brother had found a Godfrey LONGDEN with a wife named Alice living within the
parish of Hope. So we checked the records further, and discovered that they had
a son called Robert who was baptised in 1754, the date fitted the age given on
the settlement paper. We then discovered Roberts mother's name was Alice, which
re-enforced our belief that this was our man, as Robert had called one of his
daughters Alice (after his mother).
We may never
find out why he called himself Robert LANGLEY when he arrived in Shropshire, it
may have been a mistake on the part of a clerk somewhere. But we now have to
consider BOTH surnames when we are researching in
Derbyshire.
Just one of the
many problems you can encounter when doing your family
history.