Recently my husband and I had the opportunity to walk in the steps of his ancestors. A business trip took us to London, England and we added a few extra days to drop in on some of the places my husband’s ancestors attended. His Palmer ancestors arrived in Canada about 1831 from London.
Samuel Palmer married Sarah Ann Money and they had seven children. The children are:
- Sarah Ann Palmer, born 09 November 1818 in London, England
- John William Palmer, born 10 November 1821 in London, England
- Samuel Palmer, born 28 August 1824 in London, England (my husband’s 2x great-grandfather)
- Mary Ann Palmer, born 28 October 1826 in London, England
- William Palmer, born 27 September 1828 in London, England
- Shackel Benjamin Palmer, born 04 November 1832 in Upper Canada (Ontario, Canada)
- George Arthur Palmer, born 26 September 1841 in Upper Canada (Ontario, Canada)
Samuel was listed as a carpenter and undertaker. I have not been able to find any reliable source documents to identify the date and place of Samuel’s birthdate, birth place or parents, but I haven’t stopped looking.
I have found documents to identify Sarah Ann Money’s birthdate, birth place and parents. This is a line that I still need to explore and add to.
I researched available records to find where the Palmers lived and where they were baptized or married and plotted the most efficient route on a map.
We had only one day in London to take us on the Palmer genealogy tour. The first stop was the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Islington (commonly known as St Mary’s Church). In this church my husband’s 3x great-grandparents, Samuel Palmer and Sarah Ann Money were married by Jerome Alley, Curate, on 15 February 1818, after the publication of their Banns on Sundays, January 25thand February 1stby Rev. Wm. Alley and Sunday, February 8thby Rev. Straban. The witnesses were William Money and Thezia Crop.
According to Wikipedia, The Church of St Mary the Virgin is the historic parish church of Islington and is listed as a Grade II building. The first church at this location was built in the twelfth century and replaced in the fifteenth. By 1750, St. Mary’s was in “very ruinous condition” and a new church was built. The new church, designed by Lancelot Dowbiggin, was consecrated on 26 May 1754. On the third night of the London Blitz, at 10:20pm on 09 September 1940, a bomb destroyed the majority of the church, leaving only the tower and spire intact. The church, designed by John Seely and Paul Paget, was rebuilt and dedicated in 1956. The lectern, baptismal font and Royal Arms all survived the bombing and were re-located in the new church.
People of notoriety from this church are:
- Edward Vaughan served as vicar before his consecration as Bishop of St. David’s in 1509;
- Robert Browne, who authored the founding principles of Congregationalism, served as lecturer at St Mary’s until around 1758;
- John Webster, the Elizabethan dramatist, married Sara Peniall in Lent 1606, by special licence;
- William Cave became vicar in 1662, at the age of twenty-five, and held the office until 1689;
- Charles Wesley was invited to “take charge of the parish” on 24 July 1738 by the Vicar of St Mary’s, George Stonehouse. Wesley’s preaching proved unpopular and within a year he was expelled from the pulpit at St. Mary’s;
- In 1759, Philip Quaque, son of the Fante king Birempong Cudjo, was baptised at St. Mary’s. He became the first black African to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England and returned to Ghana to minister as a missionary;
- Samuel Ajayi Crowther arrived from Sierra Leone in 1826 to study at the church’s school and attend services. He later was ordained as a minister by the Bishop of London and served in West Africa. He later became the first African Bishop in Nigeria;
- Donald Coggan, later Archbishop of Canterbury, served as curate from 1934-1937;
- George Carey became curate in 1962 and continued on to become Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1987 and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1987
While we were at St Mary’s Church we were directed to the Church office to discover 
where the best place to find church records would be (I hoped to determine more ancestral lines of ascent). The secretary directed us to the Metropolitan Archives, located at 40 Northampton Road, so we headed there which took us in almost the opposite direction from our next mapped destination, St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch High Street, where Samuel Palmer, was baptized 07 January 1829 along with four of his siblings: Sarah Ann, John William, Mary Ann and William. With awareness of the limited time we had to spend 
at the Archives, if we wanted to reach the other destinations on the map, we arrived and filled out a requisition to see the church records on microfilm. After waiting half an hour, we delved into the research only to find the records at the Archive were the same ones I had already obtained online from Ancestry. We could not spend any extra time trying to locate further information regarding the ancestral line, but I was satisfied that I should be able to find the documents on Ancestry when I was back home.
We proceeded on our way, with a slight detour to a nice little pub, The Crown Tavern, for our lunch. We sat outside eating while enjoying the lovely, warm sunny day. After we
finished eating we realized we were running out of time and could only go to one of the two sites left to visit and we chose to go the church Sarah Ann Money was baptized in. We set out for St. Botolph Without Aldgate which I had located on the internet – I had starting typing and the information popped up when I had only inputted “St. Botolph Without” — it was the first three results and so I looked no further. This location was a mistake (I will talk about it later).
Enroute to St. Botolph Without Aldgate we had the opportunity to walk by St. Paul’s Cathedral – we did not take the time to join the long queue to see the inside (we will do that on a future visit).
A short 20 minutes later we arrived at St. Botolph Without Aldgate which is located east of the former position of Aldgate, a defensive barbican in London’s wall. According to Wikipedia, the earliest known written record of the church dates from 1115, when it was received by the Holy Trinity Priory (recently founded by Matilda, wife of Henry I) but the parochial foundations may very well date from before 1066. The church was rebuilt in the 16th century at the cost of the priors of the Holy Trinity, and renovated in 1621. It escaped the Great Fire of London, and was described at the beginning of the 18th century as “an old church, built of Brick, Rubble and Stone, rendered over, and … of the Gothick order”. The building, as it stood at that time, was 78-foot long (24 m) and 53-foot wide (16 m). There was a tower, about 100-foot tall (30 m), with six bells. The current church was built between 1741 and 1744. It was designed by George Dance the Elder. The interior was redecorated by John Francis Bentley, the architect of Westminster Cathedral in the late 19th century. The church was bombed during the Blitz in the World War II and was designated a Grade I listed building on 04 January 1950. The church was restored by Rodney Tatchell, and then damaged further by a fire in 1965 which required further restoration. St Botolph’s was rehallowed on 8 November 1966 by the Bishop of London, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Sir Robert Bellinger, the Lord Mayor of London, who attended in state. During an archaeological investigation of the crypt in 1990, a preserved head, reputed to be that of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, who had been executed for treason by Queen Mary I in 1554, was rediscovered and buried in the churchyard. St. Botolph’s houses the oldest church organ in the United Kingdom — it was donated by Thomas Whiting in 1676 and built between 1702 and 1704 by Renatus Harris.
People of notoriety from this church are:
- Daniel Defoe was married in the church in 1683
- Thomas Bray, founder of SPCK, was rector from 1706 to 1730
We did not make it to St. Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch where the five children of Samuel Palmer and Sarah Ann Money were baptized 07 January 1829, as mentioned above. Their baptismal records indicate the family was living on Robert Street (changed to Fanshaw Street in 1912) in the Shoreditch area.
Interesting note, Samuel and Sarah Ann Palmer were baptized 04 January 1825 at The Tabernacle, City Road an Independent Church. The description/titles of the records of this baptism, held by Ancestry, documented ‘Piece Title: City Road, The Tabernacle (Independent), 1768-1840’ and ‘Baptism Place: Tabernacle Ind St Luke, Finsbury, London, England’. The scanned image of these baptisms stated they were of the Parish of St. Leonards Shoreditch. My internet searches suggested St Leonards Church Shoreditch, located on Shoreditch High Street and St Luke located on Old Street. I was not successful in finding The Tabernacle on City Road. I presume it is no longer in existence since I have not been successful in finding any further information about it. I have sent queries out to organizations in the hope I will one day find where it was located or might still be located.
The re-baptism of Sarah Ann and Samuel, along with their siblings: John William, Mary Ann and William on 07 January 1829 leaves me wondering why. Why did they re-baptize Saran Ann and Samuel in a Church of England after they were baptized in an Independent Church? Why wasn’t John William baptized in 1825 with Sarah Ann and Samuel? Why were all five children baptized on the same date? Was this in preparation for their journey to Canada? Were they worried they may not survive the travels? — at that time it appears it took about five to six weeks to travel across the Atlantic Ocean. As a family of seven, I am assuming they travelled in steerage (I have not found their passenger records). The conditions in steerage were crowded, dark and damp. There was limited sanitation which lead to dirty and foul-smelling accommodations and they were infested with rats and insects. These conditions allowed for easy transmission of diseases that often led to death. What lead this family to risk travel to British North America?
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Now to talk about my mistake.
While writing this blog and reviewing my information I realized London has a St. Botolph’s Without Aldgate and a St. Botolph’s Without Aldersgate (about a 20-minute walk from one to the other). A new genealogy lesson for me — do not jump to conclusions when searching internet maps. If I had typed in the complete name of the church I was interested in instead of letting the internet search mislead me with its assumptions then we would have travelled to the correct church. St. Botolph’s Without Aldersgate is where Sarah Ann Money was baptized 01 November 1795 along with her brother, John Peter. Sarah was born 02 July 1792 to William and Frances Geater Money.
Our genealogy day ended with us at the wrong church, but that is not terrible. St. Botolph’s Without Aldgate is a beautiful old church and one worth seeing. The day of tracing the steps of my husband’s ancestors lead us through many streets of London – 20.4 km, 27,308 steps and 10 floors. There were many interesting places along the walk that caught our attention and many sites worth photographing.
We will return to London and make it to the correct church — St. Botolph Without Aldersgate. We will, also, find St. Leonards Church Shoreditch, located on Shoreditch High Street and take a walk down Fanshaw Street. Hopefully, I will have found more records allowing me to go back through further ancestral lines and our map will have more locations to discover the steps the Palmer ancestors once walked.
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Interesting Note:
My husband is a Movement Disorder Neurologist and the majority of his patients have Parkinsons. As noted above, his ancestors lived in the Shoreditch area, and specifically, on Robert Street in 1829. Robert Street (now known as Fanshaw Street) is four blocks from 1 Hoxton Square (about a six-minute walk) and 0.5 miles (about a 12-minute walk) from St Leonard’s Hospital (the former Shoreditch Workhouse).
The significance of this is James Parkinson lived at 1 Hoxton Square and started work as a parish surgeon, apothecary and man-midwife at the Shoreditch Workhouse in 1813. According to the website workhouses.org.uk James Parkinson made many improvements to the medical facilities. He also published an “Essay on the Shaking Palsy” in 1817 in which he describes his observations of six males between the age of 50 and 65 years with the shaking palsy that he goes on to describe as ‘a nervous disorder characterized by a trembling of the limbs at rest, lessened muscular power and a stooped posture associated with a propulsive, festination gait’. He believed he had identified a new ‘medical species’ that had ‘not yet obtained a place in the classification of nosologists’. This condition we now call Parkinson’s Disease.
Were my husband’s ancestors acquainted with James Parkinson? Remember, Samuel Palmer was an undertaker. Did they perhaps socialize? Could this be six degrees of separation between my husband and James Parkinson? If nothing else, this is an interesting coincidence.
