Belton in Rutland
On the 8th October 1712 at this church in the peaceful hamlet of Belton in Rutland, Benjamin Ireland was married to Ann Parsons. The first of their four children was another Benjamin, born in 1713, followed by Mary, William and George.
On the 5th November 1737, Benjamin wed Hannah Kilbourn here.
East Norton, Leicestershire
Before baptising their first child Mary in 1739, it appears that Benjamin and Hannah had moved just two miles to East Norton, just across the border into Leicestershire. The tower and small spire of East Norton's tiny church can be seen in this photograph looking southwards across gently rolling countryside towards the village.
This is where the first eight of their eleven children were born and christened.
- Mary - 1739
- Benjamin - 1740
- William - 1742
- Hannah - 1743
- George - 1745
- Ann - 1747
- John - 1749
- Thomas - 1750
The records for the baptising of their first four offspring showed nothing unusual. However, from George onwards, the church register recorded children born to "Benjamin and Hannah Orland", not Ireland. I have explained this in much more detail further down the page.
It seems that the four children baptised under the Ireland name also had their names changed to Orland. William born in 1742, next turned up in Creaton under the name of William Orland with a marriage to Jane Farndon in 1774. His younger brother John appears to have followed William to Northamptonshire, and was married to Prudence Simons at Winwick in 1781. John of course, was my great great great great great great grandfather! (See my ancestry tree.)
Billesdon, Leicestershire
Along with their new family name, Hannah and Benjamin Orland settled here in Billesdon to have their last three children, all girls:- Jane - 1754
- Elizabeth - 1757
- Alice - 1759
The parents appear to have seen out their days here in Billesdon, and the church records show that dozens of Orlands and Irelands were buried here in the 1700's. However, this churchyard and another cemetry on the east side of the village, which serves Billesdon and nearby Rolleston, now show absolutely no signs of any existing graves bearing the inscriptions of our family.
The research into finding out where we came from was rather prolonged and from the beginning, full of speculation, most of which in retrospect appears to have been well founded. All family historians know that at various times throughout their ancestry, one has to make use of strong circumstantial evidence in order to make progress. Between the mis-spelled church registers and the 'unusual' handwriting that is found, there are many instances where we simply stare at what looks like someone else's name but we just know that it's the person that we've been looking for! It's sometimes a tentative step from thinking that a particular link is a possibility to knowing beyond reasonable doubt that it's a real probability. It all sounds rather like a courtroom drama but most of us not only have to play detective but also the role of judge, jury and executioner of our own research. If we tell ourselves anything other than the whole truth, we are only cheating ourselves!
The problems that I faced in linking the Leicestershire Ireland family to our Orland family were two-fold. First of all, I had to make certain that Benjamin and Hannah Ireland were really the same couple as Benjamin and Hannah Orland, and then I had to find out if two of their sons, John and William, were actually two of our ancestors. I also wanted to satisfy my theory that our ancestor John in Winwick might be the brother of William from Creaton.
'Our' John in Winwick.
After around two years solidly researching the Orland name, I came to a sudden dead-end in early 2001. I had gone back fairly smoothly using Birth, Marriage and Death certificates, the 1881 census on CD and then parish & census records at the LDS Family History Centre as far as John Orland in Winwick who married Prudence Simons in 1781. However, I found no baptism for John in Winwick, and the marriage record gave no clue as to where he was from. It just said "both of this parish". From John's age on his gravestone (88 years old in February 1839) I could assume that he was probably born around 1750 to early 1751. An allowance would have to made there though - only as recently as 1988, my grandfather's age was incorrectly inscribed on his headstone as being 77. He was actually 76.
William in Creaton.
Hoping for some further clues, I turned my attention to the nearby Orland family around the Creaton area. (Including Coaton, Teeton and Holdenby.) I found the same problem there..... everyone traced back to a marriage between William Orland and Jane Farndon in 1774 but no clues to William's origin. We even visited Creaton and recorded many Orland gravestone inscriptions but on that first occasion, failed to find William's grave. I really needed to find out how old he was if I were to stand any chance of making any progress.
Long beforehand, I had already looked at the familysearch website, and by doing a general search for all Orlands, a pattern emerged. All the early Orlands, up to the late 1700's were in the Leicestershire area, mostly from the village of Billesdon or nearby. From there onward, most Orlands appeared to have moved to the Winwick area in Northamptonshire with a few scattered elsewhere. There was however, a record of a John Orland - baptised in East Norton, Leicestershire, in Nov. 1749.... very close indeed.... was this our man?
Were John and William brothers?
Looking at the similar pattern between John and William's families, I thought it seemed feasible that they might have been brothers who had moved from Leicestershire together and found work 20 miles further south in two adjacent villages. (Winwick and Creaton are only 5 miles apart.) To increase the likelyhood in my mind of their relationship, William named his first son John and seven years later it appears that John reciprocated this gesture by naming his first son William. In both cases, their next son was named after his own father, which would normally in those days have been the first choice.
After reaching this dead end in Northamptonshire, I ordered the parish records for the Leicestershire villages to try and work forwards from there. To my amazement, I found these records:
Belton, Rutland
- 5th November 1737 Benjamin Ireland married Hannah Kilbourn
- Ireland - 28th Jan 1738 Mary, - Christened Daughter of Benjamin and Hannah
- Ireland - 28th Sept 1740 Benjamin, - Christened Son of Benjamin and Hannah
- Ireland - 28th Mar 1742 William, - Christened Son of Benjamin and Hannah
- Ireland - 27th Dec 1743 Hannah, - Christened Daughter of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 8th Dec 1745 George, - Christened Son of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 14th Feb 1747 Ann, - Christened Daughter of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 6th Nov 1749 John, - Christened Son of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 5th Nov 1750 Thomas, - Christened Son of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 1st July 1754 Jane, - Christened Daughter of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 24th June1757 Elizabeth, - Christened Daughter of Benjamin and Hannah
- Orland - 29th Nov 1759 Alice, - Christened Daughter of Benjamin and Hannah
Looking again at the familysearch internet site, I found that the Orlands used two of the names (Ann & George) from Benjamin Irelands own ancestry, and two more names (John and Elizabeth) from Hannah's family too. Taken sequentially, Benjamin and Hannah Ireland/Orland named their children after themselves, their parents and all of their brothers and sisters.
The circumstantial evidence was now too strong to ignore. Distinct possibility became overwhelming probability. There was only one couple named Benjamin and Hannah, and after marrying in Belton with the family name of Ireland, it changed c.1745 to Orland during their time in East Norton. This is more easily demonstrated by a quick look at their family tree.
The reason for the change in name is still a mystery. Here, speculation plays a major part. One line of thought is that it was to anglicise their name. It might have been unpopular in the village to be seen as an outsider or foreigner, and therefore the Ireland family may have made a conscious decision to blend in with the locals. There were several Orland families in that area already, so only a subtle change in spelling was required.
Alternatively, it may have been the result of a mistake by the clergy at the christening of George in 1745 - the first child of Benjamin and Hannah's to bear the Orland name. If the Ireland family had a strange accent, and were asked at the christening what their child was to be named.... after hearing the reply "George Ireland" in a strong accent, the Rector or Curate might have misheard, and decided to spell the name as "Orland" in the way with which he was more familiar. With most "peasants" being illiterate at that time, they were unlikely to challenge the strange scribblings made by the clergy.
However, a link still had to be proven to exist between this newly named Orland family from Leicestershire and our known ancestors in Northamptonshire.
With the finding of the Leicestershire Ireland and Orland children came another clue to our past. We had already established that their John born in East Norton 1749 had a birth date very close to that of "our" John whom it appeared must have been born around 1750.
We now also had a family with a brother for John.... in William. The dates we had all seemed to correspond. The William in Creaton married seven years before John in Winwick - and Ben and Hannah's son William was born in 1742, seven years before his younger brother John.Another clue manifested itself when looking again at the record of William and Jane's marriage in Creaton - the witnesses were Jane Orland and William Dunn. The Leicestershire brothers also had a sister called Jane, born 1754 in Billesdon - and when I looked up William Dunn on the familysearch site, the only likely match was a child baptised in Belton, Rutland - the village where Benjamin and Hannah were married! (Photo on the left.) Had Mr. Dunn travelled with William and John to Northamptonshire? The evidence was mounting.... what I really needed now in order to satisfy myself of the link was to find out how old William was when he died in Creaton.
I knew from parish records that he was buried on the 6th January 1795, so if he was the son of Ben and Hannah born in 1742 then we were looking for him to be 52 years old at death. It seemed a fair assumption that his 53rd birthday would more likely have occurred later in that year.
The increasing usefulness of the internet.
I have long been a convert to the advantages of the internet, and it's ability to collate worldwide information onto your computer screen without having to mail around five billion people in the hope of a reply! Once again it provided the catalyst in the breakthrough for which I had been looking for the last two years.
In January 2003 I registered with the newly formed GenesConnected website. I uploaded our family tree in the hope that it might be of some help to somebody, and made a few half-hearted searches for any other Orland names, not really expecting there to be any.... There are not too many Orlands around and, besides, this website had not been established for very long.
Surprisingly, I found quite a few, and they were all someone's ancestors from the Creaton area. It seemed that I had stumbled across a modern day family descended from William Orland in Creaton! I tentatively contacted the person who registered these names, and the next day had a reply from a most helpful and friendly lady from Surrey named Carolyn. In my next email I explained my 'conspiracy theory' about William and John being brothers and the possibility of Ben and Hannah being their parents etc. - I certainly wasn't expecting what was to come next.....!!
Carolyn's reply two days later provided the answer to the crux of the whole investigation. A cousin of her's had done some research years before, and had recorded an inscription which gave William's age at death in January 1795 as 52 !
Of all the possible ages that it could have been, it was a perfect match, and meant that it was beyond reasonable doubt that he and John were the two sons of Benjamin and Hannah in Leicestershire.
Found it!
If that grave still existed, then I just had to have a photograph of it! I had received that email on a Saturday morning, and two hours later Bev, me and the kids were on our way to Creaton with the camera. The conditions were more favourable this time, and although we had to clear some fallen branches away and some undergrowth, the face of the headstones appeared to have been washed by the recent wind and rain, and were not covered with moss. After a very short time, I discovered William's grave next to his wife Jane's, which I had also failed to find on our previous visit. They were just in front of a hedge next to a large tree, which had shed it's leaves and many branches too - and adjacent to many of the other Orland graves which I had recorded before. So I can only surmise that they must have been unreadable or covered in growth on our last outing to Creaton. Despite being over two hundred years old, the inscription was remarkably legible, and it's perhaps ironic that the foliage which may have prevented us from finding the graves on the earlier visit might have been the very thing which preserved the condition in which we found the graves.
Counters provided by Rob Orland