After forty years of working on the Chedgzoy and Chedzoy family tree, I have hit a brick wall in the most awkward place possible: right on my own direct line. I would rather lay it out honestly and ask for help than paper over it, so here is exactly where I am stuck, the two ways it could go, and what would settle it.
What I know for certain
My direct ancestor is John Chedzoy, baptised at Aller, Somerset, on 14 January 1798. The baptism record names only a mother, "Mary Chedzoy", and no father. In the language of the time, John was base-born, and like most illegitimate children he took his mother's surname. So my Chedzoy name has come down to me through his mother, not through a father.
Everything from John forward is documented in the usual way, through census returns, civil registration and marriage records: John, then his son John (born 1836), then John James (1861, Islington), Harry (1896, Birmingham), my father Ronald (1932), and me.
The problem is everything above John. Because his baptism names only "Mary Chedzoy" and nothing about her family or where she came from, I cannot yet prove who she was. And there are two very different candidates.
Route A: Mary, daughter of Levi Chedzoy of Stoke St Gregory
The first possibility is Mary Chedzoy, daughter of Levi Chedzoy, baptised at Stoke St Gregory in 1764. Stoke St Gregory is the parish my family is generally tied to, and this is the answer that family tradition and the old inherited tree point to.
If she is John's mother, then my line reaches back into the long-established Stoke St Gregory Chedzoys, and through them to the brothers Edward and Robert Chedzoy, who were caught up in the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion, fought at Sedgemoor, and were tried at the Bloody Assizes. That is the tidy, satisfying version of the story.
But I have no record that actually connects this Mary to John. The match rests only on the shared name and a plausible age. That is an inference, not proof.
Route B: the unmarried Mary Chedzey of Mark
The second possibility is a different woman entirely. The Somerset poor-law records show an unmarried Mary Chedzey living at Mark, Somerset, who had base-born children in the 1790s. She appears in the parish bastardy papers with a bastardy order in 1793 and an indemnity bond in 1799 (the father named as Richard Pewtner of Burnham), and there is a cluster of base-born Chedzoy baptisms at Mark in 1791, 1793 and 1797, running on to John at Aller in 1798.
She is the only unmarried Mary Chedzoy I have found anywhere in the Somerset bastardy index. The Stoke St Gregory Mary has no such record. So on the documents as they stand, the Mark woman is actually the stronger candidate for John's mother.
If John's mother is the Mark Mary, she may belong to a separate Chedzoy branch, and my line would not connect to the Stoke St Gregory family or the Sedgemoor story at all. It would be an honest and rather different outcome.
What would settle it
Two records would most likely decide this one way or the other:
- The original Aller baptism register or Bishop's Transcript for 1798. The register entry may state the mother's home parish ("Mary Chedzoy of ..."), which the indexed copy I have does not show. If it says Stoke St Gregory, that points to Route A; if it says Mark or Aller, that points to Route B.
- The Mark indemnity bond of 1799 (Somerset Heritage Centre, reference D/P/mk/13/5/1, on microfiche). An indemnity bond usually states where the mother "belonged", which would identify her branch.
Can you help?
This is where I would genuinely welcome a hand. In particular:
- Are you a descendant of the Mark Chedzoys? If your family carried the name at Mark or nearby in the late 1700s and 1800s, you may hold the missing piece.
- Can you view the Aller 1798 baptism register image (on findmypast or at the Somerset Heritage Centre) and read what it says next to "Mary"?
- Are you near the Somerset Heritage Centre and able to look up the Mark bastardy bond (D/P/mk/13/5/1)?
- Do you have the base-born Mark baptisms of the 1790s in your own research?
- Are you a Chedzoy or Chedgzoy DNA match? That may help too, although because the link here runs through a mother rather than a father, it is not as simple as a surname Y-DNA test.
I would rather get this right than tell a neat story that the evidence cannot support. If you can move it forward, even a little, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me through the contact page.