Link with Hugh Bourne's family

Newly discovered link

Some time ago my cousin visited Engelsea Brook after discovering an ancestral connection with the Primitive Methodist Church there, and he visited the grave of Betsy and Mary Emma Clifton. He copied his findings and his discussion with Dr Barber to me, and I have now recently made contact with a hitherto unknown branch of our family, which is more directly connected to Hugh Bourne.

Mary Emma Clifton (1874 – 1918) was married to my maternal grandfather, Thomas Henry Owen (1872 – 1939), a primitive methodist organist and choirmaster at Borrowash, Derby. After Mary’s death he married my grandmother, Sarah Jane Owen, in 1919, and my mother, Doreen Owen, was born at Borrowash in 1920. Emma Clifton was a daughter of Betsy and John Clifton at Engelsea Brook, and Betsy, nee Henshall, was a daughter of Thomas Henshall, b. 1822 who married Emma Whittaker, b.1824, in 1844. I understand that the link with Hugh Bourne was through his marriage to Jane Henshall in 1833, but I am unsure of Jane’s relationship with Thomas, and I also see that the Whittaker family feature prominently in the Primitive Methodist’s history, of which I know nothing.

Our family link is tenuous, only through a second marriage, but I have recently made contact with the great grandson of Thomas Henry Owen through his marriage to Emma Clifton, so potentially a direct line to Hugh Bourne. They had only one son, George, who died in 1940, and whose descendant knew very little of Thomas’ second family.

All of this is of particular interest to me and my family as my father was a lifelong Methodist minister from a Wesleyan family, who married into a long standing Primitive Methodist family. Although he married in 1945, way after union in 1932, he sometimes jokingly referred to his marriage as becoming United Methodists! My siblings and I are also lifelong methodists.

I have yet to discuss the Primitive Methodist link with my new half cousin, as we are still exchanging information about the living, but would be grateful for any further information or confirmation on my findings.

i hope this is of interest to you at Engelsea Brook.

 

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