From Texas to Badsworth
By Jenny Stocker
What was a girl from Texas doing in the graveyard of St Mary's Church Badsworth on a bitterly cold day in December 2005?
The story begins in Austin,Texas in early 2005 when I became interested in genealogy and the desire to trace my own family tree. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) is an excellent way to begin one's search. On their family search website are listed many births and marriages and also the transcription of the 1881 census returns for England. I was fortunate that my father had kept his mother's birth and marriage certificates, which I was pleased to find my mother had saved. The marriage certificate gave her father's name as John Joseph Richards. On the 1881 census I found John Joseph Richards living in Salford. He gave his place of birth as Badsworth, Yorkshire.
I now turned to the IGI and found a John Joseph Richards christened at St Mary's Church Badsworth on November 29th 1835. To learn more about his parents I needed to look at the parish registers of St Mary's Church.
In the US the greatest resource for genealogists is the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The library houses the greatest collection of records on microfilm in the world. The records, microfilmed by the Church of The Latter Day Saints, include copies of parish registers, census returns and wills to name but a few.
As luck would have it we had planned a trip to Idaho that summer and Salt Lake City was on the way. We ended up spending a week at the library as we searched with great success for many of our ancestors.
On the film of St Mary's I found John Joseph christened November 29th 1835. His parents were John and Julia and his father's occupation was recorded as "late Huntsman to the Badsworth Hunt." In the burial register I found John Richards buried just 9 days earlier on November 20th 1835. He left behind his wife Julia and four children: Mary 7, Annie 6, Julia 4 and baby John Joseph. John Richards was 40 years and 8 months at the time of his death.
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