The Webb Wagg Family in Australia

Update — June 2026: George Turner, Scarborough, John Tindall, Mary Ann/Jane, and the beginning of a new investigation When I first wrote this post in May 2017, I described 16 May 1847 as the “highly likely” death date for George Turner. I wrote it deliberately on what appeared to be the 170th anniversary of his death, while also acknowledging that much of George’s story was still unfinished. Nearly a decade later, the research has moved on. I now know that 16 May 1847 was indeed George Turner’s death date. I have also established, from New South Wales records, that George came from Scarborough in Yorkshire. Those same records point to a birth date of about 1805, although I have still not found a definite birth or baptismal record for him. The most important new development is that George’s 1818 apprenticeship indenture can now be placed much more clearly in its Scarborough context. The original family-held indenture fragments showed that George was apprenticed from 3 September 1818 to ...

Part 7:  Testing the Cley baptism — Is George Horatio Wegg the right man? In Part 6, the documentary and DNA evidence allowed us to extend the Wegg line two further generations. That work identified George Wegg, who married Susanna Wilkin in 1778, as the paternal great-grandfather of William Webb Wagg. That conclusion gave us a firmer foundation. But it also opened the next question: Can we identify the origins of George Wegg — and is he the same man as George Horatio Wegg, baptised at Cley next the Sea in 1761, son of Horatio and Mary Wegg? This is not simply a matter of finding a promising baptism. It is a question of identity. Does the whole life of the man fit? In Part 6, I noted that the Cley baptism was plausible by name, date and location, but that without direct linking evidence the connection had to remain provisional. That remains the starting point for this post. What follows is an attempt to test that possibility more carefully. An unexpected lead The investigation bega...

Post 10: Mary Ann Clark The documentary trail of William Wegg’s wife In reconstructing William Webb Wagg’s birth family, the identity of his parents, William Wegg and Mary Ann Clark, rests upon a firm documentary foundation. Their marriage at St Paul’s Church, Norwich, on 23 February 1819 provides a clear starting point. From that date forward, the Norwich parish registers preserve a consistent record of their life together and the family they formed. While William Wegg’s origins can now be traced securely into the Norfolk parish landscape, his wife’s earlier identity is less immediately transparent. Mary Ann emerges clearly in the records from the time of her marriage, but her parentage must be reconstructed from parish evidence alone. Unlike the Wegg line, no autosomal DNA matches have yet been identified that can be confidently attributed to her Clark family. For this branch, the analysis rests on careful documentary correlation. Names, spelling, and identity Mary Ann appears in con...

Part 9 – Mileham, Norfolk Where the cholera epidemic touched the Broughton family Part 7 explored the Norfolk landscape in which the Wegg family lived — the villages, fields, and parishes that formed the physical framework of their lives. But as the DNA evidence began to connect descendants across these same places, it became clear that the parish registers held more than names and dates. They preserved moments when the ordinary continuity of family life was abruptly broken. While researching a DNA match descended from the Broughton family, I was drawn back into the Mileham parish records, where a sequence of burials in January 1849 revealed the devastating impact of cholera on a household closely connected to William Webb Wagg’s own family. Mileham was not an isolated parish, but part of the same closely connected Norfolk landscape in which the Wegg and Broughton families had lived for generations. Situated approximately five miles south-west of Plumstead, it lay within easy travellin...