The William Webb Wagg investigation (6)
Part 6: Extending the Wegg line — Testing WWW's paternal grandparent
In Part 5, the combined documentary and autosomal DNA evidence demonstrated that William Webb Wagg (referred to hereafter as WWW for clarity) can be securely placed as a child of William and Mary Ann (Clark) Wegg of Norwich. This conclusion was not derived from a single match or isolated record, but from the convergence of independent documentary and genetic evidence aligning as expected.
The next step is to extend that structured approach one generation further. Having established WWW’s position within the sibling group of William and Mary Ann (Clark) Wegg, attention now turns to the generation above them: his four grandparents.
This analysis will consider both the paternal and maternal lines. For clarity, it begins with William Wegg’s own parents — the paternal grandparents of WWW — before turning in the next post to the Clark family and the maternal line.
As we step back another generation, both the genetic and documentary landscapes change. The expected amount of shared autosomal DNA decreases and inheritance patterns become less uniform, while surviving records are typically fewer and less detailed. The approach itself does not change — patterns must still be assessed across multiple descendants rather than inferred from isolated matches — but the evidentiary task becomes more exacting, requiring careful interpretation of cumulative DNA patterning alongside the available documentary material.
The question is therefore whether the documentary reconstruction of the earlier Wegg generation remains consistent when tested against the autosomal DNA evidence available from present-day descendants. If the identified grandparents are correct, the cumulative DNA patterns should align in broadly predictable ways. If they are not, those patterns should fail to cohere around the proposed structure.
The methodology does not change. Only the generational lens — and the strength of the genetic signal — shifts.
From Norwich back to Plumstead
A candidate Bbaptism - William Wegg
Knowing that William Wegg married Mary Ann Clark in Norwich in 1819, and that she was born around 1798, I began searching for a corresponding baptism for William in the surrounding area. An entry in the Norfolk parish registers records that William Wegg, son of Charles Wegg and Phoebe (née Broughton), was born on 4 February 1800 and baptised on 9 February 1800 at Plumstead by Holt. [1]
Although the image is faded and soiled, this entry provides the first clear foothold for tracing the generation before WWW. My working hypothesis is that the child baptised at Plumstead by Holt in February 1800 is the same William Wegg who later married Mary Ann Clark in Norwich and became WWW’s father. That identification cannot rest on name and year alone. It must be tested by asking whether a coherent documentary pathway links Plumstead to Norwich, and whether the autosomal DNA evidence from present-day descendants supports Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton as WWW’s paternal grandparents.
Plumstead by Holt is a tiny rural parish in north Norfolk, roughly thirty kilometres from Norwich — a distance that feels modest today, but which in 1800 would have represented a significant journey across countryside. At the time of William’s baptism, the parish was home to fewer than 150 people, a small agricultural community centred on farming and local labour.
To test that hypothesis, it is necessary to examine the wider Plumstead entries relating to Charles and Phoebe.
Establishing the Plumstead family - Charles Wegg & Phoebe Broughton
The same Plumstead register also records the marriage of Charles Wegg, single man, and Phoebe Broughton, single woman, both of this parish, by banns on 2 October 1798. Although the entry is dated 1799, the sequence of surrounding entries makes it clear that the correct year is 1798. The ceremony was performed by the rector, and among the witnesses was Robert Broughton, Phoebe’s eldest brother — a detail that anchors her securely within the local Broughton family. The second witness, Sarah Goodwin, married Phoebe’s brother Thomas Broughton on 6 November 1798, further illustrating the close kin network evident in the parish at that time.
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| Marriage of Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton, 2 October 1798, Plumstead by Holt, Norfolk [2] |
Just weeks after their marriage, the register records the baptism of their first child, Robert, born 28 October 1798 and baptised on 2 November 1798 — a name that may reflect Phoebe’s brother and reinforces the continuity of the family within the parish. Together, these early entries establish Charles and Phoebe as a settled young couple in Plumstead at the close of the eighteenth century, appearing first as bride and groom, and then as parents.
The move to Norwich - Charles & Phoebe Wegg with their sons, Robert & William
Yet the documentary trail does not end in this small rural parish. The key turning point comes in 1803, when their next recorded child, Godwin Wegg, was born and baptised in Norwich, marking the family’s first clear appearance in the city.
The records do not reveal Charles Wegg’s occupation, and no direct explanation survives for the family’s move from rural Plumstead to Norwich in the early years of the nineteenth century. However, such movement was not uncommon. Norwich was a major provincial city, offering opportunities in trade and craft that would not have existed in a small agricultural parish of fewer than 150 inhabitants. It is possible that economic considerations drew the family toward the city, where their children came of age and where William would later be recorded as a basket weaver — a craft more readily sustained in an urban environment than in a tiny rural community. While the precise reason remains unknown, the documentary evidence makes clear that by 1803 the family’s centre of life had shifted decisively to Norwich.
From 1803 onward, the family’s centre of gravity settles firmly in Norwich. Over the following years, further baptisms — Christopher Henry (1805), Ann (1808), Elizabeth (1811), Susanna (1814) and George Charles (1817) — are all recorded in Norwich parishes. William himself married Mary Ann Clark at St Paul’s, Norwich, in 1819. Phoebe died there in 1822, and several of the children also lived and died in the city. What begins in Plumstead as a small rural household becomes, within little more than a decade, a Norwich family woven into the fabric of an urban parish network.
This relocation from agricultural parish to provincial city forms the geographic bridge between the 1800 Plumstead baptism and the later, well-documented Norwich life of William Wegg. The documentary sequence linking the two locations is coherent and internally consistent. The remaining question is whether that reconstruction is borne out by the autosomal DNA evidence drawn from present-day descendants.
Left: Geographic continuity of the Wegg family in north Norfolk, showing the interconnected parishes of Cley next the Sea, Baconsthorpe, Hempstead, Plumstead by Holt and Norwich.
Of those eight children, four — Robert, Godwin, Ann and Elizabeth — either died young or left no known descendants. William and three of his siblings — Christopher, Susanna and George — married and produced issue. Although George had two children, neither appears to have left descendants.
In practical terms, this means that any detectable autosomal signal attributable to Charles and Phoebe would be expected to flow through the descendant lines of William, Christopher and Susanna. Those lines therefore form the primary evidentiary base for assessing whether the reconstructed parental couple sits correctly within the family structure.
Testing the reconstruction with DNA
If Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton were the parents of William Wegg — and therefore the paternal grandparents of WWW — any detectable autosomal signal attributable to them would be expected to appear only through the descendant lines of those children who left issue.
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| Click on images to expand. |
The upper diagram summarises the documented children of Charles and Phoebe and highlights the lines through which I have been able to identify usable descendant DNA matches. Of their eight recorded children, four either died young or left no known descendants. Of the remaining four, George’s line appears to have ended in the next generation. In practical terms, this leaves only three lines through which DNA from Charles and Phoebe could plausibly persist into the present: William (WWW’s line), Christopher, and Susanna.
The lower table sets out the observed shared matches between tested descendants of WWW and descendants of Christopher and Susanna. At present, three measurable matches have been identified across these independent lines.
At predominantly fourth- and fifth-cousin distance, such a result is neither unexpected nor unusually sparse. Autosomal inheritance diminishes with each generation, and many legitimate descendants will share no detectable DNA at all. Where sharing does occur, small centimorgan values are entirely typical. For that reason, the absence of a match cannot be treated as evidence against the relationship, and a small number of matches cannot be treated as proof in isolation.
What can be assessed instead is whether the matches that do appear behave in a manner consistent with the reconstructed structure. Here, the observable matches occur in precisely those descendant lines through which DNA from Charles and Phoebe could have been transmitted. The dataset is modest and inherently limited by the number of surviving descendant lines, but the pattern is directionally consistent with the documentary reconstruction and does not contradict it.
At this generational distance, the DNA evidence is therefore supportive rather than determinative. It does not independently establish Charles and Phoebe as the parents of William Wegg, but it aligns with the documented pathway from Plumstead to Norwich and adds an additional layer of structural consistency.
Extending the line one generation further
Closer examination of the shared-match clustering suggested that the pattern did not terminate neatly with Charles and Phoebe. Instead, the observable matches between descendants of WWW and those of his siblings and paternal cousins hinted that the inheritance pattern might extend into the preceding generation — the parents of Charles Wegg and of Phoebe Broughton.
Rather than treat that possibility as an assumption, I chose to repeat the same disciplined approach used throughout this investigation: reconstruct the earlier generation through documentary evidence first, and only then consider whether the DNA — limited though it is at this distance — adds weight to, or conflicts with, that reconstruction. The question therefore broadens from “Are Charles and Phoebe the paternal grandparents?” to “Can the generation before them be examined with the same structured methodology?”
Tracing Phoebe Broughton - Daughter of Robert & Ann Broughton
In Phoebe’s case, that process leads back once more to Plumstead — and to the same parish church of St Michael where she would later marry Charles Wegg in October 1798. The register that records her marriage also preserves her earlier life.
The Plumstead parish register records the baptism of Phoebe, daughter of Robert Broughton and Ann his wife, who was born and baptised on 31 January 1779. The entry is brief, but clear. Phoebe is explicitly identified as the daughter of Robert Broughton and Ann, anchoring her within a documented household in Plumstead nearly twenty years before she appears in the same church as a bride. [3]
The continuity is striking. In 1779 she is recorded as a daughter; in 1798 as a wife; and within weeks of that marriage, as a mother. All three life stages are preserved within the same parish register of St Michael, Plumstead by Holt. That consistency of place strengthens the documentary pathway and situates the Broughton family securely within the parish at the close of the eighteenth century.
Phoebe’s baptism establishes her parentage and provides the foundation for tracing the Broughton line back another generation. But before moving further into the Broughton family, it is necessary to apply the same scrutiny to Charles.
Turning to Charles Wegg - Son of George & Susanna Wegg
If Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton married at Plumstead in October 1798, and appear in the same register almost immediately thereafter as parents, it is reasonable to expect that Charles himself originated in the surrounding Norfolk parishes. The search therefore shifts slightly west to the neighbouring parish of Baconsthorpe, just over two kilometres from Plumstead.
The Baconsthorpe parish register for 1778 is sparse. In that year, only four baptisms are recorded — among them Charles, son of George and Susanna Wegg, baptised on 14 February 1778. [4] The limited number of entries reflects the modest size of the parish and underscores how visible a surname such as Wegg would have been within such a small community. [4]
The same register records only one marriage in the parish in 1778: George Wegg and Susanna Wilken, married on 12 January 1778. [5] The proximity in date between that marriage and Charles’s baptism the following month provides a coherent and internally consistent documentary sequence. A couple married in January; a son baptised in February; both events recorded in the same parish by the same rector.
The geographic proximity of Baconsthorpe to Plumstead makes the identification plausible. Rural families frequently moved between adjacent parishes for work, tenancy and marriage. A young man baptised in Baconsthorpe in early 1778 would have been about twenty years old at the time of the 1798 Plumstead marriage — entirely consistent with the timeline already established.
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| St Mary’s Church, Baconsthorpe, Norfolk (CC BY-SA 2.0, Roger Cornfoot / Wikimedia Commons). |
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| George Wegg and Sarah Wilken's marriage - Click on image to expand. |
None of these entries, taken alone, proves identity. But the small size of the parish, the limited appearance of the Wegg surname, the chronological alignment of marriage and baptism, and the later appearance of Charles in nearby Plumstead together form a coherent documentary framework.
The record does not end there. After the baptisms of Charles (1778) and Robert (1779) in Baconsthorpe, the family no longer appears in that parish. Instead, subsequent baptisms are recorded in the neighbouring parish of Hempstead by Holt. Over the following years, George and Susanna are recorded as parents to Dinah (1781), Ann and May (1783), Clara (1785), Edmund (1788), Frost (1790), Ephraim (1791) and Susannah (1795).
George’s earlier origins remain more tentative. A baptism in Cley next the Sea in 1761 is a plausible candidate by name and chronology, and a burial in Baconsthorpe in December 1852 aged ninety-one aligns with that birth year. However, Cley lies roughly fifteen to eighteen miles from Baconsthorpe — not an impossible distance, but not insignificant in the eighteenth century. Such movement would have been entirely plausible for a young agricultural labourer seeking work, yet without direct linking evidence the connection must remain provisional.
Testing the George Wegg & Susanna Wilkin reconstruction
At this generational level, the documentary landscape thins noticeably. What emerges is structurally coherent but not fully resolved. The marriage is secure. The sequence of baptisms is internally consistent. The couple’s broader origins are less certain.
As elsewhere in this reconstruction, the documentary framework must stand first. Only once the family structure is reasonably outlined can the autosomal DNA evidence be assessed for consistency.
The question now shifts from paper to pattern.
If George Wegg and Susanna Wilkin were indeed the parents of Charles Wegg — and therefore the great-grandparents of WWW — any surviving autosomal inheritance from them must pass through the descendant lines of those children who left issue.
Of their ten recorded children, six vanish from the record after baptism. Charles, Robert and Frost married and established families; Ephraim died young, unmarried and without issue. In practical terms, therefore, the only viable lines through which detectable DNA from George and Susanna could persist (other than through Charles and WWW’s branch) are Robert’s and Frost’s.
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| Click on images to expland |
The upper chart summarises the reconstructed descendant lines of George and Susanna, highlighting the three branches through which DNA matches with descendants of WWW have been identified - Robert and Frost
The orange nodes represent descendants whose full AncestryDNA match lists are available to me for detailed analysis.
The yellow nodes represent two categories:
descendants of WWW who share measurable DNA with the Robert or Frost branches, but whose full match lists I cannot access; and
descendants of the Robert or Frost branches who share DNA with descendants of WWW.
The lower table records the observed shared DNA between tested descendants of WWW and tested descendants of Robert and Frost. The centimorgan values shown in red represent measurable sharing.
Dashes within the table indicate no detectable shared DNA at AncestryDNA’s lowest reporting level (approximately 6cM). “n/a” appears where I do not have access to a full match list; in those cases, sharing below AncestryDNA’s 20cM shared-match threshold cannot be observed. Because of these reporting limits, the absence of a visible match does not necessarily imply the absence of biological relatedness — particularly at predominantly fifth- and sixth-cousin distance.
At this depth, the DNA evidence is supportive rather than independently conclusive. It does not, on its own, prove that George Wegg and Susanna Wilkin were Charles’s parents. However, when considered alongside the parish marriage, the tightly clustered baptisms, the geographic continuity, and the absence of competing Wegg households in the immediate area, the genetic pattern aligns with the documentary reconstruction.
The observable sharing behaves as the pedigree predicts. It occurs only within the descendant lines through which inheritance from George and Susanna could plausibly have flowed. The segments are small and sparse — as expected at predominantly fifth- and sixth-cousin range — but they are present where they should be, and absent where they would not be expected.
Taken together, the cumulative weight of the evidence supports the identification of George Wegg and Susanna Wilkin as Charles’s parents on the balance of probabilities.
That conclusion rests not on a single record or a single match, but on the convergence of independent lines of evidence — paper and pattern — behaving coherently.
Turning to the Broughton line — Identifying the "union couple"
With the Wegg reconstruction taken as far as the evidence will reasonably allow, it is time to turn to the other half of the story.
Charles Wegg did not stand alone.
If Charles and Phoebe were the parents of William Wegg — and therefore the paternal grandparents of WWW — then the strength of that generation rests not simply on Charles, but on the marriage that brought the Wegg and Broughton families together. That union deserves the same careful attention.
We have already met Phoebe in the Plumstead register — not first as a bride, but as a small child baptised in January 1779. That earlier entry now becomes the quiet anchor for everything that follows.
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| Click on image to expand |
Rather than repeat the details, it is enough to pause and notice what the register preserves. In the same parish church of St Michael we see her life unfolding in sequence: first as a daughter in the Broughton household, then as a bride in 1798, and shortly afterwards as a mother.
There is something deeply reassuring about that continuity. Phoebe was not an outsider arriving from elsewhere. She grew up here. Her story is written into the same parish pages over nearly two decades.
Once that baptism is placed back into its wider setting, the Broughton household begins to take shape. Robert Broughton married Ann King at Plumstead by Holt on 6 January 1771. Ann is described as being from Wickmere, gently linking this small agricultural parish to its neighbours from the very beginning.
Left: St Andrew’s Church, Wickmere, Norfolk. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0 (original photo by Brokentaco on Flickr, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons).
Over the next two decades the Plumstead register records a steady succession of baptisms: Robert, Thomas, William, Phoebe, Jonathan, Richard, Samuel, James, Ann and Christopher. It reads like the unfolding life of a settled rural household — not scattered or sporadic, but consistent and rooted in one place.
Robert Broughton appears to have died in Plumstead in January 1841 at the age of ninety-two. Ann died earlier, in 1810, also in Plumstead. Taken together, their lifespans suggest a family embedded in this small Norfolk parish for decades.
And this is where the importance of the union comes into focus.
In this part of north Norfolk, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, I can identify only one recorded marriage between a Wegg and a Broughton: Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton at Plumstead in October 1798. There is no competing Wegg–Broughton marriage in neighbouring parishes at this time.
That absence matters.
Genealogy so often confronts us with clusters of similarly named couples across adjacent villages. When that happens, doubt is inevitable. Here, however, the field narrows dramatically. There is one documented marriage, in the right place, at the right time — and the bride can be securely located within a clearly defined parish household.
If both the documentary reconstruction and the DNA align with that couple, we are not choosing between multiple plausible candidates. We are identifying a specific, historically documented union — the hinge on which the entire paternal grandparental generation turns.
The Broughton reconstruction on parish evidence
Before moving to DNA, it is worth pausing with the parish record itself.
The 1771 marriage of Robert Broughton and Ann King is followed by a steady, internally consistent series of baptisms in the same church over twenty years, including Phoebe in 1779. The register reflects one continuous household. There is no second Phoebe of similar age in Plumstead to complicate the picture.
On documentary grounds alone, the reconstruction is stable.
For readers who do not spend their days immersed in centimorgans and shared-match clusters, this is an important reassurance. When a bride can be traced from baptism to marriage to motherhood within a single parish — and when no competing candidate appears — the identification rests on more than hopeful alignment.
The paper trail holds.
The question now is whether the inheritance pattern does as well.
Testing the Robert Broughton & Ann King reconstruction
From parish household to inheritance pattern
With the Broughton household firmly embedded in the Plumstead registers, the analysis now shifts — as it has at each stage — from parish entry to genetic behaviour.
If Robert Broughton and Ann King were indeed Phoebe’s parents, and therefore the maternal grandparents of William Wegg and great-grandparents of WWW, then any surviving autosomal inheritance from them must pass through the descendant lines of those children who left issue.
The parish record suggests that several of their children reached adulthood and established families. The branches most relevant for DNA testing are:
Robert (1773)
Thomas (1775)
Phoebe (1779) — leading to William Wegg and WWW
Samuel (1787)
Ann (1794)
These branches therefore form the core descendant lines against which the DNA can be meaningfully assessed — provided that present-day descendants have tested at AncestryDNA, share detectable DNA with WWW’s descendants within the platform’s reporting limits, and can be securely traced through documentary research back to Robert and Ann Broughton.
Other siblings are less visible in later life:
William (1776) and Richard (1784) show no evidence of marriage in the surviving records.
Jonathan (1780) and Christopher (1795) did marry, but no confirmed issue has been identified.
James (1789) appears only at baptism and then disappears from view.
As so often in eighteenth-century rural research, some children step fully into adulthood in the records, while others recede into silence. The DNA testing base is therefore shaped not only by generational distance, but by which branches continued — and can still be identified and tested today.
The next step is to examine whether the observable DNA sharing sits precisely within those surviving branches — and nowhere else.
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| Click on images to expand |
The upper chart summarises the reconstructed descendant lines of Robert and Ann, highlighting the two branches through which DNA matches with descendants of WWW have been identified - Samuel and Ann.
The orange nodes represent descendants whose full AncestryDNA match lists are available to me for detailed analysis.
The yellow nodes represent two categories:
descendants of WWW who share measurable DNA with the Samuel or Ann branches, but whose full match lists I cannot access; and
descendants of the Samuel or Ann branches who share DNA with descendants of WWW.
The lower table records the observed shared DNA between tested descendants of WWW and tested descendants of the Samuel and Ann Broughton lines. Centimorgan values shown in red represent measurable sharing. Dashes indicate no detectable sharing at AncestryDNA’s reporting threshold (approximately 6cM), while “n/a” reflects situations where access limitations prevent observation of matches below the 20cM shared-match visibility threshold.
What the DNA shows
At predominantly fifth- and sixth-cousin distance, sparse results are expected. Many legitimate descendants at this generational depth will share no detectable autosomal DNA at all. Where sharing does occur, it is typically modest — and, as seen here, often confined to a single segment.
And yet, when the matches are examined collectively rather than individually, the pattern becomes clear.
The measurable sharing:
Occurs within the predicted Broughton descendant branches (Samuel and Ann),
Appears across multiple independent lines of WWW’s descendants,
Falls within expected centimorgan ranges for the stated relationships, and
Does not appear in unrelated or structurally inconsistent branches.
Notably, several descendants show centimorgan values in the 20–50cM range — entirely consistent with relationships at this distance. The clustering is not random. It aligns with the structure predicted by the reconstructed Robert Broughton–Ann King household.
This is the critical point.
We are no longer relying on a single match, or a single line. We are observing repeated alignment across multiple independent descendant branches — paper and pattern behaving as they should.
The significance of the union couple
When this genetic pattern is considered alongside the documentary framework — the 1771 marriage of Robert Broughton and Ann King, the uninterrupted sequence of baptisms at Plumstead, the embedded position of Phoebe within that household, and the absence of competing Broughton families of the same configuration — the reconstruction tightens.
And when that Broughton reconstruction is placed beside the earlier Wegg analysis — where the George Wegg and Susanna Wilkin structure also demonstrated consistent documentary and genetic alignment — something important happens.
The two strands meet.
The 1798 marriage of Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton ceases to be merely plausible. It becomes structurally specific.
- We are not choosing between multiple candidate couples.
- We are not navigating a crowded landscape of similarly named families.
- We are dealing with a single documented Wegg–Broughton union in the right place and at the right time — and the DNA behaves exactly as that union predicts.
Conclusion: Beyond reasonable doubt
Taken together:
The parish evidence securely embeds Phoebe within the Robert Broughton–Ann King household.
The Wegg reconstruction identifies George Wegg and Susanna Wilkin as Charles’s parents on the balance of probabilities.
The autosomal DNA evidence aligns independently with both reconstructions.
The descendant clustering behaves precisely within the predicted structural boundaries.
At this point, the cumulative weight of documentary and genetic evidence moves beyond mere plausibility.
On the balance of probabilities — and, I would say, beyond responsible doubt — the paternal line of William Webb Wagg can now be traced securely:
WWW → William Wegg → Charles Wegg & Phoebe Broughton
George Wegg & Susanna Wilkin AND Robert Broughton & Ann King
WWW's paternal grandparents are established with confidence and his great-grandparents are strongly indicated by convergent evidence.
The structure holds. And importantly, it holds not because of one dramatic discovery, but because multiple independent lines of evidence — parish record, geographic continuity, surname distribution, and autosomal inheritance — converge coherently.
That is the quiet power of cumulative genealogy.
It rarely arrives with a trumpet blast. It builds — record by record, cluster by cluster — until the structure no longer feels tentative. The pieces stop shifting. The relationships stop competing. The evidence begins to reinforce itself.
For me, that is the moment where a reconstruction moves from “possible” to “probable” — and in this case, to something stronger.
The paternal framework for William Webb Wagg now rests on:
a single documented Wegg–Broughton union in the right place and time;
tightly clustered parish baptisms across adjacent Norfolk parishes;
the absence of competing households producing alternative candidates;
and autosomal DNA that appears precisely within the descendant lines predicted by that reconstruction.
Paper and pattern are no longer running on parallel tracks. They are travelling together.
But one half of William Webb Wagg’s ancestry remains to be explored.
If his paternal line has now been reconstructed to his grandparents with confidence — and his great-grandparents with strong convergent support — then the next task is to turn to the maternal side: Mary Ann Clark.
Her story unfolds differently. The geography shifts. The documentary landscape changes. And the genetic expectations adjust accordingly.
The Clark line deserves the same disciplined treatment: document first, test second, and only then draw conclusions.
That is where we go next.
Overview summary (For those who prefer the short version)
If you’ve skimmed — or if you’ve bravely read every word — here is the structural outcome of this stage of the investigation:
William Webb Wagg’s paternal grandparents can now be identified with confidence as Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton, married at Plumstead by Holt in 1798.
Phoebe is securely embedded within the documented household of Robert Broughton and Ann King of Plumstead.
Charles aligns, on parish and genetic evidence combined, with the family of George Wegg and Susanna Wilkin of Baconsthorpe and Hempstead by Holt.
Autosomal DNA matches, modest but correctly placed, occur only within the descendant branches predicted by the reconstructed pedigree.
There are no competing Wegg–Broughton marriages in this locality at this time to create ambiguity.
In short:
The paternal line of William Webb Wagg now rests on convergent documentary and genetic evidence.
The foundation is structurally specific.
And it holds.
Next: we turn to the Clark line — and begin again.
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[1] Baptism of William Wegg, 9 February 1800, Plumstead by Holt, Norfolk (son of Charles and Phoebe Wegg); Norfolk Record Office, ref. PD 412/2; digital images, Norfolk, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535–1812 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Provo, UT, 2016).
[2] Marriage of Charles Wegg and Phoebe Broughton, 2 October 1798, Plumstead by Holt, Norfolk; Norfolk Record Office, ref. nro_register_bills\at\plumstead; digital images, Norfolk, England, Transcripts of Church of England Baptism, Marriage and Burial Registers, 1600–1935 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Lehi, UT, 2018).
[3] Baptism of Phoebe Broughton, 31 January 1779, Plumstead by Holt, Norfolk (daughter of Robert and Ann Broughton); Norfolk Record Office, ref. PD 412/1; digital images, Norfolk, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535–1812 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Provo, UT, 2016).
[4] Baptism of Charles Wegg, 14 February 1778, Baconsthorpe, Norfolk (son of George and Susanna Wegg); Norfolk Record Office, ref. PD 334/2; digital images, Norfolk, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535–1812 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Provo, UT, 2016).
[5] Marriage of George Wegg and Susanna Wilken, 12 January 1778, Baconsthorpe, Norfolk; Norfolk Record Office, ref. AT Baconsthorpe; digital images, Norfolk, England, Transcripts of Church of England Baptism, Marriage and Burial Registers, 1600–1935 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Lehi, UT, 2018).
[6] Plumstead by Holt parish register (baptisms, marriages and burials), Norfolk; Norfolk Record Office, ref. nro_register_bills\at\plumstead; digital images, Norfolk, England, Transcripts of Church of England Baptism, Marriage and Burial Registers, 1600–1935 (Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., Lehi, UT, 2018).
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William Webb Wagg investigation series
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