A small breakthrough

For many years I have been looking for the parents of my 2G grandmother, Ruth, who is the mother of my GGF, Thomas George Ing.

In the census she is listed as as "Ruth Ing" and in her children's christening records she is simply "Ruth". All attempts to find her marriage to Robert Ing, have failed. So what is there to celebrate?

On Tuesday I decided to go through an old box in my garage, and Tuesday and Wednesday were spent on scanning, data entry and uploading to FamilySearch Memories. If you have followed this blog, you will realize that this is something I have done before. My goal is to get all of my family information into FamilySearch while I can. That way my family can simply discard my boxes of old papers and photographs, if that is what they choose to do. In every generation there will be people who love family history and people who don't. As a responsible custodian, my aim is to preserve it for those of future generations who ARE interested.

Now back to Ruth ,,,

One of the documents in the box was called "Record of Ing Family". It was only 2-pages long, but one line caught my eye.  "Thomas ... had a sister Emily and a half-sister Priscilla." Aha! I suspected that Priscilla might be a half-sister, but although her marriage to James Moore says that her father is Robert Ing, I could find no record of her birth or christening.

I search for her with no surname but a mother named Ruth found only one possibility in the right location.

England Births & Baptisms 1538-1975
First name(s) Priscilla
Last name Hitchcock
Gender Female
Birth year -
Birth place -
Baptism year 1827
Baptism date 23 Sep 1827
Place Paddington
County London
Country England
Father's first name(s) John
Father's last name Hitchcock
Mother's first name(s) Ruth
Mother's last name -
Record set England Births & Baptisms 1538-1975
Category Birth, Marriage & Death (Parish Registers)
Subcategory Parish Baptisms
Collections from England, Great Britain
Index (c) IRI. Used by permission of FamilySearch Intl

Hitchcock?!!! Well the time, place and mother all fit nicely. It's too bad that her mother's surname is missing from this record.

But I found the marriage of Ruth Reading and John Hitchcock in the right time and place.
England Marriages, 1538–1973
Name: John Hitchcock
Event Type: Marriage
Event Date: 8 Sep 1816
Event Place: Marylebone, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom
Event Place (Original): Marylebone, Middlesex, England
Gender: Male
Spouse's Name: Ruth Reading
Spouse's Gender: Female

Further research showed two Hitchcock children older than Priscilla,
But were they the right family?

For me the clincher was that Priscilla is listed just prior to William Frederick Robert Ing in the parish register. And when the clerk started writing William's surname, he starts to write Hitchcock, then strikes-out the H and writes Ing.

It looks to me like Robert and Ruth brought both children to church for christening. And the clerk was confused by the fact that their surnames were different.

But finding Ruth's christening is proving elusive. It is another puzzle to solve.