Gilhespie
Grandmother Frances Lamb Gilhespie was born 23 - 11 - 1877 (we have her original birth certificate, courtesy of cousin Carole). She married grandfather on 27 - 12 - 1897; her father was Thomas Gilhespie, a mariner, and her mother was Margaret Lamb.
The LSC provided some information but it did not take us much further forward. An ad placed in the journal of the NDFHS brought a reply from a Mrs Robson in North Shields. She put me in touch with a Mr Harris of Chelmsford and he sent me a complete Gilhespie family tree which showed their origins are in Ryton, dating from the mid 1700s.
Mail shots to Gilhespies, Gillespies, Gillespys etc in the Tyneside area have not produced any new information as yet. Mr Harris tells me the Gilhespie name appears in the northeast in Stuart times, if not before. He has had problems because of the wide variations in spelling Gilhespie, Gilhespy etc. He quotes an instance of three brothers living in the same village who used three different ways of spelling the same name.
When time permits maybe we will have another go at trying to trace our Gilhespies.
Appleby
Grandfather Wm (Bill) Appleby was born in North Shields in 1889. Growing up, I knew very little of his background but much information was provided by a friend of my Aunt Grace, Bill Richardson. Bill took up genealogy after retirement and traced grandfather’s ancestry back to 1755 when Thomas Appleby of Whitburn married Eleanor Hewgill of Houghton le Spring. Their son Clement, b1767, was a shoemaker. It seems that Clement is the one who brought the Applebys to Shields because eight of his nine children were christened at Christ Church, North Shields. Grandfather was the last child of 11, six of whom died very young. This is shocking but not surprising when one reads of the conditions the working classes lived in.
Of his surviving siblings I know nothing other than that James Clement Appleby b1886 was reputedly the black sheep of the family and may have gone on the stage. The LSC provided a lot of information about other North Shields Applebys and maybe some of them are related.
Grandfather left school at a young age and my Uncle John (his last surviving child) says he started driving a horse and cart but became a trawlerman. When I was a small child I remember him working in the shipyards. He married grandmother, Margaret Oxley, in 1912 and they had six children. Our mother, Annie Reed Appleby was the second child and only daughter. There is a puzzle. According to Bill Richardson the third child was James Reed Appleby but until Bill produced the tree I had never heard of him. The name Reed is also a puzzle as there are no Reed relatives I’ve been able to find
