Slowly But Surely

It has been a long time since my last post so maybe the disappointment I wrote about in the last entry has taken its toll on my enthusiasm for the task!  No, not really. I have branched out in search of Henry William's wife, Ellen McQuillan, and have been deeply involved in trying to find her of late! I will post about that search separately but in the meantime there are some small steps of progress to report in the hunt for the true parents of the Rev. John Baron.
Using Family Search online search engines I have been able to locate a John Baron born on 16 July 1795 with a christening on 27 August 1795 in Wigan, Lancashire, England. John Baron's parents from this transcription are James Baron and Ellen Jackson who had been married on 3 Sep 1793 in Palatine, Wigan, Lancashire, ENGLAND. At this point there is still no way of proving that this John Baron is actually "our" John Baron.  I have ordered in a film of the will of a James Baron, Attorney at Law, who died in 1831 and I have viewed a film of the Alphabetical Index of Wills Proved and Letters of Administration and Tuition where I have found a James Baron Attorney at law of Wigan in the Index. Also in this same Index I have located an entry for an Ellen Baron of Hulme, Manchester who died a widow in 1833. Is it possible that after the death of James Baron she moved to be near one of her children? I am now waiting for the film of the actual wills to arrive at my local Family History Centre in the hope that I can make a link with James Baron's wife and children and, thus, link the two generations to what is already proven.
So while I have waited for this film to arrive from the Family History Centre in Salt Lake City, Utah I have found a reference to a James Baron, Attorney at Law, on a website called Family Chest.  http://www.familychest.co.uk/ The documents available to researchers on this site relate to people who bought, sold or leased a house or land, made a will, or entered into any kind of legal agreement from the 18th century through until the early 20th century. There is a free surname index of the principal parties in each document and should you be lucky enough the original documents are available to purchase. When I searched for James Baron in this Index up popped two documents in which James Baron was the Attorney at Law and one of the signatories.In order to explore these documents further and to ascertain whether it was worth purchasing one of them, I e-mailed the administrator of this site, one Allan Azzaro. A more helpful person I could not hope to have met!  He was able to share with me the contents of the two documents that related to James Baron and shared much information about the contents of these: "In Doc.Ref.0504100 it seems quite clear that James Baron is acting only as a trustee for one of the others involved, and gets only the briefest mention.  It might just be worth noting that the document was almost certainly drawn up by James Baron or one of his associates in that it is marked 'Baron, Wigan' in the bottom corner of the front cover.  In addition, all the signatures are witnessed by 'Henry Hartley, Clerk to Mr Baron, Solicitor, Wigan'.  Unfortunately James Baron's signature doesn't appear anywhere on it." For the second document, and the one that is more relevant to the search for James Baron, Allan shares: "Doc.Ref. 0503024 is slightly more interesting in that the property in question is being sold jointly by Hugh Fairhurst, James Fairhurst, Thomas Fairhurst and James Baron.  All four of them have exactly equal legal status in the transaction. Maybe you know that a document entitled 'Lease for a year' always represents the first part of a sale (or mortgage) of property by the method of 'Lease and Release' :-  the Lease is made on one day and then the Release follows on the day after.  Unfortunately the Lease is always very brief and it is the Release (which we don't have in our collection in this case) which usually gives much more detail as to what is going on. My best guess here is that Hugh, James and Thomas Fairhurst, together with James Baron, are the Executors of the will of Thomas Fairhurst (deceased - the father of Hugh and James).  This is the easiest explanation of them all jointly selling the property.  But once again James Baron isn't really doing anything other than acting as any solicitor would.  This document does have a fairly good signature of James Baron, but there is nothing to indicate whether or not it was drawn up by him." So, for me, it was simply not worth purchasing either of these documents as it would seem that they are both of much more interest to other family researchers. My interest, however, was in trying to get a copy of James Baron's signature from the second document!  Again, this great man, Allan Azzaro and his wife Brenda, were so wonderfully helpful and were able to send me a copy of this signature as it appeared on the second document. Given that this document is from 28 Feb 1813, the signature is in excellent condition and so very interesting to see after all these years!

So that is a small piece of what I have turned up lately in the search for the Baron ancestors. I am hoping that the film containing James Baron's will, will arrive soon for me to go through with a fine tooth comb to see if it might reveal some more of this man and his story as I try to put the meat on the Baron's bones!