THE TROTMAN CONNECTION.

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General Navigation within The Trotman Connection pages.

Using these pages.
To understand the Trotman – Brown connection more fully, simply use this page as navigation, starting at the top with Henry Lewis and then followed by his son William Trotman and so on.

The central participants in this story are George Brown and Mary Lewis Trotman, particularly Mary.
We are going to look at those connected with Mary – for brevity shown hereafter as (MLT) :-

• Henry Lewis B1761 in Berkeley Gloucestershire. He was (MLT’s) grandfather where the ‘Lewis” element in her name came from. The “Trotman” element of Mary’s name came from Henry’s wife – unmarried until late in life – Martha Trotman B1764, in the tiny hamlet of Hawksbury, Gloucestershire.
• William Trotman B1792, (MLT’s) father.
• Mary Lewis Trotman B1817. (MLT) The early years.
• Mary Lewis Trotman B1817. (MLT) The George Brown Years.
• Mary Lewis Trotman – her children.
• George Knight Trotman B1835, (MLT’s) first illegitimate child.
• Anthony Savage, B1817 the father of (MLT’s) second illegitimate child.
• William Savage Trotman, B1838, (MLT’s) second illegitimate child.
• John Henry Trotman, B1842
• Joseph Brown Trotman, B1846
• Mary Maria Trotman, B1847
• Ellen Brown, B1849
• Absalom Thomas Brown, B1851
• Leah Brown Trotman, B1853
• Eliza Trotman Brown, B1856
• Ann Trotman Brown, B1858
• Elizabeth Brown, B1861
• Alice Brown, Born and died 1861
• George Brown B1816. The long time partner, and subsequent husband, of (MLT). George and (MLT) form the connection between the Browns and the Trotmans. George is my 2xGreat Granduncle and thus we are DNA connected.

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Content:-

You only have to look at a present-day Ordnance Survey map of the Gloucestershire in general, and the Stone/Damery/Alkington area in particular, to see the Browns lived in a very small area. Added to that, the ability to travel in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries was curtailed, geographically, by bad roads, and, as an Agricultural Labourer,  by being tethered to the land or a lord of the manor. It simply wasn’t easy to move around at will. Not to mention working from dawn till dusk, 6 days a week and how that wouldn’t leave you much time to travel anywhere, even if you could. So it’s not at all surprising people in the main lived their lives in small communities.

It wasn’t until census records started in 1801, and every 10 years subsequent to that, we became able to see who lived where and amongst whom. Genealogical research forces you to read census records. They are a mine of information, not only about your ancestors but about country life in the relevant decades.

In those records, you can see your bloodline ancestor but you can also see parents, siblings, and lodgers. And, if you turn the pages backwards and forward you can see who is living around them.

As I’ve said already; people don’t move around much and because of that they would have probably attended the same church and occasional festivals. It was a very small world indeed. I’ve talked previously about ancestors living under a teacup placed on a map. I believe we can narrow that down even more, possibly to the area bounded by an eggcup placed on an Ordnance Survey map of the area.

Human nature being what it is boy meets girl and so the family of man continues, as it should. And if you live close by and can’t travel it stands to reason the gene pool of your locale is where you will first look to make your choices.

So it was, I discovered the Trotman family living  amongst my ancestors. For at least one of my forebears, the link became physical.

First.
Is it Trotman or Tratman? Or is it really Brown?
In 1891 there were 375 families in Gloucestershire who carried the name Trotman. Those families accounted for 32% of all families named Trotman in the UK, making it the area with the highest density of Trotman’s in the UK.
The name, a derivative of Trotter, is often written ‘Tratman’ in some of the early census records, therefore answering the first question – Trotman or Tratman?
As the Vietnamese would say “Same Same but different”.

But Brown? Why could that be?
There has been much speculation about some Browns in the Alkington area in the early 1800’s calling themselves Trotman/Tratman and wondering  if those Trotman’s really are genetically Browns. Here I try to pick that issue apart within elements of my own family.

Unless your ancestors were of some consequence in this country – and the Browns weren’t – all we have to see of them are  Church or State records. Mere fleeting shadows of their lives as it were.

Here we are in the 21stC staring backwards some 200 years all the while trying to make sense of what we find as we look ‘through a telescope  the wrong way around’.  All we see is tiny elements of the data which made up their lives. It’s very easy to make mistakes using just these snowflakes of information in the snowstorm of their lives.

The common man leaves scant information – even some of that is dubious. Afterall, those who collected the data, clerics and enumerators,   could only write what they were told. In the main they had no ability to check the veracity of the oral evidence given to them. Add to that those who provided the data were largely illiterate, consequently, they had no ability to check the accuracy of what was written about them.

The data are often contradictory between the various censuses. Ages for example, are a ‘moveable feast’. Rounding up and down of the ages of those contained in the census was perpetrated by the enumerator – at least in the early census records. Similarly the informant can call themselves what they like and can similarly “vary” their age, often providing misdirection at best and downright lies at worst . It was a flawed system but it’s what we have to work with, dead, skeletal  and perverted though it is.

The Brown’s connection with the Trotman’s – where the 2 families joined so as to fall under one roof –  was in the meeting between George Brown, born 1816 in the Berkeley area of Gloucestershire and and one Mary Lewis Trotman. George is my Two Times Great Granduncle . Note. (George is not in my direct line. It’s his brother  Joseph Brown, born 1820 in Michaelwood, who provides my lineage.)

Nevertheless, despite George not being in my ‘direct line’ we opened the door to his history.
I have both regretted and revelled in opening that door. Challenging, fascinating, edifying and utterly frustrating work it has been too. It has shone a light on past lives and how they were lived. I’ve spent hundreds of hours in research on George’s relationship between him and Mary Lewis Trotman and their consequent family

Mary has frustrated genealogists before me. Name changes are not uncommon in her family as we shall discover later. And so it begins:-

George Brown (1816-1897).
He was a son of George Brown and Edith Mathews, as was my Great, Great Grandfather Joseph.
I would not normally produce so much information about a sideways relative, but this was interesting, so I tracked great uncle George, his ‘Wife’, Mary Lewis Trotman, and their children. And so it was, like Alice, I disappeared down the rabbit hole…

The Story in brief:-

Here’s the Trotman connection with the Brown’s.
I warn you, it’s messy and complicated.

George Brown struck up a relationship with Mary Lewis Trotman. They had many children before they were finally married. Mary herself had 2 illegitimate children already.

Mary was the daughter of one William Trotman and Mary Knight. She was the first of their daughters. William was a gardener, a convicted criminal, who was sentenced to death – later commuted to transportation – for housebreaking and theft in 1831. He subsequently died in 1834 in MillBank prison.

Apart from, and in addition to (MLT’s) two illegitimate children that is, George and (MLT) had a further 10 children of their own, though there may still be a question mark over the parentage of one of them, one John Henry Trotman.

There is a story to tell about John Henry Trotman, other than who his father may be. He married twice. It looks like the second marriage to Sarah Jane Fletcher may have been bigamous (on her part) from a marriage she had in America.

Name changes proliferate. So much so it’s had to understand just who is who and who are parent of the children of (MLT) and George.

One last thing… Sarah Jane Fletcher, the wife in the second marriage of John Henry Trotman, had an older brother, Oliver Montague Flecher, who deserted from the Royal Navy in Portsmouth before fleeing back to America from whence he came.
You couldn’t make this up, could you? It’s a ready-made book or even TV series I think.

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Comment
Well, as you can see this is a tortuous and complicated mess with a convicted criminal being sentenced to death only to die in Millbank prison in London, bigamy and untruths being told all over the place, illegitimate children and unexplained name changes. Throw into that mess suspected illegal marriages using fraudulent information and who knows where we end up?

One thing is pretty certain though is many people who believe themselves to be Trotman’s are genetically Brown’s

We are going to require some substantial DNA testing of the living to prove who is who, called what and comes from where. That’s assuming of course if after all this time anybody cares.

Footnote.
For us, on these Brown pages, this is an interesting diversion as the people concerned are peripheral to the bloodline we are from. Except, there is the slight possibility that John Brown’s father was not George Brown, but his younger brother Joseph. The importance of that possibility is that Joseph is in my direct bloodline, making all of these people very close indeed. How do we prove that? As the 2 possible fathers were brothers DNA may be confused. Perhaps we will never know.

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Footer

These pages revolve around the relationship between part of the Brown Family of the Alkington area in Gloucestershire and part of the Trotman family of the similar area. Specifically George Brown B:1816 and Mary Lewis Trotman B:1816 and their families.
It is not definitive, in that the information will alter as more is uncovered.

Caveat.
Please take care in using the data contained herein. This family has been shown to provide dubious information to Clerics, Census Enumerators and Registrars alike.

A request for help.
I’m are looking for a DNA match with anybody who directly flows from any of Mary Lewis Trotman’s children, in particular from John Henry(Brown) Trotman via either of his 2 marriages. If you feel you are related and have an Ancestry DNA test could you make contact or simply check to see if you have me in your list of DNA contacts? This is what you are looking for in your DNA listing…

Peter Barton on Ancestry DNA.

Errors, omissions and additions.
Please feel free to point out any errors or omissions and of course I would love to hear of any additions you may have which I can use to add to the data.

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