How this all started!

Early days

Several years ago I inherited (ended up with) the family bible, a great big leather bound thing with brass clasps.  I believe it comes from my paternal grandmother's side.  Neatly ripped from the front of it were several pages believed to contain the family tree.  No one knows who had it, so we had to rely on the odd tale mainly from my grandmother about her family.  For many years I believed that she and my granddad were both from South Shields in County Durham in the North East of England.  I also assumed that they married there.  She told us about her granddad who was a sea captain and her brother who served on HMS Belfast during the war.  We also got snippets of information from my dad about his relatives up in Durham but little else was told.  One other naval connection we were told of was that my dad's cousin had married WWII hero Captain Dudley Mason GC.  

We knew very little about my mother's side except that they came over from Lancashire when Pilkington's Glass opened a depot in Kirk Sandall near Doncaster in Yorkshire.  We also knew that my mother's mother worked in the coal mines as a young girl.

Of Rosie's family we knew little except that her mother was from Boston in Lincolnshire and her father was from Lancashire.

Breakthrough

I travelled up to Scotland on a cold October day to take part in the 2001 Karrimor International Mountain Marathon (KIMM).  As my team mate and I registered for the event I was collared by a certain Dorothy Williams who said "Are you descended from the Cumberland Wren's?".  My immediate response was "Not that I know of.  My family are from South Shields."  We had a chat about the Wren's in general (Dorothy's mother was a Wren) and particularly about the Cumberland Wrens who occupied Borrowdale and its surrounding area up until the start of the 20th century.  We then swapped email addresses and left it at that.

On getting home (very tired and unimpressed with the boggy terrain to the South West of Glasgow) I phoned my uncle Jack (John George Wren) who is the oldest surviving member of my line of Wrens and my father's brother.  He put me straight on the fact that my granddad was not from South Shields but lived in Fishburn, Durham before coming down to Doncaster in the late 1920's to work in the coal mines.  It was here, in Rossington, that he met my grandmother whose father had moved down from South Shields for the same reason.  

  < Map of  1920s migration to Doncaster

Taking this lead I then interrogated a CD-ROM directory and found several Wrens still living in Fishburn.  On the off chance that they might know something about my line I rang them up.  I was staggered to discover that they were all my dad's cousins! One of them, Cora had done some family research and provided me with 1851 and 1881 census information.  This gave me what I was looking for.  My great-great-grandfather Daniel Wren was from Dearham in Cumberland.  The area south of Dearham, around Keswick and Derwent Water is one of my favourite places.  

Derwent Water & Borrowdale beyond - Spiritual home of the Cumberland Wrens

To find I was descended from people from this area pleased me no end.  I was then hooked on finding more about my family.

The Search Goes On

So far I have trawled the various sources on the internet (see Links) and have spent a day up in and around Dearham searching various graveyards for clues.  My friend Dorothy has been digging up some pearls of information for me in her trips up to the records office in Carlisle. On my mother's side the work has been done already.  My aunt Maureen has researched back to 1540.  That side didn't move away from the St Helens area in Lancashire for 400 years until they came over the Pennines to Doncaster (see map above).

On Rosie's side I'm making steady progress.  Thankfully they didn't seems to move much either staying in the Boston area, so far.

The male line of Wren's stops with Joseph 'bastard son' of Mary Wren in 1805.  Finding MAry is the next big hurdle.