This is a follow on post from What’s That Name which started the exploration of my own surname TIMMINS. So far we have just considered the name as it is spelt now, ignoring the alternatives. For this post I intend to continue down this path to see where in the UK that the name is most populous. This area will be the most likely origin of the surname.
In the last post we determined that three Poor Law Unions in the West Midlands had the majority of the surname distribution, that is TIMMINS living in the district, not those born there. Out of the 2414 occurrences of the name 1580 (66%) are in the counties of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire; and of these 1136 (47%) lie in the Poor Law Unions of Dudley, West Bromwich and Stourbridge. The largest cluster of 569 (24%) being in Dudley.
To find the birth parishes we must first find the names of the locations that people would have given the Enumerators. I covered some of this in a recent blog post British Settlements and the Census.
Using the book The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers by Cecil R. Humphery-Smith I drew a map showing the parishes that make up the Poor Law Union boundaries:
The definitive web page for understanding the parishes within registration districts in the UK and Ireland is on the GENUKI web site, so from here lets get the list of parishes and townships that go to make up the districts.
(For anyone researching from outside the UK, the GENUKI web site is a great place to start)
Using the Find My Past web site I entered the place names one by one in the “Birth place:” field, with TIMMINS in the “Last name:” field (“Include variants” un-ticked), all other fields blank.
Stourbridge Registration District or Poor Law Union is made up of the following places (parishes & townships) in 1881:
There are 188 TIMMINS’ resident in the district and 164 born here.
Number in brackets after place is number born here.
Amblecote [1]
Brierley Hill [23]
Cakemore [0]
Cradley [4]
Halesowen [30]
Hasbury [0]
Hawne [0]
Hill [0]
Illey [0]
Kingswinford [29]
Lapal [0]
Lutley [0]
Lye [2]
Oldswinford [3]
Quarry Bank [1]
Ridgacre [0]
Stourbridge [71]
Upper Swinford [0]
Wollaston [0]
Wollescote [0]
Brierley Hill [23]
Cakemore [0]
Cradley [4]
Halesowen [30]
Hasbury [0]
Hawne [0]
Hill [0]
Illey [0]
Kingswinford [29]
Lapal [0]
Lutley [0]
Lye [2]
Oldswinford [3]
Quarry Bank [1]
Ridgacre [0]
Stourbridge [71]
Upper Swinford [0]
Wollaston [0]
Wollescote [0]
Dudley Registration District or Poor Law Union is made of the following places (parishes & townships) in 1881:
There are 568 TIMMINS’ resident in the district and 564 born here.
Number in brackets after place is number born here.
Dudley [268]
Dudley Castle Hill [0]
Rowley Regis [26]
Sedgley [157]
Tipton [113]
Dudley Castle Hill [0]
Rowley Regis [26]
Sedgley [157]
Tipton [113]
West Bromwich Registration District or Poor Law Union is made of the following places (parishes & townships) in 1881:
There are 379 TIMMINS’ resident in the district with 226 born here.
Number in brackets after place is number born here.
Handsworth [0]
Oldbury [40]
Warley-Salop [0]
Warley-Wighorn [0]
Wednesbury [47]
West Bromwich [139]
Oldbury [40]
Warley-Salop [0]
Warley-Wighorn [0]
Wednesbury [47]
West Bromwich [139]
So what can we determine from this exercise?
- The parish of Dudley has by far the largest populous of the TIMMINS surname and is so far the best area to look deeper.
- The next thing to do is to look into the parish records for the churches in the Dudley area. So come the New Year I need to see where this takes me.
- In the mean time I will look at the old IGI web site to see if I can gleam any more detail from an LDS 1881 record search.
