| My interest in STARKINGS is through one of my paternal
great-grandmothers, Hannah Maria Starkings (1858-1943). While researching her ancestors in Norfolk I realised that Starkings was a rare surname and decided to record all those I encountered.
|
| Research showed that about two-thirds of the 19th century Starkings found lived in Norfolk, the rest were mainly in Hertfordshire. A few were also found in Lincolnshire, Hampshire and London.
|
| My research has been assisted by several other Starkings descendants,
most notably Pat Twelvetree (née Starkings) of Chelmsford, Essex. Pat has
searched the Bishop's Transcripts for Martham and extracted many of the
Starkings entries.
|
| Jack Starkings of Canada has supplied me with information about the North American occurrences of the surname. He has also given me some notes which may help with the current distribution in the UK.
|
|
|
|
| This rest of this page covers:
|
|
Origins, Research,
Distribution, UK Ancestral Groups
|
|
|
| Research
|
| There are many places to find information to assist with family history research, the most productive are listed below.
|
| General Record Office indexes
|
| I have collected all the Starkings BMD GRO entries to 1940, I expect to collect the rest during 1999. I have all the birth and marriage certificates for my ancestors and some of their death certificates. I have copies of those for the ancestors of Jack Starkings and have bought a few others for non-ancestors to help to establish relationships and obtain addresses that may lead to finding census entries.
|
| International Genealogical Index
|
| The IGI for Norfolk and surrounding counties has been searched. The other counties where Starkings are known to have lived have also been searched. I have yet to complete the search of all UK counties.
|
| Census returns
|
| I have all the census returns for Martham for all years and have tried to find those for Starkings in the rest of Norfolk. Some returns for Starkings in other counties have been obtained, most significantly those for Hertfordshire in 1851 and the 1881 census index entries for the counties known to be involved.
|
| Parish Registers
|
| Parish registers and Bishop's Transcripts for Norfolk have not been examined by myself. I have yet to visit the Record Office there but some work has been carried out by other interested parties. The main Starkings village of Martham still retains its parish registers so research can only be carried out there. There is a copy of the BTs to 1812 for Martham at the Record Office and Pat Twelvetree has searched that for details of her line. The registers for Hertfordshire have also not been examined. One marriage entry at Hove, Sussex has been found.
|
| National Probate indexes
|
| Very few Starkins/Starkings left wills, none of my ancestors did so and none exist for 1858-87. While searching the probate index for those in my line I have occasionally found a Starkings entry for a different line. The probate indexes from 1888 have not yet been fully searched and none of the wills have been examined yet.
|
| Other sources
|
| The Starkings One-Name study is still at a fairly early stage and the only other sources that have been used so far are detailed under Personal Contacts, below. The Internet has yielded three people living outside the UK who have Starkings ancestry but only one, Jack Starkings of Ottawa, had conducted any research.
|
| Personal contacts
|
| Pat Twelvetree (née Starkings) has researched her own line which originated from Martham, the earliest two generations there are also my line. Pat has been assisted by another researcher who shares her line but I have not been in direct contact with this researcher.
|
| Gillian Hunn has done a little research on behalf of her husband who is descended from the Martham Starkings.
|
| Anna Kettle has a Starkings in her ancestry. Anna has concentrated on the Kettles (see her web site) but has supplied me with a little information about her Starkings. Anna's line is Norfolk based but I have been unable to link her line with the Martham branch. Anna's were primarily based at Norwich. Gillian Hunn gave me the name of another researcher into this line but I have not yet contacted this researcher. The tree I was sent showed that her research was at a very early stage and we did not seem to have much we could offer each other, my knowledge of her tree was also not very advanced at the time of my contact with Gillian.
|
| Jack Starkings of Ottawa, Canada is descended from the Martham Starkings, via Liverpool. He has supplied me with details of the Canadian Starkings and some information about Starkings to be found in the USA. He has also sent me the addresses contained in the infamous Halbert's Family Heritage World Book. This is entitled "The Starkings International Registry". This mainly consists of out-of-date addresses from telephone directories but does contain some potentially useful ones. Their usefulness will only become evident when I have collected all of the GRO bmd entries.
|
| Distribution
|
| Almost all the people with the Starkings surname in the 19th century
were in Norfolk. All of these were in eastern Norfolk, mostly at Martham and Norwich. One family appear in the Walsingham area and another in Kings Lynn. Late in the 19th century there were some at Great Yarmouth, Caister, South Walsham and Sloley.
|
| Two of the Martham males went to Liverpool, Lancashire. Another early migrant married at Hove, Sussex and then moved to London. Another took his family to Hull, Yorkshire.
|
| There were a few other Starkings in the counties just to the west of Norfolk such as Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, these may well have originated in Norfolk. It is believed that all of these eventually moved to Portsmouth, Hampshire.
|
| There was also a group in Redbourn and St Albans, Hertfordshire but it is not yet known whether they were completely separate or if the name had risen independently in the two places. Some of these later went to Watford and also some to Luton, Bedfordshire.
|
| The 19th century Starkings found so far are almost exclusively Agricultural Labourers. There are no other occupations in my census findings until 1871 when I have located a Fisherman. The Liverpool men were Seamen but were always at sea when the censuses were taken. In 1881 one man in Norwich was a Lamplighter and another at Great Yarmouth was an unemployed Coal Miner (he did not learn his trade in Norfolk!).
|
| Starkings are still mainly to be found in Norfolk but a few are scattered
throughout the UK. Details are not yet known.
|
| One of the Liverpool Starkings is known to have emigrated to Canada. There are also some currently in the USA, one is known to have been born in the UK, several others are descendants of the Canadian branch.
|
| UK Ancestral Groups
|
| The Starkings at Martham are all in my line and are described on my Norfolk STARKINGS page. The page also mentions the men who left Martham.
|
| The other Norfolk Starkings appear to have died out except for those who are probably descended from Robert and Charlotte. They are only known to have had one son, Thomas Starkings(born Great Yarmouth c1835), who moved to Norwich and had a large family. Anna Kettle is descended from one of these Norwich Starkings. Anna has a web site detailing her research into the
KETTLEs of Norfolk. Robert Starkings's ancestry is not yet known.
|
| There appear to have been at least two Starkins brothers born at Redbourn, Hertfordshire in the early part of the 19th century. They were James (c1809) and Joseph (c1815). There was also a Thomas (c1831) and several Williams. James moved to St Albans and had at least four sons. Thomas and Joseph remained at Redbourn and had families there. Many of the names were duplicated in these three families so it is difficult to sort out the ancestry of the subsequent generations. Some of them remained in Redbourn while others moved to Watford, Luton (Bedfordshire) and London. Some of the London ones later moved east into Essex. It is not known whether the ancestors of James and Joseph were born in Hertfordshire or elsewhere.
|
| A David Starkings was born at Cambridge c1832, he may have been the son of a William. David had a family at Bourn and Stamford, Lincolnshire. Most of his descendants moved to Portsmouth, Hampshire but two of his daughters appear to have married in Kent.
|
| There were a few other small family groups in Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Somerset but they do not seem to have left any Starkings descendants in the UK.
|
