© 2016 David E. Spencer
Author's note
The most remote event in this part of the Capstick story that we can be certain about
is the baptism of of Alexander in 1781. Alexander, described as "Capstack" rather than "Capstick" would have been
about six years old at the time - this was late but not unheard of. The Parish clerk ony recorded his father's name that of
John Capstack - no mother's name is given. In the plausible years for Alexander's parents' marriage there are two
possible marriages by John Capstick or Capstack to ladies called Isabel Law in 1761 at Dent and to Jane Dinsdale in 1765
at Hawes.The problem is that there are two distinct possibilities:
- The same John married Isabel and Jane.
- The two ladies Isabel and Jane married two different men called John Capstick/Capstack
Because of the lack of detail such as ages in many parish registers we have two further issues of confusion There are two credible baptisms in 1742 and in 1745 for males called John Capstick, respectively the sons of Thomas Capstick and Mary Burton and James Capstick and Margaret Capstack. We don't know for sure if either or both of them is our man or men. Similarly there are two plausible burials in 1825 and 1827 for males (we don't know how old they were) called John Capstick at Blakerigg and Dent respectively.
I have not seen the interior of Blakerigg or Blake Rigg as it is now written but I have seen a photograph of an inscription near the fireplace reading "J & I.C." - this is possibly "John and Isabel Capstick".
There are many family trees published online, many with only minimal or no annotation as to sources. I have studied many of these on Ancestry, Family Search and Genes Reunited among others.There seems to be a roughly equal division of opinion that Alexander was the son of Isabel and John and that he is the son of John and Jane (either as John's first or second wife). The way in which the children of John and Jane named their children. It was common to name the first boy after his father, the first girl after her mother and subsequent children after grandparents and other significant individuals.The sequence of known children of this marriage or marriages may therefore hold clues as to parentage. The sequence is:
In my opinion this may well be a mixed sequence containing the children from two marriages and two sets of grandparents.
There is another possible avenue of enquiry for Alexander's ancestry - that of Jane Dinsdale's own ancestry but by way of a change there is a problem that can possibly only be solved by a visit to the North Yorkshire Record Office. Several of the online trees describe the ancestry of Jane Dinsdale, born about 1745. They give her birthplace as Hawes and, crucially, name both her father and grandfather as Alexander. The only problem that I have is that online data sources notably familysearch.org show no reference to the xistence of this record. This may be a simple case of "the record has not been included in the database yet" but until I have looked at the Hawes records we have no definitive answer.
If the ancestry of Jane could be proved then this to me means that almost certainly, Alexander the starting person for this page is the son of Jane Dinsdale, named after his grandfather and great grandfather.