Joseph Bishop and Sarah Barnes

My branch of the Bishop family originated from the town of Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, in the early 1800s. My g-g-g-g grandfather was Joseph Bishop, and his wife Sarah Barnes also came from a Cambridgeshire family.

I am yet to conduct much research into 18th century Bishops and Barnes families from Cambridgeshire- the records for Whittlesey don't seem to be available online on the good old LDS site, and the wonderful Cambridgeshire Family History Group site does not cover pre-1800.
There were several other Bishop families having children in Whittlesey in the first two decades of the 19th century alongside those born to Joseph and Sarah Bishop, and most probably these families were related. Until research is conducted using 18th century records,however, we can only speculate.

I know nothing of Joseph Bishop's parents or siblings, and all I know of his wife Sarah Barnes is that she had at least one sibling, a sister named Eleanor Barnes. Eleanor was born c. 1787, and married Thomas Measures on August 19, 1811, at Market Deeping in Lincolnshire.Eleanor and Thomas had at least one child, a daughter named Mary Ann, who was christened at Market Deeping, Lincolnshire, on May 13, 1812 (the IGI coverage of Market Deeping baptismal records stop in 1812)Mary Ann grew up to marry her first cousin Joseph Bishop, the eldest son of her mother's sister Sarah Barnes Bishop.
Thomas Measures was an inn keeper at Market Deeping. He was born in c. 1791, and five months after his wife Eleanor Barnes died in 1824, he remarried a woman named Eliza Godfrey and continued his profession as publican up until the time of his death in c. 1860.( Thomas Measures married Eliza Godfrey at Market Deeping on September 2, 1824) A Lincolnshire Directory of 1852 has an entry for "Thomas Measures, publican, Bartle Arms, High Street, Market Deeping."
Eleanor Barnes Measures died aged only 37 in 1824. She was buried at St. Guthlac, Market Deeping, on April 5, 1824.

Sarah Barnes, Eleanor's sister, was born in Whittlesey,Cambridgeshire, in c. 1783-85.She was married to fellow townsman Joseph Bishop in c. 1804, and the couple had at least six sons and one daughter between 1805 and 1817.Joseph Bishop's occupation has been given on various certificates as 'farmer' and 'auctioneer'. The 1841 census for Whittlesey has Joseph Bishop,65 years, auctioneer, and his 65 year old wife Sarah living at Low Cross, Whittlesey.Also living with them was 20 year old Sarah Green, a female servant.

The first of Joseph Bishop's six sons was born in Whittlesey in 1805, and named Joseph after his father. He was followed the next year by a daughter, Sarah, who died in infancy in 1806. Thomas Bishop was born in 1807; William in 1809; John in 1810; Henry in 1813 and Charles in 1817.

While not being overly wealthy, the Bishop family were affluent enough to be able to have three portraits done of three of the Bishop sons prior to photography becoming commonplace. I have these three portraits on my wall, and estimate that they originated in the late 1820s-1830s.One is much more crudely done than the others and the subject of this portrait is unknown , beyond being one of the Bishop brothers. The other two are positively identified as William and Charles Bishop, and I will reproduce them in the blog sections corresponding to each of the Bishop children.
Joseph Bishop the Elder died in early 1845 in Whittlesey. His wife Sarah remained in Whittlesey until about 1855, when she moved to Stamford, Lincolnshire, to be closer to her son William and his young family.

UPDATE AS OF OCTOBER 21, 2009: Yesterday there arrived in the mail two c.ds from the Cambridge Family History Society, containing the parish records from the churches of St. Mary and St. Andrew, Whittlesey and dating from the 1600s. These fantastic resources allowed me to take the Bishop family back another generation or two and fill in some siblings along the way.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Joseph Bishop was baptised on May 31, 1773, at St. Mary's, Whittlesey. He was the son of Joseph Bishop and his wife Eliza or Elizabeth Bishop. Other children born to Joseph and Eliza were Elizabeth baptised October 27, 1774; Sarah Bishop baptised November 25, 1776; and John Bishop baptised June 29, 1779 and buried August 25 of the same year.

There are two possible scenarios for the wife of Joseph Bishop the Elder. Parish records show that on October 7, 1761, at St. Marys Church Whittlesey, Joseph Bishop married widow Eliza Ground.There are no children baptised belonging to this couple at Whittlesey.

On May 28, 1772, Elizabeth Bishop, the wife of Joseph Bishop, was buried at St. Mary's, Whittlesey. Less than five months later,on October 2, 1772, Joseph Bishop married widow Elizabeth Cooley at St. Mary's. In late May of the following year, son Joseph Bishop was born.
Looking for details of widow Elizabeth Cooley, I found Eliza Earle married Samuel Cooley at St. Mary's, Whittlesey, on April 21, 1767.On the same day they also had a child, Richard Cooley, baptised. In 1769, the following burials took place in St. Mary's Churchyard...May 2, 1769: Richard Cooley, son of Samuel; May 24: John Cooley, son of Samuel; and August 21: Samuel Cooley.

My Bishop Family Connection

My connection with the Bishop family comes through my great grandmother, Olive Jessie Bishop, the eldest of four daughters born to English-born Henry Bishop and his wife Bertha Hughan.
The photo above is of Henry Bishop, my great-great grandfather, taken in the 1860s after his arrival in Victoria in 1860 per the ship 'Orwell'. The two death certificates above the photo are those of Henry's paternal grandparents, Joseph Bishop and his wife Sarah Barnes Bishop.
In a situation similar to that with my Hughan family, I am very fortunate to have been handed down to me a wonderful old photo album from the 1860s that Henry Bishop bought with him from England. I will be featuring all of these beautiful old photos in this blog, which include not only members of the Bishop family, but also neighbours who lived in the same street as Henry and his family in Stamford, Lincolnshire.
I will begin with Henry Bishop's grandparents, Joseph Bishop and Sarah Barnes, both from the township of Whittlesey in Cambridge, and follow the line through their son William, his son Henry and Henry's daughter Olive Jessie who was born in Australia.