Fun 'Enhancement' of Shield from Sterry Coat of Arms

 

The same artist who enhanced the WW2 photo of Harry Sterry also created a rather 'tongue in cheek' version of the shield from the Sterry Coat of Arms.

The real Sterry Coat of Arms is shown below. It was granted to the Sterrys of Eastbury House in Barking, Essex, UK. You can read more about it here.

Magical Family Photo Enhancements

How often have you wished someone could take that old and tattered family photo and restore it to its former glory? Well, recently I've met up with a very talented Aussie Sterry artist who can do some very magical things with family photos. So I thought I'd share them via this blog.

Harry Sterry [1886-1960] is shown in his Royal Field Artillery WWI uniform. He was a bombardier in 'B' Battery, 95th Brigade R.F.A.[Royal Regiment of Artillery], British Expeditionary Force. 

The Field Artillery of course often worked with horses in WW1; hence the whip and riding boots.

He enlisted in 1914, then aged 28, and was sent to France. He was reported wounded and missing in action in May 1918. He survived and was sent to a Prisoner of War Camp in Germany in July the same year. He finally returned home and was demobilised at Woolwich in 1920.

Harry Sterry was a bombardier in 'B' Battery, 95th Brigade R.F.A.[Royal Regiment of Artillery], British Expeditionary Force.

The original of the same photo of Harry Sterry is shown below. Our Aussie artist has colorised the black and white photo and then, to add context, he's added a WWI horse drawn gun carriage in the background.

A simpler colorised version, also done by our Sterry artist, is shown below.

You can read more about Harry Sterry on the Minsterworth, Gloucestershire tree.

More photos to follow!

Probate Records for State of Victoria, Australia

Returning to this excellent resource for Probate Records in Victoria, Australia for the years 1841-1925.

https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/explore-topic/wills-and-probates

This resource is free. Note that there are usually three separate files for each Probate Record and all three need to be downloaded.

There are quite a few Probate Records for STERRYs. I never got around previously to transcribing them or adding them to our Records for  Australia.

I will be doing just that over the next few weeks and the results can be viewed 

at https://sterryworldwide.com/Australia%20Records/Aust%20Wills/willsau.html

The Sterry Family of America by Walter Smith

It's been quite a while since I used this STERRY research blog but thought I'd start using it again and see what interest it generates.

The link on FamilySearch to 'The Sterry Family of America 1670-1970' by Walter Smith has been updated. It is now:
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/17318?availability=Family%20History%20Library

You will need to log in or create a free account to view.

Many thanks to Ashley Gaumond for this information.

Thomas Sterry of Faversham, Kent finally finds a home

Every now and then one manages to find that extra little piece of the puzzle that brings all the other pieces together that have been lying about on the table for many years.

I happened to be looking at some STERRY Apprentice records from the 1600s on an excellent and free website - Records of London's Livery Companies Online - Apprentices and Freemen 1400-1900
http://www.londonroll.org/

I found some entries from the Mercers Company that I had not seen before and this one in particular:

STERRY Thomas, New Apprentice [Father] Thomas Sterry, Clerk, Finesham Kent, dead [Master] Thomas Threkeld, Co Mercer [Apprenticeship Year] 1664 [Bond] 7 years from 24 June next

By the way, Wikipedia most helpfully tells me: The Worshipful Company of Mercers is the premier Livery Company of the City of London and ranks first in the order of precedence of the Companies. It is the first of the so-called 'Great Twelve City Livery Companies'. The Company's aim was to act as a trade association for general merchants, and especially for exporters of wool and importers of velvet, silk and other luxurious fabrics (mercers). By the 16th century many members of the Company had lost any connection with the original trade.

I remembered a Will of a Thomas Sterry of Faversham, Kent proved in 1653 that had never been attributed to any Sterry family line. A transcription of the Will is on the Sterry website -
 http://www.sterryworldwide.com/Will_Thomas_Sterry_1653.htm

However, as this Thomas owned land in Ruardean, he almost certainly belonged to the Ruardean, Gloucestershire family line.

But Walter Sterry in his book 'The Sterry Family of America 1670-1970' published back in 1973 was unable to place this Thomas into the Ruardean line.

When this young Thomas was apprenticed in 1664, as were most apprentices at this time, he was probably aged 15-18, so born 1646-1649. And since I could find no place called Finesham in Kent, I decided this might very well be a mistranscription of Faversham. And I had previously found this baptism of a Thomas Sterry in Faversham:

Faversham St Mary of Charity
Baptisms
1648 Mar 10 Thomas son of Thomas Sterry a gentleman and Anne

Walter Smith had also noted in regards this Thomas Sterry of Faversham that Thomas "entered Oxford University in June 1639, aged 18 "son of John Sterry of London, gent" So we knew Thomas Sterry senior was born abt 1621. We also knew from the Will of Thomas Sterry junior that his father was John Sterry. [Walter Smith somehow got it wrong and thought the father was Joseph. That's why he never made the connection.] And we already have a John Sterry baptised 11 Feb 1619/20 at Saint Saviours, Southwark, Surrey, England, the son of John Sterry [1594-1672] and Margaret Weston.

This has to be our man!

Of course now that leads to further research. We know from his Will that Thomas Sterry of Faversham had four sons - Benjamin, Samuel, Thomas and Charles. Can we trace any of their lines? We also know from the Will that Thomas owned land in Ruardean, Gloucestershire and in the Liberty of Ely in Cambridgeshire in the parish of March. The Will suggests that this land in Cambridgeshire may have been inherited through his wife, Anne French. Can we locate any land records? And finally Walter Smith tracked down this piece of military detail on Thomas Sterry that might provide further clues:

 'From British Council of State proceedings we know that Thomas was commissioned on August 22, 1650 to be a militia Captain of county Kent. Further, on November 18, 1650 or 1651 the Council resolved to approve "what Capt. Sterry and the Mayor of Faversham have done in detaining James Greenstreet, and to require that witnesses be examined who can testify as to correspondence between Robert Greenstreet and his son"'.

There is another baptism at Faversham St Mary of Charity of Thomas' brother that confirms this connection:
1650 Jan 16 Charles son of Captain Thomas Sterry and Anne

Latest DNA results a bit of a quandry

Our STERRY DNA Project is now in its 7th year and 26 male STERRYs have now joined. The DNA results have proved a very helpful supplementary tool in our ongoing quest to understand how the different STERRY trees are related, especially where historical documentation has not survived or is uncertain. In recent months DNA evidence has demonstrated that the Lowestoft, Suffolk; Ipswich, Suffolk; and both branches of the Southwold, Suffolk Sterry trees are all part of the same genetic group and are definitely related.

John Sterry from the Ipswich, Suffolk line is our most recent and is the second member of the Ipswich, Suffolk to join. As these two Sterrys were second cousins, an exact match was anticipated.

However, a 2-marker mismatch between them was recorded and both were now 3-markers distant from the calculated mode or 'signature' of the DNA group to which we believed they both belonged. This was rather disconcerting. [Specially selected DNA 'markers' are used to determine relatedness; such markers being passed down largely unchanged from father to son over hundred of years.]

So we sought the advice of two excellent Rootsweb mailing lists: the Guild of One-Name Studies mailing list [available to members only] and Y-DNA-Projects [a public mailing list for the discussion and sharing of information regarding practical issues related to testing for Y-DNA surname projects] as well as the helpdesk at Family Tree DNA.

June Willing from the GOONS mailing list provided a particularly detailed and helpful reply. [The #numbers are the IDs of the two Ipswich line participants in the STERRY DNA Project.]

"I don't see any problem with #349959 being closely related to #169049, even though they have a GD [genetic distance] of 2. #349959 has a mutation on [marker] CDYb which the others in the group do not have. #169049 has a mutation on 385b which the others in the group do not have. So each has picked up one mutation in 3 generations. Nothing unusual in my experience. They both have a mutation on [marker] 570, suggesting they could be more closely related to each other than to the others in the group. Some markers tend to mutate pretty quickly and those concerned in your results, CDY and 385, are among the fast- moving markers.

DNA results do not in themselves prove a relationship, but must be used in conjunction with the documentary evidence. But in this case, in my opinion, the results do not contradict this."

Darren Marin from Family Tree DNA provided an intriguing insight into the possible cause of the unexpected mutations:

"While this is unusual to have two mutations and be related within the past 4 generations it is entirely possible. One way of reading the TiP calculation would be to say we see this exact scenario almost 30% of the time.  While what causes mutations is not well understood one thought is that the older a man is when he has a child the more likely a mutation will be to occur since the DNA replication seems to not work as well as when younger.  If either of their lines have older fathers this may explain the more recent mutations. "

David Sterry, Co-Coordinator of the Sterry DNA Project comments:

"We were thereby reassured that the two members of the Ipswich Sterry tree were indeed related and that the mismatch could have been the result of genetic mutation in a recent generation, possibly caused by the common ancestor fathering one of his sons "later" in life. In this case we noted that George Arthur Sterry was 24 when Mervyn`s grandfather Ernest Sterry was born whilst he was 42 when John`s father Robert Charles Sterry arrived.

Another feature noted was the sharing of a common marker difference to the combined Lowestoft, Southwold & Ipswich modal indicating an earlier mutation which may be related to the progenitor George Starry being 48 when his son, George, was born.

Ultimately, the suggested connection of the Ipswich line with the Southwold branches and the older Lowestoft tree appears to be firming up.

We would now very much like to recruit a member of the Pakefield, Suffolk line to check out our developing suspicion that the progenitors of both that line and the Ipswich line were brothers! "

Sterrys in the Republic of Ireland

A new and improved set of Irish civil registration indexes has been launched on IrishGenealogy, the state-run website best known for its church records microsite. These free indexes differ from those currently available via FamilySearch, Ancestry and findmypast by including births, marriages, and deaths right up to 2013 - as well as a certain amount of additional detail to aid identification.

"The Births Index, which dates from 1864, includes the mother's maiden surname from 1900. Additionally, the actual date of birth is included from 1900 to 1927 and from 1966 to current. The Marriages index, which dates from 1845 for non-Catholic marriages and from 1864 for all marriages, includes the names of both bride and groom for all marriages from 1913, and for some marriages from 1900 to 1912. The Deaths Index, which starts in 1864, includes the age at death from 1924 and the marital status of the deceased from 1966.

"As with the pre-existing online database, the new GRO Indexes cover the entire island up to and including 1921. Thereafter, it includes only those events registered in the Irish Free State/Republic of Ireland.

[Source: http://www.lostcousins.com/newsletters/jul14news.htm#Ireland]

Almost all of the STERRY events listed in these new enhanced indexes relate to one Dublin family descended from John Edmund Bagge Sterry [1889-1965] and Mary Margaret Felton. John Edmund Bagge Sterry and his descendants can be found on the Southwold, Suffolk, UK Sterry tree.

Details on this Dublin Sterry family can also be found on the My Heritage website on the well researched Dolan-Haugh Family Tree. You need to sign up [for free] and login to view.