Family Tree
Note: to access any of the following trees you may be asked to create an account on the respective sites. The Trees are all public, so Do Not require a paid membership in order to access the basic functions.
Create a Free account.
My Heritage.com
A family tree concentrating on Williams direct descendants of William Williams the first is located at the following site Myheritage Family tree
(Myheritage seems to be able to display public trees without requiring an account.)
Ancestry.com
A much larger tree is at Ancestry.com (seems to require an account even just to view trees, sign up only for a free account).
This tree amalgamates many families of Williams / Arthur / Sutton / Sage / Bolton / Main etc.
Findmypast.co.uk
A further option is at findmypast.co.uk. This is very useful since most ancestors are from Wales, England or Scotland.
Links to birth records on this current site are to findmypast, so if you click on one of those links you will likely need to have created a free account in order to access them.
Sign up for a free account only, no subscription required for basic functions of Births and Marriages in most of the UK (with the exception of some Somerset records).
A paid subscription will be required if you want to see Death records or Census records.
There is an HD Williams tree that has been imported there, so most of the central well recorded people in the William Williams to HD Williams line, do not yet have linkages to birth or marriage records. Over time many will be linked. The ones that do have links are the people on the edges, or not well recorded in family history. In particular Mary Griffith, which many of the consensus based trees have recorded as Mary James. HD Williams records that she was Griffith. The children of Mary Griffith (ie descendants of William Williams) are the same as those of the consensus Mary James (eg Amy Cail), so the error is only with Mary and her parents.
The findmypast site links to records of Births and Marriages and can simply be used to search for the records (as opposed to building a tree). You can also view a scan of the original. This can be useful as sometimes the database records don’t record all or additional information that is present on the original.
The availability of these record allows the accuracy of the tree entries to be verified, however it can also confuse, as in many cases there are multiple people with the same name living in similar areas.
Records show that up until around 1600 only the fathers last name was recorded, and in many cases the mothers first name is also not recorded. this makes tracing back beyond around 1500 quite difficult.
Another thing to note is that the records are mostly church records for baptisms, not birth. There can be significant time differences between them, although commonly a few weeks for regular church going families.
Conversely, it was found that several males in the Williams line were not baptised until years later, just prior to marriage, which can make searching for their birth date difficult.
For non church goers, the civil births and civil marriages records are sometimes where the required data has been found.
Calculations of age from Census records are a good indicator, but are generally out by a year, depending on the relation between when the Census was taken, and the birth date during the year.
It rapidly becomes obvious that days and months of birth are not accurate at all, mostly being dates of baptism, and the years can vary by one year either side.
The historical norm of naming the first child after the mother or father can assist, or be a hinderance unless you have a reasonable idea of the date of birth or who they were married to.
The existence of multiple options for many people, and the variability of dates, demonstrates how easily an incorrect person and hence all their ancestors can be added to a tree.
This can also explain why other sites like Ancestry and My Heritage are sometimes unable to make recommendations (Smart matches / Possible finds / Hints) for those people with multiple options. They rely on a consensus / amalgamation of other peoples trees, so if the person doesn’t occur in some-ones tree it will not be recommended to others.
On the other hand, if the wrong person has been added, and subsequently recommended to others (as is the case with Mary Griffith and others) then the consensus of trees will grow with the wrong person.
For any of the sites, a useful time gap to use between parents and children, when trying to find new connections, is 18 – 20 years.
In building the Williams trees, it became very apparent that the women were frequently married at 16 and the first child was normally born a year later.
It was also common for marriages to take place in a location other that their birth place, eg at a popular holiday or marriage location. Thus when looking for marriage records, they will not always be at the same location of birth for the woman, and seldom be the same for the man. This is particularly the case for many of the Williams who were labourers and needed to move for work.
Obviously there are many exceptions to this, particularly in the 15-1600’s where many ancestors appear to be linked to Estates / Lords / Lady’s / Sir’s / Knight’s.
This raises the question of the integrity of the linkages, since one would expect that descendants of landed gentry would retain at least some land / wealth, even if they are not first child.
It also raises the question as to why a person from a well off family might travel to New Zealand to begin a new life. This is understandable from the point of view of William Williams, a labourer in Wales, but not so much from other family lines that join the Williams line.
Other My Heritage trees that focus on side shoots of the family are located at the following:
Wells family linked through Katherine Wells (Wickham – Patterson), granddaughter of JJ Patterson and Catherine Patterson (Williams) [scroll to the right 1 screen]
Hattaway family has more detail on JJ Patterson and Wickham family – connected at Catherine (Kate) Williams
Cail and Lee family – Amy Williams, daughter of William II Williams married John Cail and moved to Melbourne Australia
Sanson family linked at Olive Kate Winifred Sanson (Williams), daughter of William III Williams [scroll up just a little]
Gadsby – Dixon family linked at Olive Kate Winifred Sanson (Williams), daughter of William III Williams
Hastie – Irons family – linked at William Dunlop (1917-1993) married to Jean Dunlop (Williams), daughter of Alfred Edward Williams [scroll right a couple of screens]
Forrest family linked at Julia Main through Elizabeth Williams, wife of Clive Williams, son of HD Williams [Private Main, directly under Forrest born Murray]
Click on the little blue and pink spots above the name to change to the tree above that person.
If you have your own trees, feel free to contact me and I will add to the list.
You could also register with Myheritage.com and build your own. It is free but it takes a little looking to find the free signup – its a link in the grey area at the foot of the myheritage home page – the other signup links will try to get you to pay.
A free account allows you to build a tree of 250 people.
If you are not a member of Myheritage, any people still alive will have their data greyed out.
Similarly, if the tree is protected so it is visible only by members invited to join that group, a lot may be greyed out (such as with the Cail and Lee tree). You can contact the site owner and ask to join the group.
I have also noticed that some trees I was a member of are now flagged as “expired”. I can only assume that the original owner signed up for a paid subscription and then stopped paying. I presume that provided the number of people stays below 250 it will remain available, but if over 250 it needs to be paid.
Note: you can export trees in the form of gedcom files, then import them into other trees, or to other sites such as Ancestry, that don’t have the limitation on numbers of people for free accounts.
Below is a brief outline of main descendants:
William I Williams (1809 -1841) Left Wales for NZ 1941 – died on arrival
Children
William II , Thomas, Mary Anne, Daniel, Amy, Edward, Cavitor
William II (1829-1914) age 12 when arrived in NZ
Children
Mary, William III, Daniel, Amy, Rebecca, Kate, John, Edward
William III (1855 – 1939)
Children
Ida Constance Williams, 1882 – 1962
Lillian Mary Williams, 1883 – 1928
Griffith William Arthur Williams, 1885 – 1963
Olive Kate Winifred Williams, 1887 – 1963
Amy Rose Williams, 1889 – 1977
Henry (Harry) Daniel Williams 1893 -1981 and
Alfred Edward Williams 1897 – 1964