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WELCOME TO THE NINTH EDITION OF THE “WORLD WIDE W*GG*”

Editor - Vivian Egan

Here we are into March already. Where is the time going ? Needless to say I am a bit late in sending out this issue. All this W*GG* stuff is keeping me extremely busy. Have now reached over 15,500 in the WIGGS database, while the WAGG/WEGGs are lagging a bit behind just passing the 11,000 mark. Of course, I still have heaps to input, trying to juggle it all around husband, children & housework.

RESEARCHERS LIST

An updated Researchers List is also included with this issue. As you will see the list has grown tremendously this past year, now numbering around 150. I have had several requests to put the List on the Internet, which I am prepared to do, but only with your permission. So a List (as is) will be made available to those hosting W*GG* webpages, to put up at their discretion. IF YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR NAME REMOVED FROM THE LIST, PLEASE ADVISE MYSELF OR YOUR NEWSLETTER DISTRIBUTOR WITHIN THE NEXT 6 WEEKS. NON-ADVICE WILL INDICATE THAT YOUR PERMISSION IS GRANTED.

FAMILY COINCIDENCES........................................................ contributed by Sheila Gompertz

I was born in Kent. My maiden name was WIGGS, and my father had come from Peckham, South London. My husband and I settled in Hertfordshire 37 years ago. When I starting researching my family name last year I was amazed to discover that by chance we had been living only 5 miles away from where my ancestors had lived for several generations, the town of Cheshunt. In the 18th century almost all of the WIGGS men were bricklayers by trade. Some of them, including my great, great grandfather, March WIGGS, moved to London early in the 19th century and their sons continued the bricklaying tradition.

While at the Hertford Family Record Centre I came across a Francis WIGGS, bricklayer. In the reports of the Quarter Sessions of 1753 there was mention of a payment to Jerome KNAPP, Clerk to the Assize of the Home Circuit, for the transportation of Francis WIGGS. I became very interested in Francis, sure that any WIGGS bricklayer was mine! With the help of "The complete book of emigrants in bondage, 1614-1775" by P.W. COLDHAM, I went to the Public Records Office in Kew and was able to handle the very parchments of the Hertford Court of Assize of 1750, where Francis was sentenced to death for "burglariously and feloniously" entering widow COE's house in Cheshunt. His death sentence was later commuted to 14 years transportation to the American colonies. He and his accomplice sailed on the "Rachael" in the October. The Assize documents, signed by Jerome KNAPP, were beautifully written, describing in intriguing prose the many items which had been stolen. I emailed a copy of the indictment to my first cousin, also an ex-WIGGS, now living in New Zealand. She replied that something had seemed familiar. When her husband looked at what I had sent, he reminded her that one of his ancestors was descended from a Jerome KNAPP, who had been Clerk to the Assize of the Home Circuit in the 1750s. Her email was headed "HOWZAT"!

FEATURE FAMILY - WAAGE Ancestors of Christine WAGG.

The original spelling of the surname of a Jewish family who lived in Frankfurt-am-Main in the 1600s was WAAGE. Originally Jews did not have surnames, but when the German authorities made them compulsory this family adopted one from the sign which hung outside their home in the Judengasse - "Goldene Waage" meaning golden scales. Three brothers - Moses, Meir and Baruch WAAGE - emigrated to London early in the 18th century. They became members of the congregation of the Great Synagogue, Aldgate. The surname was modified first to WAAG and then to WAGG. Descendants of Baruch WAAG founded the stockbrokers Helbert Wagg & Co Ltd, which eventually became part of Schroders, the international merchant banking group.

Meir WAAG's children included Abraham, born 1718. He was apprenticed to a London jeweller, but by 1770 he was living in New York and described himself as a grocer and chocolate manufacturer. At the age of 51 he married 21-year-old Rachel GOMEZ, a member of a prominent New York Jewish family who had originated in Spain. Abraham and Rachel had 10 children, the first five being born in America.

When the War of Independence broke out Abraham WAGG backed the British side, but as it became clear that the rebels would be victorious he, his wife and three surviving children fled back to England leaving all their property behind. They settled in Bristol and from there Abraham made unsuccessful attempts to obtain compensation for the losses he had suffered. Descendants of one son still live in Bristol today, while the youngest son Mathias moved to London. His children married into Gentile families so the Jewish identity was lost; their descendants are found in the London area and in Hull, Yorkshire.

Abraham WAGG was the four times great-grandfather of Christine WAGG, who has been researching her ancestry since 1978.

PROFILE SPOTLIGHT - Helen WAUGH

Hello from New Zealand. My name is Helen Waugh. I was born in Ashburton in the South Island of N.Z. in 1940. After training as a high school teacher I married John Waugh in 1962. We have 3 children, Ross, Bruce and Susan, and 9 grandchildren.

John and I shifted to Wellington in 1990 to live with my elderly auntie in the old family home here in the suburb of Wilton. The house was built about 1861 and was extended in 1882. It was the original farmhouse in this area, and is listed as a Historic Place. It is a big wooden cottage. The upstairs rooms have little low windows and sloping ceilings. We also have some old farm buildings, one of which is a cowshed with a cobblestone yard. It has always belonged to descendants of Priscilla CURTIS nee WIGGS.

In such a setting an interest in family history was inevitable, and I have had a lot of fun and an immense amount of satisfaction in finding out about my forebears.

My WIGGS ancestry goes back to Priscilla CURTIS nee WIGGS who came to Wellington N.Z. in 1840 in the "London" with her husband George and 5 children. Three more children were born here in N.Z. My Great-grandfather, Henry William CURTIS was born in Lambeth, London, when the family were living in Pleasant Place (now Brook Street) near West Square. His birth, and that of the other babies born in London were registered at St. Mary's Lambeth. Priscilla was a gifted needlewoman. Her sampler, worked in 1820 when she was 14 years old is a family heirloom. Her father, Charles WIGGS was a bricklayer. He was born in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire in 1777, and was one of a family of bricklayers who came to help build London when the city expanded in the late 1700s and early 1800s. In Hertfordshire this family has been traced back to William and Esther WIGGS in Cheshunt (married about 1750), and back further to William and Mary WIGGS who married in the parish of St Leonard's Bengeo in 1725, and lived in Little Berkhampstead and Broxbourne before settling down in Cheshunt by 1750.

Please keep sending in your articles for publication.

Until next time, best wishes to you all...........................................

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