The Priestley Family of Collingham, Nottinghamshire

The Parish Church of Saint John the Baptist, South Collingham, Nottinghamshire introduces this website: a by-product of the search for my family history.  The photograph was taken from the location of the gravestone of John Priestley, born 1791.

The church registers of North and South Collingham, Newark, North Clifton and Spalford revealed so many Priestleys baptized with the same Christian names, I decided to record them all and sort out the families later.  It took months.

Tracking them through the census records provided clues about family groups.  Contacts with other researchers filled in some gaps.  The family trees were reduced  to 3, starting in the middle of the 18th Century.

It is probable that two of the families merge at an earlier date; but the South Collingham registers for that time are illegible.  There is also a gap in the North Collingham registers between 1753 and 1772, losing a generation.  Other evidence shows there were at least two families at the time of the Protestation of 1641.  Further back, a William Priestley married in South Collingham in 1570.  These earlier Priestleys are included in the database; but have no proven links to descendants. They are there because I found reference to them, and they present a challenge for future research.

I hope the site proves useful to the descendants of the 3 Priestley key individuals listed below.  Click on a link and it will take you to the head of that family tree.  Alternatively, click on the 'Index of Names' to find a link to everyone in the database.

This will always be a work in progress and mistakes will be found.  Where assumptions have been made about relationships, these are explained.  Anyone who has an interest is welcome to contact me at the email address at the foot of the page.  The data is maintained in Family Tree Maker 2005 and the family trees are available in a number of formats.  If you have a correction, addition, comment or image to contribute, please send it and I shall be happy to include it in the next update.  Note that, for privacy reasons, there are no details of living persons.

I should like to place on record the work of fellow researchers.  Their welcome correspondence has helped to confirm or confound my own assumptions, and extended the generations into the 20th Century    They are listed below:-

Chris Allam
Linda Barber
Norma Beeby
Gillian Breese
Charles Case
Jacky Clark
Clive Holton
Linda Hutton
Barbara Moody
Gavin Priestley
Susannah Priestley-Child
Jean Tweddle

This website was first published on the 17th July 2006.  It required no technical expertise, thanks to the GEDmill Pro software which converts Gedcom to HTML.

Version1 - 16 July 2006
Version2 - 27 September 2006
Version3 - 1 January 2007
Version4 - 10 February 2007
Version5 - 23 November 2007
Version6 - 11 March 2008
Version7 - 18 November 2008
Version8 - 15 July 2009
Version9 - 25 February 2011.  This version has the rest of my search of the 1911 census.  As this is probably the last census to be included, I shall now expand  the family tree to include more of my other ancestors.  This version also reveals the recently discovered information that my grandfather was not born a Priestley.

The website contains records of 739 individuals.  There are links to 38 images.

Website created by ian.priestley@hotmail.com using GEDmill from The Logic Mill.

Created on 25 February 2011.