Ancestors of Joseph Longhurst

When I began looking for ancestors, I started on the Burke side. There was a bit of urgency in the quest. With first-hand knowledge and with irrefutable documentation I was able to take that family back to the late 1500's. The key year was 1632 when the patriarch of the Bourg family in Canada arrived and settled down. Branches of the tree became latch-on points for other researchers that will include future descendants. A story could be told about the times to provide context, with a theme of coming to Canada.

When it came to researching Longhurst ancestry, there was one particular researcher back around 2002 who provided me with information she had collected about Longhursts while researching her own family. She had built up an extensive picture that showed Longhursts back to 1515, back to an individual named John Longhurst, living in Surrey, England, with the bulk of ancestral activity taking place in and around Surrey. Prior to John, there is only the early history of the country itself to look at. It was just a few years later in 2004, though, that this researcher wanted to revise the information to include new findings. Between then and now, I had posted both documents, not as they were but in a different format that used indentation. A good deal of effort and scrutiny went into their production, and the documents seemed to serve their purpose.

Either of these documents may contain errors, either in the research or in the reformatting, but if you can reconcile the problems that arise, especially in the earlier generations, the documents can be useful going forward.

Each of these documents now contains a table near the top that shows the generations. The full documents can be compared to see their differences (open both docs, each in their own windows).

This table summarizes the original direct ancestral line according to the original descendants of John Longhurst document.

The earlier individuals do not match up well with familysearch.org individuals. The highlighted dates seem to be suspect.

Use the links to view what connections there are. Make your own judgment as to the level of accuracy overall.

Individual	Year born	Year died	familysearch.org I.D.	Spouse	familysearch.org I.D.
--	--	--	--	--	--
John Longhurst	c1515	1575	--	Amy ________	--
Walter Longhurst	c1550	1624	--	1) Amy Diggins 2) Annis Diggens	--
William Longhurst	c1550	1599	--	Elizabeth ________	--
William Longhurst	1596	1647	--	Mary Sidley	--
Ralph Longhurst	1631	1680	--	Mary ________	--
Richard Longhurst	1670	--	--	Mary Child	--
Richard Longhurst	1696	1761	--	Ann Swayne	--
John Longhurst	1727	1770	--	Jane Verrell	--
John Longhurst	1745	1815	LZCP-SDB	Mary Wheeler	M63F-S2Q
Joseph Longhurst	1787	1877	LZCG-8JC	Sarah Haysman	LZCG-8VX

This table summarizes the revised direct ancestral line according to the revised descendants of John Longhurst document.

The earlier individuals do not match up well with familysearch.org individuals. The highlighted dates seem to be suspect.

Use the links to view what connections there are. Make your own judgment as to the level of accuracy overall.

Individual	Year born	Year died	familysearch.org I.D.	Spouse	familysearch.org I.D.
--	--	--	----	--	--
John Longhurst	c1515	1575	--	Amy ________	--
Walter Longhurst	c1550	1624	----	1) Amy Diggins 2) Annis Diggins	--
William Longhurst	c1575	1599	--	Elizabeth ________	--
John Longhurst	c1586	c1631	--	Ann Spooner	--
Joseph Longhurst	c1650	c1698	--	Margaret Steere	--
Walter Longhurst	1674	--	--	Elizabeth Knight	--
Walter Longhurst	1715	1797	--	Ann Capon	--
John Longhurst	1745	1815	LZCP-SDB	Mary Wheeler	M63F-S2Q
Joseph Longhurst	1787	1877	LZCG-8JC	Sarah Haysman	LZCG-8VX

Using the links above at the familysearch.org ancestry website...

All links can be constructed by substitution from this URL --> https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/xxxx-xxx

For a link to a John Longhurst who may be the John Longhurst born c1515, try this individual: LTV6-YYX. Conflicts in the data will need to be resolved.

(Requires login, if you do not already have one, create an account for free.)

The difficulty here is that the records at familysearch.org can be entered by anyone, edited by anyone, linked by anyone. Even with the best intentions this leads to duplicate entries and entries with incorrect information. I fully understand that this almost has to happen to weed out the errors, but it will take a long while for this all to settle out. Add to this the other ancestry sites like ancestry.com and findmypast.com, then add some more for websites like this one that have their own set of data and the task or reconciliation seems impossible or a at least relegated to the distant future. More data coming online will help but it may be that the pool of documents has been tapped in large extent.

What may be required is a dedicated, unbiased and accurate AI that has access to everything, fact and opinion. Having used AI for some of the analysis on this site, I can say that a worldwide ancestry AI engine would be welcome. At present, though, AI's are far from being capable of correctly reading digitized handwritten documents. Even if the documents were to be read by humans, many documents are not completely readable. Old documents have aged, and not in a good way.

The most promising technology lies in DNA testing. It is hard to deny the accuracy. And future tests may be able to be even more specific, using genetic information of which we are presently unaware.

Maybe there will come a time that brain cells and thought patterns will be able to reveal previous lives and ancestral relations. Who knows...

My interest really begins with Joseph Longhurst, the ancestor who brought his family over to Canada West (Upper Canada, i.e. Ontario) in 1832. I am confident that I can track back to Joseph (and Sarah) with first-hand knowledge and with irrefutable documentation for the most part, to when Joseph arrived in Canada with his wife and family.

It seems generally agreed upon who Joseph's father is, so I have selectively brought forward information about him from the documents that go back to John born 1515.

Joseph's father, John Longhurst, was christened April 21, 1754, in Capel Surrey. His religion was Church of England. He was a carpenter. John was married on March 3, 1772, in Capel Surrey, to Mary Wheeler (christened June 12, 1754, in Ockley Surrey).

John and Mary had twelve children: Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah Catherine, Ann, Richard, then Joseph (born November 29, 1787, in Capel Surrey), followed by Walter, William, James, John, Hannah and Sarah.

According to the original source document, Joseph's grandfather was also a John Longhurst, christened September 19, 1727, in Oakwood Chapel, Surrey. John was married November 5, 1749, in Ockley Surrey, to Jane Verrell (or Verrall).

John and Jane had seven children: Jane, John, Richard, Thomas, James, William and Charles.

According to the revised source document, Joseph's grandfather was Walter Longhurst, christened March 20, 1715, in Ewhurst Surrey, married on December 13, 1743, in Rusper Sussex, to Ann Capon.

Walter and Ann had children, two of whom were Walter and John. There likely were others. See notes in the depiction of the revised source document.