An update on my 4th-great-grandfather

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It has been a few years since I posted about finding my 4th-great-grandfather. Although I was sure that I had found his death in 1852, I was never convinced about his birth, mainly because he had never been at home with the wife on census night. As as result, I knew his age at death, but not where he had been born. I had, during a visit to the National Archives in London, noted a few William Millers down from the register of seamen and one had seemed to be a fit: William Miller of South Shields, born 17 Dec 1795.

This was wrong.

Now then, I count myself very fortunate indeed to have a partner in crime as far as family tree research is concerned. A distant cousin living in Australia is looking at exactly the same William Miller as I am and, conveniently, he retired this year. Boy, has he put his time to (what I would class as) very good use. The key documents he found were William's claim for his Master's Certificate of Service and the resulting certificate itself which, between them, stated his date of birth and, crucially, his address. So finally we know that William Miller, master mariner, was born on 27 August 1793 in Sunderland.

The claim that William (actually, we've taken to calling him Captain Bill) completed in 1850 in order to get his Master's Certificate turned out to be a peach of a document. Not only did it contain his current address and both the date and place of birth, but it listed the ships he had served on and in what capacity. So we now know he went to sea in 1806, as an apprentice aboard the "Benjamin" and that he spent most of career in the coal trade, with three stints on the Greenland trade, which I believe refers to whaling. At the time of his claim in 1850, he had been captain of a 266 ton vessel called the "Asia" for twenty years.

On top of the above seafaring extravaganza, we figured out that at some time before 1800 his family moved north to South Shields, where his brother John was born. Looking at the parish records for the time, it looks like his parents were George Miller and Jane Hutchinson, married 25 November 1792. We've also managed to locate a copy of his will and source a picture of the house where he was living in 1850.

It has been a busy and mightily successful couple of months.

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