F is for . . .

F is forĀ Francis Rippingale. Francis Rippingale was my 4th great grandfather and for many years he represented one of my biggest brick walls, although I didn’t know his name at the time. In fact, this was one of the first times iI had seen what was blatantly false information on a certificate.

Francis’s son Henry Flear Rippingale (aka Trueman) emigrated to Australia and married literally days after his arrival under the surname Trueman. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he provided a false father’s name when registering the marriage. As soon as I saw the father’s name I began to have suspicions about the likelihood of their being a Romeo Trueman floating around back in England.

However, I was able to verify that his mother was the person who was listed on his marriage record. So by researching the mother Harriet Flear I persisted and persisted looking for a marriage between her and anyone with the surname Trueman to no avail. However, I did find that she had married a Francis Rippingale. I thought that was rather curious and out it to one side. Then I had the though that perhaps Romeo Trueman and Harriet Flear weren’t married. So I searched ancestry for any reference to a Romeo Trueman and returned with zero good matches.

Francis’s signature from his marriage record

So I dutifully returned to examine Mr Francis Rippingale and his wife Harriet Flear. I traced them after their marriage through English census records and left it at that for a while. Then one day, I was going back through the information I had on the couple and noticed that they had a son called Henry Flear Rippingale. I cross checked the age against the census year to get an approximate year of birth and it was a match with my Trueman in Australia.

Many sources later, I confirmed that these two individuals were in fact the one person and that Francis Rippingale was indeed my 4th great grandfather. As a result, one huge brick wall came crumbling down after many years of research.