The names of this branch are maternal ancestors of Charlie Mead. His great-grandparent surnames are Bird, Burrows & Janes. The trees currently available are Bird, Stanbridge & Burrows/Janes.
The families come from the low agricultural lands to the north-west of the Chiltern Hills and were mainly farm labourers, straw dealers & plaiters. The influence of the Non-Conformist Churches were strong and some emigrated to Utah after missionaries from of the Church of Latter-Day Saints from the USA, visited in the 1840's onwards. Others moved into the towns of Dunstable and Luton for manufacturing work.
DNA matches to the families that moved to Utah are numerous and many have not yet been resolved except that the cross matches to a group of persons sharing common ancestors confirm the connection.
The first that went to Utah appears to be Thomas Smith with his wife Margaret Gurney & 2 children via New Orleans. Thomas was called Thomas X Smith in the Church and became a Bishop. He had 3 wives and 25 children.
The second was his brother George Smith with his wife Catherine & 2 children. They do not seem to have been so prolific but there are several recorded DNA matches.
The last of note are the descendants of Frederick Bird, 1810-1857 of Eaton Bray. Around 1840 he and his wife Mary Ann Fenn, 1816-1864 were greatly influenced by missionaries of the Church of Latter-Day Saints from the USA. On Frederick's death in Eaton Bray, Mary Ann joined a company orgiansied to emigrate to the USA, taking her 7 children, arriving on the 16th June 1856. There is an account of this journey on the L.D.S web site as a synopsis of the 'Fourth Hand Cart Company' trip and there are for the others above.
So far at least 7 matches to persons who have Common ancestor links to Frederick's descendants are known but only one is on the Bird descendant chart. Most of these matches are with NGJ only, the matching segment seems to be absent from LS. This is because they have links to the Stanbridge family from children of Thomas Stanbridge & Ann Peppiatt, both born around 1715 in Edlesborough
One such match is to Lee Schaeche-Odine who has a test on GEDmatch. To NGJ this is on chromosome 12 at 27.1cM and this may be useful for comparison later. She has relationships through Joseph Bird & Ann Stanbridge.and possibly the Peppiatts. Doing a segement search on GEDmatch shows another match to Denise Janet Marshall; on Ancestry as well at 14cM and has the same start position as NGJ & Lee. There are 9 other matches in the compass of the Odine/NGJ segment who are not resolved so far.
On another Bird/Janes branch the DNA relationship is to a GEDmatch to Joan R Bird (married name Lee) with NGJ. This shows shared 22.9cm on chromosome 7, 11.1cM on chromosome 11 and chromosome 18 of 14.2cM. There is also a match to her daughter Fiona of much the same. This seems to be because there is more than one ancestor shared several times.
It is becoming clear that it is very difficult to separate the Mead, Cook, Hamp, Peppiatt, Stanbridge and other lines because of intermarriage in a relatively small area. There is considerable overlap in some of the trees.
Revised July 2023.