Left. Sidney George Mitchell, taken around the early part of the 20th century.

However I did have one clue, Sidney's birth certificate gave his father's address as "9 Stratham Place, Kings Road, Chelsea".  I decided to look in the 1861 and 1871 Census returns for that area.  I was lucky!  The 1861 Census showed a Thomas and Martha Mitchell at that address and his place of birth as Ottery St. Mary, Devon. The next step was an examination of the parish registers for Ottery St.Mary but I was living and working in Sussex at that time and a trip to Exeter by day return wasn't really feasible.  We wrote to the Devon Record Office and they told me they had a family history researcher who was willing to be paid by the hour.  We dutifully sent off a cheque and prepared to wait.

Right.  My father, Leonard John Mitchell, born 18th February 1926.

A little over  a month later the results of her research were returned, Thomas Henry Mitchell was one
of twelve children of Joseph Mitchell and Alice Tapscott, who were married in 1815.  There had been two previous sons called Thomas before Thomas Henry and this was common practice at a time when infant mortality was high.
    Now, it all seemed so easy, my brother, Robin Mitchell and I would send a cheque and another generation of Ottery Mitchells would come to light after a month.  But it was all coming to an end,  the researcher finally came to John Mitchell who had married an Ottery girl by the name of Hannah Richards in 1721. The next step was to find his father but here a major problem arose, working  on John's age at marriage, three candidates presented themselves.
 

Left.  Me, Kevin Mitchell,aged 2

1/  John, son of Samuel and Joane Mitchell, baptized in Whimple on 25th April 1700.

2/ John, son of John and Alice Mitchell, baptized Gittisham on 19th October 1691.

3/ John, son of Joseph and Joane Mitchell, baptized in Gittisham 9th April 1694.

 

Right.  Francis Mitchell, my uncle, born 10th May 1915, killed in 1937 by a drunk driver whilst waiting at some south London traffic lights on his push bike.

Relations became a little frayed with my researcher in Exeter as various avenues were explored and no light fell on a likely candidate.  Eventually, my cheque was returned with a note from the County Archivist that he had weighed up the pros and cons of continuing research and had decided that it would be fruitless.

 
I now turned to another research body who undertook the quest and in fact managed to eliminate candidate No.3 who appeared to have died an infant death in 1695.  But they to drew their own conclusions and told me they were reluctant to continue research unless I was able to commit serious sums of money with the proviso that at the end I may have nothing to show for my money.  Deadlock!   And so the matter rested for many years until the internet became a world wide contact point for fellow family history researchers to exchange information and data.

 
 

Left. Paternoster Row, Ottery St. Mary.  This is where Joseph Mitchell had his butcher shop in the mid 19th century. Far left. My grandfather Francis Albert Edward Mitchell born 22nd August 1886,   I see a strong resemblance between him and my older son Corin.  Below. My older son Corin and my younger son Ethan Mitchell, together on New Years Day 2000. Ethan has Angelman's Syndrome, a rare genetic condition discovered by Professor Harry Angelman in 1965 .   It involves the absence or non  operation of chromosome 15 responsible for speech, advanced co-ordination, and balance, together with other advanced cognitive processes.  Ethan is  much loved. by all the family.

Eventually, new information  came to light and not only was I able to eliminate one of the remaining candidates but I managed to trace a long lost cousin through the net.  The eliminated candidate was John, son of Samuel and Joane Mitchell baptized 25th of  April 1700.  I was also able to contact a descendant of John Mills Mitchell baptized in Ottery St. Mary in 1815, he was my great, great, grandfather Thomas Henry Mitchell's elder brother and this long distant cousin, Rodney Mitchell, has produced a pedigree with photographs of his branch of the family. 
   
Further news came via a amateur researcher who felt that none of my candidates really fitted the bill and the family tree drawn up by my long distant cousin was not correct either, the father of the groom had appeared to marry his daughter-in-law! I have now grafted this correction onto our family tree, taking the line back to 1590. The real husband of Hannah Richards who married in 1721 was one John Mitchell born in 1702 at Honiton and baptised in a Non Cormformist Chapel.   The unusual practice of these early non conformists of giving their children different names such as Loveday and Honour helped make this link.
   
Further research by Devon based professional researcher and genealogist Colin Style of Family Faces eventually established the Ottery st Mary link to the Colyton (Rawkerhayne) Mitchells.  Rawkerhayne (Rockerhayne) is in an area of east Devon known as the Offwell valley, a little north west of the town of Colyton.  The name of the farm/hamlet is "Rawkerayne", its original and existing name is "Rockerhayne" (Rawkerhayne is the result of some medieval mis-spelling).  To confuse matters references to Rawkerhayne can refer not just to the farmhouse but land held under the same name by different members of the family.  However, the farm house still exists and I visited it in April 2000 when the current owner, Will Rich kindly showed me around and let me take some photographs.

My direct ancestor was Robert,  the son of John Mychell the elder of Rawkerhayne who cut him off in his will of 1587 with 2 shillings, after he married a girl from Ottery St Mary against his wishes, called Ales (Alice) Cullye.  Robert married Ales in 1581 in the parish of Kilmington, well away from Colyton and Ottery St Mary, he was 34 years old and had decided to defy his patriarchial father.  This was a man whose own father had had 4 sons and was so determined to have his name continue possibly called all four the name "John".  Having lost everything in respect of the Mitchell holdings in the Colyton area and incurred his father's wrath (John Mychell the elder made his will 6 years later and pointedly left him 2 shillings), Robert moved to his spouse's home town of Ottery St Mary, had a son called Robert and the family continued to reside there for the next three hundred years.
 
The family tree now stretched back to c1470 and to another John Mychell who was the father of John Mychell the elder and John Mychell the younger.  In the survey of the manor of Shute in 1525 a John Mychell, Agnes his wife and John his 3rd son and John his 4th son held the land.  At that time these sons were John  Mychell the elder and John Mychell the younger.  Unfortunately the International Genealogical Index has got these two sons and their offspring inextricably mixed up and a lot of the American Mitchell Family websites have compounded this mistake with their family trees, there were in fact 2 John Mychells married to 2 Agnes's.  One was John Mychell whose widow died in 1564 and the other was Agnes Vye who married his son John Mychell the younger.  As yet John Mychell the elder's wife has not been identified. 

By contrast to the American websites based on the IGI, all the pedigrees on this site have been constructed from the findings of professional researchers accessing original material such as parish records, wills and manorial rolls funded by members of the Mitchell family still living in the UK.  Page 4 contains a lot of the research notes and the site is constantly being updated.  However, to date no existing Devon based descendants of the Colyton and Ottery St Mary Mitchell family have been traced, only Rodney John Mitchell has been contacted, a descendant of the Ottery family who lives in Lincolnshire.

Kev Mitchell   18/03/2005

 
  

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Mitchell cousins meet in September 2000 after 170 years.  From left to right, Kevin Mitchell, great, great, great grandson of Joseph Mitchell, born 1785; centre; Leonard Mitchell, Kevin's father, and right; John Rodney Mitchell, also a great, great, great grandson of Joseph Mitchell, born 1785.  Kevin and Rodney are descended from two of Joseph Mitchell's sons, Rodney from John Mills Mitchell born 1815 (photograph below), and Kevin from Thomas Henry Mitchell born 1833.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

John Mills Mitchell became an Inspector in the Metropolitan Police in the 19th century, after being retired on the grounds of poor eyesight (that particular gene runs down through our family) he became an a Poor Law Inspector.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Two Mrs. Mitchells!  Left, Wendy Mitchell, wife of John Rodney Mitchell, right, Isabel Mitchell, wife of Leonard Mitchell. September 2000.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

There's something about these Mitchell chins!  John Rodney Mitchell from Lincolnshire is in the foreground as Leonard John Mitchell sports his tan from the Isle of Wight 250 miles further south.  Photograph taken at a family re-union in Yelfs Hotel, Ryde, Isle of Wight, September 2000.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If you believe you are related to this particular branch of the Mitchell family, I'd like to hear from you!     My email address is at the bottom of the page.  The pedigrees are on Page 2

                                                                                                                                                    
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email me at insula.vecta@btopenworld.com