The Dewey family
Deweys in Witchford
It's my maternal family that links me to the Dewey family.
The Dewey family have lived in the village of Witchford - just 3 miles west of Ely, in the county of Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom since 1769. Prior to this they came from the village of Littleport, a few miles North of Ely.
The earliest record of my Witchford Dewey ancestors is my 7x Great Grandparents - Thomas Dewey, when he married my 7x Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Covell in 1768. This is followed three months later with the first Dewey baptism, their daughter, Elizabeth Dewey.
It is noted on the 1851 census that my 5x Great Grandfather, William was receiving parish relief because he was too ill to work - although I don't know what the illness was, there are probably parish records detailing this. By the time of the 1861 census, William was living in Witchford with his daughter and her husband, Mary and John Whetstone. His wife, Ellen, had died a few years before.
Dewey family on the move
Dewey's have historically cropped up in the near-by village of Haddenham but as yet, these branches remain unconnected.
They've appeared in many villages around Ely and the family finds itself intertwined on several occasions with the Moden family.
In 1881 there were just 69 Dewey name-bearers recorded on the Cambridgeshire Census. Ten years later, there was only 10 more.
Dewey outside of the UK
The Dewey family do venture beyond Cambridgeshire, and indeed beyond the UK, but it seems that it's only since the mid-19th Century.
Sisters Sarah (my 3x Great Grandmother) and Rebecca Dewey both headed out to Australia separately as teenagers, but whilst Sarah would return, Rebecca settled there, married, and raised a family.
More recently, during 1906, my Great Grandfather's older brother Arthur Robert Dewey headed to New York. By 1920, he's been naturalized as an American, and living in Wright County, Missouri, USA with his half-American/half-German wife Ruth, and five of their eventual six children.
Dewey family connections
The Dewey family are linked to a number of my ancestral families including: