All over the world

 When I started this family tree thing, little did I know that the Mayne family reach was global. Well, the British Empire and the former British colony of the United States of America, anyway. I had thought that as my father, grandfather and great-grandfather all hailed from Leeds in Yorkshire then that was as far as we were likely to go.

Then I was contacted by a cousin, a distant cousin admittedly, from the USA. I had no idea that I had any relatives in the USA beyond my uncle who moved there in 1970, but here was my cousin from a distant land (well, given that I now live in Canada, not that distant at all, really) letting me in on the data for my great-great-grandfather, Thomas Mayne (1810-1871).

Thomas was born in Leeds and died in Leeds, but in 1822 one of his brothers, Henry Collins Mayne (1796-1850), and his wife Anna Mary Hester Robinson (1800-1842), boarded a ship in Liverpool and sailed to New York. From there they made their way to Loudoun County in Virginia, and started an extensive dynasty in the USA, of which my cousin is part of.

But there was more. In 1849, another of Thomas' brothers, Charles Washington Mayne (1798-1883) took his wife Mary Laycock (1807-1878) and their young family to Durban in South Africa. From there they moved inland to Pietermaritzburg and set up a Mayne dynasty in South Africa. Other Maynes made their way to Canada and to Australia.

Having found Thomas Mayne, other information began to show itself. Thomas' father, Joshua Mayne (1757-1843), came not from Yorkshire but a small town near Exeter in Devon, called Silverton. I had lived in Exeter from 1965 until 1973 but I had no idea that the Maynes had been anywhere near. It's only now that I recall my dad saying that he thought his ancestors had come from Silverton, but I had dismissed that idea at the time. How short-sighted of me. 

Joshua had made his way to Cork, in Ireland, at around 1790, found himself a wife, Elizabeth Jane Collins (1769-1812), and then moved to Leeds at the end of 1791. There's the Leeds connection.

Joshua's father Zachariah Mayne (1728-1807) was a true Exonian, born and died in the City of Exeter. His daughter Mary (1732-1803) married one Oliver Trend (1732-1800), and it was their son Robert Trend (1772-1826) and his wife Anne Potter (1777-1855) who made the trek up to London around 1800-1801 to work. Their two daughters, Ann Maria and Charlotte, married into London families and established two more Mayne dynasties, in addition to a third dynasty set up by Henry Mayne (1809-1897, Joshua's nephew) and his wife Harriet Smith (1822-1886), after Henry moved from Devon around 1841.

Going further back than Zachariah, his father Henry was an Exonian, and his father Thomas was born in Surrey.

There are a lot of dates, and movement, written there, but all of them past Joseph Mayne (1844-1913) and his wife Jane Pickersgill (1847-1887) were unknown to me. The family tree branches in the USA are vast, and I say trees in the plural because there have been other entries by Mayne ancestors into that country after Henry Collins Mayne back in 1822. The South African branch is pretty big, too and partly comes back to the United Kingdom, in at least two places, after Charles Washington Mayne's arrival in Durban.

The Maynes in Canada are fewer, but have been the cause of two incursions into the USA, and the branch in Australia is concentrated around Melbourne, but hasn't been there as long as the other branches outside of the UK. 

I have been particularly interested in the three tree branches in London, inhabiting as they did some areas of London that I know well, and other areas that I don't know, but resonate with history, particularly that of working people in Victorian London. We were in London in late 2023 and visited some of these places, not least the graves of the a branch of the South African tree who had married into a wealthy British family and settled in London.

The thing is, though, that there is just too much. I can and will visit some of the USA connections, many of which are in rural Indiana, not so very far from us now. I may follow up some of the Canadian connections, although as many are in the western part of Canada, it may easier to visit sites in the UK first.

Now all I have to do is wait for the results from my Ancestry DNA test, and see what new doors that opens up.