Exley Family History

Open Questions and Discrepancies

8 min read

Open Questions and Discrepancies

A consolidated register of date conflicts, identity confusions, disputed relationships, and undocumented gaps across the Exley family tree sources. Intended as a working research checklist.

1. Date Discrepancies

Death of John of Rawdon: 1721 vs 1723

Death of Samuel of Manningham: 1650 vs 1673

Birth of John, son of John of Rawdon: 1679 vs 1685

Children of Samuel of Manningham: conflicting names and dates

  • Exley Chronicle (Typed): Dorothy b. 1623, Margaret b. 1626, Samuel b. 1625, Joshua b. 1629, Ethel b. 1641.
  • Meryll’s Hand-Drawn Family Tree: Sibyl 1621, Dorothy 1624, Robert 1627, Samuel 1630, Joshua 1640.
  • The Chronicle’s own dates are internally inconsistent (Dorothy born 1623 before parents’ 1626 marriage). Parish register verification needed for both sets.

Children of John of Rawdon: two different lists

Robert of High Royds children chronology

  • The Chronicle lists Hannah as b. 1730, but Robert married Dorothy Jewell on 21st March 1731. A child born before the marriage date needs verification against parish registers; it may be a transcription error or an indication of a pre-marital birth.

Death of John (1685-1763): 1763 unverified

2. Identity Conflations

John (1685-1763): one person or two?

  • The Chronicle records John (b. 1679) marrying Mary Fawcett in 1710, with children born 1710-1721 (Thomas, Daniel, Samuel, Patience, Hannah, Elizabeth, Mary).
  • Meryll’s tree records John (b. 1685, d. 1763) marrying “Mary Plesser”, with children born 1727-1748 (Mary, John, Samuel, Thomas, Robert, Dorothy, Sarah, Anne).
  • Meryll’s children overlap with the Chronicle’s children of Robert of High Royds (Thomas 1732, Robert 1734, Dorothy 1736), suggesting Meryll may have conflated John with his brother Robert.
  • “Mary Plesser” (Meryll) and “Mary Fawcett” (Chronicle) may be transcription variants of the same surname, a second wife, or an error.
  • The current note combines both traditions under a single person at medium confidence.

Francis/James m. Sybil/Sebell Oates: two traditions

3. Disputed Relationships

James of Wortley: son or cousin of Robert of Bankhouse?

Paternity of John (m. Eliz. Tonge)

  • Victor’s research: father is Francis Exley (c.1539).
  • NZ pedigree: father is Thomas Exley (d. 1553) m. Pelagia (d. 1539).
  • Both traditions agree that John married Elizabeth Tonge and that the Rawdon line descends from his son Robert. The disagreement is over which medieval line feeds into John. Victor acknowledges “a few of the links are a bit dicey” and that “a combination of both may even be more correct.”

Parentage of Thomas of High Royds (1732-1807)

4. Undocumented Gaps

William (b.1727) to John (b.1840): missing generations

  • Victor Exley Pedigree Sketch identifies William (b.1727) as Victor’s direct ancestor and places him at the same generational level as Thomas (b.1732). The intermediate generations between William and John (b.1840, Victor’s great-grandfather) are not documented in any transcribed source.
  • Victor’s TABLE 2 in the Victor Exley Article Full PDF traces this descent, but the handwritten annotations are illegible at scan resolution.

Parentage of William (b.1727)

  • William does not appear among Robert of High Royds’s children in the Chronicle, nor among John’s Chronicle children (which end at 1721). He is tentatively attributed to John, as his birth year falls in the gap between John’s and Robert’s documented children. A second marriage of John, or attribution to a different sibling, cannot be ruled out.

The Liversedge Hall line beyond Francis

  • Victor identified the Liversedge line as one of only two branches he could positively connect to Exley Hall, Southowram. No descendants of Francis and Sybil Oates are documented in the current vault sources. Further research into Liversedge parish registers may clarify this branch.

TABLE 2 scan quality

  • The Victor Exley Article Full PDF, TABLE 2, traces the descent from John Exley (b.1840) back through the Manningham/Rawdon line. Handwritten annotations on the scan are not legible at current resolution, preventing full transcription. A higher-resolution scan or the original document would resolve several open questions about Victor’s line.

The Richard of Burton branch

5. Unresolved Connections

Robert of Halifax and Robert (m. Mary Lister)

  • What is the exact relationship between Robert Exley of Halifax (d.1647) who heads Meryll’s tree and Robert Exley (m. Mary Lister, 1588) from Victor’s pedigree? The Chronicle discusses a Robert who married Maria Lister in 1596 but notes it is “difficult to decide” the precise connection, listing several Robert Exleys of Halifax living simultaneously. This remains the most significant unresolved link in the pedigree.

Angela’s identity

  • Who is Angela, the recipient of Victor’s 1990 letters? She was Victor’s correspondent and likely the person who assembled this archive. Understanding her place in the family or research network would help contextualise the collection.

Matthew’s line

  • Victor notes in his Sept/Oct 1990 letter that “Your Matthew is not yet linked to either” line (Rawdon or Liversedge). Who is this Matthew, and has the connection since been established?

Sheffield branch

  • Elizabeth Rowley (nee Exley)‘s letter describes a Sheffield/Page Hall Exley family (Joseph William Exley, b. c.1902). The connection to the main tree has not been established.

Swaina/Hugh/Henry and William de Dewsbury

  • The NZ Pedigree Sheets (Typed) show two separate early lineages at Ecclesley: the Swaina > Hugh > Henry line and the William de Dewsbury line. Ellen and Robert (Henry’s children) left property to descendants of William de Dewsbury, but the exact relationship between the two families is unclear. See Medieval Pedigree Comparison.

6. Additional Date Discrepancies

Shirley’s birth year

Samuel of Rawdon dates

Albert Edwin’s marriage date

  • Rev Morris Letter Nov 1984: Esther Lomax (b.1856) married “a Mr. Exley” in 1873. Meryll’s tree says Albert Edwin emigrated in 1875. Did he marry before emigrating, or are the dates slightly off?

Elizabeth Tonge marriage year

  • Victor gives 1555; the NZ pedigree gives 1554. A minor discrepancy, possibly from different register readings.

7. Not Recoverable

Victor’s longer undated letter

  • The 5-page handwritten letter (scan 9) is rotated and largely illegible. May contain significant genealogical detail. A higher-resolution scan from the original would be needed.

Rev Morris Dec 1985 letter

  • The PSD export is entirely black. A re-scan from the original is required.

8. Resolved

  • All scanned PDFs catalogued (Phase 2)
  • All PSDs exported to PNG (Phase 2)
  • Full article and Wills-Exley tree transcribed (Phase 3)
  • Exley Chronicle fully transcribed; Robert of High Royds generation established (Phase 3)
  • Biographical Sketches fully transcribed (Phase 3)
  • John (1679-1763) identity resolved; Thomas’s parentage corrected (Phase 4)
  • Victor’s descent corrected to Rawdon line, not Liversedge (Phase 4)
  • Filenames corrected: John of Rawdon (1651-1721), Samuel of Manningham (d.1673), John (1679-1763) (Phase 4)

Graph View

Backlinks