The Family Tree

The Dewey family of Cambridgeshire

Witchford church
Witchford Parish Church of St. Andrew.

I am connected to the Dewey family maternally and the family have lived in a village 3 miles West of Ely in Cambridgeshire called Witchford since 1769. Prior to this they came from the town of Littleport, a few miles North of Ely.

The earliest record of my Witchford Dewey ancestors is my Gt. x 7 Grandparents - Thomas Dewey, when he married my Gt. x 7 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 Gt x 5 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's have cropped up in near-by Haddenham but as yet, these branches remain unconnected.

The Dewey family crops up 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 were just 10 more.

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