The Family Tree

The Tingey family

Tingey is a relatively uncommon surname but it features twice in my family tree; once as an ancestral name and the other as the married name of a Great Aunt. These two instances are more than likely connected in some way.

My ancestral Tingey family (sometimes spelt Tingay) lived in Witcham and Little Downham in the fenland to the West of Ely, Cambridgeshire. There are only a few occasions of the name appearing elsewhere other than Ely itself in Cambridgeshire. A fellow researcher has located part of her Tingey ancestor line living in the neighbouring county of Bedfordshire, whilst a few lived in London in the early 19th Century.

My earliest known Tingey ancestor was an Ann Tingey who gave birth to her illegitimate son, Thomas Tingey of Witcham, Cambridgeshire. Ann appears to have married in 1771 to a Mr. James Toll of Witcham but this is uncertain. Her son, Thomas, married Mary Barber (also of Witcham) in 1794. They went on to have at least two children, one of which was Robert Tingey who appears on the 1851 census with his widowed Mother (the above Mary Barber) and his family in Canon Street, Little Downham, Cambridgeshire.

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