551 records · 94 households · searched 13 September 2026

The Sneyds of the Potteries

Every Staffordshire Sneyd record, assembled into households — which finally produces the family the tree has been pointing at, and moves one of its dates by twelve years.

This morning this archive reported the Sneyd line unevidenced. By evening it had found two of its four links. Reconstituting the county — all 551 records read individually and assembled into 94 households — produces the third, and corrects the tree in the process.

Madeley All Saints

William Sneyd, weaver, and his thirteen children

On 27 March 1769 William Sneyd, weaver, married Mary Blackbourne at Madeley, witnessed by Robert Sneyd. That record → Here is what follows it in the same register:

Baptised	Child	Mother	Note
9 Jul 1769	William	(not recorded)	Weaver — three months after the marriage
21 Feb 1772	Dinah	(not recorded)
29 Dec 1773	Theodosia	(not recorded)
3 Nov 1776	Sarah	(not recorded)
22 Aug 1779	James	MARY	the one entry that names the mother
4 Jun 1781	Samuel	(not recorded)	THE ONE — the tree puts him in 1769
1 Jan 1784	Lydia	(not recorded)
6 Nov 1785	Mary	(not recorded)
26 Mar 1786	Ellen	(not recorded)
11 Apr 1788	Mary	(not recorded)
23 May 1788	Ann	(not recorded)
14 Feb 1791	Fletcher?	(not recorded)	father now entered as Blacksmith
16 Dec 1794	Margaret	(not recorded)

The first child is baptised three months after the wedding, and the 1779 entry is the one time in thirteen that the clerk wrote the mother's name: Mary. That is the couple, and this is their family.

The correction

Samuel is 1781, not 1769

The family tree says Samuel Sneyd, born 1769 at Madeley, son of William Sneyd and Mary Blackbourne. This archive searched for that baptism twice today and reported it missing both times.

It is missing because it is not in 1769. The register's Samuel, son of William, is baptised 4 June 1781. The year 1769 belongs to his eldest brother William, christened three months after the wedding — which is exactly the kind of slip a family tree makes when it has a marriage date and guesses the child from it.

And 1781 fits better. Samuel Charles Sneyd was born at Hanley in March 1811 to a father Samuel. A Samuel baptised in 1781 is thirty when that child arrives; one born in 1769 would be forty-two. identification, on dates and a documented family The line as it now stands →

And the lesson, which is the third of its kind today. I searched for the tree's date instead of the tree's person. The 1781 Samuel was in every result list I pulled, and I discarded him each time for being twelve years out. Recorded →

A limit of the method

Madeley does not write the mothers down

Of 73 Madeley baptisms in this set, only 10 name the mother; 61 give the father alone. Reconstitution works by grouping on both parents, so at Madeley it cannot separate two contemporary Williams — and the raw grouping duly produced one impossible "William" with thirty-four children spanning 1702 to 1794.

Which is why the weaver's family above is offered as a reading rather than a reconstruction. It hangs on an occupation that matches the marriage, a first child three months after it, and one entry in 1779 that names Mary. That is good — it is not the same as a register that writes both parents every time, as Dursley does. Where it did work →

Where the Staffordshire Sneyds are

Parish	Records
Madeley	149
Wolstanton	47
Swynnerton	38
Stoke-upon-Trent	37
Burslem	32
Bilston	26
Uttoxeter	24
Stone	18
Ipstones	18
Tamworth	13

Madeley holds 149 of 551 — and Keele, the hall the discredited graft reached for, is four miles up the road and holds a handful. The family this archive actually descends from were weavers, carpenters, blacksmiths, brickmakers and labourers in the Potteries. The graft →