Ducking out of London for a long weekend I decided to follow the Sussex Babb line in the town of Rye. While hunting for a will that was allegedly proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, I came across three Wills. None of them were the one I was looking for, but I decided I should stop and accession them.

Cover Photo: By Shropshire&TelfordTSB – https://www.flickr.com/photos/shropshiretelfordtsb/6189799993/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19082002

As always seems to be the case, one of those didn’t go together and I had to do more research. It turned out not to be a Sussex Will at all. The will lists several places that I’m not able to identify. It seems that some of the locations mentioned are in Wales, but one that was pre-identified by an Ancestry user was the location of Bethis, Salop, England.

I’ve since discovered that Salop is an abbreviation for Shropshire, one of England’s historical counties. It happens to border Wales as well. I have no location for the place name Bethis.

There is a place name, I can’t quite identify, by a name that appears to read “Ruthin Ruguntin”. It doesn’t come up anywhere, but Ruthin comes up as a place name in Wales. The second word is a mystery to me.

Regardless, this Last Will & Testament of John Babb/Bobb provides a good amount of detail on the family unit. It seems that John had no children that survived to the date of his Will. Instead, he gives his money to his family including his wife June, brother Edmund, and Richard & George Babb (Edmund’s sons). He still has a connection to the brother of his first wife and leaves something to John Blakeway.

While we don’t have much on this family unit, this is how trees are born. Little discoveries lead to big ones!

Additional records seem to fill out an initial segment of the tree which is ready to be added to our collective history. They are just another piece of our puzzle.