FISHING FOR my forebears

For many years, I tried to link my Molineux family in Liverpool to one of the many Molyneux lines in the area. The penny dropped that I had been looking in the wrong place, when I visited an exhibition in the excellent Sugar and Slavery Gallery at the Museum of London Docklands. There on a map of the island was a plot called Molineux, spelt the same as my ancestors’ name, rather than the more common Molyneux with a ‘y’. Recent work put online by University College London confirmed that some of my family were indeed in Montserrat.

I found that they hailed originally, not from Lancashire, but from Oxfordshire: a Richard Molineux from Garsington was sent to Montserrat as a newly qualified Church of England minister in 1678. With this knowledge, thanks to the Oxfordshire Wills on FindMyPast, I was able to work back to Richard’s 3x great-grandfather and namesake in the reign of Henry VIII.

Richard Molineux (or Molliner, c.1490-1556)