Pam's Insall Family History Project - 2004

Introduction

My name is Pam.  I am an Insall descendent.  Here’s my story of how I came to do this family history project.

On my first trip to England in 1990, with my then British boyfriend (and now husband) John, my mother sent me on a quest to find a house that had supposedly belonged in her family generations ago.  She showed me a portion of a book called “Cade Insall,” which had information about the Insall family line in America.

The article she showed me contained two photographs, one of a manor house supposedly located “seven miles south of London.”  The other photo was of a group of people taking tea on the lawn of the house.  This manor house was supposed to have belonged to the Insall family at one time.

The photographs were brought back to America by Frank Insall, a WWI veteran and family member, who went looking for the family homestead while in England during the war.  The article stated that the home was 400 years old at the time of WWI, and Frank, who had seen it, said it was still as good as new, although it now belonged to the “Stanley” family.

 

Long story short, my first trip to England did not produce any results in locating a house “seven miles south of London.”  In today’s world, that could be anywhere south of the Thames.

However, years went by, and we made several more trips to England.  In 2004, we made plans for a Christmas trip to the UK.  Since I felt I knew more about England by now, and we would have a little more time on our hands for a quest, and with mom probably haunting me to go find this house, I decided to tackle the project again.

Initial Research

I will just say this:  Thank goodness for the internet.  Two websites, geneaology.com and ancestry.com gave me everything I needed to know that was not in the “Cade Insall” book. 

I developed a theory based on my now-better knowledge of how the road system works in England.  Every town and village has a road called the “London Road”.   Maybe the house was south of the London Road, and not south of London itself.

I started looking online for houses and families named Stanley.  I looked for hotels and B&B’s that had been converted from country houses, knowing that many large houses now operate as B&B’s to keep themselves going.

I found an “Insall Road” on a map of Chipping Norton.  This turned into a big clue.  (More on Insall road later.)   Chipping Norton is about 70 miles NW of London, not 7 miles south.  But this was significant.

I started e-mailing some of the people who posted online and discovered a significant lead.

One relative stated that Thomas Holifield Insall, the founder of the Insall line in America, might not have been the only one in the family to come over from England.  Robert Wholeship Insall told me that Thomas Holifield Insall came over with his father and mother, William Insall and Ann Biggerstaff, and that someone in the family even had the name of the ship they sailed on.

So that sent me back to the genealogy websites looking for Ann Biggerstaff.  There I found the biggest clue of all.  A posting on “Ann Biggerstaff” by Mike Shannon stated that our Ann was married to a William Insall, an innkeeper of “The Pin Cushion” or the “Crown Cushion” in Chipping Norton, England.  I e-mailed Mike Shannon to see if he had any updates on this line and he did not.

HOWEVER, I did say a great big “Eureka” because I already had found a hotel called “The Crown & Cushion” in Chipping Norton – I had already been looking for country houses and B&B’s and hotels, remember?  And Chipping Norton -- where Insall Road was located.  Pieces were starting to fit together.

 

So, I promptly looked up the Crown & Cushion on the internet and compared a photo of it to the house in the “Cade Insall” book.  Could it be the same?  It does look similar.  Only a trip to Chipping Norton could determine if the back of the Crown & Cushion looked like the back of the supposed Insall manor house.

Here is a comparison of the two houses that I took to England.

 

(Pic of Manor House in the Cade Insall book - brought back by Frank Insall in WWI)

Crown & Cushion Inn today -- was this the manor house?

  

Problems:  Manor house has two floors.  Crown & Cushion obviously has three floors.

And -- who are these people taking "tea" on the lawn?

More info on the Crown & Cushion was obtained from their website.  It is an old “coaching inn” that is 500 years old (which rings true with the Frank Insall story of the home being 400 years old at the time of WWI).   Interesting to people in my age group, is the fact that it was also once owned by none other than Keith Moon, legendary drum of the rock band, The Who.  Very cool!

Meanwhile, John and I booked ourselves into the Crown & Cushion for their dinner-bed-breakfast for the night of December 28, 2004.

Also during this time, I e-mailed some local people in Chipping Norton, such as the historical society and the parish church, requesting any information available on Thomas Insall.  This was before I knew that his father supposedly came over to America also.  Very shortly before we left for our England trip, I heard from Jan Cliffe, a local historian in Chipping Norton, who had information for me.  We made arrangements to meet up when we were in town.