Off I trotted to see the Latter Day Saints two weeks ago. Alas, no one was there; the doors were all locked up and I couldn't see any sign of life in the sprawl of buildings. So much for the family research center hours of operation posted on their website. Clearly, I will have to call and speak to someone next week, but it will be a while before I get back there again as summer is in full swing with visitors and things happening.
And so I have been acquainting myself with Tarrant Hinton this weekend, the birthplace of Caroline Hyde's mother. [I have come to a complete dead end with Thomas Hyde, so have left him for later.] Caroline Hyde's mother was named Martha Caish, and she was baptized April 20th, 1767 in the church of St.Mary. The first record of a marriage involving a Cash/Caish/Cosh (the spellings vary over the years, but are clearly the same family) in the Tarrant Hinton records that survive was from 1753. This is the marriage of Henry Cash and Lucy Beach, who are Martha's parents. And the first Beach to appear in the marriage records is one Thomas Beech who married Hester Aishford in 1739 - Lucy's parents, presumably (still haven't checked this line). So neither of the fathers had been from the parish it seems.
There are eight little villages along the Tarrant valley all bearing the name of the stream, and Tarrant Hinton is the second one from the river's source, and virtually at the intersection with the ancient Blandford Forum to Salisbury road. And what lies just 6 or 7 kilometers further along the road toward Salisbury? The village of Sixpenny Handley, which is where Isaac Gulliver (1745-1822) married the daughter of the local inn keeper. If this smuggler relation named Captain Hyde was real, it is most likely that he would have been living in the time of these generations I am looking at now. Wherever Thomas Hyde was from, the digitization of the records related to him has not been done for that parish, because I can find no trace of him yet in my internet searches, beyond his marriage to Caroline Hyde. Which means that I have no idea who his father and brothers were either, any one of whom might have been the elusive "captain" himself. There is a Hyde Hill on the map very close to Tarrant Hinton though, I noted.
