Ryk Brown's Genealogy Forum

[BrianDawson]

There's a note for Joseph Dawson (b. 1816) in Ryk's Family Database on rootsweb which states, "Joseph and his family were living at Cross D-yke until 1843 when they moved to Whitely Shield. Cross D-yke has not been found on any maps but is presumed to be near Whitely Shield."

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=ryk_brown&id=I04589

Well, I like a mystery, so I went about trying to locate Cross D-yke.

In the 1841 Census England, Jospeh Dawson is living with his Elizabeth, son Hugh and his in-laws, the family of Joseph Heatherington. The census inidicated that Cross D-yke was in the immediate vicinity of Barney Craig, Coalcleugh and Shield Rigg. So I went looking for those. Coalcleugh turned out to be easy to find and once I located Barney Craig and Coalcleugh on an older English map, Cross D-ike (as spelled on that map) was right in between them.

What's cool is the Cross D-ike farm house is still standing (albeit a wreck) and can be seen easily on Google maps. You can even get a street view from the nearby highway.

Pop these GPS coordinates into Google maps to get the precise location of Cross D-yke: 54.810304,-2.304766

Note: it's not the red 'A' that points at Cross D-yke, it's the green arrow (north of the red 'A').

(Edited to change d**e to D-yke because PHP was filtering out the word to d**e because it is insulting or obscene I guess)

[RykBrown]

Don't you just love these stupid word filters??? I wish I could turn them off. Unfortunately I have no control over them.

Thanks for finding Cross D-yke. I have updated the database and web page with your new information. The updates will appear on-line when I do my next upload.

Ryk
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Ryk Brown
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Descendant of...well, all of these families, except for the ones that my wife is descended from, save for the ones we share in common...Eek! I married my cousin!