Amended 5th May 2013

A main object of this site is to make contact with people overseas and in the UK who will tell me what they know about their ancestors and the places they came from.  I shall then compare that with what I have on my database and in turn supply details of their branch connections, as far back as I am able.

In the UK almost everyone I know of was in three English counties:

Cheshire, Staffordshire and Lancashire.

Astbury is so close to the Cheshire boundary with Staffordshire that early movement between them does not reflect a significant migration.   Cheshire and Lancashire are also adjacent but the distance between the Gidman settlements indicates a desire to set up home in a new area where more work was available as the industrial revolution gathered pace.  A branch which is still a mystery to me was in Kent around 1790 and later there is movement between there and Staffordshire but I do not know whether the two are related.

Several families went overseas.  The ones I know of include:

USA.  Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, Alabama and Virginia.

In the 1880 census an unnamed single man in Wisconsin says his parents were from Holland and Caroline in Delaware states hers were from Germany but I have not found out anything about their origins.  Nor do I know anything more about Joseph who in 1852 “patented a [roller] skate with coupled wheels in the middle and single wheels at each end”.

Canada. Alberta and Ontario.

Australia. Victoria

New Zealand, Holland and Sweden feature in more recent years.

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In Stockholm, Sweden Family Search.org [formerly IGI] gave a marriage on 21st March 1805  between Peter and Johanna C LINDBERG in Maria Magdalena church.

I should have liked to know where Peter came from and what happened to him and his family.  However, I had some doubt as to whether the transcription was correct and the surname is almost certainly TIDEMAN.  My thanks to C-G Magnusson in Sweden for locating and clarifying an actual Register in order to establish that.

Maybe the same applies to an IGI entry extracted from the record for Sankt Viktor Katholisch, Birten, Rheinland, Preussen:
Joes Henricus GIDMAN [sic] born 14th December 1778 and baptised two days later.  Father Jois GIDMAN, mother Annae Catharinae BIESEMANS.
Does anyone have knowledge of them?

Not everyone had a fixed abode – in 1783 Daniel, born Congleton, Cheshire was declared to be a Vagabond [but not a Rogue].  He and his wife Mary were ordered to be taken from the County of Worcester and conveyed to Hackney near London where he had been working as a servant for Samuel Hill, a tobacconist.  Daniel had married Mary at St John, Hackney on 9th November 1760.

The 1851 register for St Leonard, Shoreditch has a marriage on 30th November between Louisa, of Leicester Square, London and Harry Samuel LONG, a Salesman.   The entry states her father was Thos William Long. A simple error or is it more complicated than that? I don’t yet have any information about her birth.  There is a possibility she was GIDMON as the church register is not absolutely clear; in fact Free BMD has extracted both PIDMAN and TIDMAN from the GRO Index and her signature is more like the latter! 
Certainly there was a Gidman in the area in 1788 because there is no doubt that on 24th March Mary was married in the same church to Joshua DUNN; at that time no details of fathers were in the register - perhaps she was a daughter of the above Daniel and Mary?