Trip to Newmarket.

Newmarket Cemetery

Saturday morning and I'm supposed to be washing my car. But I have a better idea. Go of to Newmarket on a hunch that I'm going to find something! I already knew that some of my Murdoch ancestors moved on to the Newmarket area from Livepool around 1910-1920 but I still have no idea why. I only know they were there because I tracked them down after searching through the BMD index for endless hours. Luckily at least one of them has a fairly unique name. Still, although the index gives you a registration district it doesn't give you an exact town. It just seemed reasonable to me to assume that as one of the ancestors in question was named after a famous jockey, they did actually move to Newmarket itself and not just a tiny village somewhere in the registration district. Luckily it seems this time I was right!

Before we went of to Newmarket we had prepared ourselves for a pretty long day. We noticed on our map that there were at least 7 churches in the town and a cemetery. The 30 mile drive was smooth and took us under an hour. Having never been to Newmarket before we had the map at hand but didn't really need it. The first thing we saw after the Newmarket sign was a cemetery on our left. Result! We pulled up and went over to have a look.

A view of about 1/4 of Newmarket Cemetery and headstones as far as the eye can see. We wondered if the task we were taking on was slightly over-ambitious.

After about 30 minutes searching and about a third of our way through the cemetery I saw a name I recognised. "Found a Murdoch!" I called out, not quite realising the significance as I didn't recognise the first name on the stone. As I looked down a bit I suddenly realised I'd found one of the ancestors I was looking for - Kempton Cannon Murdoch.

Kempton Cannon Murdock and his wife Margaret (nee Peart)

Pleased with finally getting a result after 3 previous field trips and little new success it didn't take long to stumble upon yet another find. Literally only 3 metres away we found another ancestor.

A close up view of the headstone for Douglas and Josephine (my great great Grandparents)

A wider shot of the memorial.

After discovering this we were more than happy with the trip and decided after having such as result it wasn't worth checking out the other 6 or 7 churchyards for what was going to be a possible disappointment, so we called it a day!

Maybe one day we'll go back and look for the rest. :)