This post is long overdue; several years ago I received confirmation that my great uncle Oswald Hewer Jamison was born in northern England, but I didn’t get around to posting an update on here.

The question of Oswald’s place of birth was first posed ten years ago by Nevin of the North Antrim Local Interest  blog. Nevin had located an Oswald Hewer in an 1895 registry of births with a birthplace of Wigton in Cumbria. (Right-click images to open and enlarge in a new tab)

Oswald’s name was uncommon enough that the listing was likely to be our Oswald, and as we knew that Oswald sadly died of tuberculosis at the young age of 17 in 1912, the dates also matched up.

Using the dates in the registration listing, I located Oswald’s birth certificate:

Name: Oswald Hewer
Date of birth: 7th July 1895
Father: No name given
Father’s occupation: N/A
Mother: Annie Hewer
Mother’s occupation: general servant (domestic)
Place of birth: 16 William Street, Wigton, Cumberland (now in Cumbria)

I later confirmed that Oswald’s mother Annie was also born in Cumberland; she was a twenty-one-year-old domestic servant when Oswald was born, with no acknowledged father for her baby son.

Hewer is Annie’s maiden name. At some point, she met and married my great-grandfather William McDowell Jamison and they went on to have another three children together, across the Irish sea in Bushmills.

Data Sources

Copy of birth certificate
Registry of births 1895
1901 and 1911 census of Northern Ireland
North Antrim Local Interest List (NALIL)