The Stephensons - Steamboatmen

I finally have the courage to publish this story - the Stephenson family history as I know it at this time. I say courage, because I'm still researching, and its been difficult to stop and say, "this is good enough". There are many living Stephensons who can add to this story and embellish it, for this reason I have deliberately excluded the details of their lives. I have really enjoyed researching this, and also having contact with different Stephenson families around the world who share my ancestors. You can start to read it here:

Chapter 1 - The Earliest Facts

Chapter 2 - The move to North Shields

Chapter 3 - Married in Tynemouth Parish

Chapter 4 - A Wife and Children

Chapter 5 - Forging Alliances

Chapter 6 - Steamboatmen

Chapter 7 - The children of William (b. 1831)

Chapter 8 - The children of George (b.1845)

Chapter 9 - Kate and Hudson Stephenson

Chapter 10 - George b. 1898 d. 1918

Chapter 11 - Alice Maud b. 1897 – d. 1982

Chapter 12 - Hudson Stephenson Junior 1900 – 1936

Chapter 13 - William Stephenson and Minnie Armstrong

Family Tree - The Stephensons 19th Century

Family Tree - The Stephensons 20th Century

I would like to thank Dylane Symm, Lia Stephenson, Maureen Thompson, and Lyn Thornton who helped to fill in the last gaps, and confirm some of my ideas about our origins. Last but not least I would like to thank my mother Meg for writing down everything she found out from her talks with Irene Stewart, and my dad, Bill Stephenson – an amazing raconteur.

I found these books really useful when I was trying to visualise the Tyne and North Shields in the 19th and 20th centuries
The Archive Photographs series North Shields – compiled by Eric Hollerton
The Peoples History Beyond the piers – Ron Wright
The peoples History North Shields Memories of Fish “n”Ships – Ron Wright

I did almost all of my research on the internet, and these are the websites I used
http://www.ancestry.com/
http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start
http://www.genuki.bpears.org.uk/NBL/index.html