My Lean/Maclean Family Tree

SOURCES:

The earlier generations of this Lean/Maclean family tree are based primarily on the Blisland Parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.

St Pratts churchyard contains a number of decaying ‘Lean’ headstones which augment some of the burial record details.

Esteemed Family Researcher, Mr Hugh Peskett

My primary source of Lean Family BDM information was compiled by the late and renowned Mr Hugh Peskett, genealogical and historical researcher, aka the Sherlock Holmes of the family tree (1), of Exeter and Winchester UK, who in the years 1975 and 1976, when of more modest reputation and earning capacity, undertook to record for me all Leane and Lean Blisland Church BDM register entries from “the start of Blisland registers in 1539”.

1. Obituaries, Sydney Morning Herald March 30, 2020 taken from an obituary in The Telegraph, London “Hugh Peskett: April 26, 1932 – February 24, 2020”.

From this information Mr Peskett constructed an initial Lean/Maclean family tree which he described as follows:

“Essentially we have your ancestry firmly documented back to Christopher Lean [see 9^th Generation in the Family Tree above] of Blisland, your great-great-great-great grandfather who married Gunnet Hoskyn in 1727.”

This Christopher Lean was baptized on 27 December 1703.

Peskett recorded from the Blisland Parish registers for the surname Leane/Lean – 215 christenings, 82 burials and 50 marriages.

In addition, he recorded transcriptions of 15 Lean executed Wills.

Of course, there is no Peskett material on marriages and deaths of people whose births were registered in the Blisland Parish, but who subsequently left the Parish and married or died elsewhere (such as my direct ancestors who migrated to New Zealand around 1860).

Also, there is no Peskett material on people without the Lean surname unless they had married a Lean.

The material Peskett sent me was a photocopy of his hand-written record and it was evident that some entries were lost at the foot of each page in the photocopying process.

I was able to correct some of these omissions by accessing Mormon Church records.

Other Sources

As might be expected, I was not the only person researching the Lean surname and over the years I contacted and was helped by a number of these people, notably:

1. Ms Mary J Dunstan, who compiled “Lean/Leane in County of Cornwall, England, 1567-1950”, 25 April 1985.
2. Mr Alan Kent, “Sir John Maclean KB FSA 1811-1895”, Cornwall Family History Society Journal, No. 67, March 1993 and subsequent correspondence. It was Alan who directed me to the St Breward LEANS as these were not recorded in the Blisland Parish registers (as we have seen St Breward and Blisland are small neighbouring Parishes in Cornwall UK).
3. Mr John R Lean then of 4 Torrens Street, St Ives, NSW “The Lean Family History”, dated 4 May 1986 in which he detailed his extensive Lean family in NSW. As it turned out I am distantly related to John.
4. The late Mr Harold Lean, 3/121 Beach Road, Batehaven, NSW. Harold held an extensive record of Leans in the south-west of England, as well of many who moved to Australia.

There is also a comprehensive record of related Lean/Macleans who migrated to New Zealand and beyond in the publication “The Macleans of Howick and Tamaki”, revised 2009. This professional genealogy publication was compiled by Alison Honeyfield from information provided by living descendants of the Macleans who migrated to New Zealand in 1851 and 1860. This record was first published by Evagean Publishing Ltd, Te Aroha New Zealand, in 2008. A revised edition was published in 2009.

Finally, it was acknowledged that this Generation tree follows only a “direct line” of ancestry. For each generation there are many brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws who are not shown. This spread of relatives is particularly evident in the Macleans of Howick and Tamaki family history.

It also has to be acknowledged that the attribution of family membership to this particular lineage of “Leans” for the earlier generations could be in error. The parish BDM records are scant on detail, generally just recording a person’s name, and parents’ names (and not full name if there was a second Christian name). So, for instance, if there were 2 christenings for a child with the first name “Robert” only a few years apart then, without other supporting evidence, the wrong Robert may be nominated.

I have on occasion been contacted by people claiming a relationship to me which, on examination, proved not to be the case. Their distant relative John, Robert or whoever turned out to be from an unrelated family because my John or Robert died in New Zealand and not, say, Canada where theirs died. But it is evident a lot of Leans emigrated from Cornwall in the 1800s to North America, Australia and New Zealand and this can render research difficult.

Hugh Peskett’s Obituary Revisited

The first page of Hugh Peskett’s obituary follows. The rest of the obituary sets out other milestones in his life from an early interest in falconry to being a patient of King George VI’s speech therapist and starting out as a farmer on Dartmoor.

His first genealogist success was finding the rightful clan chieftain to his grandmother’s Buchanan Clan. He also worked at various times for Debrett’s and eventually as editor in chief of Burke’s Peerage. He identified a new Earl for an Earldom which had been vacant for 190 years (Annandale and Hartfell), produced evidence that Al Capone’s former jockey was rightfully the 13^th Dunbar of Mochrum Baronet, and identified a Canadian born former Coal Board employee as Chief of Clan Arthur etc etc.

Finally, as well as research on President Reagan’s lineage (and mine), he looked into the ancestry of Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush.

Most importantly, from my point of view, Mr Peskett could find no evidence that my family had a Scottish ancestry. Much more of this later.