My grandmother, Elizabeth Irene Wiggans was born on the 16th of April, 1916, in the back bedroom of 290 Peshine Ave, Newark, NJ. She was named ‘Elizabeth’ after her mother but to her father, she would always be ‘Lovey’. Everyone else called her Irene.
The surname Wiggans came to England with the Normans in 1066. It’s the patronymic form of the name – literally, “son of Wigand” and while I can’t trace my line back to the Normans, it may extend as far as a man named James Wygan, born around 1520 in Chorley, Lancashire – though more documentation…
James Wiggans, my great-grandfather, was born August 1st, 1881 to Sarah McIntyre. As far back as I can trace, her father’s people were West Highlanders from in and around the Firth of Lorn.
This tracks the English Catholic line of the Smiths in Lancashire back to 1823. It’s hard to go back any further in a country where being a Catholic could get you executed – record keeping was dangerous.
Elizabeth Rooney, my great-grandmother, was born in Chorley, Lancashire on the 7th of October, 1883 to John Rooney – an Irish immigrant to England who worked all his life as a farm labourer.