#13 Mary Gifford - Three times a Lady.

Sometimes in the course of my research, an ancestor seems to emerge from the past and draw attention to themself, almost as if to say "Don't forget about me!" Mary Gifford has been spotted waving at me from the 16th century several times in the last couple of months, so I am acquiescing to her demands to be noticed.

Mary Gifford was born in about 1550, a daughter of John Gifford and Elizabeth Throckmorton, making her my first cousin 13x removed. I'm always happy to include first cousins in my family lines, as growing up I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a plethora of cousins who added so much to my life that it would seems surly and ungrateful not to recognize cousins just because they happened to be born 13 generations earlier!

At this stage, I have 6 siblings for Mary, some of whom have amazing stories of their own, but they will keep for another day.

In about 1572, Mary married Richard Baker of Sissinghurst in Kent. When I discovered the marriage, I already had Richard Baker in the family tree. His father Sir John Baker was peripherally associated with the Courthoppes and Sheafs in Cranbrook, Kent. I even suspect that Sir John's grandmother was Benet Sheaf, but I have no concrete evidence of that....yet! Richard and Mary had 4 children John, Thomas, Chyrosgena (sometimes recorded as Grisgone) and Cicely. Chrysogena was named after one of Mary's sisters. Richard was responsible for enlarging Sissinghurst into a fine Tudor residence. In fact so fine was it, that in 1573, Queen Elizabeth spent three days there on her summer progress. One can only imagine the anxiety (and the cost!) to Richard and Mary at hosting the Queen and her court, even though it did result in a knighthood for Richard.

Sissingurst, now famous for its Vita Sackville-West gardens, with the remains of the Tudor buildings in the background. Photo by Klaus D Peter, Germany.

Sir Richard Baker died in 1594, but Mary did not long remain a widow, for later in that same year she married Richard Fletcher, newly made Bishop of London. Fletcher was also a man with connections to the Sheaf family and Cranbrook. His brother Giles had married Joan Sheaf and his father Richard, who had been Vicar of Cranbrook, officiated at the 'hatching, matching and dispatching' of many other Sheaf family members.

Unfortunately for Mary, her somewhat precipitous second marriage was not universally approved of. Both she and her ecclesiastical husband were in conspicuous disfavour with Queen Elizabeth for marrying without her express consent. The Queen objected to the marriage of all bishops, and thought it especially indecorous in one only two years a widower. Fletcher was forbidden the court and suspended from performing all episcopal functions.

Mary was described as a handsome woman, a 'fine lady' but her reputation was tarnished and she was ridiculed by satirists of the day as a whore and "my Lady Lecher", which conveniently rhymed with Fletcher! Poor Richard died soon after on the 15th June 1596; still largely in disfavour, debt ridden and surrounded by a fug of tobacco smoke. It is most likely that at this point Mary returned to Sissinghurst to be near the children of her first marriage, especially to her two daughters Chrysogena and Cicely who were then in their twenties and who were said to be especially devoted to her.

In about 1597, Mary Gifford married for the third and last time. Her new husband was Sir Stephen Thornehurst of Forde in the Isle of Thanet, Kent. They were together about thirteen years, until Mary died in 1609. Her husband buried her in the St Michael Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral under a splendid monument. Lady Mary reclines somewhat jauntily at the feet of Sir Stephen, not looking in the slightest bit pious or repentant, dressed in her Tudor finest; for all the world as if to say "Well yes, here I am! What took you so long?"

#7 Edward and Ann Sheaf - 'Til Death Us Do Part.

Edward Sheaf of Chipping Campden is still a relatively shadowy figure in our family story. By that, I mean that I only have sparse information about his life and I am not even 100% sure of his place in the tree. However for now, let us just assume that Edward Sheaf, the son of Edward Sheaf and Catherine was born in the Buckland area of Gloucestershire in about 1725 and is a first cousin 7 times removed.

In September of 1747 he married Hannah Webb at Chipping Campden. They were both described as being "of this parish", meaning that they lived within the parish boundaries. Together they had 5 children, Edward, John, Samuel, Mary and Hannah - all born between 1748 and 1755. What happened to these children I have not yet been able to discover; that will be a job for another day.

Some time after 1755, Hannah died and in 1788 widower Edward remarried. His new wife, Ann Fletcher, had also been widowed, her husband John dying sometime after their 1784 marriage. I suspect Ann may also have had another marriage prior to that, as she would have been about 58 when she married John. Her name at the time of her marriage to John Fletcher was Ann Stephens. Ann and Edward married in the parish church at Offenham, and being described as both "of this parish" I am assuming that this is where they were now living.

Years passed and in 1803 their story takes an interesting turn.
According to the London Morning Post "A few days since, at age 83, Mr Edward Sheaf of Offenham in the county of Worcester died; and just as the hearse came to fetch the deceased, died his wife Mrs Ann Sheaf also aged 83." Another document, compiled by Peter Stewart of the registers for St Mary and St Milburgh Offenham, says  "Anne Sheaf. Died within half an hour of the time appointed for her husband’s funeral at Sawford 1st October 1803, aged 77 "

Although there are some discrepancies with ages, this is not unusual as newspapers then were about as accurate as newspapers are now! However both sources agree on the fact that Ann died very close to the time of her husband's funeral.

In terms of our family genealogy, the facts that Ann had been married to a John Fletcher and Edward had been married to a Hannah Webb are both interesting, as these are names that regularly crop up in the family tree.

Offenham Church SS Mary and Milburgh 1903

The Allday Brothers

I like to do research the same way I like to travel. That is to say, I seem to spend a lot of time exploring the little side streets, alleys and hidden lanes instead of sticking to the highway!

I was sorting out some Fletcher census records the other day and the name of Richard Allday caught my eye. He married Elizabeth Fletcher, daughter of Robert and Muriel Fletcher. Richard and Elizabeth feature rather prominently in the Fletcher family story due to a long and drawn out litigation involving significant bequests to Elizabeth from her Uncle Richard and also her parents. (That is really another story!) However, the reason Richard Allday waved a flag at me was that I had only a few days before looked at two other Allday gentlemen who had married two Walford sisters. Sarah and Ann Walford were daughters of William Walford and Sarah Tomes of Long Marston (Marston Sicca). They are in my first cousin line but 5 x removed. The marriages all seemed to take place within a few years of each other and the Allday -Walford marriages took place in the same church - Halford, Warwickshire. Out of idle curiosity, I wondered if the Allday men were related and if so, how closely.

After a bit of scrummaging around, I am quite confident in saying that the three Allday men, Richard, Thomas and Joseph were brothers, born in Birmingham between 1796 and 1803. Interestingly, the censuses reveal that they were movers and shakers in the meat industry. Richard was a farmer and cattle dealer, Thomas was a butcher and Joseph's wife Ann ran a 'celebrated' tripe house and coffee shop! Talk about paddock to plate! The families must have had a relatively close relationship with each other as sometimes children from one family are living in the home of another family at census time. This is particularly the case for Joseph and Ann who don't appear to have had any children of their own.

 Joseph went on to become a prominent and controversial Councillor in Birmingham, starting as editor of a 'scurrilous weekly periodical' The Argus, which took as its motto " Yes, I am proud. I must be proud to see men not afraid of God, afraid of me!" Funnily enough, this little side trip into an almost unrelated family connection is leading me out into some more familiar territory. It appears that after his wife Sarah Walford died, butcher Thomas Allday remarried a woman from Quinton in Gloucestershire called Helen Southam. Her father was Thomas Corbett Southam who appears as an executor, overseer and beneficiary in several Fletcher and connected wills. Another trail to follow!

Synchronicity!

When I first started researching several years ago, I got sidetracked onto a line that was only very indirectly associated with the family. I was interested in a man called Cotterell Corbett, who built the farmhouse that my grandmother Isabella grew up in. According to my mother, who has visited the house, Honeybourne Manor Farm House itself was built in 1831 (this is carved into the guttering). On the lintel of a door into the dining room is the following verse: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in - Thus runs the ancient proverb. This house was built by Cotterell, and now belongs to Robert." [The Robert mentioned would have been Robert Fletcher]

 The Cotterell Corbett of Honeybourne Manor Farm was a son of Michael Corbett and Rebecca Ashwin and was a second cousin several times removed of my Grandmother. I got a bit carried away and at one stage checked relationships and was getting things like "so and so is the uncle of the husband of the sister of......." Quite ridiculous really! I put it all aside and got back to more relevant research along the original Sheaf lines. Or so I thought....

Last weekend, after following up some more of the Fletcher/Smith family both Mum and I (who are in different states might I add) came up with John Smith marrying Muriel Corbett in Lower Quinton in 1708. Bells started to ring wildly and I searched through the data base and found that this was a marriage I already had discovered in the irrelevant Corbett line! Suddenly the woman who was the aunt of the cousin of the sister of the uncle blah blah blah was my 6 x great-grandmother! And the lesson from all this? If you do the research, keep it! Who knows how it might tie in.

Muriel Smith

A breakthrough! For ages I have put off investigating the family of Muriel Smith, who married Richard Fletcher, because of the fact that she was a Smith! Not that Smith is anything but a fine and honourable name, I was just daunted by the idea that it would be difficult to sort out. Anyway, after some email correspondence with my mentor (thanks Mum!) I took the plunge. I had known for a while the name of Muriel's father was Robert, but other than that - nothing. Some research into old wills led me to Preston on Stour, and the parish registers there confirmed her father as Robert and her paternal grandparents as John and Muriel. Her father Robert married Elizabeth Cleeve at Whitchurch in Warwickshire and then it appears they moved to Charringworth near Ebrington. It was here that Elizabeth, Muriel's mother, died in 1764. Muriel was only about 3 at the time. I cannot find another marriage for Robert - I am almost certain he remained single for the rest of his life, 'til he died in 1797. His will leaves everything to his daughter Muriel, and then to her five children. To my delight he inserts a phrase that her inheritance is to be hers alone and that her present nor future husbands not have anything to do with it! The only missing piece in the story of Muriel is her baptism. I have looked closely through the images of the Preston on Stour registers to no avail. I have done searches for her baptisms at both Whitchurch and Ebrington but as that is not throwing up anything useful in the transcriptions I will have to look at the images for those too. If that is not successful I will have to think again!

Progress - one more generation.

I have been stuck for ages at the brick wall of the Robert Fletcher that married his "cousin" Muriel Fletcher in 1813. In a very round-about way using some information I had about a Robert Robbins Fletcher who was a very distant connection of the family in the Honeybourne area (he married Mary Ashwin, a sister of Phoebe Ashwin who married another Fletcher, Richard, also of Honeybourne), I was able to work backwards to the origin of the Robbins name. Why I thought that following that line would be helpful I don't know....call it a hunch! William Fletcher of Moreton in Marsh married Elizabeth Robins of Blockley in 1758. They had at least three children Thomas, Robert and Joseph. Thomas was the father of Robert Robbins Fletcher and his brother Robert, son of William, was the Robert who married Muriel. Wills, some online legal documents, and a whole lot of BDM data all seem to tie this in. It just seemed to be such a convoluted way to work one generation back; but when the direct way seems blocked I suppose there is no alternative but to try to sneak around it by a more circuitous route!Anyway, I felt very jubilant about cracking the puzzle!

I love monumental inscriptions!

And of course, the people who trudge around churchyards making transcriptions of aged and weathered headstones. Hats off to you, because they are such a boon to the family historian. After finding Ann Fletcher's marriage to John Jackson, I thought I had better check out this "Norton" from whence he came (great phrase that!) Turns out to be a place called Norton Lindsey in Warwickshire with the Jacksons being a prominent farming family of the time. The inscription for Ann Jackson very kindly identified her as a "daughter of Richard Fletcher of Charringworth" Another document I found courtesy of Dear Google indicated that her death was recorded by the coroner as "a Visitation from God", the modern equivalent being of natural causes.

Susannah Fletcher died 1814

I have been trying to get the last few details about the children of my 4X great grandparents, Richard Fletcher and Muriel Smith. They had seven children and four of those survived to adulthood. Yesterday I discovered what became of their daughter Susannah, baptised at Ebrington in 1786. Dear Google threw up a snippet from an old book published in 1814 that mentioned a Miss Fletcher, daughter of the late Rch. Fletcher of Weston Subedge, who die at Bath in 1814. A quick search through the National Burial Index gave me Susanna Fletcher buried at Walcot (near Bath) in Somerset. Quite what she was doing there I don't know. Had she been poorly and gone to Bath to "take the waters"? She had received a bequest in the will of her father who died in 1813. Maybe she used some of the money to express her independence and travel away from home. The only child still eluding me is daughter Ann. I have not yet found a baptism record for her, but she is mentioned in both the wills of her parents and also in some legal documents arising from the inheritance disputes connected with those wills. She married a Mr John Jackson of Norton in Warwickshire in 1817 and in 1824, according to the legal documents, was still without children. More work required here!

John Fletcher - a twisty tale.

I am surprised by how mobile some of our ancestors were. We tend to think of people staying put for generations in a single town or village, and yes, sometimes this is the case. But sometimes the paper trail reveals a series of moves that can take a lot of painstaking unpicking before the puzzle pieces fall into place. This seems to be the case with my 6 x great grandfather John Fletcher. He was born in Ebrington in 1669 and it was there that his first child was born in 1695. The register does not mention a name for the mother. This child went on to become Mary Pool of my previous posts. The next journey for this little family appears to take them to Harvington, near Evesham, where four more children were baptised. However, before I discovered the Harvington connection, I had found a baptism record in the Wellesbourne register for Elizabeth Fletcher 1704, daughter of John and Ann Fletcher of Harvington. The dates seemed to fit so I investigated the Wellesbourne registers more closely and found two more baptisms, one for Robert in 1709 and one for Richard in 1712. I was particularly excited by this as the will of Richard Fletcher of Ebrington 1779, indicated I should be looking for him belonging to a family with siblings called Mary, Robert and Thomas. His burial record also indicated that he had been born abt 1712! So, with Mary and Robert in hand, I knew that if I could locate an appropriate baptism for a Thomas Fletcher I would be in the ball park. Time to follow up the Harvington clue. Dear Google led me to a website of the Harvington History group that has, with all the appropriate permissions, made freely available transcriptions of the Harvington parish registers. A quick search of these and I had my Thomas, as well as a William, Ann, and another Richard. Their births all slotted neatly into the gaps between the Wellesbourne baptisms, although my heart did sink momentarily when I discovered the second Richard. However further investigations revealed his burial the year after his birth. So my John Fletcher - born in Ebrington, lived in Harvington and Wellesbourne, where he died in 1725. What he did that took him to these places I don't know, but I would certainly love to find out! My next task will be to find out who Ann his wife was and where they were married.

Mary Fletcher married John Pool

Today I discovered that Mary Fletcher, mentioned in the previous post, married a chap called John Pool in Chipping Campden in 1724. They went on to have at least six children baptized in Chipping Campden - Charles (who was mentioned in Richard Fletcher's 1779 will) as well as John, Thomas, Mary, Elizabeth and Joseph. I wonder if the other children were not legatees because they had died before the will was written or whether they had been provided for in other ways? Hopefully some further investigation of Chipping Campden registers may go some way to answering that question. And while Mary Fletcher is not a direct ancestor of mine, but is a many times great aunt, I find that it is often useful to sort out the sidelines to narrow down the candidates for the direct line! Well....that is my theory. Oh dear, I am starting to sound like Ann Elk! For a little Friday Funny, here is Ann Elk herself!

Fletcher family of Ebrington

I finally feel as though I am starting to unwind some of the convolutions of this family. My grandmother Isabella Sheaf of Honeybourne was descended twice over from the Fletchers, with the marriage of Robert Fletcher and his cousin Muriel Fletcher in 1813. They were her great grandparents. The Fletchers are an important part of the Sheaf story not just because of this double line, but also because Isabella's childhood home at Honeybourne Manor Farm came into the Sheaf family through this marriage. Muriel Fletcher's parents were Richard Fletcher and Muriel Smith who were from the Aston Magna area near Ebrington in Gloucestershire. Richard was a child of Richard Fletcher and Sarah ? also of Ebrington. By collating all the BDMs I can find from the Ebrington registers and online indexes etc I have come to the conclusion that Richard Fletcher 1712-1779 (Muriel's grandfather) was a son of John Fletcher born Ebrington abt 1669. At this stage I have John's other children as Mary (born 1695 Ebrington), Robert and Thomas. Mary married Mr Pool and they had a child Charles. Thomas married somebody and had at least three children Thomas, Richard and Robert but as yet I have not narrowed down any specific dates for them. These are all named as legatees in an abstract of Richard's will 1779. Richard's 1779 will also mentions a niece, Mary Holtham wife of Abel Holtham of Wellesbourne. They were married in Wellesbourne in 1762. She must be a daughter of either Robert or Thomas, but at this point in time I am not sure which. Richard appears to have acquired considerable amounts of farmland in his lifetime, mentioning land/property in Ilmington, Ebrington, Hidcote and Saintbury. These are the leads I am currently following in order to find out more.