#12 Tibbot Bowker - What's in a Name?

Woah! My Sheaf ancestor rate has really ground to a halt over the last month or so as I have been consorting with ancestors of a very different sort! But life has settled again to something approaching normality and I once again have evenings at home in order to do some research.  This post's ancestor is a very new discovery and comes with a most interesting name.

Tibbot Bowker is my 11x great grandmother and was born in 1551 in the village of Quinton, once in Gloucestershire but now part of Warickshire. Her parents were Thomas and Elizabeth Bowker and she was one of at least 8 children. Tibbot was baptised on Valentine's Day, 14th February, in 1551. This means she was probably born either on or just before that date as most of the sources I have looked at suggest that baptisms occurred very soon after the birth of a child. I am guessing that high child mortality rates and the potential for dying outside the bosom of the church meant that time was of the essence.

In all probability, her father Thomas would have carried her to the church; Elizabeth, her mother, staying at home because the Church generally followed the old Jewish custom of keeping women from holy places for several weeks after childbirth. At the church, Thomas, the newborn Tibbot and the selected godparent would have been met at the door by the parish priest. The baby would be blessed and salt would be placed in her mouth to represent the getting of wisdom and also to exorcise any demons. Then Tibbot would have been carried into the church and up to the font where she would have been immersed in the water, wrapped in a chrysom or christening gown and officially named.

But just where does the name Tibbot come from? It originally was a nickname for Theobald, an Old German masculine name meaning "brave people." But it didn't stay that way. The fashion for girls' names at the time was to feminize boys' names by adding"-ot" or "-et." ,so it didn't take long for Tibbot to switch sides! After about 1300, Tib, Tibbot, and Tibet were considered the sole property of the girls; until the name faded into obscurity altogether. During the late 1500s it was certainly a fashionable name in the villages of Upper and Lower Quinton. There are several instances of the name being used across different families in the area, and yet I have not come across the use of this name in other parishes associated with my ancestors. Interestingly, "Tib" was also a very popular name for medieval female cats! (The males were often called Gib, pronounced with a hard g.)

At the age of twenty, our Tibbot married a young local man called Thomas Ryland, (sometimes spelled Rilande). I have found baptisms in Quinton for four children of Thomas and Tibbot and I suspect there may be more, as the first one is in 1580 about 8 years after their marriage. Sometimes children were baptised across a couple of parishes so I need to do some further scouting here.

Tibbot died in March 1612/13 at the age of 62 years and her burial was recorded in the parish register as Tibbot Rilande, wife of Thomas Rilande the elder.

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.