#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?"

#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.

#11 George Holland Sheaf - Jamaica George and the Lost Children.

My 2x great grandfather George Holland Sheaf was born in 1817, a son of William Harbidge Sheaf and Mary Tomes Holland. He was the third born of their eleven children and was baptised in Bidford on Avon on the 15th Jan 1818. The family were farmers living in the hamlet of Bickmarsh near Bidford on Avon and by the time of the 1841 census, Mary and her two eldest sons Thomas and George were farming the property and providing for all the younger children; William Harbidge Sheaf having died suddenly in 1837.

Sometime in the next few years, George left his home and family in England and set sail for the colony of Jamaica. I have no record of exactly when he departed England or arrived in Jamaica but by 1847 he is recorded as being a "planter" there. As a young man of limited means, there is no evidence that George owned any land and most probably would have been employed as a manager on either a sugar or tobacco plantation.

At about this time George married a young English woman whose family were also on the island seeking to make their fortune. Cornelia Martha Briggs was born in Hackney but her mother Deborah Heath Moore was from a family that had long been settled in Jamaica and did own significant amounts of land and many slaves. I have never been able to locate a record of their marriage but it is generally assumed they married in Jamaica rather than in England. The were living at Kings Pen in the county of Westmoreland and George was now a "pen keeper". Pens were livestock properties rather than horticultural ventures and so the main activity would have been raising cattle. Kings Pen was under the ownership of George's mother-in-law Deborah Heath Briggs and it seems he was employed by the family company as a manager.

In an 1837 claim for compensation it is recorded that Kings Pen had 71 slaves with a value of  £1332. Slavery had finally been abolished in the British Caribbean in 1833, but in the way of all big social changes it took some time for this to filter through to the business practices of Jamaican agriculture. Cynically, I will also say that those who stood to lose the most quickly found a 'work around' by negotiating a settlement that established a system of apprenticeship, tying the newly freed men and women into another form of unfree labour for fixed terms. It also granted £20 million in compensation, to be paid by British taxpayers to the former slave-owners.

In 1849 the first of George and Cornelia's children, Mary Moore Sheaf, was baptised at Westmoreland. Four more children followed in relatively quick succession: William Robert Sheaf in 1851, Minna Cornelia Sheaf in 1853, George Kemble Holland Sheaf in 1857 and Charlotte Elizabeth Ann Sheaf in 1859. Then in 1863 my great grandmother and the last of their children Louisa Althea Sheaf was born.

Just what happened next is still something of a mystery, despite the best efforts of several different researchers. We know that in October 1865 George's wife Cornelia Martha died. She was buried on the 29th October at Westmoreland. This was a time of great political and social turmoil in Jamaica which resulted in an uprising fuelled by the widespread poverty in Jamaica which had been exacerbated by extremes of weather and outbreaks of disease and I wonder if she succumbed to one of the many epidemics of something like cholera or smallpox.

Our last record of George Holland Sheaf is also in 1865 as a signatory to an open letter to the Governor of Jamaica, Edward John Eyre (yes - the same one who did exploring in Australia!) to support his actions in putting down the uprising and punishing those involved. 

The letter starts: May it please your Excellency, 
We, the undersigned Inhabitants of the parish of Westmoreland, beg respectfully to express to your Excellency, the satisfaction we feel from the continuance of peace and tranquility generally throughout the colony, during a period in 
which we had reason to fear, from discoveries made in the recent lamentable insurrection in St. Thomas ye East, that a great and general danger, was to be apprehended. 

We are happy to assure your Excellency, that in this part of the island, a loyal and peaceable feeling seems now generally to prevail, and that the labouring population are willingly engaged in their usual avocations ; and we are of opinion, that this result has been largely promoted by the judicious measures taken by your Excellency's Government, for the preservation of peace, during a time of great excitement and alarm. 

The letter continues for several more paragraphs in a similar vein -very much stating a case of "nothing to see here!"

Moving from the big picture back down to the more personal aspects of these events, we just don't know what happened to George Holland Sheaf after the uprising. The family tale is that during a bad hurricane or as a result of the hurricane George rode on horseback with the youngest child Louisa (my great grandmother) and took her to a place of greater safety and then he died or was killed in an accident soon after. The fate of all the other young Sheaf children is also a mystery but seems to suggest that they too died at about that same time. Other than their baptism records and a handwritten slip of paper with their names and birth dates found in my great grandmothers purse they have disappeared from the records too.

I find it sad and a little disconcerting that events which are not so far back in our family history are so shrouded in uncertainty and I live in hope that one day I will discover a little more.

#10 Thomas Kemble Holland - A Man of Pleasing Manners.

Thomas Kemble Holland was my 4 x great grandfather and spent most of his life in and around the parish of Mickleton in Gloucestershire. He was born to David Hughes Holland and his second wife Jane Stokes in 1767 and was baptized in the church at Weston Subedge. He had two older half-sisters from his father's first marriage to Mary Ashwin and, in 1768, a younger brother was born and named David Hughes Holland after his father. When Thomas was only 6 years old, his father died, leaving his mother Jane to raise her own two small boys as well as her two young step-daughters. It appears that she was supported in this by Thomas's grandfather John Holland of Mickleton.

In 1791 Thomas made a very advantageous marriage to a young lady called Temperance Tomes who was from the well-respected Tomes family of Long Marston . According to Ian Tomes who is the keeper of much of the Tomes family history, at the time of their marriage Thomas Kemble Holland had property worth about £20,000. The National Archives currency converter has this at about £1 120 600 today! He was described in the family record as a 'gentlemanly man of pleasing manners, but very passionate....intemperate'. Ironic really, given that his wife was called Temperance!

Between 1793 and 1808 the couple had 10 children, 8 of whom survived past infancy. The children were all baptized in the church of St Lawrence in Mickleton. My ancestor Mary Tomes Holland, was the second oldest child and was born in 1794. By about the time the last child, Charles Wynne Holland, was born in 1809 the family story is that Thomas had squandered his fortune. I find this somewhat concerning as in 1796 Thomas had been made trustee of two inheritances for his much younger cousin Charles Wynne, who was only nineteen at the time and who was considered " unable to take on the burden" of the significant estate. The evidence certainly is that Thomas wasn't the greatest financial manager so I hope that young Charles Wynne had something left of his inheritance by the time he came of age!

By the time Thomas Kemble died in May 1815 he still owned some land in and around Mickleton and he was able to leave cash bequests of about £300 each to his living children. The Tomes family records say, with some nuance of distaste, that he 'died from the effects of hard drinking.' Thomas was buried in the churchyard at Mickleton on 19 May 1815 and was survived by his wife Temperance.

Church of St Lawrence, Mickleton
© Copyright David P Howard and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

#9 Mary Mitchell - The Reverend's Wife

Writing about women in the context of family history can be somewhat challenging. Their doings rarely feature in the sorts of sources that can often give us so much detail of the business of the menfolk and beyond the bare facts of family life, such as having their children baptised, it can be difficult to flesh them out. Even when we do discover something about them it is often in the context of their fathers, husbands or male children.

I have for some time known that My 6x great grandmother, wife of the Reverend George Stokes, was called Mary. It is only in the last week that I have learnt a little more about her, with my acquisition of another volume of Ralph Bigland Esquire's Historical Monuments of Gloucestershire. (Bless him!) As I skimmed through the records for Cheltenham an entry caught my eye - "Mary Stokes, wife of the Rev Mr George Stokes". Excitingly, the inscription continued "Daughter of the above Edward Mitchell died Jan 7, 1778 aged 75 years." At last I had a family name to work with.

Mary was born in about 1702 and baptised in Cheltenham on the 28th October of that year. Her father was Edward Mitchell and her mother Martha Bridges, the third of his four (yes four!) wives. At the time of her birth, three of her six previously born siblings were still alive. Mary's mother died in March of 1703/04.

Sometime in about 1730, Mary married George Stokes. George had studied at Jesus College, Oxford University; been ordained a priest in 1728 and had been appointed as curate for Cheltenham in about 1729. Looking through the parish register images I have been able to find his name signed many times, although I have been able to discover little else about him. At about this time she also received a bequest from her half-brother John Mitchell who died unmarried and childless at the age of 36.

Between 1730 and abt 1740 Mary gave birth to nine children, six of whom survived infancy. Her daughter Jane our ancestor, baptised in 1734, is the earliest baptism record I can find for any of her children. Michael, baptised in 1739 is the latest.

I have not yet been able to find any details of the death of her husband George but I do know from the will of Thomas Kemble of Tewkesbury that he had died before 1770. For I long time I have been wondering what the Kemble connection to our family is and, in fact, devoted an earlier post to it. I now believe that Thomas Kemble of Tewkesbury's  mother Elizabeth was a much older half sister of Mary's. Elizabeth was born in about 1680 and I think she is the daughter of Edward Mitchell and his first wife Ann Carter, who is incidentally also a 2nd cousin to me! Thomas Kemble would therefore be a half-nephew of Mary's and it would be likely that he would feel some family obligation to remember her in his will.

In 1777, Mary wrote her own will. She bequeaths to her widowed daughter Jane Holland £448 as well as the bond for a debt of £140 that she had previously lent to Jane's husband David Hughes Holland. She also leaves £180 to be shared between the five children of her deceased daughter Martha Jordan. She notes that in the past she had advanced about £400 to Martha and her husband Thomas and so her bequest to the children makes this amount up to be roughly equal to her bequests to her other children.All her household goods go to her daughters Mary Stokes, a spinster, and Dorothy Wynne, wife of Robert Wynne. Lastly the rest of her estate is to be divided equally between Mary, Dorothy and her only surviving son George.

Mary died in Cheltenham on the 7th of Jan 1778 and was buried on the 16th Jan at the church of St Mary in Cheltenham. Her memorial inscription is recorded as having been on a flat stone in the south aisle and transept of the church near those of her father, her half-brothers John and Edward, three of her father's wives and her own daughter Martha Jordan.

St Mary's Minster, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

#8 William Sheaf - Cut from a Reforming Cloth

To get to this week's ancestor we have to go back, way back to about 1543 when William Sheaf was born in the town of Cranbrook in Kent. His grandfather Thomas Sheaf is the earliest recorded Sheaf in this area and William was born to Richard Sheaf and Elizabeth Andrews. William was the sixth of nine children born to this wealthy family of clothiers.

The Weald of Kent, where Cranbrook is situated, was known at this time for its excellent grey broadcloth. Many families in the area were involved in the cloth trade at all levels; either raising sheep for wool, milling the cloth or providing material or labour to use in the process. Edward III had encouraged Flemish weavers to move to England in order to break the Flemish monopoly over the wool trade. Many of them settled in the Kentish Weald and Cranbrook became a centre for the manufacture of a fine, woollen broadcloth called Cranbrook Grey. When Queen Elizabeth I visited the town in 1573, she is said to have walked along a mile long piece of Cranbrook Grey made specially for the purpose. There is certainly a possibility that this cloth may have been made by the Sheaf family or their many connections.

In 1569 William married Katherine Courthoppe, the daughter of another wealthy Cranbrook family involved in the cloth trade. There were several marriages between these two families, including one between William's sister Margaret Sheaf and John Courthoppe. Although William and Katherine both lived long lives, they had no children.

The next we hear of William Sheaf is in about 1575 in the midst of a religious squabble between the vicar of Cranbrook, Richard Fletcher and John Stroud a dissenting preacher. According to one source William Sheaf sympathized with Stroud who as well as being a radical preacher was operating an illegal printing press somewhere in the parish of Cranbrook. In order to quell the brewing parish troubles Richard Fletcher (son of Richard Fletcher the vicar of Cranbrook and also a preacher) came from Rye to caution the people against ideas of reformation, but his sermon "did not calm the troubled spirits and a fierce contention followed, whereupon William Sheaf, one of the Church wardens, met the noisy disclaimers in a true John Bull-like manner with his feet firmly set and his head erect, and uttered these decided words "We WILL have Mr. Stroud to preach to us."

As William aged, we learn from the sources that he did not enjoy the best of health. On 17th July 1598 a jury of Cranbrook worthies were all indicted for contempt because on 3 May 1598, being sworn as jurors at a hundred leet held at the market cross in Cranbrook, they elected William Sheaf of Cranbrook, yeoman, to serve as hundred constable "although they knew him to be an infirm man incapable of discharging the office." The hundred constable was a parish law enforcement officer, usually part time and usually unpaid! The motives of the jury in electing William to this office can only be suspect, given his inability to perform the duties required. William would have been about 55 years of age.

William lived for almost another 20 years after this and died in December 1616. Interestingly we learn a lot about William's lifestyle from his very detailed will and his many bequests to his brother and sisters, nieces and nephews. We know for instance that living with him at the time of his death, his wife Katherine having died in 1611, were two sons of his cousin Peter Courthoppe. He was also in a position to be lending money as he bequeathed the above named Peter Courthoppe "the £20 I lent unto our Sovereign Lord James (King James 1 of England), and the privy seal which I have thereof." This presumably allowed the money to be given to Peter Courthoppe should the King ever decide to pay back his loan. As well as other numerous bequests of money, William left silver cups, spoons and salters; his book of martyrs and two bibles; feather beds and other furniture and pots and glasses. He also held significant amounts of property around Cranbrook and neighbouring towns which he distributed among his relatives. One of these properties was 'Old Wilsley', a beautiful timbered Wealden hall house and cloth hall, probably built in the 15th century. There is some suggestion it may have been built by the Courthoppe family. Certainly it is known that in 1569 Richard Courthoppe’s widow Anne married the Revd Thomas Lawes, whose will in 1594 left ‘Wylsley in Cranbrook’ to his daughter Katherine and her clothier husband William Sheafe. William left it to his nephew Edmund Sheaf, son of his brother (our direct ancestor) Thomas.

Old Wilsley, Cranbrook, Kent.

William was buried inside the church of St Dunstan in Cranbrook and a brass plate was placed in his honour. "William Sheaf after he had lived godly and christianly the space of 73 years he departed this life the 21 of December, 1616, and his body lies here buried"

Brass plate for William Sheaf, St Dunstan, Cranbrook.

#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