Week 1: I'd like to meet #52Ancestors2023

More often to answer this question I would choose a brick wall ancestor, closer in time, but since I am still waiting for that wall to fall, I have looked further afield this time.

Who would I like to meet? This guy.

Thomas Davys, the elder, the younger, the even younger

Thomas Davys the elder of Milverton in the county of Somerset and his son Thomas Davys the younger are parties to an indenture dated “the second day of March in the fifth year of the reign of the Sovereign Lord George…” So when was that? And what is the indenture for or about?

George I ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 August 1714. If he is the Sovereign Lord George named in the indenture, then the fifth year of his reign would have been 1719.

This date ties in with the date of the marriage (about 1719) of Thomas the younger to Jane Helling/Hellings, the daughter of John Helling/Hellings of Raddington which is also referred to in the indenture. The indenture pertains to land, messuages and buildings in four parts making up the lease of the Hagleigh Tenement and to me is being divided as a marriage settlement with Thomas the elder retaining one quarter along with stipulated barley fields and use of the cider wring and mill.

At this time a Thomas Davys also owned the manor of Raddington, in a parish adjacent to Milverton where Hagleigh is. At British History Online digitised copies of “A History of the County of Somerset” and other counties are available to read free. There is a wealth of information about each parish including, geography, church history, local government as well as the history of any manors. For Raddington the history of the manor dates from 891 A.D. In their commentary it states that in 1718 James Waldegrave (later the 1^st Earl Waldegrave) sold the manor to Thomas Davys the younger. The Waldegraves had held the manor, or had interests, in it since the mid-1500s. James Waldegrave seems to have disposed of a number of land holdings around this time. 

Here is where it gets trickier, British History Online (BHO) also states that in 1719 Thomas the younger settled the manor of Raddington on his father – Thomas the elder. That has always seemed a bit out of order to me, why would a son be buying an estate and then gifting it to his father? Surely if he had the financial backing to be entering these sorts of transactions then his father would also have means? BHO cite a source but I can’t work out whether it is the indenture I have “read” and we have partially deciphered or a separate one. I am thinking there may be a separate document that has either been lost to time – or is lost to me at this point. I also think that they could be citing the Hagleigh Indenture and misattributing the intention. 

The descriptor for the indenture at The National Archives states that it IS for the settlement of three quarter parts of the Hagleigh Tenement in the parish of Milverton on Thomas Davys the younger and his wife to be Jane Hellings prior to their marriage. The length of the lease was three lives (99 years) determinable from the deaths of Thomas the elder his wife Judith (nee Burchell) and Thomas the younger. A note on the outer wrapping of the indenture claims that the leasehold was granted by Lord Lymington to the first Thomas Davys who came from Wales. Another Thomas? But when? The family seem well settled in Somerset in the mid-1600s, if not before. 

I would really like to talk to Thomas to determine just what the indenture is telling us 300 years later. The thing is, I’m not sure just WHICH Thomas I need to speak with, and I’m not sure if there might be more than one indenture I need to ask about.

Thomas the elder; husband of Judith Burchell and leaseholder of the Hagleigh Tenement since when? Thomas died in 1724, but his wife Judith lived to be 100 and died at Hagleigh Bridge in December 1770.

Thomas the younger; husband of Jane Hellings styled himself as “Lord of the Manor”. Pretty flash we all thought when we discovered him in our tree, then we discovered that when he died in 1783 he left no will and left a debt-ridden estate.

Thomas the grandson. As the eldest son Thomas inherited the manor and its debt from his father. This Thomas had studied at Balliol Oxford and was ordained in the Church of England. He had the Advowson of Raddington from 1749-1784 and two of his younger brothers also lived on the farms that made up the estate. Sadly Thomas died in March 1784 and the debt-ridden estate passed to his brothers James, George and Benjamin.

Here also BHO has conflicting information compared to the Clergy of the Church of England Database, with the order of clergy at Raddington. It would appear the brothers separated the Advowson from the rest of the estate after Thomas' death.

I have got a list of questions for the three Thomas’, and I am sure they would all have extremely interesting stories to tell. Maybe one of them would know about that "first" Thomas Davys from Wales as well.

The Family of William Norman and Sarah Vickery

On Friday 19 December 1817 at St Mary Magdalene in the tiny village of Withiel Florey in Somerset a wedding took place. Just three days before the winter solstice. It was the only marriage that year, in fact it was 15 months since a wedding had been celebrated there. Four days earlier William Norman accompanied by his future brother-in-law had been granted a license after swearing an oath to the Lord Bishop of Bath & Wells. William was from Huish Champflower a neighbouring parish to his bride. The license states both bride and groom were upwards of twenty one years…the church record says they were married by license with the consent of parents. Both William and Sarah signed their own names in the register.

Why would consent be required if they were both of age ? Perhaps it was because William and his bride Sarah Vickery were first cousins.  William’s father and Sarah’s mother were brother and sister. Theirs was a family deeply rooted, like many in this branch of my tree, in the parishes on either side of the border between Devon and Somerset on or near the Brendon Hills and Exmoor.

Sarah and William spent the early years of their marriage farming at Tripp Farm in Clatworthy.

It was there in 1818 that their first child was born just three months after the death of Sarah’s mother. In her honour they named their daughter Jane Vickery Norman. They farmed there for at least six years before moving to Treborough where they lived and farmed at Chapmans Farm. By the time they arrived in Treborough they had three children: Jane, Marianne (Mary Ann/Marian) and William. Another daughter Elisabeth had lived just 15 weeks. A further two daughters, Sarah and Caroline completed their family at Chapman’s.

At Chapmans, the census in 1851 recorded that there were 260 acres and that William was employing 3 labourers.

Marianne was the first of their children to marry. On 8 October 1846 she married Thomas Davys of Kingston in the parish of Raddington. Her siblings Jane and William were witnesses to the marriage. Two pages later in the church record, Jane and William were witnesses to another marriage. This time Sarah married James Davys, the younger brother of Marianne’s husband, on 18 January 1849. On the same page, four months later Jane married Joseph Partridge on 12 April. James Davys was a witness this time along with William. Turn the pages a couple more times – 1852 was a popular year for marriages in Treborough and there is Caroline’s marriage to Thomas Langdon Norman, a first cousin, on 24 June. This time George Sutton was the witness alongside William. Thomas Norman’s father was a brother of Caroline’s father, William.

William married Mary Dommett Raddon in Exeter, Devon in 1860, they had one daughter and lived most of their married life in Bristol where William was a publican running the Bell Inn in Hillgrove Street for a number of years before retiring to Nailsea.

After her marriage Jane and her husband farmed at Monkham Farm near Luxborough. They had just two sons before Joseph died in 1853. Jane stayed and ran the farm, her parents came to live there too until their deaths. William died 12 April 1874 and Sarah 1 January 1881. Jane died at Monkham Farm 30 July 1887.

Marianne and Thomas lived at Kingston which he had inherited from his father and grandfather. They had a large family of six daughters and three sons. Two of the sons died young, the third trained as a jeweller and had a business in Truro, Cornwall. They spent some years away from farming in the drapery business in Bristol, but returned to Kingston for the last twenty years of their lives.

James and Sarah lived first at Nethercott Farm in Lydeard St Lawrence. They were there on the 1851 census where James was farming 80 acres of land and employing 1 labourer. On census night Sarah’s younger sister Caroline was visiting and they were parents to one son. Their second son would arrive 6 months later. I had hoped that birth certificates might reveal their places of residence so that I could create a timeline, but no. For the first four children just the parish of their birth was recorded. However sons number 3 & 4 were baptised at Bathealton and their birth certificates state Milverton - which is a sizeable parish - as their birthplace, which suggest that home was no longer Nethercott. They were at Hurstone by 1857 though as the three youngest children are recorded as being born there. On census night 1861 they were at Hurstone with their family of six boys. Just one month after the census they would welcome their first daughter, however Caroline lived just 7 months.

It was Hurstone they left behind, servants and all, when they joined the growing emigration movement, packed up their family and set off for New Zealand in 1862. It has been suggested that James was left £600 by his grandmother, in contrast Thomas as the eldest son was left the lease of Kingston. This endowment, it has been speculated was possibly used to fund the move and establish James and Sarah’s new life in New Zealand.

Their plans did not initially come to fruition, but they were obviously made of tough stuff. Three more children completed the family after their arrival in New Zealand, one born in Auckland and the youngest two in the Coromandel where gold was the lure. Farming was something they knew and they pursued this endeavour in the Tuhikaramea area near Hamilton.

It was in Thames that Caroline, her husband and young daughter joined James and Sarah, arriving in Auckland in 1864. Sadly Caroline died at Shellback Creek near Tararu on the Thames Coast just 5 years later. Caroline & Thomas’ daughter Harriett married her first cousin, James and Sarah’s second son.

Other members of the wider Norman family were also emigrating from England, several cousins and an uncle went to Canada and America – some even fought in the Civil War. I’m sure there are others too – I just haven’t found them yet. 

Drapery was big business it seems and several other members of the Norman family and the Davys family were in this industry in the 1800s – another area I need to research further and record. Time permitting there are more new blog posts under development.

I have some other posts about members of the wider family, or which mention them if you are interested to read them while you wait for me to get organised.  The Great Chatsworth Rail Disaster  . YMCA and Land - there may be others.

I have made a map it still needs a bit of tweaking but for now using the link should allow you to move about the locations I have talked about.