Dorset Ancestors Rotating Header Image

Real Lives

The Family of Frances Davis

Jan 16th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Frances’ death at her home in Poole on the 17th of June 1856 was not unexpected. It marked the end of a two year battle with cancer, which had attacked her womb. She was the daughter of James and Frances (nee Besant) Davis; the sister of Rachel, Elizabeth, Thomas and Leah; the wife of James; the mother of Rachel, Emily, Henrietta and Tom and a grandmother as well.

Until the cancer came her last twenty years had been settled and comfortable but it had not always been so. Frances Davis, sometimes known as Fanny, attracted men who lacked commitment. Her husband of 22-years was not her first and he was the father of only one of her children; Henrietta, who was baptised on the 17th of November 1824 at St. Mary’s church, Sturminster Marshall; her mother had been baptised there 26-years earlier on the 4th of February 1798.

Frances got James Boyt to the altar of the village church on the 3rd of August 1834, 10-years after the birth of their daughter. The Sturminster Marshall Overseers had issued a bastardy order against James and at the time of their marriage he knew the village constable held a warrant for his arrest for not supporting his child. James Boyt may have concluded it would be cheaper to make an honest woman of Frances rather than pay 10-years arrears of child support or spend a term in jail. However, from this distance it would be unfair to label this a marriage of convenience for James Boyt was taking on rather more than a wife and a daughter.

By now Frances was the mother of three other children. Rachel baptised on the 2nd of March 1818, just eight months after the marriage of her mother to James Ford on the 3rd of August 1817. Emily, baptised on the 4th of March 1821, “the daughter of Fanny Ford” after James Ford had run away from his responsibilities. Then there was Tom Ford born in 1829; he was the subject of a bastardy order against a William Medway of Wimborne.

In 1841 James Boyt was living with his wife and step-son, at King Street, Sturminster Marshall; their daughter Henrietta was with her grandparents (Davis) in the High Street. Frances’ eldest girl, Rachel, was working as a servant at West Brooks Farm, Shapwick, which is about two miles away from her home village. Emily was at Poole where she was working as a servant for hotel-keeper William Furmage. Similarly employed at the hotel was Ann Davis; Emily and Ann were probably cousins.

A decade later the family moved to Poole and with help from the 1851 census we can drop in on the family to see how they are all getting on. James and Frances have moved to West Quay, Poole and Tom Ford is still with them. James and Tom are both working as farm labourers.  Their daughter, Henrietta, is in Poole and described as a Cook’s Shopkeeper. She is unmarried and has a one-year-old daughter. On the day of the census she had the company of two visitors Eliza Smith (18) and Julia Peiler (16), both shirt makers.

Emily married John Henry Chitty in the early part of 1843 in the Wimborne district and that includes Sturminster Marshall, which suggests her mother and step-father moved to Poole after that event. John Chitty came from Shaftesbury; in 1881 the couple had a nine-acre farm at South Stoneham, Hampshire.

Rachel was a green grocer at Thames Street, Poole. She had a two-year-old daughter, Georgina, born at Hamworthy. In the census she is listed as Rachel Ford and lets the enumerator believe she is a widow but there is no evidence to say she had been married.

On the 7th of February 1860, Rachel, then 42, married Samuel Betts, a master mariner of High Street, Poole; the marriage was witnessed by her sister Emily Chitty. In 1861 Rachel and Samuel Betts have Rachel’s twelve-year-old daughter Georgina with them and they are at Thames Street, carrying on business as grocers. Samuel came from Maldon in Essex and was six-years younger than his wife who was buried at Poole on the 1st of June 1896 and a year, almost to the day, later Samuel Betts was buried there on the 6th of June 1897. We loose track of Henrietta and her daughter.

In the summer of 1856 Tom marries Sarah Medway in the Poole district and by 1861 they have settled at Lytchett Minster. Interestingly, the bastardy order of which Tom was the subject cited William Medway as the father; Sarah’s father was a William Medway. The 1861 census has the couple at Sydney Place, Lytchett Minster, with two children, William and Emily, but from the 1871 census, when the couple are living at Poole Road, Lytchett Minster, we can see that both children died. By 1881 Tom and Sarah, then living at Yarrels Common, have six children: Sarah (19); William (16);
Mary (13); Bessie (11), and Harry (6). Also with them is Sarah’s mother, Eliza Medway (76); she receives a pension. Eliza Medway was buried on the 28th of January 1882 at Lytchett Minster.

Tom Ford died and was buried at Lytchett Minster on the 19th of August 1889; his widow continued to live with two of her sons, William and Harry, at Lytchett Minster. Living on her own means in 1901 at The Common, Lytchett Minster, her eldest and unmarried son William, then 37, is with her.

By 1891 Emily and her husband John Chitty had moved back to Dorset and in 1901 are living at 23 Church Street, Poole with Ann Dunford, a middle-aged spinster.

James and Frances stayed together for 22-years and for much of this time James’ step-son, Tom was living and working with him. The other children kept in touch. After Frances’ death, ten years passed before James married his second wife, 49-year-old widow Elizabeth Galton and by then James had taken to the sea for employment. James died at Poole in the first quarter of 1873 when his age was given as 68 but he would have been 71-years-of-age.

We shall never know how much James was influenced to marry Frances by the constable waving an arrest warrant but there is little doubt their marriage stood the test of time and all of Frances’ children prospered.

Mary Channing – A Path to the Gallows

Jan 10th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

On January 15th 1705 an extraordinary marriage was solemnised in a Dorchester church. Extraordinary, because neither party to the union, especially the bride, was committed to the other out of mutual affection. Furthermore, the groom could scarcely have imagined that the ceremony would launch them both on a fateful journey that would end in capital crime and capital punishment. Neither could he have imagined that before spring turned to summer that year he would be dead.

The groom was Thomas Channing, a goodly tradesman of a Maiden Newton family, who had established his own successful grocery business in Dorchester; his bride was a reluctant, rebellious teenager called Mary Brooks. And they were wedded not out of love but purely out of convenience: in deference to the wish of the bride’s parents to see their daughter suitably placed with a respected, financially secure citizen.

The chain of events, which culminated in this peculiar tryst of fate, began some 18 years before with the birth of Mary Brooks in May 1687. Her father Richard and mother Elizabeth were keen to give their daughter the kind of education common to children of their social standing. Mary excelled in reading and writing, but her parents neglected to lend equal weight to the girl’s moral and religious instruction.

Whether or not this was a contributory factor, the girl manifested a latent sluttish disposition, which may have been aggravated by emotional depravation caused by her mother’s frequent absences. It was thought that the pastoral simplicity and rude country acumen of 18th century Dorset was no environment in which to equip a country girl for the niceties of high society, and so Mary was packed off to Exeter, London and elsewhere to gain experience of English higher society.

But this extraordinary degree of liberty was to exert further negative consequences on Mary Brook’s already weak character and tainted persona. Her sluttish manner gave way to vanity, promiscuity and riotous living. Every two weeks she would attend the local dance school, staying on for a night of frivolity and mirth with other young friends. She was ever at the homes of her neighbours, luring them into orgies of gluttony and intemperance while frittering the night away in gay abandon.

She was later to disown these “friends” when she began a loose affair with a local man. The pair would frequent public houses, where the wayward teenager would entertain her date with wine and shower him with gifts such as ruffles and cravats. Mary would willingly cover the expenses for these excesses, but her generosity cut deeply into her solvency. To financially support her highly social lifestyle Mary cajoled, or even conspired to rob, her parents of substantial sums, aided by some of her closest friends.

Naturally her cavorting and Jezebellian ways became the talk of Dorchester’s gossips, but Mary continued to drift from one extreme of pleasure-seeking to another. One citizen, who did not even know the Brooks family, even sent Mary’s parents a letter of complaint about their daughter’s wayward conduct. These correspondences would increase as Mary’s excesses increased. Clearly Dorchester’s busybodies had blown any hope the girl may have entertained of keeping her activities under wraps from her parents. Although Richard Brooks was shamed by his daughter’s behaviour and expressed his displeasure, Mary took scant notice.

Once the revelations of the extent of Mary’s conduct had come home to her parents they concluded that the best remedy lay in finding Mary an eligible husband – probably in the hope that she would knuckle down to the sober responsibilities of family life. To make the proposition more attractive they used the prospect of a considerable fortune as a carrot to dangle before several Dorchester bachelors. But of these only one would rise to the bait: Thomas Channing.

Although the grocer was an acceptable suitor in the eyes of the Brooks, their daughter’s affections lay elsewhere. Channing himself turned his attentions to another prospective bride for a time, but the iron will of Mrs Brooks proved to strong to countermand. As for Mary, her rejection of Thomas brought about confinement to her room for several days in punishment. Eventually, for the sake of her freedom, she grudgingly agreed to marry Channing.

After an initial postponement of 24 hours the unhappy union of Thomas Channing and Mary Brooks was consummated. Yet after a while Mary, who before and after was plotting how to rid herself of parental control, came to look on her marriage as the way to achieve this. Shortly before she had also been roused to anger when her current fancy had refused to marry her.

Amazingly the wedding party lasted for two days with the full knowledge of the Brooks, but apparently the total ignorance of the Channings. Only weeks earlier their son had told them he had relinquished all thought of marrying Mary, but after the wedding he changed his mind. By now though, a fateful dye had been cast. When the marriage was barely three months old Mary began an affair with yet another man, a visitor to Dorchester recorded only as Mr Naile, upon which she lavished her accustomed costly entertainment. She even persuaded Thomas to let Mr Naile take his place in their bed. That he did so most likely occasioned the illegitimate conception that added the drop of gall to Mary’s cup of tragedy.

By now, poor Thomas had become an inconvenient hindrance to his wife’s nuptial preferences. On April 17th she administered to her husband a dose of mercury purchased from the maid of the apothecary the previous day. After eating the dish of rice milk Thomas was violently ill and began vomiting. The following day, prompted possibly by the suspicion that he was being poisoned, he made out a last will and testament entirely disinheriting his wife. Following another three days of agony and unremitting pain the grocer died on April 21st. Following the post-mortem sixty to eighty people attended Channing’s funeral at St. Mary’s back in Maiden Newton.

Even before Channing died however, Mary had decamped. She went into hiding for 30 hours, first to a safe house in Dorchester, then into a wood four miles away. From there, with the aid of a friend’s employee, she made it to the home of a relation of her sister-in-law who lived in Charlton Worthorn in Somerset. Once he had learnt of Mary’s purchase of the mercury, Thomas’s father then organised a wide search. On Sunday Mary’s accomplice, following the offer of a reward and out of fear of being charged as an accessory, brought her back. That night Mary learnt of her husband’s death, but showed no emotion or concern.

In the morning she was brought before the justices at Dorchester for questioning. During the trial Mary had the opportunity to defend herself, but against the weight of two barristers and many prosecution witnesses the jury took only half-an-hour to find her guilty. On pronouncement of the death sentence Mary pleaded “her belly” (postponement on account of her pregnancy.) Until her baby had been born the sentence could not be carried out.

This pregnancy, of course, was a critical, if unintended artefact in the Channing case, providing an 8-month window of opportunity for appeals against the sentence to be lodged. Richard Brooks lost no time in petitioning Queen Anne and Mary’s eldest brother presented a petition signed by several Dorchester citizens to the judge at Wells. Mary’s mother sought the help of a lady, but all these efforts were to no avail. Multifarious deaf ears could not save a sinful teenager from the terror and humiliation of a public hanging.

While in prison much pressure was put on Mary to confess and repent, but she would maintain her innocence to the end. At first the Brooks were able to pay for respectable accommodation for their fecund daughter, but later seemed to lose concern for her welfare. Their support payments lapsed, so that Mary had to be relocated to a much more spartan cell with a bed made from only canvas tilting of an old wagon. It was in here on December 19th that Mary delivered a son that was immediately baptised at her request. The mother refused to have the baby withdrawn from her care.

But the opportunity for maternal care almost never arose. Soon after the birth Mary was smitten with fever and nursing the baby greatly weakened her. In these last tragic days Elizabeth Brooks was at Mary’s side constantly. On March 8th 1706 Mary was again summoned to the bar and asked if she could show just reason why the death sentence should not be passed. She could not, and so was told to prepare for death. Various clergy began a campaign to persuade Mary to repent of her sins, but without success. Yet Mary asked to be baptised (the Brooks were Baptists, who did not believe in infant baptism.) But how could the chaplain baptise one who wouldn’t repent? After a special dispensation from the Bishop of Bristol however, Mary was baptised on the 17th of March.

Only four days later on March 21st 1706 Mary Channing’s time had come. From the prison she was brought to her place of execution at Maumbury Rings on the outskirts of Dorchester, where a crowd of over three thousand had gathered for the macabre ordeal. Burning at the stake was the customary execution for women until the end of the 18th century. At 5 o’clock in the afternoon Mary was bound by the neck to a post while faggots piled up around her were lit. But the 19 year-old was already dead from strangulation by the noose. Then, with no sense of shock or revulsion, the multitude dispersed as Mary Channing’s mortal existence was consumed by fire.

As to the fate of her son, this seems to have been lost to history. Did he die in infancy? Was he perhaps brought up in a workhouse or even adopted by his grandparents or another family? Did he stay in Britain or emigrate to seek his fortune overseas? We may never know.

From Shaftesbury To a Place In Australia’s History

Jan 3rd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

In 1834 Elijah Upjohn was 11 years old, 4’10” in height, with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and of a fair complexion. Born on New Year’s day 1823 at Shaftesbury Holy Trinity he quickly learned from his father Henry a disregard for other people’s property.

Elijah had been caught stealing a pair of trousers and on 8th April 1834 he found himself before the Mayor, Mr R. Buckland and Mr. J.B. Chitty, Justices of the Peace for Shaftesbury, who sentenced him to three months imprisonment during which time he was to be whipped twice. His Dorchester Gaol record describes his conduct as disorderly. He was released on 7th July 1834.

Three years later he was again in trouble with the law and was sentenced to six weeks with hard labour for stealing rabbits. As was the case during his previous imprisonment his conduct while serving his punishment was said to be disorderly.

A year after that sees him back again in front of the Justices and this time the enforcers of law and order thought they had seen quite enough of this boy’s anti-social behaviour. He was now 16 years of age and this time he had been caught stealing shoes. In what may be seen as an early interpretation of the “three strikes and you’re out” rules his sentence was that he be transported beyond the seas for seven years.

In March 1839 the ship ‘Marquis of Hastings’ took on 100 prisoners at Woolwich and then sailed to Portsmouth to receive 140 more, amongst them Elijah Upjohn; he was never to return to England. The convict ship sailed from Portsmouth on the 17th March 1839 and reports say seven of the prisoners died during the voyage.

On arrival in Tasmania Elijah was transferred to Launceston where we believe he served out the rest of his 7-year sentence, he would have been freed in 1846. The next sighting we have of Elijah in Australia is in Geelong, near Melbourne. Why or how he ended up in Geelong we can only speculate but his brother Robert was there around this time and we also know his father had been transported to Australia and may also have been in that town. We know Elijah married there and had children but only two of his boys survived to manhood.

It was not long before he returned to his old ways; from 1864 to 1880 he was in and out of jail, each time for longer periods. He was put away for larceny in 1880 when the judge described him as a “rogue and vagabond.” His life to this point was very similar to that of many convicts transported overseas but a spur of the moment decision secured for Elijah Upjohn a place in Australia’s history books.

In Melbourne gaol a man was to be hanged. The executioner wasn’t available and the warden of the jail lined up the prisoners and asked for a volunteer to execute the man. Elijah Upjohn stepped forward for the job, probably assuming that with it would be some privileges; he could have had no idea how famous this decision was to make him.

Earlier in the morning of the 11th November 1880 he was just another prisoner, now he was preparing a man for his death and playing a part in the ceremony that these occasions become. An elderly, grey headed but fit-looking man, he did not look out of place in his new role as he proceeded along with the warden, the governor, priests attending and some local dignitaries to the cell of the man to be hanged. After being released Elijah Upjohn continued in his new career as a public hangman.

An expert contributor to an Australian radio program broadcast in July 2000 said “Elijah Upjohn would have to be probably the country’s most famous hangman” and goes on to suggest that he got this first hanging right but “the rest were pretty appalling. He was often drunk and he lost his nerve because people were harassing him and giving him such a bad time.” At one time things got so bad for him he was allowed to live in Pentridge Jail at Melbourne for his own safety. Apparently he had been arrested for drunkenness, indecent exposure, and carting nightsoil.

At the time of his death there was no mention of his wife or sons. He was found at Bourke by a constable, was sick and survived only two days. His death certificate dated 28th September 1885 reads: “Upjohn. Public Hangman. About 70 years of age.” Actually he would have been 62 years of age.

Elijah Upjohn had a tragic life. Yet nearly two hundred years after his birth in Shaftesbury, Dorset, newspaper and magazine articles, films and television documentaries, frequently recall his name.

The man he hanged on 11th November 1880 was Ned Kelly.

Tyneham – The Village that Peacetime Betrayed

Dec 31st, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

“Please treat the church and houses with care. We have given up our houses where many of us have lived for generations to help win the war to keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.”

These heart-felt words, pinned to the door of a church at a time of great desperation during the dark days of World War II could hardly have been more ignominiously dishonoured through the insensitivity of officialdom. The church was that of Tyneham near Worbarrow Bay in east Dorset and the tragedy behind those words written in good faith was for them never to be respected by faceless ministers, never to be honoured when the victory was won. Seldom has the expectation of happier days been more brutally betrayed by the eventual reality, by what the passage of time would tell.

The catastrophe, which brought the Tyneham villagers’ world crashing down, and left their community to rot amidst bats and owls, struck on December 19th 1943 with an official notice from Southern Command. With the most appalling sense of timing imaginable the entire population was to be evacuated, virtually with immediate effect. A close-knit community which had peopled and shaped a village for generations was to be ousted by the military without even the decency of being permitted to spend one last Christmas in their own homes.

Inevitably the question would arise: could not the military have waited but one more week? The military chose not to. Tyneham – and a huge area of pristine Purbeck downland, were commandeered for use as a tank gunnery school. The Army, it seemed, needed all those undefiled acres as ranges for tank training – with live shells.

Notwithstanding the cold, wet December of 1943, the young, the old, the halt and sick were callously pitched from their ancestral dwellings, many to be re-located by the compassionate Town Council of Wareham. Others had relatives to go to, or took “temporary” accommodation. Pupil, postman, parson, gardener, teacher, builder, baker – all were forced out with their chattels under the premise of a noble sacrifice for the duration of an emergency. Those offered subsidised council housing in Wareham could regain some semblance of a normal life, and the town’s Tyneham Close bears witness to where the displaced were re-housed. For the young, some re-adjustment to the new circumstances was possible; though gnawing pangs of homesickness would never fore-sake them.

The old of course were not so fortunate. Jack Miller, an ageing fisherman who owned a cottage overlooking Worbarrow Bay, was offered a condemned cottage at Langton Matravers for himself and his wife, but was dead from bronchitis not long after the end of the war. Langton’s windy and foggy atmosphere gave Mrs Miller arthritis, despite the Women’s Voluntary Service labouring on the Miller’s behalf to make their home from home habitable.

Boatbuilder Will Strickland was another fellow villager who also did not long survive his displacement. People like Strickland, who made their living from the sea felt they had nothing more to live for once they became estranged from it. The once sturdy health of these old salts was broken. They ailed, and like a dog, which loses a beloved master they pined, suffering that great death of the spirit so often the precursor to the death of the body.

On VE Day (only 17 months after the evacuation) none of the evacuees in Wareham and elsewhere dared to raise their hopes too highly that the Purbeck ranges would now contract or be closed. By 1946 nothing had changed, prompting the Tyneham villagers and their supporters to begin a long campaign for the return of their valley to civilian occupation. Following the lapse of wartime censorship for security reasons the villagers could expect press publicity about their plight to begin to circulate nationwide. ‘The New Statesman’ and ‘The Star’ were notably in the vanguard in bringing the Tyneham case to national attention.

In March 1948 a two-day public enquiry was convened after news broke that the derelict homes in Tyneham were to be compulsorily purchased. Acting on behalf of the Tyneham people J. Scott Henderson KC made a watertight case for the return of the ranges to peaceful uses. The clay-pit workers and miners of the area, natural history societies, the YHA and NFU, and several other organisations and churchmen with vested interests also pressed for the War Department’s pledge of withdrawal to be honoured.

What emerged from this enquiry was that the Government did acknowledge that the withdrawal pledge had been made; yet the area was still required by the Army. The reason, as Brigadier Duncan for the War Department explained, was that by 1942 American tanks required a range of over 2,400 yards, so that there could be no contraction of the target area. It was this simple most important fact that underpinned why such an extensive area was needed; why a century’s old community found itself in the line of fire.

For the displaced villagers, who became more expectant that re-occupation could be nigh, the compulsory purchase was a devastating blow. At a hastily convened meeting in Wareham the then Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lewis Silkin, broke the bad news. The only comfort he could offer was that: “every effort would be made to make sure that when firing does not take place the public should have access to the road to Worbarrow Bay.” Those who contested the CPO were informed their properties would be requisitioned anyway.

At the time of this enquiry the Tyneham, Lulworth and Holme Ranges – together with Bovington – occupied about 11,500 acres! Tyneham House, for generations the village’s cosy manor, was boarded up by a mason. Then an uneasy peace descended upon the ranges. The exiles, as best they might, never gave up hope of one day being able to return to re-purchase their properties and repair the effects of target damage and the elements.

Then in 1960 the War Department gave the screw another turn. Territorial demands were extended still further, with the closure of more roads and rights-of-way to the public within the range area. Angry letters flew to the local MP, the Transport Minister and the War Department. In January 1961 an extension to the closure to certain roads on the East Holme and Lulworth Ranges prompted further enquiries in Dorchester.

However, hopes of liberation from the Purbeck Ranges briefly arose in 1963. Then Col. Forbes Hendry, the Aberdeen MP, suggested in the Commons that the Army exercises in the south could be re-located to Scotland, where there were better facilities and more extensive, suitable terrain for tanks than the environmentally sensitive Dorset coast. Hendry’s very valid point fell on deaf ears, mainly from the peculiar excuse that the tanks would get stuck in the mud. As it was pointed out that in Purbeck the ground was persistently muddy even in dry weather, the objection was very strange indeed. Although the Army did open Tyneham car park on Bank Holidays, it seemed always on the lookout for any excuse to exclude the public indefinitely.

The first and only human deaths to occur on the ranges probably provided the best excuse the Army could have wished for. One March morning in 1967 two 14-year-old boys from Stoborough near Wareham were killed by tank fire when they strayed onto the East Holme Range. This led to a flurry of new warning notices referring to the tragedy in particular and the need for the public to heed regulations in general. But the deaths had a very positive deterrent effect on mothers, who may otherwise have had no qualms about taking their sons down to Worbarrow Bay when the Tyneham road was open.

In 1965 Monica Hutchings, who had written the script for a documentary film featuring Tyneham in 1948, moved into the area. Soon afterwards a local resident approached her concerned about the welfare of the ponies who grazed the Tyneham valley. A farmer’s wife, Mrs Hutchings took up the plight of the ranges stock and wildlife with the local RSPCA and NFU. She took photographs of the animals, intended for use as evidence at enquiries but also evidence of damage to Tyneham and its adjacent hamlets.

Then came the ministerial announcement that Tyneham House was to be demolished. Fighting her way through the undergrowth Mrs Hutchings took a picture of the house to prove that it was in no ruinous condition. Neither was the valley-head position of the 520-year-old manor in any direct line of fire. Even Tyneham House’s hereditary owner, Brigadier Mark Bond, was not consulted about the demolition plan. Remarkably, his later response was one of philosophical resignation, saying that he could neither prevent nor condone the house being bulldozed into oblivion.

A rumour began circulating in 1967 that the Army was going to pull out of Tyneham after all, and briefly there was more freedom of access while demolition lorries were coming and going. In reality, instead of a withdrawal the “overshot area” of the valley was being promoted – to a third full-scale range. New emplacements, lookouts, firing points, fences and targets were added, and new red warning flags fluttered above the cliffs.

On May 18th 1968 in an upper room of the Moule Institute at Fordington a steering meeting took place to set up what would become the Tyneham Action Group (TAG.) The intensification of targeting in the valley had been the last straw in two decades of an ever-tightening grip by the Army on East Dorset’s beautiful priceless coast. The twenty-or-so people attending had been invited by Rodney Legg, the first editor of ‘Dorset County Magazine,’ to challenge the military to “surrender Purbeck” as he put it in an editorial for the magazine.

The formation of the group then triggered a wave of press, TV and radio coverage. On the August Bank Holiday of 1968 TAG set up an information table at Tyneham car park. It was estimated that on the day almost 6,000 membership forms were issued. Also that summer the Wareham-Kimmeridge road was closed when a new firing point was installed on Creech Hill.

Using slides, Monica Hutchings gave an illustrated talk at a special meeting held in Wareham Parish Hall in November. The audience were shown the extent of damage to Worbarrow Tout, Gad Cliff (with its fulmar nests,) a pony injured by missile-wire, and houses in Tyneham itself.

On the Easter Bank Holiday of 1969, TAG held another post at the car park, this time distributing leaflets asking members and supporters to lobby their MP’s in advance of a deputation the group would be sending to the MOD the following month. On the 22nd of May the chairman and committee members presented their case to the ministry. Members spoke in turn on various aspects and photographic evidence was produced, together with a comprehensive dossier.

While TAG had every hope of success in their mission, by the late 1960’s social change was the effect, which would have an important bearing on their objective. The rise of easier travel, tourism and leisure meant that access to the coast became more sought after than ever. But the Army’s case for continuing occupation was further undermined by advances in laser technology. A new device for the Chieftain tank was developed called Direct Fire Weapons Effect Simulator, which removed the need for the firing of live shells and the sapping of unexploded ordnance afterwards.

Was the seemingly permanent occupation down to ministerial indifference pure and simple? Did the powers that be have an ulterior motive, that in leaving the Army in occupation immunity from the populating and despoliation of the coast from commercial and holiday development would be guaranteed? Or were the post-war prospects for the release of the land the first and only casualties of the Cold War on English soil?

Whatever the reason the Tyneham villagers never returned, or could return. Ultimately, in 1975 safe access to Tyneham was restored. On the 5th September that year Col. Sir Joseph Weld cut a tape to mark an official re-opening of the Lulworth Range. This marked the effective end of the long campaign to free Tyneham, and the Army would thereafter make a point of being seen to be environmentally aware. But ironically, it would be believed in some quarters that the presence of the Army had been more beneficial for the environment than originally thought.

What befell this scene of dereliction in Purbeck, and the feelings of those never able to take up the thread of their halcyon existence again, could best be summed up by the Worbarrow Bay fisherman who, returning as a “lucky” veteran from the Great War quipped: “I fought for this bit o’land, and when I come ‘ome they try to starve me out of it!”

Footnote: Please go to Editor’s Updates in the forum area for more on this story.

Samuel Crane – Farmer Diarist of Bloxworth

Dec 30th, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Dorset farmers with a firm footing in the 18th century were not usually the kind of people known for their erudition. After all, for anyone running a farm this was an age of illiteracy and poverty; any schooling, where it existed at all, would have been very elementary. However, there were a few notable exceptions to this rule. One such person was Samuel Crane.

Crane was born near Bere Regis in 1746, one of eight children and the elder son of John and Elizabeth Crane. Of the younger son George, little is known but it is known that Sam was able to benefit from a well-rounded education, since it was noted that his handwriting was distinctly legible and precise. Probably from his father, he gained knowledge and instruction in practical husbandry and farm management. These attainments would serve him well in the years to come.

While Samuel was still a young man a wealthy landowner called Jocelyn Pickard came into the possession of Bloxworth House in the parish of Bloxworth near Bere. The house was the focus of an extensive estate of farmland which, with the exception of the northern part, was owned by the Lytchett Matravers branch of the manorial Trenchard family. Pickard had secured his tenure of the estate by marrying George and Mary Trenchard’s daughter Henrietta in 1751. At the time the best land on the estate lay to the north, where the bedrock was chalk, while to the south was a narrow belt of clay mostly suitable for pasture with some crops. Some yeoman farmers had smallholdings here.

Needing a farm/estate manager Pickard appointed Crane to the position soon after taking up residence at Bloxworth. But Samuel wasn’t just concerned with carrying out his duties. Possibly upon the instructions of his superior he began to keep what would eventually become at least two farm diaries: the first, covering the period from June 14th 1770 to August 10th 1771; the second, from February 1st 1781 to November 30th 1783. These records have proved to be of great value as sources of information about managing of the agricultural estate of an 18th century country house.

It is thought, therefore, that Crane probably arrived at Bloxworth House before beginning the first diary. Pickard was clearly eager to increase the estates’s value by ensuring that the farm was a success. However, entries in the 1781 to 1783 diary show obvious signs of some alterations being made in the style and content, suggesting Pickard was wielding some influence upon the content of what Crane wrote.

In 1771, the year the first diary was completed, Sam Crane married Jane Perrott at Hermitage, some 12 miles north of Dorchester. A faded, barely legible entry of a baptism on October 25th 1772 in on of the parish registers suggests that by this date the couple had a son, though no further or later records relating to him have ever been found. No less obscure has been the fate of Jane herself, who early disappears from the records, leaving behind her abiding mystery unresolved to this day.

While the Crane diaries furnish a wealth of detail about the day-to-day nuts and bolts of his managerial labours at Bloxworth, they are much less informative about personal details. For example, Sam did not record where he lodged at the time, though it is believed he lived in a large farmhouse in the part of the parish known as Newport. Otherwise, in these pages it is possible for the reader to compare changes in the organisation of the farm over a ten-year period – a time covering a recession when the estate workers experienced great hardship.

Samuel recorded the wages paid to the workers, though never his own. The wages include details of labour costs, staff numbers, and occupations, and it was a measure of Crane’s skill that the wage bill was brought down by almost 5% despite an increase in the size of the farm and in the amount of time worked. By March 1771, he wrote, he had increased the dairy heard, and during the writing of the first diary, the number of sheep increased to 1,100. Wheat and barley were sold for profit and cereals were also grown to supply the manor and to sell off to the farm workers. Details of wheat deliveries to the mill are also noted. In June 1771, Crane borrowed horses from two other yeoman farmers.

Also to emerge from the diaries is the fact that children were regularly employed as part of the workforce, though girls were not made to work until they were twelve. By 1782 ten men and four boys were employed on the Bloxworth farm. In that year too, five fields of hay were mown and by the 1780’s Crane had increased the size of the turnip crop. For a time, Sam had dealings with a man in Wolverton he called “my brother” selling turnip seeds and barley. Some buck wheat was bought in August 1782, but what it was used for is not recorded.

Domestic arrangements at the manor were largely in the hands of Henrietta Pickard, so that Sam had little involvement in the running of the house. His remit was limited to securing farm produce, furze, turf, hay, corn and coal. Routinely, Crane undertook journeys on horseback to make deliveries of corn.

Then soon after 1783 everything changed for Sam Crane. He left Bloxworth, his last diary entry being for November 30th that year. On August 28th, 1788 at Cerne Abbas, he married Elizabeth Davis and settled in that parish. The couple had four sons of which two, Samuel (born 1790) and James (born 1792) survived to adulthood. The eldest and youngest sons died in infancy.

In 1787 an uncle of Sam Crane – also named Samuel – had died at Alton Pancras in the Piddle valley, leaving his nephew a legacy of land called Mill Grounds at Buckland Newton and a residue of £1,700. Uncle Sam Crane, although twice married, had no surviving children so his nephew became the principal beneficiary.

Although his uncle’s will meant that Samuel was comfortably off, it is not certain whether he had any other sources of income. There is also no record of his salary as a farm manager at Bloxworth, and whether this included accommodation and food. Since by now his diary keeping had ceased, there are no details of how Sam earned a living after his move to Cerne.

Samuel Crane died in 1815, aged 69. Whatever income Elizabeth was able to provide, the time in which she could have applied it was very brief, as she followed her husband to the grave only three months later, leaving an estate worth £35,000. Today Samuel and Elizabeth lie together in Cerne Churchyard.

The following year Sam Jr and James married, at Compton Valence, women who may have been sisters. Samuel married Jane Davis and made his marital home at Godmanston; the couple’s only child died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. James married Charlotte Davis that June.

Elizabeth Martha Clarke – Her Confession

Dec 25th, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

It was the 9th of August 1856: the weather was sombre enveloping Dorchester in drizzle, perhaps anticipating, but unable to stop “several thousand” people of the town and thereabouts from congregating to witness the awful event to take place there that morning.

Christened Elizabeth Martha Clark the daughter of John and Elizabeth Clark at a simple ceremony in St.James’ church Allington on the 22nd of July 1802 at the end of which the rector John Blessed entered her name in the church registers to confirm her entry in to the Church. Who could possibly have foreseen the ordeal that her life was to be and the horrors she was to face at the end of it?

Her father John Clark was an agricultural labourer surviving on a meagre income. Elizabeth, would have quickly learnt to help her parents with the family chores. Childhood would have been short.

Martha’s confession made in Dorchester Prison 7 August 1856 before The Governor and the Prison Chaplain the Rev, Dacre Clemetson.

 “My husband, John Anthony Brown, came home on Sunday morning, the 6th of July at two o’clock, in liquor, and was sick. He had no hat on. I asked him what he had done with his hat. He abused me, and said “What is that to you? Damn you!” He then asked for some cold tea. I said I had none, but would make him some warm. His answer was “Drink it yourself and be damned.” I then said, “What makes you so cross? Have you been to Mary Davis’s?”

He then kicked out the bottom of the chair on which I had been sitting, and we continued quarrelling until 3 o’clock, when he struck me a severe blow on the side of the head, which confused me so much I was obliged to sit down.

He then said (supper being on the table at the time) “Eat it yourself and be damned,” and reached down from the mantelpiece a heavy hand whip, with a plaited head and struck me across the shoulders with it 3 times, and every time I screamed out I said “if you strike me again, I will cry murder” He replied “if you do I will knock your brains through the window,” and said hoped he should find me dead in the morning, and then kicked me on the left side, which caused me much pain.

He immediately stooped down to unbuckle his boots, and being much enraged, and in an ungovernable passion at being so abused and struck, I seized a hatchet that was lying close to where I sat, and which I had been making use of to break coal for keeping up the fire to keep his supper warm, and struck him several violent blows on the head – I could not say how many – and he fell at the first blow on his side, with his face to the fireplace and he never spoke or moved afterwards.

As soon as I had done it I would have given the world not to have done it. I had never struck him before after all his ill treatment, but when he hit me so hard at this time I was almost out of my senses, and hardly knew what I was doing!”

Martha’s journey from this world to the next took four to five minutes and this can be put down to the cruelty of her executioner: William Calcraft, the hangman who favoured the short drop technique and presided over her departure from this world. Calcraft’s successor later commented “Calcraft killed, I execute….” Today society would see Martha as a victim not a killer. We must hope a more sympathetic justice awaited her.

Elizabeth Martha Clarke: “a most kind and inoffensive woman..”

Dec 24th, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Saturday the 9th of August 1856 saw Dorchester enveloped in penetrating drizzle. This miserable weather did nothing to dissuade the people of the town from being on the streets early, joining many from towns and villages the length and breadth of the county who where already assembling to witness the awful event to take place early that morning. The local newspaper estimated four thousand were out in the town.

Elizabeth Martha Clarke was in Dorchester. She had snatched only two hours sleep that night and declined breakfast deciding instead to make do with a cup of tea, for in a little over an hour she too had to keep an appointment she could not break. Those with her had noticed a quiet determination to see the business through with dignity. However, it is likely her mind was elsewhere probably recalling other times and wondering at the events that had brought her to Dorchester.

She had spent her childhood and most of her early adult years in an area known as Marshwood Vale, a quiet rural part of West Dorset where her father worked as a farm labourer and occasional dairyman and where even today it is narrow winding lanes that pass for roads. Her mother and father John and Martha Clark were married at Burstock on the 18th of February 1800; her mother’s maiden name was Hussey. She was one of eleven children and soon became known simply as Martha.

The 1830’s were the best years of her life. Probably through her father’s work she met Barnard Bearns a widower and a farmer of twice her years; they married on the 27th of December 1831. He came from the village of Askerswell and farmed land in the Powerstock area where he rented a prominent house ‘Meadways’ by the Maggerton River. Now no longer a farm labourer’s daughter, she was a farmer’s wife and content with her lot.

Barnard was for a while an Overseer to the Poor and well respected in the community.  They were happy with each other despite the difference in their ages. Their two sons both died in 1835, William was born in 1832 and Thomas in 1834. On the 4th of May 1840 the couple witnessed the marriage of Martha’s sister Ann to John Record at Whitechurch Canonicorum.

These were difficult times for anyone earning their living from the land. Records show that late in the decade Barnard had financial difficulties. He ceased to be an Overseer to the poor and had to surrender his holdings at Powerstock.

Her husband died leaving her the sum of £50. She found work as the housekeeper to two farming brothers John and Robert Symes who held Blackmanston Farm in the Purbeck hills, quite a distance from the Marshwood Vale. It is likely she knew them previously. Both brothers were born near Powerstock; John in1805 and Robert in 1811 and the brothers habitually returned to the Marshwood Vale to hire their labour. Martha was housekeeper to the Symes brothers for 14 years and John Symes described her as “a most kind and inoffensive woman.”

Also from the Marshwood Vale area was Robert Brown who was dairyman on the Symes’ farm and his son John was employed there as a shepherd. A relationship grew between Martha and John Brown. Despite the fact that she was twice his age the couple married at Wareham on the 24th of January 1852. Soon after their marriage they returned to the Marshwood Vale and the remote hamlet of Birdsmoorgate.

They lived in a house with a small shop from which Martha sold sweets and groceries. Her young husband acquired a horse and cart and set up in business as a Carter. John’s cousin lived in the hamlet along with just a dozen or so other souls including Mary Davis a young woman well known to Martha, who had the other shop in the village. But it wasn’t trade that connected the two women as rather a matter of the heart.

Perhaps it was inevitable in a such a small community that an attraction would blossom between John a young man married to a women twice his age, and Mary a young woman married to a man almost old enough to be her grandfather.

There is no doubt Martha was jealous of the attraction Mary held for her husband. John would come home late, often drunk, offering vague excuses about where he had been. Martha knew full well that he had been with Mary; she had spied on them often enough to be in no doubt.

John arrived home at 2 o’clock in the morning of  Sunday July 6th – he was drunk and vomiting. The couple argued about his supper and where he had been to such a late hour. As was often the case John was being physically and verbally abusive towards his wife when something within her snapped. She retaliated landing several blows to his head.  A moment later and John Brown lay lifeless on the floor. 

Thirty-four days had passed since Martha killed John Brown. In that short space of time there had been an inquest, Martha had been arrested, charged, tried and sentenced. The infamous Jeffreys who held court some two hundred years earlier was not alone in dispensing quick and rough justice at Dorchester.

Early on the morning of the 9th of August 1856 Mary Davis set off from Birdsmoorgate to see Martha Brown but the people of the village of Broadwindsor recognised her and insisted she turned back. There was little sympathy for Mary Davis because people knew that Brown would have been alive that day had she not encouraged his attentions.

Back in Dorchester that same morning Martha had decided to wear a black figure-hugging gown, which showed off her shapely figure. Mr Clementson and the Rev. Henry Moule were with her and gently reminded her it was time to leave: she decided, despite the drizzle, to walk rather than ride in the van.

She climbed the first flight of steps and at the top was met by William Calcraft – the public executioner. He bound her hands and she ascended the second flight of steps from where she could see the sea of faces surrounding the scaffold. She turned to Mr. Moule and thanked him for his kindness. Mr Clemetson had been overcome with emotion and sadness that his efforts to secure a reprieve had come to nought. He was unable to come to the top of the scaffold with her.

Calcraft placed her on the drop, put a cap over her head and adjusted the rope. The bolt was withdrawn and Elizabeth Martha Clarke left this world for a better place where we must all hope she was met with forgiveness and a more sympathetic justice.
 
Her lifeless body hung for the hour dictated by law, viewed by the thousands who had attended this awful event, most of them drawn there by a morbid curiosity. Amongst the crowd was a young man destined for literary greatness: the sight he witnessed that morning stayed with him for the rest of his life. Later the memory of that day was used to dramatic effect in one of his most powerful and popular novels, which is probably why the memory of this most kind and inoffensive woman lives on.

Robert Coward (1819-1905)

Dec 23rd, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Born at Stourpaine into the Dorset rural community in the early part of the 19th century it is unlikely that as he grew up Robert Coward expected a great deal out of life. He was illegitimate, his mother died when he was just 11 years of age, by which time he was probably already labouring on the land and he had little or no formal education.

Robert’s mother, Repentance Coward, herself illegitimate and the daughter of Hannah Coward, was baptised at Holy Trinity church at Stourpaine on the 24th July 1785 and was buried there on the 17th January 1830, when it was recorded that she was 47 years of age. She never married but had two sons; Job, baptised 12th February 1815, he died in infancy and was buried on the 27th May 1817; also Robert, who was baptised on the 16th May 1819.

After his mother’s death in 1830 Robert was probably taken in by another branch of the Coward family living in Stourpaine or by his father and it is likely throughout this period he offered himself for work as an agricultural labourer.

On November 9th 1842 Robert, then 23 years of age, married Ann Allen. She was also from a poor Stourpaine family: the 1851 census has Ann’s parents and three of her siblings listed as paupers’ inmates of the Blandford workhouse.

When pulling together a family history a marriage certificate (after 1837) will often provide the missing links: it will confirm the ages of a couple, who their fathers were and the witness details can reinforce or dismiss ideas you might have about your ancestors’ relationships.

That is the case here. The fact that the couple and all three witnesses signed the marriage certificate with their mark tells us they were illiterate and had not benefited from a formal education. We learn that Robert Coward knew his father was Henry Horlock. One of the witnesses was Charlotte Horlock so it is reasonable to conclude that Robert was on good terms with his father and family. Interestingly, perhaps out of respect for his mother’s memory, he never changed to his father’s name. His great and great great grandfathers were also named Robert.

Children were late coming to this relationship but after five years of marriage in 1847 Robert and Ann had a daughter who they named Rhoda. She was baptised on the 2nd of May in that year. Everything we know about Robert to this point and subsequently learn about his later life leads to the conclusion that he was at heart a decent family man.

Early in 1848 disaster struck this poor family when Robert was caught poaching. We know of nothing to suggest this enterprise was for any purpose other than to put food on the table for his family. He, however, on being apprehended by the keeper would have straight away known he was in serious trouble and likely to be facing six months in jail with hard labour at the very least. Perhaps, it was the thought of being separated from his wife and baby daughter that prompted him to make a fight of it and to try to escape the clutches of the keeper. Failing, he found himself arrested and held in jail until his trial at the Dorchester Assizes on 11th of March 1848. He was charged with poaching and beating a keeper.

Dorchester Crown Court had a long reputation for handing down rough justice. In the 17th century the notorious Judge Jefferies let it be known at the start of the hearings against men involved in the Monmouth Rebellion that he was minded to be lenient: 74 men went to the gallows. Robert would have known about the seven men from Tolpuddle, like him all agricultural labourers, who had been transported to Australia on trumped up charges that they had formed a Trade Union. Later in 1856 Martha Brown was sentenced to death for defending herself against an ogre of a husband. She was publicly hanged in front of a crowd numbering thousands.

Robert would have faced his court appearance with much trepidation and without a doubt he was greatly worried for his wife, who he knew even if he was treated leniently faced a long period of having to provide for herself and their child on her own.

“The sentence of the court upon you is, that you be transported beyond the seas for a term of 7 years.” For Robert this dreadful punishment the worst he may have expected meant that once transported he would never return to England and it was unlikely he would ever see his wife and daughter again. He was just 27 years of age and he must have felt that his life was over. He left London aboard the ‘Adelaide’ on 17th August 1849 arriving in Sydney on Christmas Eve 1849.

It was surprising, but reinforces what we say earlier about his good character, that he secured his Ticket of Leave on 30th December 1849. This was incredibly quick and confirms that he must have been a model prisoner in England while waiting to sail and continued to be so on the voyage and on arrival in Australia. This did not mean he had his freedom but he was probably allowed to work for wages and live virtually free: he would not have been allowed to leave Australia until his sentence had been completed and he would have from time to time to appear before a local Justice. He may have been restricted in other ways such as the area he could work and live in and he may have been subject to a curfew.

He must have been more than a little relieved to have survived the voyage and found that his life was not after all going to be quite as bad as he had every reason to have expected it to be. But imagine his joy on learning that his wife and daughter had secured passage as assisted immigrants. Ann and Rhoda arrived in Australia on the 14th August 1851. They were not long separated their first child born in Australia in 1853 was another daughter Sara Martha.

The government needed colonists to settle in Australia but few went out and the government turned to convicts who had completed their sentences; they were offered the essentials of free land, tools, seed and livestock. These incentives meant that many accepted the offer and became landowners and farmers.

Sentence served, against all the odds family united, Robert and Ann would have seized this opportunity with both hands. They stayed in Australia and produced a further 10 children, five sons and five daughters.  When he died Robert Coward’s estate was one thousand six hundred and twenty seven pounds. This couple had managed to turn adversity to opportunity and they both enjoyed a long life. Ann died on the 24th November 1900 aged 78 years and Robert died 22nd January 1905 aged 88 years. They were living and farming in Maitland, NSW where they are buried.

Rhoda thrived and on the 25th January 1868 married William Gulliver a son of Dorset who arrived in Australia around 1849 aged 5 years. Rhoda and William went on to have eleven children and some of their descendants now live in New Zealand.

Footnote: Robert Coward’s mother, Repentance, worked as a button maker.  Her mother, Hannah Coward, was the daughter of Robert and Mary Coward and was baptised at Stourpaine 11th of February 1759 and was buried in the parish on 16th of March 1794 – a short life of just 35 years. As far as we can tell Repentance was her only child.

We have found that Robert Coward had been in trouble previously. At the time of the 1841 census he was in jail at Dorchester. There were two other members of the Coward family there as well: William (25) and James (70.)

Footnote (2) It appears that Robert Coward had an older brother, Charles. His mother Repentance Coward had him baptised at Stourpaine on the 24th of February 1811. According to information supplied by Andrew Cooper who is a direct descendant of Charles Coward, it seems both brothers were involved in the 1848 affray.

The Family History of John and Hannah Bagg

Dec 22nd, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

John Bagg (1828-1900) and Hannah White (1834-1900) were both born in rural Dorset from working class families. Hannah, the daughter of Joseph and Sarah White was born in the village of Piddletrenthide. John the son of Joseph Roberts Bagg (1801-1882) and Ann Vincent (1799-1874,) was christened in the village of Cattistock. John and Hannah were married on June 24th, 1852 at St. Nicholas Anglican Church, Sydling. Their marriage was to be the start of a dynasty spreading across the world, with living descendants today in Canada, Australia, Wales and England.

John and Hannah had 12 children: Eliza Ann White Bagg (June 14th, 1852 – 1925) Eliza married John Denning of Weymouth, Dorset, where the couple operated a green grocer shop. They had 8 children.

 Emma Jane Bagg was born October 13th 1853; Joseph John White Baggs (March 6th 1856 Piddletrenthide – July 19th, 1930) Joseph emigrated to Newcastle, NSW, Australia where he worked as a coal miner and married Mary Jane Gills (1865-1940) they had 6 children.

George Bagg (July 15th, 1857 Piddletrenthide – May 12th 1951) George married Mary Jane Shaw (1858-1937) and farmed near Woolbridge, Ontario with their 4 children. And James Bagg born June 2nd, 1859 at Piddletrenthide married Catherine Morris and lived near Toronto Junction with their 5 children.

Elizabeth (Bess) Bagg was born July 15th 1861 at Weston, Portland. She married William Bull (1866-1920) at Beaufort in Wales, where they raised a family of 6 children. Bess died on December 30th 1950.

John and Hannah then moved to Weymouth where Frederick William Bagg was born on July 28th 1865. Fred had 4 children with his first wife Annie Dennis (1870-1897) and 3 more children with his second wife Jennie Bishop (1867-1949). Fred was a successful farmer near Guelph, Ontario. He died on September 28th, 1940.

In 1867 on November 28th, Harry (Henry) Bagg was born. Harry married Alice Dennis (1862-1942) and they had 7 children. They operated a successful farm in Downsview now in the City of Toronto.

Thomas Bagg was born in 1869 and married Margaret Graham (1873-1920.) The couple had 3 children. Thomas, who died on August 6th 1942, was a farmer and thresher at Downsview.

William George Bagg was born at Llagattock, Crickowell, Wales in April 1871 and died at just 7 months.

Walter Bagg born May 16th 1874 at Crickowell, Breconshire, Wales died in 1942. He married Charlotte Duncan (1872-1954) and had 7 children. They homesteaded on the unsettled Saskatchewan prairie near Springside, in 1900.

John and Hannah’s youngest child, William Charles Bagg, was born on July 29th 1877 at Crickowell. Bill married Blanche Hadden and they had 7 children. Bill and Blanche also homesteaded near Springside, Saskatchewan, and operated some grain elevators. They eventually retired in the Rocky Mountains near Trail, British Columbia. William died on October 21st, 1953.

The Bagg family moved frequently in search of work. They originally lived near the rural villages of Sydling and Piddletrenthide. Here, like many of his family, John worked in the fields as a general farm labourer. This was a time in British history when mechanisation was replacing the need for farm labourers. The agricultural based economy of rural Dorset County provided fewer and fewer employment opportunities. Industrialisation was underway and many people were forced to move from farm cottages to city slums in search of employment. The working class struggled to survive.

In search of employment, John moved his family to Portland, Dorset, where manual labourers were required to work in the limestone quarries. Long hours, low wages, harsh working conditions and child labour were the norm. The Census taken on April 7th, 1861 has John listed as a labourer living at the top of the steep slope above Fortuneswell on Yeats Road with his younger brother George Bagg (1835-1916) and his family. George is described as a “carter,” which means he worked with teams of horses or mules and a cart used to move materials in the limestone quarry. Hannah (6 months pregnant) and their young children Emma (7), Joseph (5) and James (1) were living about 20 miles away, on the Doles Ash Estate, near Cerne Abbas. Hannah is listed as a “farm servant.” Eight year-old Eliza was sleeping over at her White grandparents’ home at Lower Sydling.

A short time later, Hannah and the children joined John in Portland. Hannah gave birth to daughter Elizabeth (Bessie) at the small Portland village of Weston on July 15th 1861. They later lived for a few years at nearby Weymouth, where John likely worked at the harbour.

Their first-born son Joseph left home with a friend at 14 years of age, about 1870, and emigrated to Australia. He married and settled in Lambton, Newcastle, New South Wales and worked as a coal miner. Joseph worked in the mines for the rest of his life and many of his descendants are still living in Newcastle today.

Times were still very difficult for John and Hannah and their family, so about 1870 they moved to Wales to look for work in the coal mines and steel foundries. They worked in the coal mine at Llangattock, Breconshire for what was likely subsistence wages in chronically dangerous conditions. It was still very difficult to get ahead financially. Even the young children were expected to work. When she was 12 years of age, Elizabeth (Bessie) went to work as a domestic for the Ebbw Vales Ironworks Company Shop.

John’s younger brother George Bagg (1835-1916) had previously left Portland limestone quarries and moved his wife Mary Ann Porter (1832-1907) and two children, James (1854-1932) and Martha (1856-1941) to Ontario, Canada. They had emigrated in 1871 and were already doing quite well farming near Toronto. George encouraged John and the family to leave Wales and come to Canada. Their decision to do so was a turning point in their lives.

In 1880, John, Hannah and seven of the sons (George, James, Fred, Henry, Thomas, Walter and William) emigrated to the Weston area, near Toronto. George and his “little brother” Walter came to Canada first with their friends, the Mellings family. The family bible states “March 28 1880, leaving for America.” The rest of the family followed several months later. John and Hannah farmed in Downsview on Jane Street and Wilson Avenue. John also kept the tollgate at Wilson Avenue and Weston Road. These areas are now part of the City of Toronto. With the help of their seven sons, John and Hannah lived a happy and prosperous life. They were able to watch their many grandchildren grow up and establish their own farms, businesses and professions.

In April 1900, just as William and Walter were preparing their move to homesteads on the Saskatchewan prairie, John and Hannah died within a week of one another. They are buried together in the Weston Riverside Cemetery. The large “Bagg” tombstone is shared with George and Mary Ann Bagg. Also memorialized on the tombstone are John and Hannah’s grandson Arthur Bagg (1892-April 9, 1918,) who was killed in France during World War 1, and their great-grandson, Sgt Murray John Henry Bagg (1918-July 12, 1944,) who was killed at Caserta, Italy during World War II.

On July 1st 1930, 50 years after John and Hannah’s arrival in Canada, the first Bagg Family Reunion was held at the farm of Harry Bagg in Downsview. This was attended by 130 of the Ontario descendants of John and his brother, George. It is amazing to see how prolific and successful the family of John and Hanah Bagg has been in the last 150 years. There are now over 700 known descendants in Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Australia, England and Wales. Like their 19th century ancestors, these Bagg descendants possess a strong work ethic, and a close sense of “family” that includes providing improved opportunities for the following generations.

Thomas Stovey: alias Stubbey (1797-1843)

Dec 22nd, 2009
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Born into a working class family in Dorset during the closing years of the 18th century meant there was little prospect of Thomas Stovey becoming anything other than an agricultural labourer who would marry a local girl and have a large family to support on meagre wages.

Thomas was baptised at Hazelbury Bryan on the 30th of July 1797, the son of John and Sarah Stovey. For reasons that are not clear he was, like his siblings, baptised with the surname Stubbey. In 1840 he was described as being 5’7” tall with brown hair, grey eyes and a fair complexion.

The Hazelbury Bryan burial register records the passing of two-year-old Charlotte Elsworth: “the natural daughter of Priscilla Elsworth and Thomas Stovey.” Charlotte was buried on the 17th of December 1818. Thomas and Priscilla’s affair, if indeed it was an affair, didn’t last. Seventeen months later, on the 24th of May 1820, in the 14th century parish church dedicated to St. Mary and St. James and where he was baptised 23-years earlier, Thomas married Sarah, the eldest daughter of Thomas and Leah White.

The marriage was witnessed by his sister Charlotte who married John Hutchins, also a witness to the marriage, a couple of years later. The other witness was John Gillingham.

Thomas and Sarah had twelve children. Baptised at Fifehead Neville, this is about two miles from Thomas’ birthplace, were: Edmund (1821); Robert (1822); Mary (1824); Henry (1825); Charlotte (1827); James (1829); Susan (1830); Jane (1832); Sarah Ann (1834); Christopher (1835); George (1836.) Then there was Sarah (1838); she was baptised at Hazelbury Bryan. Her mother died giving birth to her; Thomas, who already had a daughter named Sarah Ann, undoubtedly named his last child after his wife.

Two years after the death of his wife, Thomas was charged with committing a misdemeanour. The Quarter Sessions record states that with Thomas Holt and Henry Bushrod – “let them be severally imprisoned in the House of Correction to hard labour for two years” and on the 14th of September 1840 Thomas found himself in Dorchester Gaol, while his children were sent to the Workhouse at Sturminster.

We know from the Dorchester Gaol records that he had a cut above the bottom joint of his right finger on his left hand and another cut just below the middle joint of the middle finger. Work injuries perhaps? But what are we to make of the fact that he had a cut to the left side of his throat? The Gaol records report he was a disorderly prisoner.

It seems likely that on his release from jail Thomas was reunited with his children and they returned to Fifehead Neville. His 10-year-old-daughter, Sarah Ann, died and was buried there on the 18th of June 1843, just two months before Thomas himself passed away. He was buried on the 17th of August 1843 aged just 46 years in the same churchyard as his daughter. His mother was buried at Hazelbury Bryan on the 12th of October 1834 aged 80 years.

Newer Posts →