A Whitechapel Butcher

Continuing on my stories about tradesmen ancestors, this is the tale of Nicholas Foskett*, ten generations back.  In addition to being a butcher, he had an uncommon (but difficult to spell and transcribe) name, which has helped with uncovering the story of his life.

Nicholas Foskett was born in Whitechapel, London, England, around 1716.  In his baptism record, his family’s address was given as “Over against the church”.  I am not quite sure what this means but it doesn’t sound very salubrious.  The mentioned church must have been St Mary’s Whitechapel, where he was baptised.  Nicholas was the eighth of nine children of John Foskett, a Throwster (silk weaver) and Isabel Mallard.  The two oldest children, Samuel and Sarah both died infancy.  I am not sure what happened to most of his other brothers and sisters: Elizabeth, John, Richard, Thomas, Mary and George.  In spite of their unusual surname, the only one I can find record of as an adult is John, who married Elizabeth Christian.  I wonder if Foskett might be an anglicised version of a French name.  Many East End silk weavers were of French Huguenot background.  

Mother Isabel died when Nicholas was only six years old and his father, John, remarried to Alice Cornwell with indecent haste (the likely subject of a future story).  It seems likely that Nicholas’s childhood was not easy with his parents perhaps not having a happy marriage and his mother being replaced when she was barely cold in the ground.  He may not have had much education as he does not appear to have been literate; he marked rather than signed his name on his marriage records.

Probably around the age of 14, Nicholas would have been apprenticed as a butcher.  I haven’t found a record of this, so it seems likely that he worked for a relative, although not his father, as more formal apprenticeships at the time were recorded and taxed.  I need to track down a Foskett or Mallard butcher.  Apprenticeships typically lasted seven years.

At about the age of 21, presumably having just completed his apprenticeship, Nicholas Foskett married Margaret.  I haven’t found their marriage, so don’t know Margaret’s surname.  The marriage St Mary Whitechapel registers for several years around 1737 are missing.  Yes, there are some gaps in this story and I have avenues for further research about Nicholas’s early life. Nicholas and Margaret had four children: Samuel (my ancestor), John (who died in infancy), Mary and Henry.  Margaret then died in 1745. 

Unlike his father, Nicholas didn’t rush into his second marriage, although his third was another matter.  He married Sarah Bennett in Jul 1769 by licence.  As marriage licences were expensive, he must have been doing reasonably well in his butchery trade by then.  Sarah died in August 1787, and Nicholas married Mary Pether at the end of September the same year, weeks later, by banns.  Mary outlived Nicholas by several years.  I haven’t found any record of Nicholas having children by his second or third wives.

I have found Land tax records showing that Nicholas lived in Whitechapel for most of his adult life.  He lived in good enough circumstances to be able to pay Land tax (this was before the days of income tax), which not everyone could manage.

Nicholas plied his trade via a butcher’s cart rather than selling from a shop. He cart features in his grandson James’s story.  Butchers took meat around to streets to prospective customers.  Butchery was (and is) a messy business but meat was to some extent a luxury item, so while  butchery was consigned to the East end and other not so nice parts of London, a butcher could do well taking his product to nicer parts of town.  However, in 1759, I have a record of Nicholas working as a coal dealer.  Maybe there was a downturn in the meat trade so he put his cart to other uses or perhaps the work was seasonal.  The butchers trade was also closely associated with leather, for obvious reasons, and Nicholas’s son Samuel was a leather worker.  It seems likely that Nicholas took on his grandson James as an apprentice, or at least played a role in his career choice.  However, as per James’s story, that didn’t work out so well and he disinherited James.

A butcher's cart (Public Domain via Wikipedia)

Although a long time Whitechapel resident, when he died in February 1792, Nicholas Foskett was living in nearby Stepney.  His cause of death was given as “decline” and he was buried at Whitechapel.

Nicholas left a detailed will written after his marriage to Mary Pether with a codicil added after his son Henry died around 1788.  In that short time, James had caused his grandfather enough offence to be cut out of the will.

I think knowing even a little about an ancestor’s work makes them fell much more real than just a few dates and places can do.

Notes on lineage: Me > Mum > John Macdonald Charley > Walter George Charley > John Joseph Charley > Catherine Thompson > Catherine Foskett > James Foskett > Samuel Foskett > Nicholas Foskett

*Also Fosket, Faskett, Fosset, Fosgate, plus other spellings and poor transcriptions, including Sosket.

What is a cordwainer?

I thought it would be interesting to investigate some of the trades my ancestors had.  I will start one that sounds exotic but isn’t – a cordwainer (which Microsoft Word doesn’t have in its dictionary).  I have several forebears who were cordwainers and will share the story of one of them, William Ayers*.  The word cordwainer is derived from the Spanish word “cordovan”, a type of leather, and people who worked with cordovan to make shoes were known as cordwainers or shoemakers.   A cordwainer is different to a cobbler, a cobbler repairs shoes, whereas a cordwainer made them.  Shoemaking was a very traditional trade with the process changing very little from the Middle Ages until the mid-1800s when it became industrialised.  Here is a picture of a shoemaker at work.

Public domain photo found via Google images.

William Ayers was born around 1755 in Fairford, Gloucestershire, the seventh of eight children of Richard Ayers and Mary Hughes, although at least three of the children had died before William was born.  The other children were: John (died young), Elizabeth, John, James, David, Temperance and Richard.  With a Temperance in the family, I wonder if the Ayers family had puritan tendencies.  The children were all baptised in Fairford parish church.  Curiously, another line of my family also lived in Fairford at this time but those two lines didn’t join until 1878.

In 1767, age about 12, William Ayers of Fairford was apprenticed to Thomas Bond for £8 bond.  Like all trades, an apprenticeship was the first step in a career and typically lasted 7 years.  Sometime after completing his apprenticeship, William moved to nearby Coln St Aldwyns, Gloucestershire.  In 1788, he took on his own apprentice, John Porter.  It is likely that William was the only cordwainer in Coln St Aldwyns and he would have made everyone’s shoes, so he would have been an important figure in the village (Coln St Aldwyns is still a village).  In spite of this, shoemakers often had to take on a second job to be able to afford to maintain their families, perhaps something like farming.  As mentioned further on, I have some reason to think that the Ayers family had some money or another source of income.

In January 1782, William Ayres married Mary Mihill by licence at Coln St Aldwyns.  Mary was underage, 19 years old, and her father Thomas was also named in the licence.  The money for the licence may have come from the Mihill family, who were Yeoman farmers, rather than from the Ayers family, although I haven’t found any record of Richard Ayers prior to his marriage to Mary Hughes, to indicate anything about the family background.  In any case, William’s family appear to have been well off enough to afford property and further marriage licences.  I know from land tax records that William owned the property in Coln St Aldwyns.

William and Mary had seven children: Thomas, Lydia, Mary (my ancestor), David, Lucy, Rose, Jane.  All of the children were born in Coln St Aldwyns.  I am curious about the children’s names as Lydia, David, Lucy and Rose were not common names at the time.

Before 1811, the family moved to Chedworth, Gloucestershire.  Chedworth’s claim to fame is the ruins of a Roman Villa, which I have visited.  I am not sure what took them there but several of the children, including my ancestor Mary, were married in the village.  The children married by licence rather than banns, suggesting that the family continued to have funds available to them.

I am not sure what happened to William’s wife Mary.  She may have been buried in Fairford in April 1792, although daughter Rose wasn’t baptised until May the following year.

William lived to a good age of 84 before he died and was buried in Chedworth.

Bibliography:

Waller, Ian 2015 “My Ancestor was a Leather Worker” pub. Society of Genaologist.

*Spelling variations include Ayres, Eyers & Eyres.

Notes on lineage: Me > Dad > Helen Francis Ruth Akeroyd > Florence Ruth Kirby > Oscar John Kirby > Henry Kirby > Mary Ayers > William Ayers

An Ordinary Life

My prompt for this week is “Would like to meet”; well I would like to meet any and all of my ancestors.  To be honest, the ancestors I would like to meet most are the stuff of history books (and Wikipedia entries) rather than blogs posts, being royalty and nobility.  If I met Henry Stafford, 2^nd Duke of Buckingham, I could ask him what happened to the Princes in the Tower and maybe solve a 500 year old mystery.  However, in my blog I am revealing the lives of "ordinary" people from the past who otherwise would remain unknown.  So for this post I am writing about Eliza Roberts.  I would like to meet her to ask her who her mother was because I am not sure; not quite as big a mystery as lost princes but still something I would like to know.

Eliza Robert was born about 1831 in Hendon according to most records, now part of London and not far from where I used to live, or Highgate, London, according to her baptism record.  She was the daughter of George Roberts and Charlotte (maybe nee Hollingsworth).  I have found a possible marriage record for Eliza’s parents but nothing further about her mother’s past.  George Roberts was a shoe maker who belonged to a family of prominent blacksmiths and iron founders in Deanshanger, Northamptonshire.  I am not sure what brought him to London but perhaps it was an apprenticeship?  Eliza Roberts was baptised on 22 January 1832 at Highgate Chapel in the parish of Hornsey.

In 1833, Eliza’s brother George was born in Hendon.  He was followed a couple of years later by Frances Elizabeth Roberts, born around December 1834 in Hendon.  Sadly, mother Charlotte died in December 1835, aged just 24.  She is buried at St John’s, Hampstead; a picturesque grave yard that is the last resting place of a number of famous people.  Sister Frances died in a few months later in 1836, in Hendon, when she was only 16 months old.  It must have been a very difficult time for George Roberts (senior) who was left a widower aged only 25, with two young children. 

The young family returned to Deanshanger, where George married Susannah Harding in 1838.  He also seems to have taken up work at the family iron foundry. Susannah had a son from a previous relationship, Frederick, who was aged 7 in 1838.  This created a blended family and gave Eliza an older brother.  George and Susannah had two more children that I know of, William, born 1839 and probably died before 1851, and Elizabeth, born in 1841.  In August 1841, Eliza’s brother George died, leaving Eliza as the only surviving child of Charlotte.  Eliza’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Robert nee Davies also died in 1841.  It must have been a traumatic year for the family.

Ten years later, at the time of the 1851 census, Eliza was living with her step-mother Susannah in Bicester, Oxfordshire.  I am not sure what took them there as George was in Deansahnger at the time, although maybe he was just visiting his family on the night of the census.  In any case, this explains how Eliza Roberts met John Smith, her future husband and a carpenter from Bicester, whose biography I wrote a couple of years ago.  Eliza married John Smith on 17 April 1854, in Oxfordshire.  Eliza signed the marriage register with a very shaky signature, so it seems that she was educated but perhaps wasn’t used to writing much.  

The story of John and Eliza’s family together is recorded in detail in his story.  In summary, Eliza and John had four children: Emily, Harry (my great great Grandfather), Mary Ann and Elizabeth Ann.  The family travelled and lived in various places around South East England before ending up in Woolwich, Kent.

Eliza died in Woolwich in 1904, aged 72.  By this time she was grandmother of at least 14 children, four of whom lived in Australia.

Eliza had a turbulent childhood, as many have had throughout history.  She lived in London and around South East England, moving frequently.  She must have seen a lot of changes in the world between 1831 and 1904.  When Eliza was born, Hendon was a little village a day trip from London.  In 1904, it would have been a short train ride from the city centre.  In many ways, her life was nothing special but with all she experienced and saw, I am sure Eliza Roberts would have been an interesting person to meet with lots of stories to tell to fill in the bare bones that I have discovered so far.

Notes on lineage: Me > Mum > Daphne Madge Smith > John Henry Smith > Harry Smith > Eliza Roberts

See 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks regarding the prompts.

Thomas Bisgood Times Three

This story is inspired by the prompt “first” and actually covers the lives of the first three Thomas Bisgood’s that I have uncovered so far in my research.  Only the first Thomas Bisgood is my direct ancestor.

The first Thomas Bisgood was born around 1757.  I haven’t found a record of his birth or baptism yet.  The name “Bisgood” (and its variations) is rare in England.  As there are similar names that occurred in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, I wonder if Thomas was a migrant from Northern Europe or the descendant of recent migrants.

I think Thomas Bisgood married Alice early in the 1780’s.  Thomas and Alice Bisgood had a daughter, Elizabeth, born 12 October 1782 and baptised 1 January 1783, in the parish church of St John the Evangelist, Westminster.  I have not found any other records relating to Alice or Elizabeth.

St Martin-in-the-Fields Church
(public domain photo from Wikipediea)

On 4 June 1788, Thomas Bisgood married Mary Head at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the famous church now next to Trafalgar Square in London, by banns.  Both signed the register, so must have been educated.

Thomas and Mary had at least eight children: Elizabeth, Charlotte, Mary Ann, John, Harriet (my ancestor), Henry, Thomas (the second one) and Nelson.  Nelson and Mary died in infancy.  The first two children were baptised at St Dunstan in the West, the third child at St Andrews, Holborn, while the family were living in Cursitor St, near Chancery Lane.  The remaining children were baptised at St Leonard’s Shoreditch, by which time the family were living in Gray’s Inn Lane (now Gray’s Inn Road).

I don’t know Thomas Bisgood’s occupation but I wonder if he was something like an attorney’s clerk, or even an attorney, as he always lived near the Inns of Court and his son and grandson, the other Thomas’s, were both lawyers.

This first Thomas Bisgood died late in 1816 and was buried on 29 December at St Leonard’s Shoreditch, age given as 59.

The second Thomas Bisgood, was born on 22 February 1805, in Shoreditch (as mentioned above), so was not quite 12 when his father died.  His mother, Mary, died only 6 years later in 1822. By then, his surviving older sisters were all married, so one of them may have looked after him until he came of age.

By 1824, Thomas Bisgood was training as a legal clerk – I found a newspaper mention of this.  He became an attorney 1834.  In 1842, according to various newspaper articles, his partner, Samuel Richardson Gilbert, went insolvent.  His name crops up in various newspaper articles about court cases through the 1840s and 1850s.

This Thomas Bisgood marries Maria Oakes on 11 January 1829 at St Mary-le-Bow, another famous London church.  Thomas and Maria had at least six children, including Thomas Fallows Bisgood, born 11 December 1829 and baptised at Old Church St Pancras the following year.

Sometime before 1861, Thomas Bisgood migrated to New York, USA, leaving his family in London.  I assume that he was estranged from his wife.  At this time in England, divorce was not an option for most people.  In 1864, he because a naturalised US citizen.  He lived in Brooklyn, New York and died there in 1878.

Meanwhile, son Thomas Fallows Bisgood also trained as a lawyer.  According to an obituary, he practiced in Paris as well as in London.

The third Thomas married Annie Martha Yates in Kensington in 1849.  They had several children, including another Thomas (who I will not write about).  However, like his father, Thomas’s marriage appears to have failed.  He left his wife with his brother, Henry, who was already living with them (in the 1861 census), and joined his father in New York before 1870.  Thomas became a naturalised USA citizen in in 1874.  His son Henry had joined him in New York by 1880.  Within months of Annie’s death in 1886, Thomas Fallows Bisgood remarried to an Edith.  He married a third time in 1889 to Alice Maude Whitaker and had two more children, one of who died in the 1960s, extending this story over 200 years.

Sag Harbour c. 1880s
(photo from Wikipedia, no known copyright restrictions)

Thomas Fallows Bisgood lived in Sag Harbour, New York, where he became a police justice.  He also stood a Democratic candidate in a judicial election.  He was certainly a prominent citizen of the area.

In 1895, Thomas Fallows Bisgood died of Bright’s disease (kidney disease).

While I know a lot about the second and third Thomas Bisgood, I am continuing to look for any records of the first Thomas Bisgood’s life before he married Mary Head.  Perhaps there is an earlier Thomas Bisgood yet to find.

Notes on lineage: Me > Dad > John Edward Blake > Alice Mary Elliston > George Elliston > Samuel Joseph George Elliston (first cousin of Thomas Fallows Bisgood) > Harriet Bisgood (sister of Thomas Bisgood) > Thomas Bisgood (the first)

The "First" prompt is part of 52 ancestors in 52 weeks.