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(continued)
PART
TWO
The
marriage of William and Elizabeth Sherwood.
William and Elizabeth would have married prior to 1811, given that their
eldest child William was baptised in June of that year.
One of the
first steps to finding their
marriage was to check the registers of the Fowlmere parish church.
These registers do not have any mention of the marriage.
Furthermore, the marriage did not take place in Cambridgeshire.
A check was made of Boyds Marriage Index, which covers 99% of the County.
The Index was checked using exact and similar spellings of the bride and
groom's names. Boyds Index for Essex, which covers ninety-four percent of
the County has also been checked as well as Allens Marriage Index for
Hertfordshire.
It seems unlikely then that William and Elizabeth were married in
Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire or Essex. It
is possible that they married in a
nearby county, and then moved back to Fowlmere to live.
Of course there is the possibility that the marriage took place in an
Independent church. The reason I
don't think this is likely is due to Lord
Hardwicke’s Marriage Act which was enforced in 1754.
The Act required that all marriages by law be performed in parochial
churches. Not all non-conformists of course complied with the Act, with many
continuing to marry in their own church. Never the less a check was made of at
least fourteen Independent
churches in Cambridgeshire including the Fowlmere Independent chapel.
None of these performed marriages or kept marriage registers.
According
to the International Genealogical Index
there were only two marriages in the United Kingdom
between a William Sherwood and an Elizabeth Smith around 1810. We can
discount the first marriages as it took place in 1811. William and Elizabeth
were living in Fowlmere by this time and they already had a child by this date.
The other marriage which took place in Paddington, Middlesex on the 8 June 1807
and looks very promising.
William
Sherwood of this parish (St. James, Paddington) bachelor and Elizabeth Smith of
this parish, spinster married in this church by Banns 8 June
1807, by me Jos Pickering (curate)
Signed:
The mark X of Willam Sherwood
Elizabeth Smith
In
the presence of Richard Smith, Richard Wotton
Why the couple chose
to marry in London when William had family in Hertfordshire and Elizabeth had
family presumably in Cambridgeshire is a mystery.
The only reason I can come up with is that Elizabeth also had family in
London at that time. The Richard
Smith who signs as a witness to the marriage may have been related. Nineteen
years earlier in 1788, at the same church a
Richard Smith married Sarah Warral.
At this stage the Paddington marriage seems to be the most
encouraging. More research needs to
be done before we can say with any real certainty that this is the marriage of
our William and Elizabeth.
Not long after they married William and Elizabeth settled in
Fowlmere and raised their two
sons Charles and William and daughter
Jane. Their first son William died
young. His baptism entry in the parish church registers is the earliest reference
to our family in Fowlmere. William
Shoewood, son of William and Elizabeth, was baptised Friday 21 June 1811 and
buried the following Sunday. No mention was made of William’s age at the time
of burial, only that he was an infant. The
term infant can mean any child up to seven years of age.
It has always intrigued me as to why William and Elizabeth’s first
child William (21 June 1811- 23 June 1811) was baptised in the Fowlmere parish
church while his younger brothers and sister were baptised in the Fowlmere
Independent Church. Charles was baptised in 1813, Jane in 1815 and a second
William in 1818. The only
explanation I can come up with is that the Independent Chapel was without a
resident minister in June 1811. According to Chapel Minutes, the pulpit was
supplied by the seminary at Wymondley, Hertfordshire from 29 September 1810
until November 1811.
Given
that there appears to have been some urgency in having the infant William
baptised (he was buried 2 days after he was baptised) and their own church being
without a resident minister, his parents had little choice but to have the
baptism and burial carried out in the Parish church of St. Mary. Perhaps because
the family were not well known to the minister he misspelt Sherwood as Shoewood
in the register.
In July 1996, I wrote to Janet Hurst for her thoughts on the above. Janet
has done work on transcribing the records of the Fowlmere Independent
Chapel. Janet wrote back saying...
I
suspect that you are right to think that William Sherwood was baptised in the
parish church because there was no permanent minister in the chapel in 1811.
I do not have all our notes on Fowlmere here but I vaguely remember a
number of chapel folk having their children baptised in the parish church around
this time.
William
may have joined the chapel sometime prior to records being kept in 1812.
Perhaps not long after settling in Fowlmere. William and Elizabeth’s three other children Charles, Jane and William
were all born and later married in Fowlmere.
Charles married Mary Perry in 1834, Jane married Thomas Morley in 1835
and William junior married Sophia Stimpson in 1839.
Jane and her family settled in Portland, Victoria in 1853.
Three years later Charles and Mary and their ten children together with
Charles’s mother Elizabeth settled in South Australia.
William junior may also have left for Australia sometime after 1841.
My
grandfather Arthur Gordon Sherwood is remembered as saying that a brother of his
grandfather (Charles Sherwood) was the first to settle in Australia.
After arriving here the brother is said to have encouraged Charles and his
family to join him. When Charles
arrived in Australia he was reunited
with his brother’s family but not his brother.
According to family folklore the brother had ran off with the parson’s
wife. From what we know, Charles's only surviving brother was William.
If William did in fact emigrate then it was more than likely to South
Australia. All indexes on immigration to South Australia
have been searched. There are only two references to a William Sherwood in these
indexes. The first reference is to a William Sherwood who was married with a
child and who applied for a free passage to South Australia in 1837. Our William
wasn't married until 1839 and was still living in Fowlmere up until at least
1841. The other reference to a William Sherwood is in the South Australian
Register newspaper of 24 July 1847. William
Sherwood is mentioned along with his wife as having arrived on the ship the
British Sovereign. No other details are given.
It's
worth noting that William and Sophia Sherwood do not appear on the 1851 census
for the county of Cambridgeshire. This
suggests that the couple either moved from Fowlmere to another county sometime
after 1841, or had in fact
emigrated.
If William junior did emigrate, then it is unlikely he sailed directly to
Victoria. A very comprehensive list of emigrants from Cambridgeshire to Victoria
has been compiled for the period 1840 to 1870, by Colin Holt.
No Sherwoods appear in this list of emigrants.
We will probably never know for certain if it was William who
settled here first and later encouraged other family members to follow. What we
know of William is very limited. The earliest reference to him is his baptism at
the Foulmire Independent Chapel, 2 May 1819.
On the 6 May
1839, William married Sophia Stimpson at the parish church Fowlmere.
The age of both parties was given as ‘Full age’ indicating that the
couple were 21 years or older. Both
William and Sophia were living
in Fowlmere at the time of their marriage.
Fathers’ of both parties were, William Sherwood, labourer and James
Stimpson labourer. Witnesses to the
marriage were James Smith and Mary Nunn. On
the 1841 Fowlmere census, William appears as a 23-year-old agricultural
labourer. Sophia
also 23 worked as a
servant. This is the last reference
to them in England.
Independent chapel
There is
little doubt that William Sherwood was a member of the Fowlmere Independent
Chapel. The following entry appears
in the Member’s Book Number Two.
‘William
Sherwood deceased Feb’y 20. 1843.’
Independents or Congregationalists as they were also known were
nonconformists. They were
nonconformists in the sense that they weren't members of the established church
which was the Church of England. Membership of the church was tightly controlled.
Only people earnest in their faith and who made open confessions about
their faith could be counted as members.
Independents suffered under a number of Acts of Parliament. For example
it wasn't until 1806 that marriages and baptisms carried out in their churches
were officially recognised. By the
nineteenth century many of the repressive measures against Independents had
disappeared.
The
Independent church in Fowlmere was founded about 1780.
The chapel was erected in 1782. According to A History of
Cambridgeshire…
A
large brick house was built at the southern end of the village, on land given by
Benjamin Wedd. It became the centre
for dissenters in neighbouring parishes. It
was well attended in 1825, when there was also a Sunday school.
In 1851 the chapel was attended by 250 adults on Sunday mornings, 300 in
the afternoon and 80 in the evening, more than three times the numbers attending
the parish church.
William Sherwood senior was baptised in the Clothall parish church, which
was the Church of England. There is
no evidence of his family being Independents or Congregationalists.
I believe he joined the Fowlmere Independent Chapel either because his
wife to be Elizabeth, was already a member or because of his employment with the
Nash family. The Nash family were
prominent members of the chapel. It has been established that William Sherwood
senior worked for Thomas Nash in Fowlmere as his farming bailiff.
Quite often, but not always an employer had some influence over which
church his employees attended. Perhaps
William joined because of his employment with Nash Of course the family may have
joined for purely personal reasons and as a result of their membership later
gained employment with the Nash family.
William’s Work
Apart from being members of the Independent Chapel and it would seem
taking their religion seriously, little else is known of William and Elizabeth.
An interesting piece of information
comes to us in a letter written by the late Florence Craker, a great
grand-daughter of Jane Morley nee Sherwood, and a great, great grand-daughter of
William and Elizabeth Sherwood. The
information is interesting for two reasons. One because the information
was passed on down through the family for well over 140 years, and two
because of what it tells us about William.
According to Florence, ‘William managed a stud farm for a banker in
Cambridge.’
As
testimony to the accuracy of this statement we find on William's death
certificate that his occupation reads ''Farming
bailiff.'' Farming
bailiffs were responsible in those times for the management of estates.
In
another story, passed on down from my grandfather Arthur Gordon Sherwood,
the Sherwoods were said to be grooms back in England.
In
a letter to Dennis Hitch in 1994 (Dennis is the author of A Mere Village.
A History of Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire 1993) I mentioned
Florence Craker’s letter. Dennis
wrote back saying:
The
information you have given from the letter from Florence Craker that William
Sherwood managed a stud farm for a
banker in Cambridge, is very fascinating. I
had suspected that William Sherwood was the farm bailiff for the Nash family and
that he lived at Brook Farm Fowlmere. Thomas
Frederick Nash’s father Thomas Nash (1776-1841) was a banker in Cambridge.
There is a difficulty here however because these Nash’s farmed at Bury
Farm, Fowlmere, and not Brook Farm where William Sherwood lived.
Brook Farm was owned by Swan Nash and his son, another Thomas Nash, who
were cousins of the other Nashes. There
may have been an arrangement whereby William Sherwood bred horses at Brook Farm
for all the Nash family.
It is likely that William Sherwood would not have been a
Fowlmere man because gentlemen farmers at that time often did not appoint local
men as their farm bailiffs so that there would be no favouritism shown to
members of the bailiff’s family
although his sons would often be employed on the farm.
In a
subsequent letter Dennis wrote…
Swan
Nash and his son Thomas Nash farmed Brook Farm, although they did not live
there. I quite believe that
William’s occupation was connected with looking after horses or managing Brook
Farm for the Nash family.
Keen
to learn more about Brook farm and the farm house in which the family no doubt
lived at one stage, I received the following information from Dennis.
I
know of no history of Brook Farm apart from the very brief historical account of
it on page 82 of my book. “It was a substantial house with coach houses, farm
buildings and rickyards to the rear. It
was rather grander than a simple farm house although it was never the manor
house of any of the two or three Fowlmere manors.
I knew it in the 1930’s when the Nash family still lived in some style
there.
Brook
Farm, on the south side of Chapel Lane, almost opposite White Hall, was a timber
frame and plastered house of the late 16th century, with a tile roof.
It consisted of a straight range at right angles to the lane with a
staircase projection to the back. At
the beginning of the 18th century, the house was widened to the extent of the
staircase projection and the front was remodelled.
Later the house was extended to the north and, in comparatively modern
times, a porch and bay windows were added, together with a new wing to the east.
Inside, the central part of
the house had interestingly moulded ceiling beams.
According
to his death certificate, William died 20 February 1843, age 57 years.
His occupation was given as Farming bailiff and the place of death
Fowlmere. The cause of death was Inflammation of the lungs. Inflammation of the
lungs referred to pneumonia and related diseases.
On the certificate in the section headed Signature, description and
residence of informant the following appears. "
x The mark of Elizabeth Bunn in attendance, Foulmire." Elizabeth was
about 67 years old at the time of William’s death. The informant is sometimes, but not always a
relative, living at the same address as the deceased. In this instance
Elizabeth Bunn's probable relationship with the deceased William was that of
someone who knew him sufficiently well to know his occupation and
approximate age. She was aware of the cause of death as she was more than
likely present when William died.
William’s
death was registered in Melbourn on
the day he died. It would appear
that Elizabeth Bunn travelled to Melbourn to report the death.
Melbourn is 10 kilometres from Fowlmere.
Because I at first thought she might be related, I decided to see if I
could find out more about her. I
discovered that she married a John
Bunn in Fowlmere in 1819. She was already a widow when she married John Bunn. Her first marriage was to Joseph
Jordan in 1806 at Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire. She was born Elizabeth Sims in
Fowlmere, about 1776. She went on to live to the ripe old age of ninety-five.
According to
Dennis Hitch, in a letter to me dated 5 December 1995:
With
regard to Elizabeth Bunn who registered William Sherwood’s
death, I would incline to the view that Elizabeth was a
sort of nurse who attended people in illness and perhaps “laid them
out” when they died.
There were women, who did this in villages like Fowlmere until
comparatively recent times.
In the 1841
census, John and Elizabeth Bunn were living with William Sell, a 27 year old
shoemaker, and his wife Charlotte in the High street somewhere near The Manse.
It would not be far through the churchyard footpath to Brook Farm.
I do not think
there was any relationship between Elizabeth Bunn and the Sherwood family.
It is quite conceivable that when William Sherwood died of bronchitis or
pneumonia on 20 February 1843, the household would be in some turmoil in view of
William Sherwood’s responsibilities as bailiff for the Nash family.
It
is therefore likely that Elizabeth Bunn who was attending to William Sherwood
when he died would, as one of the persons legally capable of registering a
death, travel to Melbourn in one of the Nash’s carts or carriages to do this
registration. Remember that civil
registration was a comparatively new thing and the Sherwood family would have
taken it very seriously and would wish to meet the legal requirements in this
respect as soon as possible.
Twelve years after William’s death,
Elizabeth along with her son Charles, his wife Mary and their ten children left
Fowlmere and sailed to Australia,
arriving in Adelaide in April
of 1856. She lived in South Australia for 17 years before dying at the age of
84. Elizabeth
died on the11 July 1873 at Wistow, South Australia.
©
R J Sherwood. 2001
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William and Elizabeth Sherwood
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