Historical Family Interaction with Sir Henry Lopes and Family

In a previous post on April 28, 2015 I described my search for my great-granduncle, William John Shepheard. I found him working for and living with the family of Henry Lopes, at both their London home and in Wiltshire, at their country estate, Heywood House.

There is a great deal of information available for Henry Lopes, in published books and on the Internet. He was the son of Sir Ralph Franco Lopes, 2^nd Baronet of Maristow in Devon, and Susanna Gaisford Gibbs Susan Ludlow of Heywood House, born on October 8, 1828 in Famerton Milliot, Devonport, Devon. Heywood was passed on to Henry following the death of his mother’s brother, Henry Gaisford Gibbs Ludlow, in 1876. His parents had died earlier, Sir Ralph in 1854 and Susanna, Lady Lopes, in 1870.

Henry was shown as a student at a private school in Exmouth, Littleham, Devon, on the earliest source I found, the 1841 census. In 1851 he was staying at a hotel in Brighton, with his parents, and indicated to be a “Student at Law”. He married Cordelia Lucy Clark in 1854, at the parish church in Egg Buckland, Devon. By 1861 he was practicing law at Monkton Farleigh in Wiltshire. They had three children by then and their home was Farleigh House. At the time of the 1871 census, Henry was staying at the Royal Hotel on College Green in Bristol, possibly at a legal conference as several other lawyers were also in the hotel. His title then was “Barrister at Law, Queen’s Counsel & Member of Parliament”. His wife and six children were at home at Cromwell Place in London. In 1881 I found Henry and Cordelia at the Cromwell Place home while their children were still in Wiltshire, at Heywood House. And, of course, that was where I found William Shepheard, working as a groom. By 1891, the family was all together at Cromwell Place and “Uncle Will” and his new wife, Jane, were living in the coach house at the rear of the property.

The history of Sir Henry makes very interesting reading, perhaps in part because of the connection with my own family. Uncle Will worked for the family certainly for over 10 years and quite possibly for close to 20. Another project will be to find employment records for the man, hopefully in the Lopes papers.

Sir Henry’s accomplishments are summarized in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 Supplement by James McMullen Rigg:

LOPES, HENRY CHARLES, first Baron Ludlow (1828–1899), judge, third son of Sir Ralph Lopes, bart. [see Lopes, Sir Manasseh Masseh, of Maristow, Devon, by Susan Gibbs, eldest daughter of A. Ludlow of Heywood House, Wiltshire, was born at Devonport on 3 Oct. 1828. He was educated at Winchester School and the university of Oxford, where he matriculated from Balliol College on 12 Dec. 1845, and graduated B. A. in 1849. He was admitted on 5 June 1849 student at Lincoln's Inn, but on 26 May 1852 migrated to the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar on 7 June 1852, and elected bencher on 31 May 1870, and treasurer in 1890. He practised first as a conveyancer and equity draftsman, afterwards as a pleader on the western circuit and at Westminster. He was appointed recorder of Exeter in 1867, and was gazetted Q.C. on 22 June 1869. Returned to parliament for Launceston in the conservative interest on 9 April 1868, he retained the seat until the general election of February 1874, when he rendered signal service to his party by wresting Frome from the liberals. In 1876 he was appointed justice of the high court and knighted (28 Nov.) He sat successively in the common pleas and queen's bench divisions until his advancement in 1885 to the court of appeal (1 Dec.), when he was sworn of the privy council (12 Dec.) He was raised to the peerage, on occasion of the queen's jubilee in 1897 (26 July), as Baron Ludlow of Heywood, Wiltshire, and shortly afterwards retired from the bench.

 

Henry Charles Lopes, 1^st Baron Ludlow (source National Portrait Gallery; downloaded August 25, 2015 from Wikipedia)

The old Lopes family residence in Wiltshire, Heywood House, is now  a business centre, renting out offices in the old home to individual business people, “mostly ‘high tech’ companies – in defence, telecoms, IT, control systems and software development, but also include companies in consultancy and other business services” according to their brochure. The coach house, where Uncle Will lived, is still there, also now converted to offices.

Heywood House and grounds (source Heywood House Business Centre website)

Heywood House – old coach house, home of William John Shepheard (source Heywood House Business Centre website)

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Moving 3 - Mayfield Family

Since my last post, we have finished our move to the new condo and the old house is up for sale. We are still settling in, trying to find a place for all the items we brought with us. We have sold, given away or discarded loads of stuff, some quite valuable, we thought, but for which there was limited or no interest to others to purchase it. So we have downsized in space and things.

This post deals with another ancestral line who also moved from Maryland in the early 19^th century. Thomas and Ellen (Tunstall) Mayfield came to the US around 1811 we think, settling soon after in Baltimore. No passenger or other records have yet been found to confirm that date. They had two children born in London in 1804 and 1805. The rest of their seven children were all born in Baltimore. Ellen died there around 1833. Thomas was a medical doctor and presumably practiced in Baltimore. A family story states he fought for the US side in the War of 1812.

According to a biography of one of his sons, also a physician, Thomas and several of his children moved to Jefferson County, Indiana in 1834, where he farmed and practiced medicine until his death there in 1859.

It is very likely that Thomas Mayfield travelled to Indiana via the National Road, previously called the Cumberland Road. Work on it was started in 1811 beginning in Cumberland, Maryland. It was open to Wheeling, West Virginia by 1818 and to Indianapolis by 1829. It would later be extended to St. Louis, Missouri on the Mississippi River. Private toll roads already existed between Baltimore and Cumberland, Maryland where the new road to the west began.

 

Map showing the major towns and cities along the Cumberland or National Road downloaded August 18, 2015 from http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-nationalroad.html

A previous trail had been built in 1755, primarily for the military, by Virginia troops and British regulars. It was named after their commander, General Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards – Braddock Road. George Washington accompanied the Braddock expedition to the Ohio region against the French who occupied the lands. The road was the first major route to cross the Appalachian Mountains. The Cumberland Road generally paralleled the route set out by Braddock’s men but much improved for wagon traffic.

 

Map of Braddock’s Military Road, downloaded August 18, 2015 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braddock_Road_(Braddock_expedition)#/media/File:Cumberland_md_braddock_road.jpg

With the completion and improvements of the National Road, the northern interior was open to settlers the length of the Ohio River right into Indiana. Members of my Mayfield family were in all likelihood part of those groups that moved westward in search of new land and opportunity in that rapidly-developing state.

The move to Indiana was a major event in my family’s history. It was a way station for many branches of the family for at least a couple of generations. From there, many families eventually moved further west to Kansas and Oklahoma as those territories opened up. My 2^nd great-grandmother, Hannah Tunstall (Mayfield) Miller-Watson was one of those later migrants, moving there with her second husband. She had lived in Cincinnati, Ohio with my 2^nd great-grandfather, John Conrad Miller, and where three of her six children were born. The background picture on this blog is of Hannah’s family.

 

Map showing the major events and residence locations of members of the Mayfield family along with the route taken during moves to new locations

I’ll have more to say about those further migrations in a later Moving post here.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Moving 2

In my last post I described the travels of my McDaniel line from Maryland to Virginia and eventually on to Missouri. In this post I outline the migration of another line, the Keith families, who also moved west from Maryland. The two lines converged with the marriage of my grandparents in 1895 in Oklahoma.

The Keith family in North America originate from George Keith, who we label as George 1 as there were several direct line ancestors of that name and he was the first one in North America. He was my 8^th great-grandfather. We believe George was born in Scotland although we have not confirmed the information. He arrived in Maryland around 1666 as part of a major migration of British people who established colonies in that region. His wife, Dorothy, is reputed to have been an indentured servant to Captain Luke Gardiner, a prominent citizen of the new settlement. After serving several years as a servant, Dorothy was apparently granted land in the area where she and George 1 raised a family. He died about 1737 in Charles County, Maryland. No further information has been found for Dorothy.

 

Map showing the major events and residence locations of members of the Keith family along with the route taken during moves to new locations

Their son, George 2, was born in 1667. He married another Maryland resident, Anne (surname unknown) and they had at least three children, all born in Maryland. George died in 1705 and his will was probated in Maryland, naming three children. Anne may have remarried.

George 3 was born in 1695 in Charles County. He married a Maryland woman named Elizabeth, (again her surname is not known) about 1715. Their five children all were born in Maryland. A George Keith is shown on land records to have sold property, in Charles County in 1755 which may have been George 3.

George Keith 4 was the first of the family to migrate westward. He married Monica Pidgeon in Prince George’s Parish, Frederick County, Maryland in 1751. They had ten children between 1754 and 1774, all born in Maryland. Land records show he sold Charles County property, probably in anticipation of their move to Kentucky. Monica apparently died in Bourbon County, Kentucky that same year which dates their move.

It is very likely that they took the Great Wagon Road and then the Wilderness Road to Kentucky. Some family researchers suggest they travelled to Fort Duchesne (Pittsburgh) and then down the Ohio River to Kentucky, however, the connecting road from Maryland, The National or Cumberland Road was only started in 1811 and did not become a major route for settlers until much later. The Wilderness Road led directly into Bourbon County and was open for wagon traffic y 1790.

Some of George and Monica’s children, including my 4^th great-grandfather, Richard Keith, with his wife, Sarah (Mason) and five of their children, followed their parents to Kentucky around 1796. Richard and Sarah were married in Prince George’s Parish, Frederick County, Maryland in 1784. Four of their children were born in Maryland between 1786 and 1791; five children were born after they arrived in Kentucky, between1796 and 1809; another daughter was possibly born in Maryland in 1794. The birth dates fix their move to the middle of the 1790s. Richard and Sarah both died in Missouri, after they had moved again to be with some of their children there, making them the family with the greatest geographic range during their lifetime.

Samuel Adkins Keith, my 3^rd great-grandfather was born in Maryland in 1786 to Richard and Sarah. He married Isabel Parks in Kentucky in 1811. They had four children there, moving to Indiana about 1820, where seven more children were born. Both Samuel and Isabel died in Indiana and are buried, with many other family members in the Keith Cemetery in Marion Township, Jennings County, Indiana.

Although my 2^nd great-grandfather, James Blare Keith, lived, worked and died in Indiana, a few of his siblings took up the wanderlust and moved west again, to Illinois, Missouri and Kansas.

For this line, the Wilderness Road was once again a major route for migration and the spread of branches of my family across the United States

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated