Witches in Devon, England and other haunting things

As we near Halloween we are reminded (bombarded might be a better term) of ghouls and assorted other haunting spectres. For we whose families come from Devon, England, what better way to mark the date than looking at the history of witches who may have lived there.

There is a notorious case of a witch trial in the town of Bideford, Devon. Three women were convicted in 1682: Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles and Susannah Edwards. They were hanged in Exeter in 1685, apparently the last of those convicted of witchcraft in England to have been executed.

There is a plaque at at Rougemont Castle, in Exeter, Devon commemorating the deaths of the three women with a plea to end such persecution. In recent years many groups, including a Devon MP, have sought to have the Bideford women pardoned. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-witches-demand-justice-for-the-bideford-three-executed-300-years-ago-9702695.html

 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-22840560

There is a website that list the people tried for witchcraft of which 22 were from Devon, England. (http://www.witchtrials.co.uk/county.html) I have not looked for them in other records so cannot confirm whether they were all convicted or hanged, outside of the three above:

1652    Joan Baker

1654    Diana Crosse

1658    Joan Furnace

1658    Thomas Harvey          

1670    Elizabeth Eburye

1670    Aliena Walter

1671    Johanna Elford

1671    Margaret Heddon

1672    Phelippa Bruen

1676    Susannah Daye

1682    Susanna Edwards

1682    Temperance Lloyd

1682    Mary Trembles

1684    Alicia Molland

1685    Agnes Ryder

1685    Jane Vallet

1687    Abigail Handford

1693    Dorothy Case

1693    Katherine Williams

1694    Clara Roach

1696    Elizabeth Horner        

1701    Susanna Hanover

Witchcraft is an interesting study and there have been many publications on the subject, for Europe and North America. You only have to do a Google search for “witches in Devon, England” to get thousands of references. A booklet about the Bideford trial by Frank Gent can be found at http://gent.org.uk/bidefordwitches/tbw.pdf There is a Museum of Witchcraft in Boscasle, Cornwall that apparently has a great collection of related artefacts. http://www.museumofwitchcraft.com/

Devon has its share of haunted places as well, ten of the (apparently) most important of which are described here: http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/10-haunted-places-Devon/story-23344331-detail/story.html I am sure there are many more!

One that is not listed is a pub in Underwood, Plympton called the Union Inn (http://www.unioninnplympton.com/). This pub has been in existence since the early 1600s.

 

Photo from Union Inn Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Union-Inn-160924193926387/

According to the pub-owner, there is a well-dressed lady from long ago that has visited the established on more than a few occasions, usually late at night. She did not appear the day we were there in 2004 so we could not confirm the story.

 

Wayne enjoying a brew at the Union Inn in 2004

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 the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

How could I tell which Amy was which?

As we go further back into English records we have to depend largely on parish baptism, marriage and burial registers to tell us who is who. But, of course, because of traditional naming patterns, children in related families often had the same forenames. So how do you tell which one is which in later documents.

I recently ran across this case in reviewing a cousin’s family tree on Ancestry. We don’t yet know what our exact relationship is but know we are related through an Amy Shepheard born in the late 18^th century in Cornwood, Devon. She was his 4^th great-grandmother and my 4^th great-grandaunt.

Cousin Douglas has his Amy as the daughter of Nicholas and Mary (Barratt) Shepheard, baptized on 10 July 1767. I have her as the daughter of Richard and Mary (Collins) Shepheard, baptized on 29 December 1765. Both were baptized in Cornwood. Both Nicholas and Richard were brothers, and named their daughters after their mother, Amy (Prideaux) Shepheard.

Sons of Nicholas Shepheard & Amy Prideaux
Children of Nicholas Shepheard & Mary Barratt	Children of Richard Shepheard & Mary Collins
Nicholas (1761-1820)	Richard (1762-1794)
William (1763-1796	Amy (1765-1826)
Mary (1765-1766)	John (1768-1845)
Amy (1767-1788)	Priscilla (1770-1850)
Jane Treby (1769-1851)	Thomas (1771-1834)
Sampson (1771-1856)	Elizabeth (1774-1851)
Arthur (1773-1834)	James (1776-1841)
Thomasine (1775-1846)

Douglas descends from the Amy Shepheard that married Phillip Chapple in Cornwood in 1789. She would have been 24, arguably a bit old for marriage at the time. The other Amy married Joseph Hillson, also in Cornwood, in 1787 at the age of 20. It would be easy to confuse the two, being so close in age and given their respective ages in regard to the marriage dates. Both would have been 22 if the marriages happened the other way around.

Anyway, I believe it was Richard's daughter that married Phillip Chapple, not Nicholas’. One reason I thought that is because one of the witnesses to that marriage was John Shepheard. A witness to the marriage of Amy Shepheard to Joseph Hillson was William Shepheard. The first Amy had a brother named John, but no brother named William; the second one had a brother named William, but no John. I think the names of the witnesses give us a solid clue as to their relationships. It would not be unreasonable for immediate family members to be witnesses to marriages. It is interesting that all of the individuals named in both marriages signed their names in the marriage register confirming the spelling of our surname. I wrote about that in a post on May 13, 2014.

The clincher for me, though, was a series of property documents signed in 1813 concerning a piece of land in a nearby parish. One of the sons of Nicholas and Mary, Sampson, was to receive some land through his mother, following her death. His older brother, Nicholas, inherited the main estate of the family. In order for Sampson to take possession of the minor property, he had to pay his other, older living siblings 20 pounds each. Three sisters were named in the mother's final instructions that would receive the monies: Amy, Jane Treby and Thomasine. One older brother, William, and one sister, Mary, had died before their mother, so were not named in the document. As the older male, William would have been the one to get the lands if he had lived. Daughters, of course, could not inherit real property at the time but were generally compensated in some other way.

By the time the property was transferred, only two sisters were still living, Jane Treby and Thomasine. Each received 20 pounds in 1813. What defined Amy in this particular document was she was named as “afterwards Amy Hilson”. That proved that she was the one that married Joseph Hillson. The Amy that married Phillip Chapple was still alive at the time the document was executed, so she was not the daughter of Nicholas and Mary (Barratt) Shepheard. Amy Chapple died in Cornwood in 1826.

As an additional discovery in the whole process, the land documents also described how Mary Barratt had come to own the property. It was through a transfer of land from her step-father, Arthur Jefferys, to her mother, Thomasine. From learning Thomasine’s first name on this document, I was then able to find:

·         her marriage to William Barratt (in Newton Ferrers, Devon in 1736);

·         her second marriage to Arthur Jefferys (in Newton Ferrers, in 1754);

·         her maiden name (Goad);

·         the deaths of all three individuals (William in Yealmpton, Devon in 1740; Arthur in Ermington, Devon in 1765; Thomasine in Erminton in 1771); and

·         the baptism dates and places of her two daughters, Mary and Jane (both in Newton Ferrers).

Unfortunately, Cousin Douglas also has the parentage of Mary Barratt wrong on his Ancestry tree, showing them as John and Elizabeth Barrett of Cornwood. I actually had the same idea until I found the property document.  It was quite by serendipity that I found the property record that contained a great deal of family history information, which just shows one always needs to keep reviewing every kind of record possible.

All images used here courtesy of the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office. 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 the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Common Law Relationships in 18th Century England

While old English communities no doubt frowned on unmarried couples living together, and certainly would not have approved of them having children together, there is no reason to suppose it was uncommon.

When we look at baptism entries in older parish registers we often find children with second names and, occasionally, more than one child in a family had the same second name. I pointed out in a post on March 17, 2015 that some children were given the names of their grandparents or great-grandparents as second forenames. But there was also a group for which no father was listed and an assumption was made that the second name was really the missing father’s surname.

I was contacted by a family researcher recently to see if I could find burial information on a man named Amos Rice. We found a marriage record for him, to Sarah Bond, in the marriage register for Plympton St. Mary parish, Devon, dated April 13, 1784. Both were shown as resident in the parish. There was no baptism entry for him. In fact there were no families of that name in the area prior to the 1800s. We have not found a death or burial entry for him either although Sarah was buried in the parish in 1818 at the age of 78.

The parish baptism register did not show any children of the couple at least with the name Rice. But there were seven entries for children of Sarah Bond between 1763 and 1784, all of them “base born” and four of them with a second name of Rice. The Rice name began with the 1777 baptism. The last child was baptized just 23 days before Amos and Sarah were married. The coincidence of second names strongly suggests that the couple was living together for at least seven years. What finally prompted them to make it legal is anyone’s guess at this point.

There is no evidence about where Amos had come from or what happened to him after his marriage to Sarah, other than mentions of the family in a series of entries in the Overseers Register of Applicants for Relief between 1805 and 1823. It appears that Amos was sick and/or in need, possibly for many years. The parish provided cash and clothes to assist the family, including help for an unmarried daughter who was “in childbed”.

Judging by the entries it seems likely that most of the entries that mentioned an Amos Rice were actually for the son of Amos and Sarah. The only one that can be linked to Amos Senior is an 1806 entry when and entry showing that funds were paid to Sarah also indicated “Husband ill”. In all entries after that it is not possible to distinguish where the relief was paid to Amos Senior or Amos Junior.

Amos Junior’s story is interesting as well. He was baptized in 1777 as Amos Rice Bond. He was also married under that name in 1799. But all of his children were baptized with the surname Rice with one of them having a second name of Bond. He was also buried as Amos Rice in 1842, in Plymptons St. Mary parish. It is clear he was eventually convinced that his father was, in fact, Amos Rice and that he should carry that name.

In the parish marriage register there are four marriages that could be for children of this family. Mary Bond married Robert Shiers in 1791; she may not have been Amos’ daughter as she was one of Sarah’s children that did not have a second name of Rice. Amos Rice Bond, as mentioned above, married Mary Warren in 1799. Ann Rice married David Dunn in 1801; she had been baptized as Annrice Bond in 1778. Sarah Rice married Robert Andrews in 1804; she also had been baptized with the surname Bond in 1784. The last two grooms were soldiers and not from the Plympton area.

So we have another example of people whose surname changed over time. In this case it appears the children knew who their parents were and the number with the second name of Rice indicates the couple lived together in what we would now consider a common law relationship.

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