Supplement to Ebbesbourne Wake Through the Ages
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SUPPLEMENT TO EBBESBOURNE WAKE THROUGH THE AGES TRANSCRIPTS OF NATIONAL CENSUS RETURNS FOR EBBESBOURNE WAKE & FIFIELD BAVANT 1841 – 1901 COMPILED BY Peter Meers 2006 (EWTTA3S.pdf) 2 3 FAMILY NAMES IN THE WILTSHIRE VILLAGES OF EBBESBOURNE WAKE & FIFIELD BAVANT EXTRACTS FROM RETURNS OF NATIONAL CENSUSES HELD IN THE UNITED KINGDOM BETWEEN 1841 AND 1901 Contents Page Contents and 'quick start' 3 Sketch map 4 Introduction 5 Definitions and abbreviations 8 List of family names, 1841-1901 9 Summary statistics 13 Illustrative notes 14 Census return, 1841 17 Census return, 1851 23 Census return, 1861 31 Census return, 1871 39 Census return, 1881 47 Census return, 1891 55 Census return, 1901 61 How to use this document For a quick start in searching for a particular name turn to the complete list of family names 1841-1901 (see Contents, above) and note the year(s), if any, in which the name appears. Then turn to the first page(s) of the census year(s) indicated (listed above) to discover the serial number(s) of the household(s) listed in the complete copies of each census return where, under the number(s) listed details of the family, families or individual(s) with that surname will be found. 4 Sketch map of a part of Wiltshire to show how, between 1885 and 1894, the former independent parish of Fifield Bavant was divided between the parishes of Bowerchalke and Ebbesbourne Wake to form, with the latter, the new enlarged Civil Parish of Ebbesbourne Wake. (See p. 5, para. 4) 5 FAMILY NAMES IN EBBESBOURNE WAKE & FIFIELD BAVANT, 1841 – 1901 Introduction The third edition of Ebbesbourne Wake through the Ages (Peter Meers, Dial Cottage Press, 2006, EWTTA3.pdf, to which this is a supplement) devoted a section (pp. 79-130) to a study of the population of the civil parish under the sub-heading 'who they were, how they lived and what they did'. In practice paucity of data meant that the 'who' (and so how many people lived there) was scantily covered. Prior to 1841 parish registers were the principal sources of such data. These document births, marriages and deaths but do not record movements of people and families into or out of the parishes concerned, or say when these took place. Parish registers are at best poorly informative and, in the case of Ebbesbourne Wake, notoriously incomplete, so for most of its history little or nothing is known about how many people lived there, or who they were. The first British national census was held in 1801. That held in 1841 saw a change when details such as personal identities, ages, marital statuses, relationships, occupations, birth-places and at least an indication of individual habitations began, incrementally, to be recorded. Repeated every ten years (except in 1941 during the Second World War) the data accumulated now form an important historical resource whose value is limited by the 100-year embargo on access to details of a personal nature. This is why, in 2006, the public may see the complete records of only seven censuses though the years concerned, 1841-1901, coincidentally encapsulate the Victorian era. While assembling data about the villagers who lived in what is today the civil parish of Ebbesbourne Wake nearly complete copies were made of all available census records from 1841 to 1901. When the book (above) was written extensive use was made of details of, for example, individuals' occupations, but less was made of the mass of information that had been collected about their names and relationships, details unlikely to be of interest to ordinary readers. On reflection, however, it seemed that anybody with a special, perhaps genealogical, interest in the village might be glad of access to everything that had been collected. With this in mind virtually complete transcripts of seven census returns (1841-1901) are reproduced here, together with simple analyses designed help with the location of specific individuals and their families. Many of the civil parishes newly set up in the late 19th century were coterminous with their ecclesiastical forebears. This did not apply in Ebbesbourne Wake. The hamlet of Fifield Bavant, once an ancient manor and ecclesiastical parish in its own right (see the sketch map opposite), although 6 smaller and less populous than its westerly neighbour, was more richly endowed. The former parish of Fifield Bavant possessed a long narrow 'tail' rarely more than 150m wide (B-B, p. 4) that extended south to reach the county boundary between Wiltshire and Dorset. In 1885 this tail, uninhabited apart from a tiny hamlet called Shermel (or Shermil) Gate at its southern end (footnote p. 6, below) was transferred to the parish of Bowerchalke (see also p. 13), possibly as part of a redistribution of tithes. A little later the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894 established what, at the time, were completely new County, District and Parish Councils, much as they exist today. In 1894, as part of this exercise, the residual northern section of the original ecclesiastical parish of Fifield Bavant (A-A, p. 4) was merged with its neighbour to form the new enlarged Civil Parish of Ebbesbourne Wake. Despite this civil merger the ecclesiastical parishes remained separate until 1923. Those appointed as enumerators in each parish were provided with printed sheets to be filled in using a pen and potentially (and sometimes actually) messy liquid ink. Enumerators' handwriting was not always clear, their spelling sometimes inconsistent, and the enumerated individuals' recollections of their ages, imprecise. This is not surprising as most of the earlier (and older) inhabitants surveyed in the period concerned were actually, or later at least functionally, illiterate, and the enumerator who performed the 1841 census was aged only 18. The legibility of the original records was not improved when handwritten originals were copied first to 35mm film and then into microfiche format. Although the final half-postage-stamp-sized copy of each record sheet was transcribed with care, using a microfiche reader, the complete accuracy of the transcriptions is not guaranteed. Where it has proved possible to do so the records have been changed to clarify and correct otherwise confusing or demonstrably inaccurate entries. Examples of when and how this was done are given in the Illustrative Notes (p. 14). A more complete account of national censuses, and a discussion of their interpretation, may be found on pp. 89-93 of the main book. (Footnote) Shermel Gate Although the whereabouts of this settlement is known to older local inhabitants it appears in the census returns for Ebbesbourne Wake and Fifield Bavant only twice, in 1871 and 1881 (and then in the return for Bower Chalke in 1891). In 1871 it was listed as the address of just two of 12 habitations in Fifield Bavant, while in 1881 it was applied to no fewer than nine of a total of 11. Between 1861 and 1891 the enumerator for Fifield Bavant was called John Burrough Coombs (presumably a father and his son): in 1881 the son was described, at the age of 31, as a farmer of 282 acres, living at Bingham's Farm, Bowerchalke. This John had a son, aged four, also christened John Burrough Coombs, so it is evident that the family used the same name in successive generations. In 1841, 1851 and 1901 the census returns for both Ebbesbourne Wake and Fifield Bavant were completed by the same 7 individual. Curiously between 1861 and 1891 someone from outside either parish intervened to conduct censuses in just one of them. When to this oddity is added the gross discrepancy between the numbers of habitations allocated to Shermel Gate in 1871 and 1881 it appears that the interventions may have represented an attempt to pre-empt the decision of what to do with the administratively non-viable parish of Fifield Bavant. Was it to be united with the new civil parish of Ebbesbourne Wake, or with that of Bowerchalke? In the event a judgement of Solomon divided the parish between the two. 8 SURNAMES RECORDED IN EBBESBOURNE WAKE & FIFIELD BAVANT, 1841 – 1901 Definitions and abbreviations The Index (opposite, pp. 9 - 12) lists the family names of heads of each of the households enumerated in the seven censuses 1841-1901 plus the names of individuals recorded in households whose surnames differed from those of the head of the household concerned, if it appeared that such individuals contributed to the social or economic life of the community. This is why more surnames are recorded here than are reported in the book cited in the Introduction, where only heads of households were counted. Names of apparently casual visitors have been omitted. Abbreviations, when used, are mainly self-explanatory. For example w (wife), wdr (widower), wd (widow), s (son), d (daughter), g-s, g-d (grand-son or -daughter), MM/F, UM/F (married or unmarried male/female), Ag Lab (agricultural labourer), pau (pauper), sch (scholar) (primary education to the age of 11 was made compulsory in 1880). Relationships are described by reference to the person identified, and named first in each family group, as the head of that household. Birthplaces outside Ebbesbourne Wake (EW or E), Fifield Bavant (FB or F) or Alvediston (Alv) were sometimes illegible: to avoid guesswork more distant birthplaces have often been reduced to the more legible county (Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, Hants, etc.). An individual citation might appear as follows (an incomplete extract from an entry in 1851): 10 Pound Street George Moxham, 50, Ag Lab, Chalke 1841, 27 Elizabeth w, 44, Somerset Lucy d, 20, UF, Somerset George s, 16, UM, Ag Lab, EW. This refers to a family (listed tenth in the 1851 return) living in Pound Street under the head of the household, George Moxham, an agricultural labourer aged 50 who was born in 'Chalke', a name applied centuries ago before Broad Chalke, Bowerchalke and part of Berwick St John separated to become independent entities and still apparently used to indicate any of them as late as the middle of the 19th century.