10. LOOSEMORE-COLMAN

Charlotte image

Fay Sampson’s Family History

This site is a work-in-progress. There is a massive amount to cover. I have included both male and female lines, and some go back 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)

 

Sampson Tree

 

JAMES LOOSEMORE and MARY COLMAN (10)

 

JAMES LOOSEMORE is thought to be the son of James Loosemore senior and his wife Johan. The Loosemores arrived in Rose Ash between 1610-20, and there is no reason to believe that there was then more than one family of that name in the parish.

James was married in January 1634, which gives him a probable birth date of 1605-10. His baptism is not in the Rose Ash register, and he was probably born in Creacombe, like his siblings. The early Creacombe registers have been lost, except for a few Bishop’s Transcripts.

His father was listed in the 1620-22 tax rolls for Rose Ash for land at the modest sum of 40s. James was thus from one of the more prosperous families, but not a wealthy one. His father was probably a yeoman farmer.

 

MARY COLMAN was the daughter of John Colman and Christian Hoopper. She was baptised on 17 March 1610 in the parish of East Anstey, on the foothills of Exmoor, close to the Somerset border. East Anstey is 6 miles from Rose Ash.

She appears to be the seventh of eight children.

She too came from farming stock.

 

The couple were married on 30 January 1634 in the parish church of Rose Ash. This implies that Mary was already living in the parish.

 

In the following ten years, Mary gave birth to five known children.

Baptisms. Rose Ash.
1635  Anne d. of James Loosemore  28 March
1637  Mary d. of James Loosemore  1 Jan
1639   Nicholas  s. James Loosemore  31 March

 

The Protestation Returns for Rose Ash were taken in March 1642. They include the names of James and John Lusmore. James senior died in 1624, so we may assume that these are James junior and his brother.

The family continued to grow.

1642  Joan  d. James Loosemore  5 June 

By now, the Civil War was underway. Rose Ash’s rector was a notable Royalist and was ejected from his living.

1644  20 June  Christian.  d. James Loosemore.

Little Christian was obviously named after her maternal grandmother. She lived only two days, and was buried on 22 June.

The next day, Mary herself was buried. We can only assume that this was a difficult birth, which neither mother nor daughter survived. She was 34.

 

The picture is then clouded by a gap in the Rose Ash registers during the Commonwealth period, from May 1646 – Dec 1660. W. R. Loosemore has traced the probable sequence of events.[1]

In the summer of 1644 James c1605 was left a widower with at least two young children, Nicholas 1639 and Joan 1642 so it was almost inevitable that he should re-marry.  No record of this second marriage has survived but the parish register does contains information about several children of James from which we can infer that some time between 1644 and 1650 he remarried to another Mary.  This union produced at least nine children, three sons and six daughters, of whom all except one son survived childhood.

After the Civil War, the execution of Charles I in 1649 was followed by republican rule under the Commonwealth. In 1726, the rector of Rose Ash, one of many Lewis Southcombes to hold this office, commented in the parish register on the effect of this Puritan period on the leisure activities of his parish:

  1. That about ffourscore or a Hundred years gon here was Playin g of Bowls in ye said Green, very commonly in ye summer Time, on Sundays after Evening Prayer.
  2. That about seventy years since, one John Pincomb of Broad-Heal in Bishop’s-Nymet, who was a great Cromwellian & a Constable of the Hundred, in the time of that Usurpation, was in This Green, when some Persons were Playing at Bowls in it.

This Jo: Pincomb stopt ye Bowl of Mr Edmond Reed, A Reverend, orthodox, & Loyall Clergy-man, who was Minister of ye Neighbouring Parish o f Mariansleigh, And took upon him to throw Mr Reed’s Bowl over the Hedge, upon which a great contest arose; but how Twas Accomodated, Reconciled and Pacify’d, I cannot Learn.[2]

 

Of James’s first family, we do not know what happened to Anne and Mary. They may have died before 1660, or been married in the late 1650s.

His daughter Joan married John Locke of Knowstone in April 1666, and his son Nicholas married Joan Dodge in July of that year.

Of his second family: All the daughters were married in Rose Ash, Grace to Nicholas Aishelford on 20 June 1670, Wilmot ‘daughter of James’ to Thomas Beer on 16 September 1679; Emlin, also ‘daughter of James’ to James Pincombe on 23 August 1676; Charity to John Stick on 17 October 1688; Christian, baptized 8 April 1662, to William Stephens on 6 August 1700, and Elizabeth, baptized 28 February 1665/6, to John Tapp on 3 April 1700.  No baptismal record exists for the four eldest girls Grace, Wilmot, Emlin and Charity, so they were probably born before 1660.  Of the sons, John was baptized on 18 January 1660/1 and buried just six months later, on 18 June 1661 and the youngest son, another John, was baptized on 9 February 1663/4.  Nothing is known of his family and he may have died a bachelor.  The remaining son, James… married Joan the daughter of William and Joan Kingdon (of Knowstone).[3]

 

James Loosemore died in 1673. He was probably in his sixties.

Burial. Rose Ash.
1672/3  James Loosemore senr. 13 Mar

 

 

[1] W.R. Loosemore, Loosemore of Devon, an outline family history. www.loosemore.co.uk. Chapter 8.
[2] Lewis Southcombe, Touching the Green. See 9. NICHOLS-BENNET, The Green.
[3] Loosemore.

 

 

NEXT GENERATION: 9. LOOSEMORE-DODGE

PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 11. LOOSEMORE

11. COLMAN-HOOPPER

Sampson Tree