Alan March’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 many generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from Alan’s as (1)(1)
THOMAS MONKE and MARY (10)
THOMAS MONKE. We have traced our Monks back to the 17th century in Aylesbury and neighbouring parishes. We believe it was this generation who made the move to the parish of Stone in the early 18th century, where we find them for many successive generations.
The Monks were dairy farmers or graziers, of yeoman status. We do not have a record of Thomas’s occupation, but it is fairly certain that he was a farmer too.
We have found two possible baptisms for this Thomas.
Baptism. Bierton with Broughton.
1665 Aug 21 Thomas son of Richard and Elizabeth Munk
Baptism. Hulcott.
1667/8 Mar 18 Thomas son of Joseph and Hanna Monke.
Both these villages lie to the NE of Aylesbury, where Thomas started his family. Bierton is 1 mile away and Hulcott is 2.
The second baptism is of particular interest, because the name Joseph features frequently among Thomas Monke’s descendants.
At this early date, there is, of course, always the possibility that Thomas was baptised in a parish whose registers do not go back that far. Nevertheless, Joseph is not a common name, and the Hulcott baptism looks promising.
This assumes that he was baptised in an Anglican church. Another real possibility is that he was born into a Baptist family. Baptists do not practice infant baptism, preferring to wait until the person can make their own baptismal vows, in their teens or as adults. Such churches usually kept a register of children born to members, but no such list seems to be available for the Aylesbury area.
In the 17th century a number of Monks in this area were Baptists. A Thomas Monk of Bierton played a leading part in Baptist history. Our Thomas was almost certainly related to them, but we do not have the evidence to tell us his degree of kinship.
MARY. We have not found a record of Thomas’s marriage, so we do not know Mary’s maiden name or her parish of origin.
Thomas’s first children were baptised in Aylesbury, where the early registers only give the father’s name. It is not until the family move to Hartwell that we learn that Thomas’s wife is Mary.
We cannot be completely certain that she was also the mother of the Aylesbury children, and not a second wife, but there seems no reason to think that she was not.
Baptisms. Aylesbury.
1687 Jul 31 Elizabeth
1689/90 Mar 5 Thomas son of Thomas Monke
We have no record of the first Thomas’s burial, but we assume he died in infancy.
1691 Aug 9 Thomas son of Thomas Monke
1692 Nov 6 Mary
The baptism records for Aylesbury suggest that there was only one Thomas Monke raising a family there at this time, so we believe both the infant Thomases to be his.
The sequence of baptisms then shifts to the little village of Hartwell, adjacent to both Aylesbury and Stone, where the younger Thomas raised his family. In this case, the mother is named as Mary.
Baptisms. Hartwell.
1694 May 6 Martha
1696 Aug 22 Joseph
1697 Jan 16 or 22 David.
Many of these names are used by Thomas junior for his own children, confirming the assumption that these are his siblings.
Both Thomas senior and Mary were buried in Stone, and Thomas junior raised his family there, so it seems that the Monks moved there sometime before Thomas junior’s marriage in 1715.
The last Stuart monarch, Anne, died in 1714. The rest of Thomas and Mary’s lives were lived under the Hanoverian kings.
Burials. St John the Baptist, Stone.
1719 Aug 16 Thomas Monk
We estimate that Thomas would have been in his early 50s..
1734 Aug 19 Mary Monk widow
NEXT GENERATION: 9. MONK-HAWES
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 11. EARLY MONKS