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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)
ROBERT SMITH and MARY JOHNSON (14)
ROBERT SMITH is believed to be the son of the miller Richard Smith and Melisant Druly.
The StamboomOnderzoek website has done intensive research into this Smith family in the North Kent villages of Westerham, Brasted and Hever..[1] They are confident that Robert Smith was Richard and Melisant’s son, though they have not been able to find his birth or his baptism. The information must come from another source, but they do not say what this is.
In my own inspection of the Westerham parish register, I found the following:
Baptisms. St Mary the Virgin, Westerham.
1602 Jul 4 ?Robert the sonne of ?Richard Smith
The ink is badly faded, but Robert seems the most likely reading.
If this is the correct baptism, then Robert was the eldest of five children.
Westerham is a large village on the Kentish Weald in the north of the county. The eastern edge of the parish forms the boundary between Kent and Surrey. The village lies on the road between Oxted and Sevenoaks.
Robert grew up at his father’s mill at Valence, on the western edge of the parish.
Lionel Cole, researching from the manorial rolls, says that Robert was “possibly a sawyer”. We do not have his evidence for this.
A sawyer, as the name suggests, is someone who saws wood. He may have worked in a pit below the timber, using a cross-saw.
MARY JOHNSON. Mary was also from Westerham.
Baptism. St Mary the Virgin, Westerham.
1611 Jul 28 Mary the daughter of Jhon Jhonson
A previous baptism in 1604 is for John the son of John Johnson shoemaker. It is likely that this is also Mary’s father, though baptisms for the children of John Johnson continue after the shoemaker’s death in 1616, so this may be another man of that name. This makes it difficult to be sure how many siblings she had.
We have found no information about her mother.
The couple married in 1631, in the troubled decade before the Civil War.
Marriage. St Mary the Virgin, Westerham.
1631 Jun 23 Robert Smith & Mary Johnson both of this parish
Six children were baptised at St Mary’s.
Baptisms. St Mary the Virgin, Westerham.
1632 Apr 29 Ann.
1632/3 Jan 17 Elizabeth. She was buried on 19 Jan 1633/4.
1635 Feb 1 Robert
1637 Sep 8 William. This first William was buried on 20 Dec 1637, aged 3 months.
1638 Dec 2 William.
1640 Jan 20 Elizabeth. The second Elizabeth lived to be eight. She was buried on 14 Feb 1648.
St Mary the Virgin, Westerham, is noted for its rare 16th-century royal coat of arms. These are of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s young son. His reign lasted only six years, ending when he died aged 15 in 1533.
The supporters are a lion and a dragon. Unicorns only appear from the 17th century onwards. These would have looked down on the Smiths as they worshipped every week.
The manorial records record Robert Smyth as an inhabitant of Westerham in 1639-40.
In 1641, shortly before the Civil War, men were required to sign an oath pledging loyalty to the King and the Protestant religion. There are five Smiths on the Westerham return, but we have not found Robert Smith’s name, nor does he appear in the list of those who refused to sign. We have not found him in a neighbouring parish. Perhaps he was away from home when the return was made.
The manorial records also have Robert Smith as the owner of Molehilly field, which is in Force Green. This is a part of the parish north of Westerham village, on the other side of the Oxted-Sevenoaks road. Robert was living there with his wife Mary and young son Robert.
When the Civil War broke out in 1642, Kent was largely under the control of Parliament, but there were many Royalist supporters. We do not know where the Smiths stood.
We find Mary’s death the year after the execution of Charles I, at the start of the Commonwealth period. Four months earlier that year, one of their children died.
Burials. St Mary the Virgin. Westerham.1650 Jun 1 a child of Robert Smith.
This is believed to be their eldest child Ann. She would have been 18.
1650 Oct 17 Robert Smith’s wife.
Earlier records name a child and record its parents as Robert and Mary. Here, they are entirely defined by the man.
This is the last mention we have of Robert. We have not found his burial.
[1] For the research into manorial records I am indebted to the website: https://www.stamboomonderzoek.com/parkhoward/getperson.php?personID=I36398
NEXT GENERATION: 13. SMITH
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 15. SMITH-DRULY