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 SAMUEL HILLSDON and ELIZABETH TOOLEY (8)

 

SAMUEL HILLSDON. In 1791 Samuel Hillsdon fathered a child on the unmarried Elizabeth Tooley in the Buckinghamshire village of Waddesdon.

When a child is born to a married couple it is likely that the pair will have married in their mid-twenties. Allowing considerable leeway either side, we can get a rough idea of when they were born

When a man fathers a child out of wedlock, he could be anything from a young teenager to a grandfather.

Unless he came into the parish from elsewhere, we have only one candidate for Samuel. He is most likely to be the youngest of the four known children of John Hillsdon and Ann Holt.

Baptism. Waddesdon.
1767 Oct 11 Samuel Hillsdon son of John and Ann Hillsdon.

One of his three older sisters had died before he was born. Samuel was the only boy.

His mother died when he was ten.

There is partial evidence for an older Samuel Hillsdon, who would have been a 49-year-old widower when Susanna was born. We have a burial in Waddesdon in 1826 for 84-year-old Samuel Hillsdon, giving him a birth date of 1742

There is also a burial in 1776 for Ann, wife of Samuel Hillsdon. This is too early for her to be the wife of the younger Samuel.

We do not have a baptism, marriage, or baptisms of children for this older Samuel Hillsdon, but the available sources are patchy. He may have come to Waddesdon from another parish.

We cannot rule him out as Susanna’s father, but the 24-year-old seems more likely.

We do not know Samuel Hillsdon’s occupation. All the Waddesdon Hillsdons we do know are labourers.

We have no record of this Samuel marrying or fathering other children.

Susanna was born in 1791. In 1798, there was great anxiety about the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. There was a real fear that England might be invaded. Lists were drawn up for every parish of the men who might be called upon to fight. Buckinghamshire is the only county that has preserved this list in full. Men are listed by their occupation, with notes of any disability. In Waddesdon, three Hillsdens are listed as labourers. Samuel does not appear on the list, or anywhere else in Buckinghamshire. There is an outside chance that he is one of two unnamed servants of Francis Cox.

Nor have we found a marriage, the baptisms of children, or a burial.

As yet, we do not have online access to the Waddesdon registers, and have to rely on indices of baptisms, marriages and burials, which may not be complete.

The absence of any further record for him suggests that he died not long after Susanna’s birth, or that he moved to another county. There are many Hillsdons in Norfolk, but few elsewhere. A death seems more likely.

This is the most recent generation of Hillsdons on Alan March’s family tree, but the one about which we have least information.

 

ELIZABETH TOOLEY. Here, too, we have a lack of firm information.

We have not found a plausible baptism for Elizabeth, so we cannot be sure what sort of family she came from.

Her daughter became a farm servant, and this may well have been Elizabeth’s occupation.

 

Their daughter Susanna was born in 1791.

Baptism. St Michael and All Angels, Waddesdon.
1791 Aug 1  Susanna Tooley daughter of Samuel Hillsdon and Elizabeth Tooley.

Samuel was 24.

It was a repeating pattern. In 1814, when she was 24, Susanna herself gave birth to a child out of wedlock, to a child whose father was the farmer’s son Daniel Jeffcoat.

Her unmarried great-granddaughter Emily Evans also bore a child to the farmer Henry Monk.

If Samuel Hillsdon was a labourer, rather than someone of a higher class, then there is a greater chance that the union was consensual, but we cannot be sure of this.

We have not found a burial for Elizabeth Tooley either. She may be the same Elizabeth Tooley who married two months after Susanna’s baptism.

Marriage. Dinton.
1791 Oct 3  William Howe and Elizabeth Tooley.
Witness: William Wootton
Both were resident in Dinton. This is a village 4 m SE of Waddesdon.

The Overseers of the Poor would sometimes pay a man to marry an unmarried mother, so that she would be provided for, and not have to rely on the Poor Rate.

There is more than one couple with these names William and Elizabeth Howe(s) in the Waddesdon area, so it is unclear what happened next.

In 1793 there is a baptism in Waddesdon.

Baptism. St Michael and All Angels, Waddesdon.
1793 May 12  Ann daughter of William and Elizabeth Howe

She may be their daughter.

This is followed by two burials.

Burials. St Michael and All Angels, Waddesdon.
1795 May 22  Elizabeth wife of William Hows
1799 Feb 7  Elizabeth wife of William Howes

The absence of other baptisms for this couple makes the first of these burials more likely to be our Elizabeth.

We should treat the DintoN marriage with caution, because we have no other record linking Elizabeth to this parish. But a marriage, followed by an early death would explain why we have found no further records of Elizabeth Tooley.

There is a great deal of uncertainty about this generation. The one sure fact we have is Susanna’s baptism.

The picture is likely to become a great deal clearer when we have access to the parish registers.

 

NEXT GENERATION: 7. JEFFCOAT-TOOLEY

PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 9. HILLSDON-HOLT

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