5
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)
JOHN HILLSDON and ANN HOLT (9)
JOHN HILLSDON. The Hillsdons were a family of labourers in the Buckinghamshire village of Waddesdon.
Baptism. St Michael and All Angels, Waddesdon.
1725 Oct 17 John son of Thos and Elis Hillsdon.
His mother was Elizabeth Clisby.
At the time of their marriage both his parents gave their parish as Upton Cum Chalvey near Slough, but they married and brought up their children in Waddesdon and we believe them to have originated in this area. We know that his mother was baptised here.
John was the third of six children.
We learn from his burial that he was a labourer.
ANN HOLT. When she married Ann’s parish was given as Dorton. This is a village in the Vale of Aylesbury, in the west of the county of Buckinghamshire. It is 5 miles SW of Waddesdon, where John lived.
There are two possible baptisms in this area.
Baptism. Grendon Underwood.
1729 Nov 10 Anna Maria daughter of John and Elizabeth Holt.
There had been two previous daughters named Ann, in 1727 and 1728.
Grendon Underwood is 4 miles north of Dorton and nearly 6 miles NW of Waddesdon.
An Ann Holt of Grendon Underwood was married there in 1755, though her birth year is given as 1730-1.
Baptism. St Michael and All Angels, Waddesdon.
1729 Dec 31 Anne daughter of Sam. Holt.
We have found no baptism in Dorton for the Ann Holt who married there. Nor have we found a marriage in Waddesdon for the Ann Holt baptised there. It seems very likely that the two are the same, and that Ann had gone to work in Dorton before her wedding. Thus the Waddesdon baptism thus seems the more likely of these two.
John and Ann named one of their sons Samuel, though this was also the name of John Hilsdon’s maternal grandfather.
If the Waddesdon baptism is right, then Ann’s mother was Anne Griffin.
Ann was the fourth of five children of Samuel and Anne Holt, though one of pair of twins had died before she was born.
Her father was a blacksmith, a trade that ran in the Holt family. This was his second marriage. Two step-brothers, out of the four children of his first marriage, survived.
Ann appears to have left Waddesdon to work in Dorton.
John and Ann grew up in the reign of George II.
Marriage. Dorton.
1750 Oct 1 John Hillsdon of Waddesdon and Ann Holt of Dorton.
Ann was the daughter of a skilled craftsman, while John was a labourer. She was thus, to some extent, marrying beneath her. But there were many more labourers than there were craftsmen, so it was a common occurrence.
They had at least four children baptised in Waddesdon
Baptisms. St Michael and All Angels, Waddesdon.
1754 Dec 1 Ann, buried 5 Sep 1759
1757 Sep 18 Mary
1764 Aug 5 Jemima
1767 Oct 11 Samuel
The heavy clay soil meant that Waddesdon was suited to pastoral farming, rather than arable.
John and Ann lived long enough to see the enclosure of common land in Waddesdon in 1774. This weighed heavily on the poorer inhabitants, depriving them of the opportunity to raise a few animals on the common.
Burial. Waddesdon.
1777 Nov 13 Ann wife of John Hillsdon.
1785 Jan 11 John Hillsdon labourer
NEXT GENERATION: 8. HILLSDON-TOOLEY
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 10. HILSDON-CLISBY
10. HOLT-GRIFFIN