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)
GEORGE MAPES and ALICE (9)
GEORGE MAPES. George is the fourth we have traced in a long line of George Mapes from the parish of Great Waltham.
Baptisms. Great Waltham.
1691 Aug 26 George son of George and Jane Mapes.
His mother was Jane Bernard. At the time of their marriage both his parents were of Much Waltham, which is another name for Great Waltham.
George was the eldest in a family of five children.
ALICE. We have not found the couple’s wedding, so we do not know Alice’s maiden name.
George came from a well-established Great Waltham family, but did not raise his own family there. He moved to the village of Pleshey, just 2 miles to the NW. This may have been Alice’s home.
There were no Mapes in the Pleshey registers before the baptism of George’s first son.
In 1717, Samuel Mayes, son of George Mayes of Pleshey, was apprenticed for £8 to the blacksmith Robert Barton of Hatfield. He may be the same as the Samuel Mapes who was buried in Pleshey in 1743, and whose wife Ann was buried in 1754.
For the first two baptisms, of our Mapes baptisms, the parents are given as Goorg and Elice Mapes.
Baptisms. Holy Trinity, Pleshey.
1718/19 Feb 9 Goorg son of Goorg Mapes the younger and his wife Elice.
1720 Nov 14 Goorg
1722 Sep 30 Thomas
1727 Aug 20 John
1729 Jul 13 Mary
1733 Oct 14 Mary
Pleshey is an unusual village. It is surrounded by a rampart and ditch, which once formed part of the fortifications of the motte and bailey castle. It’s name is thought to come from an Old French word meaning “and enclosed space”.
Pleshey is now a quiet village, but it was once an important centre with a Norman castle. For four centuries after the Conqest it was home to the high constable of England.
The ditch surrounding the castle is spanned by a 15th-century brick bridge, one of only two surviving from that date in Europe.
The Mapes children were baptised in the church of the Holy Trinity. This had been rebuilt in brick only ten years before the first of these baptisms.
George lived on into the reign of George II and Alice into that of George III
Burials. Holy Trinity, Pleshey
1749/50 Jan 22 George Mapes
1763 Mar 3 Alice Mapes
NEXT GENERATION: 8. MAPES-SKRUBY
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 10. MAPES-BERNARD