13. SALLY

Cory Tree

THOMAS SALLY (13)

 

THOMAS SALLY. We find the earliest Sally in the village of Wickhambreaux, five miles east of Canterbury. It still retains its medieval pattern with the church, manor house, rectory, inn and mill encircling the green. The parish lies on the Little Stour river and is bounded on the north by the Great Stour.

We do not have Thomas’s baptism, and since we do not know the date of his marriage, it is hard to estimate when he was born. It was probably before 1550, in the reign of Henry VIII or his son Edward VI. This was before the Wickhambreaux registers begin.

Our first record is the burial of a son of Thomas Sally.

Burial. St Andrew, Wickhambreaux
1573 Oct 28  John son of Thomas Sally

We do not have John’s baptism.

There may have been other children born before 1576, when we have our first known baptism for a child of Thomas Sally. The Wickhamabreaux registers go back to 1563, but the first century is hard to read.

We do not have Thomas’s marriage, and we do not know even the first name of his wife.

We do not have a record of Thomas’s occupation. His son Samuel was a husbandman, farming a small amount of land, so it is likely that Thomas Sally was too.

We have the baptisms of four children, probably the youngest of a larger number. 

Baptisms. St Andrew, Wickhambreaux
1576 May  Thomas
1579 Jan 10  Jone. She was buried on 2 Jul 1594, aged 15.
1584 May 24  Samuell
1586 Nov 6  Agnes

Thomas lived through most of the reign of Elizabeth, dying seven years before her. He would have shared in the alarm at the Spanish Armada in 1588 and breathe a sigh of relief as the threat of invasion receded.

Burial. St Andrew, Wickhambreaux
1594 Mar 24  Thomas Sallye householder.

We have not been able to identify the burial of his wife. Again, this is likely to be because of the poor state of the early registers.