Fay Sampson’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 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)
ARTHUR COREY and ELIZABETH WANSTALL (6)
ARTHUR COREY was christened in Harpole, near Northampton, on 5 Jan 1755. He was the second child, and the first son, of the four children of John Cory and Elizabeth Butlin née Chater. His father is thought to have been a schoolmaster.[1]
Arthur left Northamptonshire for Buckinghamshire, moving to Milton Keynes, south of Newport Pagnell. The new town created in the 20th century was centred on this ancient village. There do not seem to be any further records of his immediate family in Harpole, so it is possible that his parents moved too. Teaching was a profession which offered mobility.
ELIZABETH WANSTALL. In the 18th century, the Wanstall surname was almost exclusively confined to Kent. There were also a handful of them in Buckinghamshire, concentrated in and around Eton. Elizabeth may have been born into this branch, or moved from Kent to join relatives.
She may be Elizabeth Wastell, who was born in 1758 in Leicester. If so, her parents were Samuel Wastell and Mary Baggeley. [2]
An earlier ancestor was Simon Wastell, who married Elizabeth Harris in 1662 in Harpole, Northamptonshire. Harpole is the breeding ground of the Corys and there were many Harrises there too. Simon Wastell was born in 1639 in Lillingstone Dayrell, Buckinghamshire, near Milton Keynes. He is probably the same Simon Wastell who married Ann Bent in 1672 in Leicester. The link between Harpole and Milton Keynes is encouraging.
In Leicestershire the spelling is usually Worstall.
If Elizabeth came from Kent, the most likely baptism found on the IGI is the following:
Baptism. Bekesbourne.
5 May 1752 Elizabeth daughter of Thomas Wanstall and Ann Gardner.
Bekesbourne is a village SW of Canterbury. Unlike other baptisms for girls called Elizabeth Wanstall around that time, this one is not followed by a marriage in the same parish, so this Elizabeth could have moved to Bucks.[3]
They were born at a time of British expansion overseas. Britain and France were competing for territory in North America. 1759 saw the capture of Quebec. In India, attempts to enforce British rule resulted in 1757 in the Black Hole of Calcutta, when many prisoners were stifled in an overcrowded prison.
They lived almost all their lives in the long reign of George III, 1760-1820. Despite his later bouts of madness, he was a popular king, known as ‘Farmer George’.
Arthur and Elizabeth married in Milton Keynes on 17 May 1781. They lived there for the rest of their lives.
They had eight children, two of whom died in infancy.
Baptisms. Milton Keynes.
1782 12 Sep John
1784 2 Nov Richard
1787 2 Mar Elizabeth
Thomas’s baptism is not known, but he died in 1789.
1789 19 April Mary
1794 9 Mar Sarah. She died before she was five.
1797 15 Jul Susanna
1801 25 Jan Sarah
The year the second Sarah was born, Arthur died. He was only 46. He was buried in Milton Keynes on 1 Jan 1802.
Elizabeth was left to bring up her young family alone. She did not remarry. She survived Arthur for 39 years and was buried in Milton Keynes on 5 Jan 1841.
Their son John remained in Buckinghamshire, marrying Ann Spenser in Milton Keynes in 1806. Two years after her death, in 1860, he died in the workhouse at Newport Pagnell, four miles north of Milton Keynes.
Richard was the most adventurous of the family. He may have been offered a job in Kent by Lord Carrington, who owned land in and around Newport Pagnell and was also Captain of Deal Castle.[4] Richard moved to Deal as a young man, working first as a licensed victualler, but spending most of his life as a gardener, possibly at Deal Castle. He married twice in Deal and raised a large family. He died there in 1871.
Elizabeth married Daniel Boys in Milton Keynes in 1813.
Mary was married in Milton Keynes in 1811 to John Conquest of Great Linford, two miles away.
Susanna married Thomas Markham in Milton Keynes in 1824. She had eight children and died at 73 in Little Woolstone, only a mile from Milton Keynes.
The second Sarah married another local man, William Holloway, in Milton Keynes in1824.
[1] Unless otherwise stated, information on the Corys of Harpole comes from Marilyn Cory.
[2] Dave Dennis
[3] IGI
[4] Dave Dennis
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