Jack Priestley’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. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from Jack’s as (1)
THOMAS CATTERSON and ISABELLA PETTY (12)
THOMAS CATTERSON. Thomas was the second son of Thomas Catterson senior, yeoman of Skipton. At his death, his father left a widow Margrett, but there is reason to believe she may not have been the birth mother of Thomas’s children. A clause in his will urging his children to be friendly to his wife Margaret and “use her as a mother”, suggests that she was their stepmother and that there had been some difficulties between her and Thomas’s children. On the other hand, Margaret’s own will names Thomas senior’s children as her sons and daughters.
His father’s will of 1612 shows that Thomas junior had an older brother Stephen and sisters Isabell, Jane and Elizabeth. There may have been others who had died earlier.
The Skipton registers have only survived from 1592, so we do not have Thomas’s baptism. His father was born around 1537, so is likely to have married in the 1560s. Thomas would have been born sometime in the following years. His marriage date of 1605 suggests a birth date nearer 1680 than 1660.
ISABELL PETTY. When Isabell married Thomas Catterson in 1605 in Skipton, she was ‘of this parish’. She may have been born in Skipton before the start of the registers.
But there is a plausible baptism four miles south in the village of Kildwick.
Baptism. St. Andrew, Kildwick.
1586 Jul 25 Isabella Petty filia Willmi Petty et Lucia uxor
There is no record of Isabell dying in childhood or marrying in Kildwick. The most plausible marriage for her is the one to Thomas Catterson.
A younger brother was also baptised in Kildwick.
We do not know her mother’s maiden name.
Isabell’s baptism is the first instance of the Petty surname in the Kildwick registers. It is possible that her parents came from elsewhere, and that Isabell had older siblings, but in the following years, the only other Petty is John, who was having children baptised at the same time, and who may be her uncle, and Isabell’s brother Francis, who married twice and brought up a family in Kildwick.
Since both she and Thomas were resident in Skipton at the time of their marriage, it would appear that Isabell had moved there, probably to find work.
Thomas and Isabell married in 1605, two years into the reign of James I. Both of them were born as Elizabethans.
Marriage. Holy Trinity, Skipton.
1605 May 5 Thomas Cattersonne and Isabell Pettie both of this parish
In November of that year, the country was shaken when Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were caught trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament, when the Royal Family, as well as the government, would have been there for the opening of Parliament. Thereafter, prayers of thanksgiving for the king’s deliverance were said in church.
In 1603 Thomas’s father had taken over the tenancy of the Red Lion inn and farm in the centre of Skipton. Thomas senior died in 1612. After his widow Margaret’s death in 1616, the tenancy of the Red Lion passed to Thomas junior’s older brother Stephen.
When Thomas’s father died in1612, he left Thomas a small lease worth £3 a year, because “I have been at a very great charge with Thomas Catterson my son for his better preferment to the value of more than I think his childe’s parte of goods”. This suggests that Thomas senior had made the couple a generous settlement when they married.
When his mother (or stepmother) died three years later, she made good the deficit “to augment the income left by his father”.
We should expect Thomas and Isabell to have had children in the first decade of the 17th century. We have only found baptisms in the 1610s and 20s. One possible reason for this would be that Isabell died in the early years of their marriage, probably in childbirth, and that Thomas later remarried. We have found no evidence to prove or disprove this. The early Skipton baptism register does not name the mother. We have found no burial for Isabell Catterson either before or after the births of Thomas’s children.
We have baptisms for Thomas’s children from 1616.
Baptisms. Holy Trinity, Skipton.
1616 Aug 6 Anne. Anne was buried on 13 Feb 1623, at the age of six.
1618/9 Mar 18 Marie
1621 May 1 Thomas
1623 Jul 13 Francys
1625 Dec 29 Stephen
Thomas is always referred to in the register as “Thomas Catterson of Skipton”. This means the family were living in town, and not in one of the rural townships.
Thomas died in 1627.
Burial. Holy Trinity, Skipton.
1627 Oct 24 Thomas Cattersonne of Skipton.
There is an illegible note after this which may indicate where he was buried. Other Cattersons were buried in the chancel or choir of the church. The initial letter could be Q for Quire.
Since his last child was baptised in 1625, the likelihood is that Thomas was still of middle age.
No burial has been found for Isabell.
In 1642, Stephen, their youngest son, aged 16, fought in the Civil War. He joined a troop of Royalist cavalry raised in Skipton. Skipton was a fiercely Royalist town. Under the Cliffords, the castle held out against the Parliamentarians until 1645.
Their son Francys married another Isabell Pettie.
In 1665 he took over the tenancy of the Red Lion
NEXT GENERATION: 11. CATTERSON-PETTIE
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 13. CATTERSON