12. GARBUTT

Bray Tree 

THOMAS GARBUTT (12)

 

THOMAS GARBUTT. The earliest record we have of Thomas Garbutt is the baptism of his daughter Elizabeth in 1649 in the North Yorkshire village of Sneaton.

Baptism. St Hilda, Sneaton
1649 Sep 30  Elizabeth daughter of Thomas Garbutt of fforss was baptised.

“ fforss” is Falling Foss, a 67-ft waterfall on the Little Beck in the ancient woodlands close to Whitby.

Sneaton is a village three miles south of Whitby. The parish boundary borders on St Hilda’s priory in Whitby.

The only other record we have in Sneaton is the burial of Thomas’s son.

Burial. St Hilda, Sneaton
1651 May 7    Robt. son of Thom: Garbutt

In 1647 there was the burial in neighbouring Whitby of the wife of Thomas Garbutt. Her first name is illegible. This could be the same man, but there is no certainty.
He could have remarried and moved to Sneaton before Elizabeh’s birth.

These three are the only surviving records of the Garbutt surname in this area.+

The difficulty is that the early registers are badly faded. The entries we are looking for may be there, but no long legible. We have found no further baptisms for Thomas’s children, nor his buria, or that of the children’s mother.

The address given at Elizabeth’s baptism raises the question of what Thomas Garbutt was doing in the woods around Falling Foss. There are four possibilities:
In the 17^th century, there was an alum mine in these woods. Alum shale was mined, burned and processed to provide a chemical used to fix clothing dyes or soften leather.
As with woods around the country, he may have been a charcoal burner.
Or he may have been engaged in timber management, felling trees for construction, of gathering brushwood to feed the huge demand for alum-burning fires.
Or he may have been a carrier, using pack horses or wagons to transport the alum or charcoal to local markets or to the coast, to be shipped further afield.

Today, the woods around Falling Foss are frequented by tourists and walkers, but in Thomas’s time it was the scene of considerable industry.

Elizabeth was born towards the end of the Civil War. In the year before this, in 1641, men were required to sign the Protestation Oath, pledging loyalty to King, Parliament and the Protestant religion. The returns for Sneaton and Whitby have not survived, so we are unable to check whether Thomas was living there.

Whitby, and the area around it were largely Royalist, because this was the cause favoured by the principal landowner, Sir Hugh Cholmley. He had originally supported Parliament, but switched to the Royalists in 1643.
In 1644, the Parliamentarians captured Whitby and looted the Abbey house.
If local people were Cholmley tenants, they would have little choice but to follow their landlord’s lead.

Elizabeth was married at St Hilda’s and her only known child was baptised there. It is likely that her parents lived on in Sneaton, though we have not found either of their burials.

When Elizabeth’s husband Francis Burne died, his address was given as Little Beck. This was the site of the alum mine.