RootsChat.Com

Hello
I hope that someone can help me with a puzzle. Our family have owned two portraits for many generations and they are supposed to be of Richard Shuckburgh and his wife, Grace, daughter of Sir Robert Doyen, former Lord chief Justice of Ireland. The portraits date from the late 17th century. My problem is that there doesn't seem to have been any such person who was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. There was a Sir Robert Doyne, born 1651, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, but he would have been younger than Grace Shuckburgh.

Using Find my Past, I discovered that Grace Doyne and Richard Shugborough were married at St Werburgh, Dublin, on 28th October 1664 (Betham's Genealogical Extracts) and this has to be the right marriage. Later on Richard Shuckburgh's will, of Bourton, Warwickshire, is recorded in Prerogative Wills of Ireland in 1687 (will destroyed). I am not sure where he died, but Grace died at Bourton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire, on the 29th January 1707, aged about 70 (registers and MI). We know that Richard Shuckburgh inherited Bourton from his brother, Henry, in 1676 and it is possible that he and Grace lived in Ireland before that time as their childrens' births cannot be found at Bourton or in England.

The mystery of Grace's father being Sir Robert Doyen stems possibly from Richard Shuckburgh's will, another copy of which I saw at Warwickshire county Record Office many years ago. It is then repeated in the 1730 edition of Dugdale's Warwickshire which states on the ownership of Bourton "....and after him Richard, another brother, who by Grace, daughter to Sir Robert Doyen, late Lord Chief Justice the Kingdom of Ireland, left issue John Shuckburgh, the present owner hereof." This has been repeated down to the present day and it was only when I, with the aid of the internet, tried to find out more about the Doyens and realised that there was a problem.

So who was Grace Doyen or Doyne?!

Best wishes
Jonson1

 

Hello Mr Dudley
I think that the answer to this one is lost in the mists of time, but thought that I would reply as I too descend from the marriage of Bernard Cotton and Rebecca Halford.  I have an 1860 letter addressed to my great grandmother, then Miss Sarah Harrison, which details her descent from the Cotton/Halford families via her grandfather, Thomas Chapman Harrison who married Elizabeth Fowke(s).  This descent is detailed in Nichols and the Harrisons, being yeoman farmers and nurserymen of Leicester made good, were obviously seeking to 'beef up' their family tree at that time. Another member of the family had a parchment pedigree of the Cotton and Halford families drawn up from Nichols in the late 19th century, and I have a photocopy of this.

Having investigated this link years ago when I researched it in the Leicester Record Office, I have to say that I was a little  dubious as I wondered why Eleanor (various spellings) Cotton, daughter of Bernard Cotton and Rebecca Halford presumably gentry, was marrying Robert Paul(l), a framework knitter who couldn't sign his name on the marriage license.  You do however mention that Bernard Cotton was apprenticed to a trade himself and I wonder what that was?  I have recently gone through everything again on Find My Past and am a little happier with the link, especially as it is evident from his will that Robert Paul was a man of property and he had learnt to sign his name by the time of his death.  I am not too worried by the few anomalies of date such as Eleanor's baptism (the correct date seems to be March 10th 1700 at Dadlington) and Bernard Cotton's burial (March 25th 1733 at Wistow).  The different date on the stone slab for Bernard Cotton is confusing, but sometimes memorials were laid down many years after the event, and this could be an explanation.

It is frustrating that Bernard Cotton doesn't show up in more documents and that there aren't relevant Halford Wills for that time, but perhaps, considering the dates, we are lucky with what we have got.

Best wishes
John   

Hi QueenCorgi and DeannaB, and all descendants of Thomas Creswick Watson out there!
Further to my previous post, I have been using Find My Past again using their cleverer search facilities. Another marriage has come up which I think is the correct one for Thomas Creswick Watson, being St Peter and St Paul Church, Sheffield, although for some obscure reason the entry in the register is for Thomas Watson Creswick.:-

"3rd November 1789. Thomas Watson Creswick of this parish, bachelor, and Rebekah Ellison of this parish, spinster, by banns. Signed by Thomas Watson Creswick and the mark of Rebekah Ellison.  Witnesses John Ellison (spelt wrong, but obviously her father) and John Hall"

Thomas Creswick Watson was baptised in this church 20th June 1770 and his father, Paul a widower, married Judith Wigglesworth (not Wrigglesworth) widow here on 30th November 1787, when John Hall was again one of the witnesses.  There are two baptism entries in the same church for Thomas and Rebecca's children (Rebecca seems to have been spelt in all different ways, but it is spelt this way at her death in 1854) and I have not been able to find any more children:-

"9th May 1790. Susannah, daughter of Thomas Watson, plater, and Rebecca Watson"
"19th April 1795. George, son of Thomas Creswick Watson, plater, and Rebekah Watson (BTs)"

I went back a little further and found the following baptism entry in the St Peter and St Paul registers which seems to tie in with Rebecca's age and birthplace at her death and in the 1851 census:-

"26th June 1767. Rebecah, daughter of John Ellison, cutler (Rebecca in BTs)"

Although I don't understand why the entry should be in the name of Thomas Watson Creswick, I feel that this is the correct marriage that has eluded us over the years.  It is the right church and the right date. The story could be that young Thomas gets into trouble with slightly older Rebecca and marries her, with father there to see the deed done!  Susanna(h) is baptised six months later.

I myself have not found the Birmingham links that John Watson obviously found in the 1970s (did the information come from family?) and a Rebecca Hanson has been mentioned a few times as the wife of Thomas.  Has anyone any thoughts on this, as I am prepared to be put right?

Best wishes
Jonson1
 

Hi DeannaB and Queencorgi1
Thanks for your replies. Like you Deanna, I am sometimes mesmerised by the number of children that the Watson clan had in Australia and have to study John's family trees very carefully to work out who belonged to who.  We, who are descended from Ellen Emma Cobham Watson, are a small family by comparison.  What is surprising is how many of them kept in touch after so long.  Our family have always been in touch with descendants of Alexander Cobham Martyr (1808-1902), who had to change his surname to Cobham on inheriting Shinfield in Berkshire.

John Watson, who didn't have the benefit of the internet, did very well, but he got a few things wrong.  One of them was that my great great grandmother, Ellen Emma Cobham Watson, was in fact born on the Manning River, New South Wales in 1841 (certificate) and her mother, Ann Percival Watson, died there in 1843 (newspaper announcement).  This changes the whole dynamic of the family and a few of us are trying to understand how George Watson seems to have started a second family with Ann's sister, Mary, before Ann had died. He married Mary Martyr in Sydney in 1844 (certificate), but their eldest daughter is shown as having been born on the 1st January 1840 (entry in family bible). The 1st January 1840 is perhaps a convenient round figure and I wonder whether an innocent explanation could be that an error in the year of birth was made many years  later without realising the implications.  All very intriguing!

In something of a desultory way, I am trying to update John Watson's history for my family should they show a flicker of interest.  I too am not sure how private messaging works, but it might be the way forward. Some of the pieces I have written in the past have gone online in a general way and I have been a little disappointed to find them then absorbed into other people's histories verbatim, and with assumptions made about facts that I have been careful to qualify.

Good luck with your research and best wishes.
Jonson1   

Thanks Amateursleuth - a great help. I too have found a lot of this information on the internet, but you have put it together in a very coherent way. I had known about the challenge to Alexander Cobham's will by the Craig family for many years, but had not known the details or the important fact that Dr Thomas Cobham was referred to as a 'first cousin' in the documents. It wasn't until I got Alexander Cobham's will from the National Archives a while ago that I realised that it was only by a deathbed codicil (which Alexander had to mark, being too ill to sign his name) that Alexander Cobham Martyr inherited Shinfield. One has visions of the infant's mother, Catherine, leaning over the dying man and guiding his hand!  There may have been a practical reason for the change in the will in that there may have been only one Craig son, possibly unpopular, surviving at that time and he was in India. The fact that Alexander mentions no other sibling than Mary in his will, indicates that, if there had been others, they were dead by this time without issue.  (The three ships mentioned by you as seen by Mary proved to be French.) The leaving of Shinfield to Alexander Cobham Martyr could have been a practical decision, as, although he was an infant, his father was a respected solicitor and the family lived in England.

I have the wills of Thomas Cobham and Archibald Cobham and Thomas Cobham's will states that Archibald is his brother. Both are shown as being naval, or former naval, surgeons at the time of their deaths. From your information in the court documents, these brothers must be the sons of a brother of James Cobham of Carrickfergus and the grandsons of the Revd James Cobham of Ballycarry.  It would be good to find their births and the name of their father.

I am a descendant of Alexander Cobham Martyr's older sister, Ann Percival Martyr. She married Lt George Watson and they emigrated to Australia in 1839, where my gt gt grandmother, Ellen Emma Cobham Watson, was born in 1841. She married John Bell Chirnside at Geelong in 1859 and they lived in Australia for a year or two before moving to England. The Australian property was retained until 1907, but no member of the family lived there again. Strangely, given that it is two hundred years, our branch of the family have never lost touch with members of your branch of the family. I still see descendants of Percy Edward Cobham, younger brother of your gt grandfather, and I remember meeting Henrietta Blanche Cobham, his sister. My grandmother and gt grandmother saw a lot of her and I ended up as a trustee for her daughter.

The reason for my original query is that I am starting to update a Watson family history, 'the Watson Family in England and Australia' by John Watson.  He did this in the 1970s and so much more information has come to light since then, especially through the internet.  His publication was just for family members and my update will be the same. John Watson died some years ago. Another connection in Australia did a family history connected to the Watsons and she was kind enough to give me a copy, but I have lost touch with her.  Both she and John alluded to Cobham family history, but there is so much more especially about Dr Thomas Cobham. I have a copy of the 'Journal of a Lady of Quality' by Janet Schaw and many other references to him, and his wife and daughter, during the 1760s and 1770s in Wilmington, North Carolina. Not the best time to arrive in America as someone with loyalist sympathies.

I have recently met someone interested in history who lives in Carrickfergus and will be seeing her in a week or two. Perhaps she can ferret out some more information about the Cobhams and Craigs.