Hi folks,
Time to drink from the well again. I’m going to pop up what I think is the ‘best fit’ for the Southill Carvers in relation to the Wrestlingworth Carvers given the evidence we now have in this thread. The intention is for you good people to shoot this down in flames if you think there is evidence about which does not substantiate this. This summary is kind of an amalgam of ideas that have been floating around – anyway here goes...
Deacon Thomas Carver is the father of four sons:
• ‘Pastor’ John – who ended up in Wellingborough
• Thomas ‘Jnr ‘– who married Susan Turner and Mary Vintiner
• Samuel Carver – the Hitchin St. Mary apprentice wheelwright
• John Carver of Everton who married Mary Willason
I suggest that all these are siblings because their marriages all occurred within a relative short number of years. The most obvious father is Deacon Thomas.
John Carver of Everton married in 1745
Thomas Jnr married in 1746 and again in 1765
Hitchin Samuel married in 1754 and again in 1759
Pastor John married in 1754
In terms of first marriages the four married within 9 years of each other.
PASTOR JOHN
This John Carver married the confusingly named Ann Dunton at Southill in 1754. Deacon Thomas died in March 1762, John succeeded him in November 1762. John moved on to Cambridgeshire and one of his sons William eventually became founder of the Melbourn Independent School with which his son William Crole Carver was so heavily involved in as well. John eventually ended up in Wellingborough and died there. (Going off at a slight tangent here – we have a William Carver of Bassingbourn who married Elizabeth Bird in Wrestlingworth in 1805 who I’ve never placed. This Bassingbourn William must have been connected to the Cambridgeshire Carvers and would have been born probably around 1780. Does he fit in here?)
HITCHIN SAMUEL
Samuel was apprenticed out to Hitchin from Southill as a wheelwright to Edward Watts in 1744. We have two marriages of a Samuel Carver in Hitchin, one in 1754 (St. Ippolyts) and one in 1759 (St. Mary). The most plausible explanation to me is that we have one Samuel Carver here and that his first wife died between 1754 and 1759 and Samuel simply remarried. Samuel’s four children were baptised in 1768 in Hitchin. We know therefore that Samuel was probably in Hitchin from 1744 to 1768.
JOHN CARVER OF EVERTON
This John Carver married Mary Willason in Dunton in 1745, in the marriage register it states John was from the Everton parish. He is the father of John Carver who married Elizabeth Merrington. We know this branch of the family became wheelwrights, we also know that Samuel was farmed out as an apprentice wheelwright to Hitchin. Why not John too? Jan discovered John Wilson the Wrestlingworth wheelwright who died in 1779. I think it is a great call that John of Everton was similarly farmed out. John Carver of Everton died before Wilson in 1772 in Dunton so why not John Carver Jnr. of Wrestlingworth was a wheelwright?
THOMAS CARVER JNR
I refer to this Thomas Carver as Jnr as to distinguish him from Deacon Thomas although it is my submission that he is the son of Deacon Thomas. Thomas Jnr married Susan Turner in 1746 at Lower Gravenhurst , Bedfordshire. Susan died in 1760 in Southill. A child of a Thomas in Southill died in 1750 and this child was probably the child of Thomas Jnr. and Susan. Thomas Jnr. married again on Boxing Day, 1765 in Southill to Mary Vintiner. He was a widow and she a widower. A Thomas Carver (a labourer) was buried in Southill in 1791 and I believe him to be Thomas Jnr. and I also believe the Mary Carver buried in Southill in 1811 was Mary Carver nee Vintiner.
DEACON THOMAS CARVER
He became a non-conformist preacher in Southill. An entry in the Church records references Thomas Carver in 1719. By 1737 Thomas is a trustee of the Church. Thomas died in 1762 and a list of Church trustees in 1765 does not reference Thomas Carver. The burial record for Thomas Carver in Southill in 1762 has lodged a ‘D’ against his name probably to designate a dissenter. We have no record of a marriage for this Thomas but we do have a burial record for a daughter of Thomas in 1728 in Southill (Rebecca). I believe Rebecca to have probably been a daughter of Deacon Thomas.
A couple of further pontifications for you. Could Deacon Thomas be the grandson of William Carver who was married in Southill to Margaret Usher in either 1655 or 1656? Or possibly was the Thomas Carver of 1690 a predecessor of Deacon Thomas and a son of William?
I shall now retreat a safe distance and hide behind my sofa...
Cheers,
Neil.
