The Churchstanton Ancestors (1770 to 1850)
By the last quarter of the 18th century James Chard's ancestors had well established roots in the Hemyock Hundred. His great grandparents William (1742 - 1808) and his new bride Mary had recently married in Hemyock but had looked towards Churchstanton to settle and raise a family. It was 1772 when their first child [1] was born - a boy named William - James Chard's grandfather. Sadly this union was to bear only one child as Mary [2] died the following year, at the age of 25. On the 18th July 1774, William married his second wife Elinor Hawkins at the church of St Peter and St Paul. Elinor was a local Churchstanton girl, her parents being parish farmers dating back to the 1730’s. |
THE HEMYOCK HUNDRED
To the left is “Columb David” (known today as Culm Davy) – an early Chard residence. Centrally located is “Clayhaydon” (known today as Clayhidon) whilst to the right is the Churchstanton village of Stapley and hamlets at Munty and Redlane. To the lower right is the hamlet of “Smith Harp” (known today as Smeatharpe) which is on the Upottery parish boundary. At bottom left (but out of map range) are the adjoining parishes of Luppitt and Dunkeswell, the location of the Atkins ancestors before they moved to Somerset. |
The Parish of Churchstanton
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| Lying 850 feet above sea level in the Blackdown Hills, the parish is 8 miles equidistant from the cities of Taunton and Honiton. Over the centuries it has existed under various names, the Saxons calling it "Eston" (meaning “Stoney Town”) whilst in the Doomsday Book it is referred to as "Tanton". By the thirteenth century it had become "Cheristanton” (meaning "stony settlement where cherries grow"), whilst the 1841 census lists it as Church Stanton (separated words). Now in Somerset, Churchstanton was originally a parish of Devon before the revision of county boundaries in 1896 [3]. Covering approximately 4000 acres it contains the hamlets of Redlane, Churchinford, Stapley, Biscombe and Burnworthy. The moors, Southey and Gotleigh, along with King Down make up 2000 acres of common land. In the early to mid 1800's the greater part of the remaining parish land [4] belonged to Captain John White, the Earl of Devon, along with smaller freeholders Richard Blackmore and William Dommett. Today Churchstanton remains in the Diocese of Exeter and comes under the municipal governance of Taunton Deane. |
The Churchstanton - Upottery Parish Boundary
Southey Moor (lower left) is effectively the boundary separating Churchstanton and Upottery parishes with the hamlet of Smeatharpe it's centre. For centuries a flat pasture land, it became known as "RAF Upottery" when the area was acquired for the construction of an airfield in the 1940's. Becoming operational in 1944, it was used by the Royal Air Force, United States Army Air Forces and United States Navy during World War II. It was the staging point for the U.S. 101st Airborne Division's first combat jump into Normandy on 6 June 1944. After the war, in 1948, Smeatharpe was closed. The airfield remains to this day, but agriculture once again dominates the landscape. |
THE CHARDS OF SOUTHEY
William Chard (1772 – 1841): James' Grandfather William’s early life would have been very male-dominated; his birth mother dying [6] a year after he was born. As a toddler of 4, he was introduced to his step-mother Elinor. Sadly their bonding only lasted 10 years as Elinor died [7] giving birth [1] to his youngest step-sister, Grace. At the age of 12, he and his father farmed Southey Moor whilst caring for the younger children; his closest female influence being his nine year old step-sister Mary. William also had two younger step-brothers Thomas and Robert who also helped their father establish Southey farm but it was only William who remained at his father's side long term. Thomas and Robert, as soon as they were of labouring age, left Southey farm to help their well-to-do grandfather Thomas who had acquired a small piece of orchard land called Chard’s Cottage in the neighbouring parish of Luppitt. When grandfather Thomas died the management of the orchard passed to a farmer named Henry Manfield with whom Thomas (and later Robert) held a shared title [8], although it wasn't until the early 1800’s that Thomas and Robert were able to take on operational responsibility. One suspects their tenure was short as the government of the day had recently proclaimed prohibitive land taxes [9] to pay for the war with Napoleonic France. WILLIAM'S STEP BROTHERS AND SISTERS Thomas (1775 – 1847) Thomas never married, and after departing the orchard, laboured [10] in the Luppitt parish (listed as a pauper) at Moorlands farm until his death [11] at the age of 65. Mary (1777 – 1866) Mary married a journeyman tawyer [12] named William Perry. They had 8 children with Mary surviving her husband and all her siblings. As the matriarch of this Chard generation, her final years were spent in Tiverton, Devon with her youngest daughter. The 1861 census records her occupation as a “former dairywoman”, which probably confirms the lot of this Chard generation. Robert (1779 – 1861) Upon the sale of Chard’s Cottage, Robert headed across the county border to Somerset where he farmed a property called Straw Bridges, a tithing in the Pitminster parish. At the age of 42 he married Martha Agland, a 43 year old woman from the Devon parish of Upottery, their union [13] being celebrated in Churchstanton’s St Peter and St Paul on the 2nd May 1821. Of this event the parish records show that Martha was “of this parish” which suggests that she may well have lived and worked in the area from her early teens and she and Robert may have met there when they were both much younger. Of this marriage there was no issue. Their life, farming at Straw Bridges, continued for some years until they retired to Venn farm [14] in Churchstanton where at the ages of 71 and 73 respectively, resided with Martha’s sister Sarah, and her brother, Joseph. Ten years later, the 1861 census records that Robert (as owner), his wife Martha, and Martha’s youngest sister Elizabeth, were residing at Newton’s Cottage, an 11.5 acre property that forms part of the Robert Dommett owned Venn farm. When Robert Chard dies the same year Martha inherits an estate [15] worth £450 (the equivalent [16] of approximately A$452,000 in 2011). Five years later, at the age of 88, Martha passed away in Churchstanton with er estate [15] being valued at £300 (the equivalent [16] of approximately A$278,000 in 2011). The Executors of Martha's will were her youngest sibling William Agland - a highly respected cabinet maker [17] from Bethnal Green, London - and her sister Elizabeth (Betsey Newberry). It is highly likely that these siblings (both now widowed), were the major beneficiaries of the Chard / Agland estate. There appears little doubt that James' great uncle had amassed a sizeable fortune from his humble farming exploits with that legacy passing through to the Agland and Newberry generations. Betty (1781 – 1834) Essentially a lifetime Churchstanton resident, Betty married an Upottery farmer, William Webber and together with their 4 children milked cows at Grants farm. Betty was a relatively young 53 when she died. Grace (1784 – 1830) At the age of 46, Grace was even younger when she died. Married to William Hawkings, a farm labourer from Dittisham parish, Grace bore 9 children and remained in Churchstanton her entire life. The Hawkings first worked a tithing called Beer Hill farm in the hamlet of Biscombe before moving to a smaller farm at Stapley [10]. WILLIAM'S MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN At the age of 23 William married [13] a 21 year old local girl named Rebecca Daw in the local Church of St Peter and St Paul on 2nd September 1795. Rebecca was the second daughter of sojourner James Daw and Betty Collings. Residing at Southey farm, the couple raised seven children; three girls and four boys. Joan (1796 – 1926) Little can be determined about Joan’s life except that she never married as she was buried in Churchstanton as “Joan Chard”. A parish burial note [7] details her residence at Southey Moor. Sarah (1798 – 1842) The 1841 census records her presence at Southey Moor with her mother and father. She died – an unmarried lady of 44 - one year later [7]. Mary (1805 - 1882) Mary was the first of William and Rebecca's children to marry. In 1828 she married [18] William Burrough (variously named “Barrow”, “Burrow” or “Burrows”), a farm labourer from the ancestral parish, Hemyock, where they resided for just over a decade. Of their eight children, only two reached adulthood. By 1851 Mary and William and their two teenage boys had returned to Churchstanton - Mary being recorded on the census of the same year as a washer-woman. Towards the end of their life, after their children had married, Mary and William retired to the Chard residence of Southey Moor. William (1809 – 1848) The 1841 census records the presence of a 32 year old farmer named William Chard at a Hemyock tithing called Pencross. He is married to 25 year old "Marian" and they have a 2 year old son John. There is no record of this family at Pencross - or anywhere - in the 1851 census which draws the assumption that they all have perished. Deaths registered in the Honiton parish, of which Hemyock is part, record a John Chard in the September quarters of 1847 and 1848; a William Chard in the March quarter of 1848, the September quarter of 1849 and the June quarter of 1850. Mary Ann (Marian) Chard's death is recorded in the January quarter of 1850. Thomas James (1810 – 1874) With elder brother William and sister Mary departing for Hemyock in the mid 1820’s, Thomas was left to manage Southey Moor with his ageing parents and spinster sisters. This he did until he married (see below) in 1828. Robert (1814 – 1881) The 1841 census records that Robert was in Hemyock near to his sister Mary. The 27 year old was single and working as a farm servant to William Sparkes at Hodges farm. His wife-to-be, Mary Fry was also in service at a neighbouring property. Four years later they married [19] and by the 1851 census they had moved some 8 miles to the next parish of Awliscombe, where they laboured for Thomas and William Rosier at the 113 acre property, Ford’s farm. Here they raised 7 children, 6 of whom were boys. They farmed Awliscombe land until Robert died in 1881 [11]. Much of Mary's remaining years however was spent as a patient [20] at the Devon County Lunatic Asylum in Exminster where she died in 1892. George (1815 – 1898) William and Rebecca's youngest son, George, was the first of James Chard's uncles to reside [10] in Awliscombe, an outlying hamlet of Honiton, being registered as a farm servant to the Pring family at the age of 26. The next decade saw George marry a Clayhidon lass named Ann Smith and begin to raise their family at Smallacombe farm [14] (just outside Woolverstone village).
Sometime in the next three years the family moved to Wellington in Somerset where they took a tithing on a property [17] named Gidlands. They raised five sons and two daughters and both lived just one and two years shy of the turn of the century – Ann dying [11] in 1899. |
| Their third son Isaac George, a cousin of James Atkins Chard, married Mary Ann Smith at the age of 44. She was 37 at the time and they had one son Frederick John who was born in 1897. |
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| William and Rebecca spent all their lives on Southey Moor, William being regarded as a "Husbandman" (see certificate above). William lived just long enough to be recorded on the first English census in 1841. This historic undertaking recorded the Chards; William, Rebecca and 40 year old daughter Sarah occupying Southey farm. Sadly less than a year after, father and daughter were dead, both being buried in the St Peter and St Paul church graveyard. Rebecca Chard (1773 - 1846) survived her husband by five years passing away [7] at their Southey Moor estate aged 73. |
THE CHARDS OF RED LANE AND BISCOMBE
Thomas James Chard (1810 – 1874): James' Father. On the 14th of December 1828, at the age of 17, Thomas married [13] Mary Warren Atkins, a woman ten years his senior. Mary hailed from the neighbouring Devonshire parish of Luppitt. The couple had become acquainted when Thomas and his younger brother Robert began working as labourers on the Dommett family's Munty Farm in Red Lane (Stapely). Hoping for work at Churchstanton's Stapely Mill, Mary and her younger sister Elizabeth had come across from Lupitt some years earlier and had found lodgings at William Wyatt's Clivehayes (Cleve farm) tithing. Initially there was room for the newlyweds at Wyatts even after Mary had given birth to their first child. This harmonious situation quickly changed a year later when Thomas is arrested on a felony charge. The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette of Saturday March 19, 1831 lists a calendar of crimes for the surrounding district and amongst those cited is Thomas Chard - guilty of "passing bad coin". For William Wyatt, having a criminal residing under his roof, was intolerable but his stance was mollified somewhat by the fact that Mary was pregnant again. Once the child was born however the Chards needed to relocate and they fortunately found employment in a tithing at Biscombe Bottom. Here they stayed for the remainder of the decade during which time two more boys, John [1] and Richard [1] and a girl Mary [1] were born. Whilst Mary Chard remained in Biscombe raising their children, husband Thomas found himself on the wrong side of the law again and this time the family would be devastated as he would never see them again; consigned to spending the rest of his life on the other side of the world. |
THE CHURCHSTANTON PARISH CHURCH
The original shell was restored around 1719, and the latest addition - the west gallery tower - was erected in 1830. A Royal Coat of Arms, thought to be Queen Victoria's adorns the entrance. Neither the tower nor the royal crest would have been present when Thomas Chard married but would have certainly been in place for the baptism of his children. The church's burial ground is also the resting place of Thomas' parents and grandparents. |
| THOMAS AND MARY'S CHILDREN James Atkins (1830 – 1924) James was baptised [1] on the 6th January 1830 in the church of St Peter and St Paul, Stapley, Churchstanton having been born at Munty farm in Red Lane sometime during the last months of 1829. He would have had little knowledge of his birthplace however as his parents had moved to Biscombe Bottom - a cottage attached to the 65 acre property known as Biscombe farm - before he could walk. The first seven years of James' life was under the reign of King William IV, an era noted for nationwide poverty that triggered the introduction of "the poor law". Such extreme poverty nurtured criminality and James and his younger siblings became victims of their father's indiscretions at an early age. By the age of 10, with the family having two new mouths to feed, James is burdened with the responsibility of being the male head of the family. The following year, at the time of the first English Census, James, his mother and his siblings are listed as paupers [10] and fortunate not to be in the county workhouse. At the age of 13 James’ young life takes an unfortunate turn when the family support that he provided comes to an abrupt end consigning him to the same destiny as his father. Elizabeth “Betsey” (1832 – 1891) Betsey’s early years would have been quite despairing given that her mother was pregnant most of the time. By the age of 11 she had become estranged from her father and her eldest brother and by the time she was a teenager found herself in Hemyock working as a dairymaid [10] at Windsor farm, a 130 acre property owned by Samuel Trenchard. She married William Cox, a Somerset farmer, in 1854 and together they raised seven children. She died in Yeovil, Somerset, aged 58. John (1836 – 1914) John was too young to have known his father and as a six year old would barely have known his elder brother James. Confirmed in the 1861 census, but more likely four to five years earlier, John was a farm servant on Biscombe farm for its widowed owner Mary Edwards. Sometime during the next decade John abandons Biscombe to lodge with sister Elizabeth Cox and her young family at Mountway farm in Bishop's Gate. Here he begins work as a wheelwright [17] alongside blacksmith Joseph Sparks. When the Cox's quit Mountway for Yeovil, John heads to Wellington where, in 1864, he marries [19] Elizabeth Ann Fry, a Wellington dressmaker. Here with the assistance of a £50 legacy from his mother, John sets up shop as a master blacksmith [23] in Trinity Street (Wellington's artisan district). Here the childless couple spend the rest of their days. Elizabeth died a year shy of her fiftieth birthday but John continued into his 78th year dying on the eve of the outbreak of World War I. Not only did he survive his wife by over 20 years but he also outlived all of his England-dwelling siblings. From the humblest of beginnings John Chard’s estate at his death was worth £480/10 (the equivalent [13] of approximately A$280,000 in 2011). John was probably the first and quite possibly the only Chard ancestor to make a living outside of farming. Richard (1839 – 1911) Like his eldest brother James, Richard was baptised on the Epiphany (January 6th); being born sometime during the 1838/39 festive season. His arrival in those most difficult times of financial hardship possibly contributed to the family's tragic breakdown, for Richard was barely nine months old when his father was convicted and banished from England for life. The 1851 census records a 12 year old Richard occupied as a silk throwster helping elder brother John support their pauper mother and his baby sister. During the next decade Richard enlisted in the Royal Marines [17] seizing the opportunity to earn a regular stipend together with the chance to learn the carpentry trade. In 1869, following his release from the Navy, Richard marries 22 year old local lass Anna Valentine. The couple reside in Churchstanton all their lives raising 12 children. Up until his death in 1911, Richard farmed and plied his carpentry skills at Biscombe farm, Malpit farm and Grants farm. Wife Anna was still domiciled at Grants upon her death in 1935. Mary (1840 – 1867) Mary’s birth was most likely the pivotal event that changed the lives of the Biscombe Chards and one that created new generations on the other side of the world. |
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| For Thomas and Mary the arrival of their second daughter, although obviously welcome, was another “mouth to feed” when the family was already destitute. Father Thomas may well have held his new baby daughter once or twice before he was apprehended for stealing. Certainly that brief touch would have been her only paternal connection. Now without a father, it fell upon her eldest brother James - a mere ten year old - to provide family support and a suckling infant’s sustenance. That she had any awareness of his actions in her first two years of her life is impossible to speculate as would be her lack of awareness of his arrest before her third birthday. The next decade would have been dire and as soon as she was physically capable was pressed into processing silk yarn [14] as a “throwster” [24]. By 1851 the census records Mary living [17] in Bristol with her Auntie Elizabeth and her husband William Westlake Blackmore. Two years later, at the age of 23, Mary married [19] a journeyman carpenter/joiner named James Blackmore from Wellington, Somerset. This union lasts just 18 months, with Mary dying [11] (quite possibly) at the birth of their first child. Mary Warren Chard's life (1801 - 1870) may well be considered sad as she paid a heavy price for her husband and son's felonious deeds. She lived through the toughest of times and, like many others, found herself an innocent victim of the cruelest of justice systems. There would appear to be little doubt that she had a strong supporter in her 1841 Biscombe landlady, the widow Mary Edwards (nee Blackmore) and the companionship of her younger sister Elizabeth (now Mrs William Wyatt) but by the mid 1850's Mary was alone. Despite all her setbacks however she would have been a proud mother. For a woman, abandoned at birth by her father and raised with the stigma of illegitimacy; to live as an illiterate labourers wife in times of extreme poverty, yet have the strength and willpower to guide her four children to successful life outcomes is indeed an achievement of which to be proud. |
James Chard's Paternal Lineage
Churchstanton, United Kingdom: 1770 to 1915
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| WHAT'S IN A NAME?
For over one hundred years and a span of three generations, James Atkins Chard was the first eldest male in the family blood line NOT to be traditionally named. The patriarchal convention of “William” begetting “Thomas” begetting “William” had been broken. His name however carried significance as “James” was the conventional first eldest male name in his mother's Atkins family. |
References
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