tapley-battley family history aug 2006

If it is in the Rainbow

A Family History of Battleys and Tapleys

(and others)

Nathaniel Tapley

2006

Produced by Legacy on 9 Aug 2006

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Produced on 9 Aug 2006

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Table of Contents

Introduction 4

Dorothy Sybil Allchurch 6

Mills Point & Tapley Cove 10

John Rose Battley 14

Adventure on the High Seas 20

Janeth Adeline Ford 27

Maurice Hanrahan 30

Mansfield College 34

Ailsa Leonard 39

John Tapley 41

Robert S. Paul 47

Battledores to Battleys 51

Eunice Mary Pickup 56

Edward Jerome Tapley 59

Conclusion 62


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Introduction

What do you get if you cross a teetotaller and an alcoholic? A pacifist and someone who was forced to ditch their torpedo bomber in a fjord? What happens if you throw in a minister, a teacher, and artist, and someone who worked to build the first atomic bomb? With a little luck you end up here, in Mansfield College Chapel on the 12th August, 2006.

As a title, I’ve borrowed the Battley Brothers slogan from the 1920s; “If it’s in the rainbow, we can print it.” It sums up a lot of what I think I’ve found. If it’s in human nature, it’s in our family’s history. The members are so varied and so colourful that they leave the rainbow with its paltry seven colours and full spectrum of refracted white light shuffling and looking embarrassed.

I’ve done lots of speeches over the last year about how families can only get bigger, and not smaller. I’ve done them in different countries, and at different dinners. However, it’s not until you really try and write everyone down that you realise just how big families can get. You don’t need sixteen children. This is a fact1. However, it’s also a fact that had some of our ancestors not been so unconscionably fecund we wouldn’t be here today.

This is by no means a comprehensive overview of the Tapley-Battley ancestors. It’s merely scratching the surface, and pointing out some interesting things that I noticed during the scratching process. I’ve focussed on our grandparents, because they stretch half way around the world (as a group; as far as I know, no one in our ancestry has done it individually), they have done incredible things, and because people don’t pay enough attention to grandparents on days like this. Grandparents, after all, made the whole thing possible.

I’ve also stopped to have a better look at pretty much anything that’s taken my fancy along the way, and the story’s nowhere near finished. I’m an organised person, you know that. Every morning I wake up bright and early, ready to cram as much as possible into another day, according to a strict timetable. However, somehow, by some disastrous twist of fate, I managed to leave myself not half enough time in which to prepare this book. There are lots of avenues I didn’t have time to poke down, lots of censuses I didn’t have time to search (or, rather, ask someone else if they had searched), lots of people who confused me by just being born far too long ago.

This, hopefully, is a start, and an interesting start. In more ways than one. It’s a start because there’s a lot more work to do, a lot more ancestors to hunt down, and a lot more

1 I’m looking at you, Peletiah Tapley.


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wishing people wouldn’t name their children after themselves for generation after generation. And, of course, it’s a start for us. It’s a start for our start. This is where it all starts.

Hopefully, it’s also a good story. It’s got the dizzying highs, and the vomit-inducing lows. It’s got shipwrecks, ambitious apprentices and being captured by the hated British, the hated French, the hated Germans, and the hated Confederacy. And, best of all, it has a happy ending. Us.

A happy ending for a new beginning, to complicate things even further for our descendants when they try to put together a family history. I suggest we make them do it the hard way, and refuse to give any of our children first names at all.

You may be pleased to know that: “Incredible as it may seem, there are marked characteristics which appear in all branches of the [Tapley] family, notably, a quick and nervous movement, a similarity of features, a fondness for music, a stature short and a genial disposition.”2 I thought I’d only mention this after the register was signed, and the ring was firmly on.

I love you, Boë Z, and I always will. I said that this wasn’t the whole story, and, of course, it’s not. It’s nowhere near. We’re just turning over a new page now. Please accept this as my wedding present to you.

Natt

12th August, 2006Mansfield College, Oxford

2 Harriet Silvester Tapley, Genealogy of the Tapley Family (1900).


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Dorothy Sybil Allchurch(1903-1986)

The typical image of a wife of the 1950s has been that provided by America. It consists of an apron, a submissive smile, and, carried reverently to the table, a roasted fowl of truly gigantic proportions. However, as Susan Faludi points out, by 1952 there were more women at work, in America at least, than there had been at any point during the Second World War. The difference was that, by this point “the proportion of them who were relegated to low-paying jobs rose, their pay-gap climbed, and occupational segregation increased as their numbers in the higher-paying professions declined.”3

It is against this background, then, against declining status for the average women as demobilised soldiers made their way back into the workforce, and as culture became more hostile to women in the workplace, that we should examine Dorothy Sybil Battley’s achievements4. She was not the average woman, and in 1952 she became Managing Director of Battley Brothers.

Since her husband had become ill, two years earlier, she had taken over the running of the firm. After his death, in 1952, she became Managing Director, and introduced a number of innovations. It was during this period that the first non-family directors were given seats on the board, and automatic printing presses began to come to Battley Brothers, with the Heidelberg Platen5. Sybil Battley ran the firm for ten years, until her son, Bernard joined the business in 1962. She stepped down as Managing Director, but continued to work in the bindery and office for another ten years, and act as Chairwoman of the company until 1972. She attended the firm’s Annual General Meetings until her death in 19866.

Dorothy Sybil Allchurch was born in Turney Road, Battersea in the same year that Westminster Cathedral opened, and William and Gilbert Foyle began selling books from their house in Peckham. Her father, Stanley Allchurch, had moved from Bedminster7 to London, and worked as a biscuit and cake maker in the A-1 Biscuit Factory.

3 Susan Faludi, Backlash (1991), pp.544 Well, some of them. We will come to others in a minute…5 Battley Brothers: A Centenary Celebration (1998), pp.236 David and Bernard Battley, Chairman’s Report to the Annual General Meeting, 16 July 1986 (hereafter AGM)7 Home to the previous two generations of Allchurches.


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The A-1 Biscuit Factory has one of those wonderful late 19th century names that consist of taking a superlative, and adding an utterly mundane object to it, like ‘Zenith Velocipedes – when a penny farthing just isn’t fast enough!’ or ‘Pinnacle Soap – the cleaner cleaner!’ In my imagination, the A-1 Biscuit Factory is much like the place where they make the Toot Sweets in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, full of gurgling brass machines, and gentlemen in top hats and frock coats8 letting their monocles fall from their eyes in surprise when they have tasted quite how wonderful their latest biscuit creation is. However, Upton Sinclair paints a very different picture of turn-of-the-century factories9. Let us hope that the A-1 Biscuit Factory was more like the former.

Sybil left school at around the age of 14, and went to work at Battley Brothers as a finisher, meaning that she was involved in the packing and folding of the printed items10. Part of the culture of the company was its social events for its employees, including trips to the theatre and to exhibitions, and fancy-dress parties for the ‘Nippers’, the female employees11. Sybil played the organ at these parties, and also sang in the Lavender Hill Temperance Choir, as did John Rose Battley.

The Allchurches were a family who were very talented musically. Sybil was not only an organist, but also a very good soprano. Despite not being able to read music, Stanley, her father, conducted the Lavender Hill Temperance Choir, and Sybil’s brother, Sydney, could have been a professional violinist12.

It is probably worth pausing here to say a word or two about the temperance movement (especially as you’re not going to hear much about it from the other side of the family). It was an important strand in the thinking of the Liberal and Labour parties in the early 20 th

century. In fact, from Gladstone through to Tony Benn, it has been a running theme in the history of progressive opinion, and tends to go hand-in-hand with some flavours of Nonconformism13.

Possibly the best analogy for quite how vigorously abstainers felt about temperance is that of smoking. Alcohol was seen as ruinous to people’s health, detrimental to their work, and expensive. And this was before the age of Bacardi Breezers. When misery and alcoholism were seen together so often in certain strata of society, it was often more tempting to think that the alcoholism caused the misery (as alcoholism could be treated) than that the misery caused the alcoholism (as the misery could not). As today, the argument was that huge corporations were making immense amounts of money out of providing substances that wrecked lives and homes.

Probably the high point of the temperance movement14 was the Volstead Act in 1919 in America that prohibited the sale of all alcoholic beverages anywhere at any time in the United States. Temperance, up until this point, had been part of a whole platform of social reform ideas. However, the repeal of the Act during the Depression, and the crime caused by the banning of the legal sale of alcohol led to many reformers quietly dropping their vocal support for abstinence, and focussing on other areas.

8 Called things like Mr Jabez Slynt and Mr Ephraim Hardbottle. You know the sort.9 In The Jungle they usually involve filth, limb loss, and the carcasses of dead animals.10 Personal correspondence with Bernard Battley, 20th July 2006 (hereafter PCBB)11 Nowadays employers who refer to their young female workforce as ‘nippers’ and put on special parties for them probably go to prison; but this was a gentler, more trusting time. 12 PCBB13 See pp. 3414 In the Western world. It’s always gone over a little better in Muslim countries.


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This is not to say that that was the end of temperance, not by any means. I have a small paperback, printed on the wartime toilet paper, written in 1943 called Young Citizen. This pamphlet sternly urges the Young Citizen to get more involved with clubs and societies, including temperance societies, with the clear implication that they are what Hitler fears most15. Perhaps war could have been averted if only Neville Chamberlain had worried less about ‘no such undertaking having been received’ and more about sending the Band of Hope Union to defend the Maginot line, with the members of the Young Methodist Department close behind.

In 1933, Sybil married John Rose Battley, and they sang duets at the reception, continuing the musical tradition of their courtship. After the birth of their first son, David, who could not walk unaided and did not go to school until he was eleven or twelve16, we can clearly see her true strengths.

When her husband entered Parliament in 1945, she had two children, one of whom was disabled, and a husband who had been tempted to withdraw his Parliamentary candidacy as early as November 1943 because of the strain it was putting on him. She created a home around a man whose job required him to work anti-social hours, and required her, as the wife of an MP, to always be ‘on show’17. After 1950, she had the added strain of dealing with her husband’s illness, keeping the family business running, at the same time as bringing up two adolescent boys.

After her retirement in 1972, she continued to sing in a local choir, and enjoyed the social life provided by the Inner Wheel in Clapham. She enjoyed her sons’ successes, and those of her grandchildren, and took a “lively interest”18 in the company until her death. Dorothy Sybil Battley was no average woman.

15 A.E. Morgan, Young Citizen (1943), pp.13616 PCBB17 Ibid.18 AGM


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Mills Point and Tapley Cove

There is a small corner of a small village in a rocky state, where the ocean, grain by grain, washes away America, which has held Tapleys, and others of my relations, for hundreds of years. The village is West Brooksville, which, it’s pleasing to note, is north of North Brooksville, and it’s almost an island in the Penobscot and Bagaduce Rivers. It’s a strangely remote corner of Hancock County, in the Granite State, Maine. It was to here that Peletiah Tapley decided to move around 1780.

Peletiah had been brought up in Kittery, which is also in Maine, and is a place about which I know nothing. Still, Peletiah probably had his reasons. After all, Kittery sounds like a silly place. He built himself a log cabin on the right bank of the Bagaduce River19

in what was then called Bagaduce, and set to work creating 226 years worth of descendants. Peletiah had 16 children.

It is necessary when having so many children to have some way of remembering all of their names. The ‘ballad’ has come down to us today: “Susie, Lucy, Sally, Becky, Bob, Tom, Bill, Pel, Elsie, Mary, Job, John, Luther, Nancy, Joel; and little Ben died.”20

His wife, Sallie Stover, came from the Bagaduce (later Brooksville) area, and did not seem to object to the reckless procreation. Indeed, she had her first child when she was 16, and her last when she was 46. She died, exhausted, in 1823. This didn’t stop Peletiah, however; he married again, at the age of 69, although didn’t manage to produce any more children before he died, four years later, in 1830.

Peletiah was an upstanding member of the community (when he wasn’t lying down with his wife), and was one of the founders of the first parish church at Penobscot. After all, there was a lot of baptising to be done.

Over the years, and through the generations, people added to Peletiah’s log cabin. Patricia Boudreau’s A Tapley Genealogy says: “From 1784 to 1871, forty-five Tapley children had been born on the old Tapley place, only one of whom died in infancy.” 21 I like the idea of the Old Tapley Place. It makes it sound like there was an horrific accident one day, when the master of the house went insane and killed all of the servants with an

19 The sources say it was the right bank. I think that probably depends on where you’re standing.20 This version is from A Tapley Geneaology, the version from ‘The Amazing Tapley Brothers’, Yankee Magazine (January 1969) goes: “Joel, Nancy, Luther, John, Job, Mary, Elsie, Pel, Bill, Tom, Bob, Becky, Sally, Lucy, Sukey and Little Benny who died.”21 Patricia Boudreau , A Tapley Genealogy (1996) pp. 12.


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oyster fork. It’s been boarded up ever since, but some do say that, on a stormy night, you can hear the souls of the dead wandering the empty corridors of the Old Tapley Place. Foolishly, of course, a group of teenagers will decide to spend the night in the Old Tapley Place, and will perish horribly. This cannot be helped.

The inlet on which The Old Tapley Place sat (I’m not going to stop calling it that), became known over the years as Tapley Cove, known for its log cabin, and unfeasibly low infant mortality rate. That last bit’s just a guess.

Fortunately for us, and particularly me, in around 1835 the Tapleys got some new neighbours. George V. Mills, a travelling tin salesman and his new wife moved into Lot #13: the bit22 that sticks out above the cove. This had originally belonged, when the town was founded, to Joseph Webber, who had left it in his will to David Douglass, who sold it to the newlyweds in 1835. We shall from here on in refer to Lot #13, the bit that sticks out, as Mills Point, because that is what it is called.

As far as we can tell, George had met Dorothy Farnham in one of his trips to the area from Bangor, selling tin products. He was a travelling tinker. This pleases me, too. Up until this point, as far as we can tell, he had probably been living with his brother in Bangor. His brother was called Preserved. I am truly stuck now, as to whether to do a ‘jam’ joke or a ‘pickle’ joke. I’ll do neither, I’m not a performing monkey. Imagine a punchline here.

At the age of 23, George married Dorothy, and decided to move to Brooksville, where Dorothy was from, and set up home. He was a much more considerate husband than Peletiah. They only had nine children.

Apparently, George: “loved a good joke and had a very hearty laugh. When his young wife died, he was left with seven children, the oldest, Alice, sixteen years old.”23 I am not sure what these sentences have to do with each other.

George turned into an even more upstanding member of the community than Peletiah, becoming a justice of the peace, a member of the state legislature in 1870, and, in 1893, a truant officer. He slowly bought more parcels of land, and added them to his plot at Mills Point. After a while, he even had enough for his own graveyard.

There are four graves out the back of Mills Point, behind the homestead. They are the graves of Dorothy, George’s first wife, and three of their daughters: Lucy, Alice and Susan. He even mentioned the cemetery in his will: “Outside of all gifts, I put aside my plot of land where the graves are. A lot of land, 40 feet square, for a burial place forever and that said 1,600 feet of land most convenient for burial of the dead shall always be safely fenced and cared for by Edward E. Mills or those holding through him.”

Meanwhile, next door, the Tapleys had been slowly spreading, having had quite a few of the 45 children born there between 1784 and 1871. Peletiah’s son Robert (the one of the sixteen from whom I, eventually came) had ten children on his own24, and most of his brothers and sisters lived to childbearing age. Robert ended up having at least 42 grandchildren.22 100 acres.23 Martha Varnum Stayner , “A Small Tribute to a Really Big Man” from Mills, edited by Kevin Clark Mills (2004)24 This is not entirely true. His wife Polly Snow Parker (1795-1885) almost certainly helped at some point.


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By this point West Brooksville had become a town of seamen and farmers. Of Robert’s eight sons, seven became sea captains (see pp.20). At least one of George’s children sailed on one of Robert’s children’s ships. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Mills and the Tapleys were two of the most established families in the town, along with the Wassons, the Douglasses and the Farnhams, all of whom interbred merrily. There were so few people to choose from that Captain Jerome P. Tapley (my great-great grandfather) married his own cousin, Phebe Parker Tapley. People say ‘when cousins marry’ like it’s a bad thing…25

Unsurprisingly, with two such fecund families living next door to each other, eventually two were going to marry, and, on the 7th August, 1912, they did. Jerome Perkins Tapley (not the same one as above), and Ada Littlefield Mills married each other, and moved into a farm on Mills Point. No one had to move very far.

None of Jerome and Ada’s children: Edward, Merle or Rebecca stayed in Brooksville, where their families had lived for the last century. Jerome died in May 1955, and Mary Mills sold Mills Point to a Norma and Bessie Stettbacher in 1963. However, Ada was allowed to live there until she died in 1976. Ada Littlefield Mills Tapley was the last Mills and the last Tapley at Mills Point and Tapley Cove.

25 I think they’re just jealous. By the way, before you get too tickled by the in-breeding, I would point you to your great-great-uncle William Battley, who married his cousin, Martha Howlett. So there.


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John Rose Battley(1880 – 1952)

In July 1945, the British electorate returned 393 Labour Members of Parliament, compared to 213 Conservatives26, 12 Liberals and 22 Independents. Harold Nicolson, one of those Tories who lost their seats, and an exact contemporary of John Rose Battley’s, said: “It is an amazing statement of public opinion, but I am not yet quite sure what it really means. I feel sad and hurt, as if I had some wound or lesion inside.”27

In 1935, Clapham had returned a Conservative MP with a majority of over 5,000 votes. Ten years later, they were to return their first ever Labour MP, and to return him with a majority of more than 6,000 votes. As Gerald Rhodes says: “it is possible that another Labour candidate could have won Clapham in 1945, he probably would not have won it so comfortably.”28

Much more has been said about John Rose Battley (or JRB) than I can say, and it has been done by much better crafters-of-prose than me. JRB himself left us with a written account of much of his life, and the biography, The Clapham Man by Gerald Rhodes and the entry in the Dictionary of Labour Biography contain much more information than I am going to be able to provide in this short sketch, and I’d urge you to look to them for a much more complete picture.

As Michael Foot says: “Then came the great days of the greatest Labour government, the exultant hopes, the achievements, the victories which could not be denied or overturned, the setbacks, the disillusion which still – even in 1951 – did not withhold from the Labour Party the largest vote ever cast for a political party in British history.”29 Some would go further than Michael Foot. Some would suggest that, with the institution of the National Health Service, this was more than the greatest Labour government, but was the greatest government30.

26 Who, let us not forget were led by Winston Churchill, who had just won a war.27 Harold Nicolson, Diaries 1945-62 (1968), pp.27. Nicolson went on to join the Labour Party, and stand for election (unsuccessfully) at North Croydon. On 13th March 1947, he says: “I go to see Mummy. She takes my having joined the Labour Party as a cruel blow. She says ‘I never thought that I should see the day when one of my own sons betrayed his country.’” Mummy could be very cruel, sometimes.28 Gerald Rhodes, A Clapham Man: John Rose Battley, 1880-1952 (hereafter ACM)29 Michael Foot, Loyalists and Loners (1984). He is referring at the end to the fact that the Labour Party, despite receiving more votes in the General Election of October 1951, lost the election. There have to this day never been more votes cast for one party in a General Election than those cast for the Labour Party in 1951.30 When I say ‘some’, I mean ‘me’.


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Despite many Labour frontbenchers having served in the National Government, this was still a monumental change, and one with which not everyone, not even every Tory who defected to the Labour Party, was comfortable. After he joined the Labour Party Harold Nicolson’s wife, Vita Sackville-West wrote to him: “Not so sure about the Labour Party, though not wholly hostile, especially if it leads eventually to Lord Cranfield31. Of course I don’t really like you being associated with those people. I like Ernest Bevin32 and Philip Noel-Baker. I have a contemptuous tolerance of Attlee, but I loathe Aneurin Bevan, and Shinwell is just a public menace. I do not like people who cannot speak the King’s English33. The sort of people I like are Winston and Sir John Anderson.”

John Rose Battley was one of ‘those people’ with whom Vita Sackville-West could not bear to have her husband associated, although perhaps his shyness would have reconciled her to him, as it appears to have done with Ernest Bevin. JRB, it should be remembered had attempted in November 1943 to divest himself of the parliamentary candidacy for the Clapham seat, feeling the strain of his involvement with the LCC (where he had, in 1938, become the first Labour representative for Clapham).

A quiet, committed man, JRB worked almost ceaselessly for his constituency, although this led to criticisms in the constituency that he was not vocal enough in Parliament. He had drafted a maiden speech, but later told Alfred Bransom that he had been unable to catch the Speaker’s eye, and so never spoke in a debate in the House of Commons34. He asked few parliamentary questions, and only twice moved amendments to Bills in standing committees.

However, as he himself said: “a member’s constituency is his chief concern…A Member of Parliament has to be a ‘father confessor’ as well as a ‘defender of the faith’, and he can only be truly successful in as far as he can handle and help to solve his constituents’ domestic problems as ably as he represents them in the House of Commons.” 35 There are three large boxes full of the correspondence he entered into with ministers on behalf of his constituents36.

This is not to say that he was completely at his constituents’ mercy. In a telephone conversation with Bernard Battley one of the words he used to describe his father was ‘strict’37. This strictness perhaps becomes apparent in his answer to a letter from a Mr Lott, who had inquired about road safety, and did not want to be put off with stock answers: “I am not disposed to place myself in the position of being told how I should answer my constituents’ letters.”38

All through this period, JRB was a conscientious backbencher as the Labour government put in place the changes that were to shape the country in the post-war period. The only occasion on which he voted against the government was over the question of National Service. As a committed pacifist, who had worked in a market garden as a conscientious

31 Nicolson desperately wanted a peerage, the title of Lord Cranfield, and implies that he was promised one if he stood for Labour in North Croydon in 1947.32 JRB’s close neighbour as MP for Central Wandaworth.33 What Vita would have made of John Prescott we will sadly never know.34 ACM, “7) MP for Clapham”, pp.535 John Rose Battley, “12 Months’ Hard”, South London Press, July 194636 Ibid. pp.637 The other he used were ‘gentle’ and ‘religious’.38 JRB to R.F.Lott, 13th June 1946


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objector during the First World War, he naturally objected to the idea of all young men being compelled to perform military service39. He was one of 85 Labour MPs to oppose the bill (which had the support of the Conservative opposition).

JRB was in his sixty-fifth year when he entered parliament, and he was a member of the LCC at the same time. It was quite common for him to work 70-hour weeks, and he described his average day as beginning at 6 a.m. and ending whenever the House finished sitting, often in the early hours of the morning. “In one exceptional week, I managed to obtain ten hours’ sleep in four days.”40

In January of 1946 he took a few days’ rest in Devon with Walter Wakeling, but on his return he withdrew his candidature for his parliamentary seat at the next election (by which time he would be 70). It is thought that he had realised that he would be unable to keep up the exceptional work rate and strain of the Clapham seat, and that he wanted to devote more time to his family and to his business.

JRB enjoyed the traditions and the procedures of the House of Commons, and wrote a book, A Visit to the Houses of Parliament with John Battley, to describe his experiences. He enjoyed showing people around, and booking visitors into the Strangers’ Gallery. He put together a speech called ‘First Impressions of Parliament’, which he delivered many times during 1948-941.

From 1945 to 1950 he was a proud parliamentarian, a tireless worker for the members of his constituency, and a solid Labour backbencher, in a parliament of real achievements. However, reaching that point had not been an easy task, and nor was he to continue at that pace for more than that brief period.

John Rose Battley was born in Battersea in 1880. His father seems to have had many financial ups and downs during John’s youth, going from being a railway engineer to a casual labourer42, at one point, to an employed engineer, to the owner of a grocery store. JRB himself said that he had experienced a degree of hunger and poverty in his youth, although we have no reason to believe that the family was ever of the very poorest.

When he was six years old his mother died, and within a year his father had remarried. Someone, after all, had to look after his eight children. At 14, JRB went to work as an apprentice printer at the print works of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway at Victoria. He left to work at Marchbanks Printers in Battersea Rise, where he worked until 1904. He said of this period: “I found that I was not allowed to express myself – I was expected to work along what I considered antiquated and straitlaced lines, allowing me no scope for my own ideas and ambitions…my feelings were shared by my brother and we felt that the only course open to us was to start on our own.”43

This they did in their parents’ house at 23 Elsley Road in 1897. During this time JRB also worked at Marchbanks. In 1902 he joined in Society of Compositors, and he became a master printer in 1904. At this point he left Marchbanks, and concentrated on building up Battley Brothers with his brother, George.

39 See the paragraph Nonconformism pp. 2040 John Rose Battley, A Visit to the Houses of Parliament with John Battley, pp.11841 Much of this paragraph is taken from ACM, “7) MP for Clapham”, pp.13 - 1542 The work of these labourers was usually seasonal.43 Cited in Battley Brothers: A Centenary Celebration (hereafter BB:ACC), pp.5


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They bought a printworks at 40 Queen’s Road, Battersea, for £380, and incorporated the company. They were mainly printing handbills and posters for local churches and small businesses, but a sign in their window read: “Every description of printing executed with the greatest despatch and at reasonable prices.”44

By 1909, the annual turnover was almost £1,200, but George had left the company. Battley Brothers was an employer deeply interested in the welfare of its employees, offering a week’s paid annual leave, which was very rare for the time.

As a conscientious objector, during the First World War, JRB worked in a market garden near Twickenham. Slightly later he was moved, on health grounds to a factory in Lambeth. Gerald Rhodes has suggested that it was the war, and the necessity of opposition to war that drew JRB to his more active involvement in politics45. It is also at this time that we have the first mention of his ill health.

In the early 1930s JRB has two nervous breakdowns. Overwork and stress have been given as the reason for this, although Gerald Rhodes makes an interesting case for loneliness being a contributory factor, citing speeches which JRB made in which the theme of loneliness was stressed46.

Whatever the reason, JRB was admitted to Maudsley hospital in April of 1930, and his illness was though to be serious enough to warrant giving power of attorney to Herbert Baldwin, and solicitors attended the hospital to witness JRB making his will. This episode was not a particularly long one, and he was able to resume his local activities fairly shortly, and in 1931 William Bonney, his successor as President of the local Rotary Club welcomed “dear John, whom we are all delighted to see back with us again, rejuvenated.”

However, he had another breakdown early in 1932, of a much more serious and prolonged nature. This episode lasted for more than a year, and he was not able to rejoin his friends in the Rotary Club until after February of 1933. When he had returned to health in March 1933, he married Dorothy Sybil Allchurch47.

After his recovery and his marriage, JRB seems to have gone at life with a renewed fervour, both politically, and in terms of his business. He started the Westminster City Publishing Company, bought Batten and Davies printers and booksellers in Clapham, and first stood for election in Clapham North, and the LCC.

The furious pace at which he was to continue his activity until 1950 may well have been one of the contributing factors to his final breakdown in January of that year. After the 24th January 1950 the records of his answers to constituents abruptly stop. When his father-in-law, Stanley Allchurch died two months later he was not well enough to attend the funeral. As Gerald Rhodes says: “he was never again to play an active public role in Clapham.”48

44 Ibid. pp. 6-745 ACM, “2) Socialism and Politics”, passim46 Ibid. “4) Battersea to Clapham”, pp.1547 See “Dorothy Sybil Allchurch”, pp. 648 ACM “7) MP for Clapham”, pp. 19


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The last two and a half years of his life were not spent in the public service, for which he had given so much. Clapham, in the words of the Clapham Observer, was stunned by his death in November 1952, shortly before his 72nd birthday49.

He was a vigorous defender of his constituents, created a successful business with a strong social commitment to its employees, and was “the best type of nonconformist”50. However, the details by which I shall remember him come from his diaries. Despite working 70-hour weeks, being a Member of Parliament, a member of the LCC, and a Managing Director all at the same time, at the weekends JRB often recorded things like: “took the boys to the recreation ground” or “took Sybil and boys to the zoo” or “blackberrying”51. These and the picture of him, with his brother, in drag, on his honeymoon cruise.

It’s easy to get lost in people’s achievements, especially when trying to put together something like this. Once you’ve got their CVs, and read up a bit on the circumstances of their lives, it’s all too easy to begin to think that you know people in some way.

We are not, however, the sum total of our achievements. We are not a list of events in chronological order. We are, perhaps, blackberrying. Or wearing silly clothes with our brothers. We can be all of these things and more.

49 Clapham Observer, 7th November, 195250 Clapham Observer, 10th March, 195051 ACM, “6) The London County Council and the War”, pp. 19


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Adventure on the High SeasThe Brooksville Connection

What follows will probably be the most exciting chapter of the book, in the Hollywood sense. I advise you to get some popcorn and strap yourself in. Other chapters have been Merchant Ivory52, or Powell and Pressburger. This one, however, is pure Jerry Bruckheimer. I don’t want to give too much away but it’s got pirates, hurricanes, shipwrecks, escapes, ransoms, and some spectacularly enormous beards.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous chapter, the Tapleys and the Millses lived next door to each other for many years, and most of the boy-children of those two families became mariners, or were sailors for at least a part of their lives. One, Angier Tapley, a nephew of my great-great-grandfather on one side of this convoluted tree, retired from the sea to become a lighthouse keeper at Goose Rocks, where his assistant was Albert R. Mills, the younger brother of my great-grandfather on the other. Tapleys, Millses, water: it’s a running theme throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries.

The first sea captain in the family history, as far as we know, was Captain Luke Mills, who was the first Mills to move to New England. Going back any further than him, details get a little sketchy, as Virginians weren’t as meticulous about keeping detailed records of minor land disputes as their Yankee cousins. Once he moves to New Hampshire in around 1745 we know all we need to know about his buying and selling plots of land.

Captain Luke seemed desirous of getting his father-in-law’s approval after his death, or at least recreating his mode of living. In at least thirteen transactions Luke buys or sells parcels of what once had been his father-in-law’s land, almost as if he were attempting to piece it back together again. He also buys all of John Lang’s old pews. These transactions are interspersed with periods of wild sale of land, which may be for the same reason his widow had to sell large chunks of their land after he died: to pay his debts.

The Seven Years’ War was less good than the War of Jenkins’ Ear (because it was not named after a body part) but much better than the Hundred Years’ War because it was shorter, and because we won. This was a tragedy for the Native American population, as the French had only wanted access to trade routes, not to settle all the way across the new continent, massacring natives and stealing their hunting grounds while they were so doing53, but it should always be remembered that we beat the French. Yes, it may have

52 I mistyped this as ‘Merchant Ovary’ first time around.53 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Second Edition (1996) pp. 86.


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meant the near-destruction of indigenous culture in North America; yes, it may be responsible for the Anglo-Saxon monolith that now stands astride the world; yes, the profits from that war led to the beginnings of major inequality of income in the United States; but I’ll say it again: we beat the French.

Captain Luke Mills was a Master Mariner in the Mediterranean trade54, and up until the beginning of the Seven Years’ War had been happily plying his trade, and buying up everything his father owned before he died. However, on the 12 th August, 1757, he was captured whilst travelling from Barbados to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. As captures go, this is the least exciting one in the chapter.

The French, overpowering Captain Luke’s ship (which may have been the sloop ‘Neptune’, of which he was captain the year before) with eight guns and 36 men, kept Luke and his crew prisoner for four days, possibly waving smelly cheese, garlic and farming subsidies in their faces the whole time55.

After four days the crew performed a daring escape by being let go at St. Christopher to find their own way home. This they did as proud English subjects, rather than slinking away victorious like the cowardly French. The French kept their ship, and that is about as much as we know about Captain Luke’s adventure. We have absolutely no evidence that Captain Luke, when confronted by the French, pulled open his breeches and passed water in the French captain’s goblet, and presented it to the stunned Gaul, telling him that it contained “Entente Cordial”. None whatsoever.

In the summer of 1764, Captain Luke was lost at sea, and we should pass on to look at the next, more exciting, instalment of seagoing heroics. It’s the one where they fight the hated British in the name of liberty, and the right not to have to pay taxes on their slave-holdings.

Eligood56 Mills was Captain Luke’s son, and the person who moved the family to Maine. In 1780, a few, short years after the Declaration of Independence had declared that ‘all men were created equal’ (as long as they were men) (and white), Eligood was an officer on the American privateer ‘Grand Turk’.

Eligood had gone to sea with his father, Captain Luke, and was present when his father was killed. They were on a trip to the West Indies when a gale blew up, and Captain Luke was swept overboard. Eligood made to dive in after him, but the crew restrained him, and Captain Luke was lost at sea.

It is worth being clear right now as to what, exactly the difference between a pirate and a privateer is. The answer is that one travels the seas, falling on unwary ships, murdering their crews and stealing their cargo, and the other is a pirate. A privateer just happens to have a licence from someone to say he can do it. So we might not want to feel too much sympathy for Eligood when he was captured by a British man-of-war with 60 guns to his 21.

54 Kevin Clark Mills, Mills (2004)55 Just to be clear: this is a joke. I’m well aware that the Common Agricultural Policy did not exist in the 1700s56 Eligood’s name is one of the pieces of evidence in assuming that Captain Luke was the grandson of the Mark Mills who landed in Virginia in the seventeenth century, as Mark, by Mills family tradition the first Mills on the continent, is thought to have married Mary Eligood, of the Virginia Eligoods.


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Having been taken by a ship of the Royal Navy, rather than by a privateer, he and his crew were held prisoner until after the end of the war. Then they were released. His obituary, and some other sources, including one who claimed to have heard it from Eligood himself57, however, tells a rather more exciting story.

These sources suggest that the British told their prisoners that the Americans had lost the war, and that General Washington and the whole of the Continental Congress had been hanged58. They then made the mistake of informing their prisoners that they were going to transport them to England, where they would have them executed.

“What’s all that cheering?”“Um, that’s the…the cheering of defeat. The people are glad that we won, and that they stopped being so silly.”“And the fireworks?”“Dirgeworks we call them now. Only used in times of extreme sorrow.”“Bet General Washington will come and get us out.”“Well, actually, we hanged General Washington, if you must know.”“So they‘re shouting ‘Long live George Washington’ because…”“They aren’t. They are not. They are shouting ‘Wrong spiv: Geo..’ Right, that’s it, I’m taking everyone to England and having them killed. I said no talking and I meant no talking.”

And so the ship set off from Halifax59 to Boston. In the middle of the night, when the ship was moored about a mile from New London, Eligood and his crew escaped, letting themselves down from the bow with the help of ‘a friendly sentinel on the forecastle’, or a filthy traitor, depending on your point of view.

They swam three miles, and got to shore near a fisherman’s hut, near the mouth of the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire60, where they were taken in and given food and clothes61. There was good news and bad news waiting for them. The good news was that George Washington and the Continental Congress had not been killed, and that the colonies had thrown of the yoke of British tyranny. The bad news was that, in the five years they had been away, Eligood’s wife had died, his property had been lost, and that two of his brothers-in-law, prosperous merchants had been ruined by the war.

Eligood also had other adventures in his time at sea, although, according to his obituary, he later ‘professed religion’, during ‘a little reviving; in 1798, and became greatly devout. Indeed, he was so devout that: “During an illness of several months he looked forward to his dissolution with calmness and hope.” 62

When younger he had been on a voyage to the West Indies under a Captain Charles Blunt. Captain Blunt was later captured by pirates off the island of St Thomas, and, having put up a furious fight, was cut into pieces and fed to the pirates’ pigs63. You don’t see Johnny Depp doing that very often.

57 The wonderfully-named Azro Mills.58 ‘A Brief Sketch of the Mills Family of Portsmouth, New Hampshire’, The Granite Monthly (1921) Vol. 111, pp. 77-79, by the Revd Charles Blunt Mills (hereafter ABS).59 Novia Scotia, whence they could not have heard fireworks or cheering in the United States, I know.60 ABS61 Eligood Mills Obituary, The Morning Star, Limerick (Friday, January 6th, 1832)62 Ibid.63 ABS


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Eligood had amongst his older brothers another Luke, who did not get on with their father Captain Luke, at all. In his will, Captain Luke disinherited his namesake, saying: “Item, As my Son Luke Mills hath not behaved towards me as becomes the Duty of a Child, I give and bequeath to him, so soon as my executors shall think proper, Ten Pounds Sterling and a full Suit of Apparell and this I give in full of all such Portion, or Share that my said Son shall have in and to my estate, from which I disinherit him forever hereby.”64

We don’t know what Luke Jr may have done to enrage his father, but I like to imagine him tugging his beard and running away, cackling.

£10 and a suit may sound like a reasonable haul for a beard-tugger, but it pales into significance when compared to his brother’s portion: half a dwelling house, wharf, warehouses and garden, with all privileges pertaining thereto, as well as half of his father’s pasture land, all of his wearing apparel65, a feather bed and bedding, a chimney glass, “my large Silver Can, my best Gun, my Sea Books and Instruments, my two largest China Bowls, and my great Bible.”66

Undeterred by his father having been lost at sea, both his father and his brother having been captured at least once, and his brother’s captain having been cut up as pig-food, Luke, too, went to sea67, where he was promptly captured by the Algerians. The Captain and almost all of the crew were released to go and tell Samuel Cutt, the ship’s owner, that the ship had been captured, and was being held to ransom. William Bennett, the first mate, and Mills were left behind as hostages, to ensure speedy payment.

The deal was this: the hostages were to be housed in comfortable surroundings until a reasonable time had passed for the message to have got home, and the ransom to have arrived. After that they would be put in jail, and closely watched for a month. If the ransom still had not arrived, they were to be allowed to starve to death. When Captain Thomas Leigh got home he told Cutt about it straight away, and was assured that it would be dealt with swiftly.

Months passed, however, and Cutt did nothing. Bennett’s parents passed up notes to the pulpit to get the preacher to demand that Cutt pay the ransom, but still Cutt refused for months. Mills managed to escape the Algerians, but William Bennett starved to death in a dark prison in a foreign country, because Samuel Cutt refused to pay. Captain Leigh was racked by grief, and went slowly insane, until he was confined to the Alms House for the final two decades of his life.

Perhaps the most famous Mariners are the ‘Amazing Tapley Brothers’68, the eight brothers, all but one of whom became master mariners. Their father Captain Robert Tapley sailed to West Brooksville and seven of his sons followed in his footsteps. The other became a deacon, and was probably roundly teased at family gatherings.

64 Captain Luke Mills’ Will, 1764, cited in Mills, Kevin Clark Mills (2004)65 As opposed to the other kinds of apparel.66 No, I don’t know what a ‘chimney glass’ is. No, he doesn’t say who gets the rest of his guns, if Eligood only gets the best one. No, I don’t know what made his Bible so great, either. Maybe it was on DVD.67 This story is from They Came To Fish, and only mentions a Mills. However, as Captain Luke’s other sons were all dead by this time, and if it had happened to Eligood it would probably have been mentioned on his tombstone, as so much else was, the assumption is that this Mills was Luke Jr.68 ‘The Amazing Tapley Brothers’, by Warren C. Carberg, Yankee Magazine (January 1969), pp. 122-124.


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There were so many of them that, at one point, there were four of them captaining boats in the same harbour in China. Perhaps the most famous was George H. Tapley, who: “followed the sea for 52 years. He doubled the Horn nine times, made 19 voyages to the West Indies, crossed the Atlantic 26 times, and the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans four times. He crossed the equator 17 times. He made his first voyage at 13, and at 19 commanded a ship.”69

He and his second wife planned to escape to somewhere warm, and so he took her on his bark, Ironsides, whilst pregnant with their first child, to escape to the Pacific. However, when they reached Arica in Peru, Mary, his wife, died of yellow fever, having given birth to their child, who was 11 weeks old by that point. A Brooksville contemporary wrote: “Capt. George Tapley writes if he can get any one to take the brig he will come and with the baby and Mary Sister by steam. O what a change. She was married well but o how soon was that dear young lady called to give all that up that was dear to her but their [sic] is a blessed hope in her death. We hope she is with her Saviour to die no more also one of his mats [mates] is dead.”70 I particularly like the way she was so clearly moved by the death of one of the mates on the ship as well.

Captain George did find someone to take his brig, and began to make his way back to Brooksville with a nurse and his baby. Unfortunately, by the time they reached Aspinwall, she, too had died. George sent the nurse away, and had his child embalmed in a keg of alcohol, in order to return her body to Brooksville. The next year, he went back to Peru, and collected his wife’s body, and on the 17th February, 1871 she was buried with her child in Mount Rest Cemetery in Brooksville. Captain George later married again, and, after he retired, taught navigation to the boys of the town, and was remembered for bringing presents for Brooksville’s children back when he returned from a voyage71.

I, however, have descended from one of George’s mariner brothers. Captain Jerome Perkins Tapley, who managed to have not one shipwreck, but two. In 1873, Jerome captained the three-masted schooner, ‘David Wasson’ out of Brooksville. The owner of the ship had decided not to take her on that voyage, but his son, Wasson Jones, was so insistent about being allowed to go and see the world that his father let him go along. It was meant to be a pleasant voyage, as they transported lumber from Bangor (Maine) to Curacao72.

When they were in the latitude of Bermuda, a terrible gale arose, and everything was swept off the boat. Eventually, the boat was flipped over completely, and smashed. The captain and crew were left hanging onto bits of flotsam for four days73, without food or water, until they were rescued and taken to Montevideo. Wasson Jones was lost at sea.

Margaret Lord Varnum wrote: “Wasson Jones was a promising lad. He was the idol of their hearts but he is gone never to return until the sea shall give up their dead. Then may parents and grandparents brothers and meet to part no more.”74 This shows just how literally some of our ancestors took the stories of the Second Coming, when the dead

69 Ibid.70 Margaret Lord Varnum, Diary of Margaret Lord Varnum, (10th August, 1869).71 The kind of behaviour that could get him put on a Sex Offenders’ Register these days.72 Ibid. (14th December, 1873)73 Margaret Lord Varnum says four days, Yankee magazine says six days.74 Ibid.


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would rise from their graves75, and what a tragedy was felt when people were lost at sea. They could not be near their families in Mount Rest Cemetery.

One story runs that before Wasson Jones left his parents, he ran a flag up the flagpole in their garden, and demanded that it not be taken down before he returned. On the night of the storm near Bermuda, there was also a gale in Brooksville. When his mother looked out of the window the following morning she saw that the flag was at half-mast, and so began to sneakily get dressed in order to raise it again before her husband might see. Whilst she was doing up stays, ribands, corsets and whatever else made up nineteenth-century women’s costume, her husband did get up and see it, and hurriedly rushed into the garden to raise it again, before his wife could be disturbed by the sight76.

It was assumed, because the crew were gone so long, that everyone had drowned, but it was just that they were having to get passage on various boats going most of the way around the world to get home again. Captain Jerome Perkins and his crew made the final stage of their voyage, back across the Atlantic, on the ‘Hattie E. Tapley’, built by Jerome’s brother, another Captain Robert, in honour of his wife, out of Liverpool.

This wasn’t the last piece of bad luck to hit Captain Jerome. Three years later, in 1876, his brig, the ‘Nellie Clifford’ was secured at Funchal, Madeira, on a sunny afternoon, when a storm began to blow up. Captain Jerome ordered everything to be battened down, an extra watch was posted, and an extra anchor was hung and readied for an emergency. Throughout the night a tropical hurricane beat the ‘Nellie Clifford’, and began to drag the ships in the bay around.

Captain Jerome dropped the second anchor, and worked to keep the ship’s head to the wind. The wind, however, was too strong, and turned the ship sideways on, all the better to smash it against the rocks. Jerome ordered the crew to cut the rigging and let the mast and spars go over the side, but it was all for nothing, and they had to abandon ship, swinging each other to shore on a canvas buoy. Captain Jerome was the last to leave the ship, clutching the ship’s log to his chest, and his leg was broken on an outcropping of rock as he was swung to shore77.

The ship was lost, but all of the crew were safe. When my great-uncle Merle went to Funchal to see the port, and research a story about it he was writing, the worst storm to hit the port in 50 years was what welcomed him: “When these facts became known, there were several Madeirans who (jokingly, I hope) noted the possibility of the Tapley family having a bad influence on Madeira’s weather and suggested that we leave, not to return!”78 However, I think this may present an opportunity, and that we should perhaps go back to become kings of Madeira, threatening to smash houses and swimming pools with our mighty storms each time they disobey us.

The last nautical adventure happened on the last voyage of the younger Captain Robert’s ‘Hattie E. Tapley’, built for him in 1862. Captain Robert Jr79 had previously ensured that at least one member of the family was taken prisoner in every way fought on the

75 Like in Shaun of the Dead.76 Kevin Clark Mills, Mills (2004)77 ‘In The Wake Of The Storm’, W. Merle Tapley, Connecticut Square & Compass (1990).78 Ibid. I have a tendency to blame the weather, too, when I am asked to leave somewhere, and told never to return.79 This is a pretty unhelpful thing to call him, as he, too, had a son called Robert who became a sea captain in the Old Dominion Line.


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American mainland between 1492 and the present day, by being captured by the Confederates of the ‘Alabama’80, whilst aboard the ‘Mark L. Potter’. Told that they could bring nothing with them but the clothes they wore, Robert smuggled a daguerreotype of his wife under his coat, and had to watch as they burnt his ship. "So near a spectator to this sacrifice was Captain Tapley that the crackling of flames, the crash of falling spars and the sharp hissing of blazing fragments going overboard were sounds indelibly impressed upon his memory."81 How we are meant to surmise exactly what was impressed indelibly upon his memory, we will never know (but, presumably, he always will).

On the 2 March, 1878, he sailed for Yokohama, Japan for the last time in the ‘Hattie E. Tapley’. On the 13th September, on the way home the crew saw a “low, rakish looking vessel” that appeared to be following them, and Captain Robert grew convinced that she was a pirate. At dusk, he ordered all of the crew on deck, ready to grind down their knives to attach to bamboo poles, to repel boarders. The Captain then ordered thousands of carpet nails to be scattered across the decks, so that bare-footed pirates would have a hard time. They turned off the lights, and prepared for a tense night.

“And as I stood alert at the rail with my bamboo handpike, I wondered what the good old folks of Brooksville would think if they could glimpse this strange scene thousands of miles away aboard the 'Hattie E. Tapley'. Captain Tapley steered by the stars that night, and a dozen times I heard him say that the next trip to the Far East, he would have enough rifles aboard to arm every man of the crew. When morning dawned, we saw that the pirate craft had been joined by two others, but the wind freshened and we soon left them way below the rim of the distant horizon.”82

Captain Tapley never took another trip to the Far East, although he may well have sat around the home armed to the teeth. As I have said, his son became a captain with the Old Dominion Line, but these were the last of the Tapley mariners out of Brooksville.

80 Between them, the British-built ships ‘Alabama’ and ‘Florida’ sank or captured more than 100 of the USA’s merchant vessels, leading to a $15 million compensation claim after the war.81 Sailing Days on the Penobscot, George S. Wasson, cited in Mills.82 ‘Aboard the Hattie E. Tapley’, Brooks W. Grindle, cited in Mills.


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Janeth Adeline Ford(1916-1968)

This, I am afraid, is going to have to be very brief. Certain people, when asked about their parents provided biographies, photographs, anecdotes and avenues for further research. Others produced nothing. Guess which applies in this case.

So, this is all going to have to come from odds and ends I remember hearing around the dinner table (and she was most often mentioned around the dinner table), and what little I have been able to find out in terms of actual facts. Here come the facts:

Janeth Adeline Ford was born in Pittsfield, Massachussetts on the 8th October, 1916. Her parents were Dean Wilbur Ford, and Louisa Caton Tarment. Janeth’s Tarment grandparents had moved to America from Bedfordshire some time after 1870 (when they were married in the Wesleyan Chapel in Luton), and this propagated a strong Anglophile tendency through the Tarment side of the family.

Janeth married Edward Jerome Tapley on the 2nd October, 1942, less than a week before her 26th birthday. She had two sons, Dean and Emery Tapley, and died on the 5 th July, 1968, when she was just 51 years old.

There. That’s it. That is completely it for facts. I am pretty sure that she was a home economics teacher, but that, despite that, she made revolting duchesse potatoes, which my father hated. As I said, she only ever really comes up at mealtimes.

In many cultures there are examples of terrifying, monstrous figures that parents use to terrorise their children into good behaviour, whether it’s the witches who will make boats out of your uncrushed eggshells, or the Krampus himself dragging you out of the door. Janeth served much this purpose in our household.

If the legends are to be believed she was a terrifying autodidact with a penchant for table manners. She would not allow stacking of plates at the table, or any number of minor infractions of what she considered to be the correct protocols. Her spectre would be raised when such heinous atrocities as having one’s elbows on the table occurred at mealtimes, and she served a double purpose in showing children how lucky they were:


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“You’re lucky Janeth’s not here.” She could produce both guilt and terror, then, in those that had never met her83.

That, I am afraid is about the sum total of my knowledge. I remember only two real stories. The first was that when my father told her that he wanted to be a minister she burst into tears, and tried to convince him not to, because she knew how difficult they were with their minister. This is probably exactly the support a young man needs when considering future career options.

Oh, and she also had a habit of saying “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.” This was apparently the response to all sorts of things, and could be applied in any situation.

An interesting note about when she was gone is that she had always claimed that when she died she would come back as a cardinal. Cardinals are not native to Connecticut, and yet, for the week after her death, a cardinal sat outside the kitchen windows of my family’s house. Now, if it had been a cardinal which only appeared when people were eating off their knees in front of the TV to tap at the window and make cross noises, I’d take the story a little more seriously.

That, then is all I know of Janeth Adeline Ford. Perhaps if I ever get the chance to update this there will be more to add then. Until then, I leave you with the images I had, of a grandmother who could never be satisfied, because you could never meet her to do it. Her standards were always more exacting than your achievements, and she was most definitely around not to tell you so.

83 I say that knowing it to probably be false. I doubt, in his prolonged campaign of rebellion, she ever occurred to Joshua, as he lay completely splayed across the table his nose in the gravy boat, blowing bubbles in the bread sauce.


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Maurice Hanrahan(1917 – 2001)A Greater Escape

In 1917, Belfast was a city divided in a country divided. On Easter Monday, 1916, a thousand nationalists had taken the General Post Office in Dublin, and declared Ireland to be an independent republic. In 1919, all 73 constituencies in Ireland outside Ulster had returned Sinn Fein MPs who began to meet in Dublin as the Dail Eireann, or Irish Parliament. Michael Collins’ Irish Republican Army, and the British government’s84

response, the Black and Tans fought each other, including a particularly savage attack in which the Black and Tans opened fire on the crowd at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park.

Niall Ferguson says: “But as would happen so often in the period, the British lacked the stomach for repression.”85 He says this because he is a Tory. And quite, quite mad. At this time, the British forces lost 1,400 men (Niall does not bother to record the number of Irish casualties); the Black and Tans burnt a large portion of Cork; and in November 1920 Lloyd George said: “We have murder by the throat…we had to reorganise the police, and when the Government was ready we struck the terrorists and now the terrorists are complaining of terror.”86 It’s probably a good thing the British didn’t have the stomach for repression.

Born in Ulster in 1917, this was the Belfast Maurice Hanrahan left as a baby. His upbringing in a strict Catholic family – he had to go to three services every Sunday 87 and the only pastime allowed was reading the Bible- led to his dislike of organised religion. 88

He was studying for his Naval exams in Liverpool when he met his future wife, Ailsa Leonard.

When the war broke out he was a Sub-Lieutenant in the Fleet Aim Arm, and flew Swordfish from H.M.S. Furious. The Fairey Swordfish was a biplane torpedo bomber,

84 Specifically Winston Churchill’s, see Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939, Robert Rhodes James (1970) pp. 163-165 (hereafter C:ASIF85 Niall Ferguson, Empire (2003) pp. 32986 Cited in C:ASIF, pp. 16587 Any God who demands attendance at more that two services a day is too insecure and petty to worship very enthusiastically.88 Personal correspondence with Sarah Battley


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known to some of those who flew and fitted it out as ‘the Stringbag’, because it could carry almost anything.

Some thought that the Swordfish was outdated even by the beginning of the war. However, it played a part in two major victories early in the war, being responsible for the destruction of the Italian fleet at Taranto, during a night attack, and also having helped sink the Bismarck. Indeed, the very fact that it was so slow was perhaps an advantage, as it was too slow for the fire-control predictions on the Bismarck to predict where the planes were going to be by the time the shells reached them.

Its weaknesses were shown up, however, in the Channel Dash of 1942, when all of the Swordfish used were destroyed. This led to the Swordfish being used mainly against U-boats after this point. Slow and old-fashioned though it might have been, the Swordfish outlasted its intended successor, the Fairey Albacore, and sank 14 U-boats during the course of the war.

If the Swordfish were old, H.M.S Furious was positively ancient. Originally fitted out in 1916 as a Courageous Class cruiser to help in a landing on Germany’s Baltic coast, her 18-inch guns had to be removed when it was found that firing them tended to buckle her hull. Left with a large ship with no guns, the Navy refitted her as one of the first aircraft carriers.

On 3rd August, 1917 the Furious became the first moving ship to have a plane landed on her, as Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning did in a Sopwith Pup. When he tried to repeat his feat the next day, one of his tyres burst during the landing, and his plane went overboard, killing him. This was from which Maurice Hanrahan was flying the slowest planes in the sky in the early stage of the war.

Trondheim is a port in Norway that was occupied on the first day of the German invasion in 1940, and was not liberated until the end of the war. Not that the Allies didn’t try. On April 9 1940 Admiral Forbes first sent a group of ships, including the Furious to attack Narvik and Trondheim. Unfortunately, there were no fighter planes with this groups (the Swordfish were torpedo bombers), and so the Luftwaffe sank pretty much whatever they wanted to.

Four days later, there was a slightly more successful attack, and the Royal Navy gained control of the fjords around Narvik, although it and Trondheim were still held by the Germans. Holding these coastal regions, and Vaernes airfield, the Germans could continue to fortify Norway, despite the efforts of the Navy.

On 22nd September 1940 Maurice Hanrahan was flying his Swordfish over the fjord north of Vaernes airfield when a heavy fog settled. Lost, unable to find the Furious, he was forced to ditch his plane into the fjord, and to try to survive in the icy water. Having survived some days in the fjord89, he was captured by the Germans.

Having been forced to march across Poland, and having attempted escape from many prisoner-of-war camps, some time after 1942, he was sent to Stalag Luft III. Stalag Luft III was a prisoner-of-war camp in what is now Zagań in Poland. It had been designed to hold airmen who were persistent escapees. There were seismographs in the ground, so that digging would be detected. The barracks were raised, so that guards could see any

89 Ibid.


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attempts at tunnelling. The whole camp was built on sandy sub-soil, which could easily be distinguished from the topsoil. Up until 1943 there had been 30 tunnel attempts, and all had failed. The camp was designed to be absolutely escape-proof. That is, until the largest escape from any prisoner-of-war camp happened in it in March 1944.

Although Maurice helped dig the tunnels, he was not one of the escapees that night, which was probably fortunate, as we shall see later. Three tunnels: Tom, Dick and Harry were dug down through the cement bases on which the stoves in each barracks sat. The main problem was the sand.

The sand tended to collapse the tunnels, and so they had to be supported. The main material used was slats from underneath the beds. Each bed started with 20 slats, and it was estimated that, by the time of the escapes, they were down to 8 per bed. This cannot have been good for anyone’s backs.

Neither can the fact that, to avoid the seismographs, they had to dig 9 metres (27 feet) straight down, before they could start actually tunnelling out. This meant that each tunnel, not including large chambers for ventilation or extra sand which fell in whilst tunnelling required the moving of 1,536 cubic feet of sand.

That’s a lot of sand. It’s especially a lot to have to distribute around a prisoner-of-war camp where the topsoil is a different colour without anyone noticing. To do it, they used penguins. I had hoped that this meant that they had an army of trained birds who slid along the tunnels moving sand, but, apparently, a penguin was a long, thin bag, usually made of a sock, which could be hidden down a trouser leg. Once in place it could be filled with sand, and surreptitiously distributed around the camp, possibly whilst whistling and staring innocently at the sky90.

Although Stalag Luft III was, by all accounts, one of the better POW camps in terms of the treatment of its prisoners, it was not as jolly as it was made to seem in the film The Great Escape, where, I seem to remember one of the punishments meted out to prisoners was having to use a flowerbed to grow vegetables. Oh, and Steve McQueen wouldn’t have been there. All of the American prisoners were moved to an adjoining camp before Harry was completed in March 1944. When Maurice was invited tot he premiere of The Great Escape he declined, saying that it did not bear much resemblance to reality.

There were no heroics on motorcycles, either. 76 men escaped on the night of the Great Escape, and 73 were recaptured. Hitler himself was so incensed by mass escape that he ordered 50 of the men shot, a quite unprecedented number, and one that prompted Anthony Eden to make a speech about it in the House of Commons. Three-quarters of the men who escaped were recaptured and killed. When the rest of the camp were told what had happened, they sewed black diamonds onto their sleeves, some going so far as to use their last socks for material.

When the Germans took stock of what had gone missing in order to build the tunnels, they came up with an estimate of 4,000 bed boards, 90 actual beds, 52 tables, 34 chairs, 1,700 blankets, and 1,400 ‘Klim’ tins91. Some might argue that this undermines their reputation for ruthless efficiency somewhat.90 When the Germans cleared the area where Dick was meant to emerge in the woods, that tunnel was abandoned, and after that was used to store much of the sand that was coming out of the other two tunnels.91 The Red Cross milk tins were referred to as ‘Klim’ tins, and made up much of the ventilation system for the three tunnels.


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As the Russians approached in January 1945, Maurice and the rest of the prisoners at Stalag Luft III were all marched to Stalag Luft VIIA. They were liberated on the 29 th

April, 1945 by General Patton92.

In 1959, Lieutenant Commander Maurice Hanrahan left the Navy to work at Vickers-Armstrong Aircraft in Weybridge. He left some years later to become a Director of Greggs publishing firms, which specialised in university texts. He died a month after his wife, on the 10th February, 2001.

92 Despite what he would have you believe, General Patton is believed to have had some help in this from other soldiers.


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Mansfield College

I thought that as we have just stood in the Chapel, in front of people enduring the stifling heat / torrential hail (delete as applicable), it might also be worth including a little bit about the place and its connections. A Why We Are Here, if you like.

At some point before March 1826 George Storer Mansfield and the Revd Timothy East, Congregational minister in Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham sat down to have a conversation about God. When George said: “What shall I do with my property? Tell me how I may employ it for the honour of God?”93 Revd East replied that the best thing George could possibly do was to found a college for the education of men for the Congregational ministry. He was in no way influenced in his decision about what God would have wanted by the fact that he, himself, was a Congregational minister.

So, on October 3rd, 1838 Mr Storey and his two sisters opened Spring Hill College in Birmingham for nine students, whilst Revd East travelled the country trying to get sponsors for the new institution. The course lasted six years, with the first two devoted to: Latin, Greek and Mathematics, Hebrew and Chaldee, Logic, and Mental and Moral Philosophy, whilst also focusing on the English Language with regard to Rhetoric, English Grammar and Philology, Philosophy of Language, the Principles and Canons of Verbal Criticism, the History of the English Language and the Principles of Composition. Nowadays, you can get away with one or two essays a week.

Before the repeal of the Test Act in 1828, no one but Anglicans had been allowed to attend Oxford or Cambridge, or hold public office. No Catholics, no Methodists, no Congregationalists, no atheists, no Jews, no Baptists. In fact, if the same held true today, the congregation of our wedding would have been pretty sparse. And they would have been watching two absent people at an altar at which the minister was not allowed to preach. Conservatives often like to mention that the Test Act was repealed in a Tory Parliament under that most Ultra Tory Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington94. However, what those commentators often also fail to point out, was that the Government opposed repeal of the Test Acts, and was soundly defeated. So there.

By the 1870s, Non-Conformists were regularly attending the universities, and some were worried that they were being infected with the Anglican rites they had to attend at many

93 Mansfield College, Oxford: Its Origins and Aims (1890) pp.394 “the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts of 1828, and the passage of Catholic emancipation in 1829 showed that the Tories were capable of moving with the times,” Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (1970), pp. 10


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of the Colleges. “Members of Nonconformist families came into a society whose religious associations, customs, and influences were altogether unlike those of their homes. The faith in which they had been reared had no living associations, no outward and active being, and no academic representative at Oxford.”95 Presumably undergraduates turned up at home after their first term in Oxford and started putting posters of archbishops on their walls, going around smelling of incense, and starting arguments over the turkey about Cardinal Newman. This would never do.

So, on the 15th October, 1889 Spring Hill College in Birmingham was moved to Oxford, becoming a post-graduate Permanent Private Hall, which only offered one subject: theology. “Hitherto the return of the Nonconformists to Oxford after their exclusion, has been little more than a pretence, and has by no means realised the expectations formed of it. But the founding of Mansfield makes that return a reality, and renders it possible for Nonconformists to feel that in Oxford they are at home.”96

This is probably the place to drop in a short word about Nonconformism, as it takes in quite a lot of our forebears. Nonconformists, or Dissenters, or the Free Churches are those that reject the idea of an established, national church. Essentially, it’s pretty much everyone except Anglicans and Catholics.

I’ve always like to think of myself as part of the Nonconformist tradition. Maybe it’s just the name: Nonconformists, Dissenters are an awkward, vocal and thinking bunch. They refuse to sign up to accepted orthodoxy. They have a history which encompasses the Levellers, Puritans, Quakers, Suffragettes, Tony Benn and Nye Bevan, Lloyd George and Gladstone. Their history in Britain has been marked by the activists who have worked for social change. That’s my reading, anyway, although to most people they are just annoying killjoys who should stop causing trouble over nothing.

Your grandfather, John Rose Battley97, seems to me to have epitomised much of what I have always liked about the Nonconformist label in one particular episode. In 1947, the Labour Government introduced the National Service Act, to introduce conscription for 18 months’ service in the armed forced for every man aged 18 and over. Your grandfather, although a loyal and committed supporter of the Government throughout the rest of his time as an MP, was also a committed pacifist, and could not bring himself to vote for a motion that would increase the size of the armed forced, and lead to everyone having experience of a militarised life. He was one of 85 Labour MPs to vote against the Bill98 in its second reading in the House of Commons. This seems to me characteristic of Nonconformism, and implicit in its title: the ability and desire to be led by one’s conscience rather than by slavish loyalty to a party, and the willingness not to conform, to be the awkward one, to stand by your beliefs, no matter what the cost.

It was to create a home for these sorts of people in Oxford that Mansfield College, nominally was founded. Of course, not every Nonconformist is a nonconformist, but in the tapestry of our families, it is quite an important thread.

In 1941 my grandfather, Robert S. Paul went to Mansfield to study for his MA, and went on to do his D.Phil99 there, which he completed in 1949. It was whilst at Mansfield that

95 Dr W. B. Selbie, Mansfield College, Oxford: Its Origins and Aims (1890), pp. 3296 Ibid. pp. 4497 Indeed, whilst in politics in Clapham, he was known as ‘John the Baptist’.98 Which passed because the Conservative Opposition (led by Winston Churchill) supported the Bill.99 In Church History


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he met Eunice Paul, a Modern Languages student who had been evacuated from Westfield College, University of London. She has told stories of sitting in the Principal’s Lodgings with the my grandfather during the war, listening to John Marsh read the stories of Damon Runyon. I think that the Congregational Society’s meeting were held at Mansfield, and it was at one of these that my grandparents met.

The room in which we are staying tonight (C1) is in the John Marsh building, named after the same John Marsh who appears in the paragraph above, which we have a video of the Queen Mother opening in 1963. Also, the rooms in which my grandparents sat listening to Damon Runyon being read are the same rooms I occupied for a summer in 1998, whilst being Acting Assistant Junior Dean and applying for theatre jobs that I didn’t get.

My Uncle Martin was a Junior Year Abroad student at Mansfield, although by that time the college was no longer just a place for post-graduate studies in Theology. This is fortunate, because had it been, I would never have got in.

In 1995, I came up to study Modern History at Mansfield100, the year in which the College got its Royal Charter. This made absolutely no difference to the way in which the College functioned, the subjects it offered or the students who went there, it just meant that it was officially allowed to call itself a ‘college of the University’, rather than a Permanent Private Hall. So, for snobbery’s sake, it was an excuse for a big party.

I spent three years at the College generally avoiding work. During my time there I did 19 plays and went to 11 lectures (10 of those were in my first year). Later, having left, I was asked to fill in as Assistant Junior Dean over the summer, which meant working on the Lodge, fixing things broken by the students at the summer school, and lying on the Quad.

As far as I know, I may be the first person since its founding to be in the third generation of a family which has attended Mansfield101. Without Mansfield, the situation of my grandparents’ meeting would have been very different, if possible at all. Without Mansfield, I would not have met the people I met, and would probably have got a proper job at some point, not leaving me available to go to News Revue auditions. Without Mansfield it is very possible that I might not have existed, or that, if I did, we would not be standing here102. I mean, obviously we would not be standing here because without Mansfield here wouldn’t be here, but…you know what I mean.

Mansfield has never been an especially big or impressive college. I remember that when I was at the College one year it was too poor to qualify for the Poor Colleges Fund. I have a leaflet sent out from the college in 1952, entitled Vision Fulfilment? In which it makes it clear that it has had to make its staff much smaller, is unable to buy library books “with the same freedom as in the past”, and that it needs another £4,000 a year to

100 At Oxford Modern History is everything that has happened since the Romans left Britain, and the course starts at around 460 A.D. I had thought before that that modern history meant things that happened after the First World War or maybe the Crimean War. Generally, I expected to be able to watch a video about it. I found that there was to be no watching of videos. And that they expected me to know who the Anglo-Saxons were.101 Although the same might be true of a Caird or Micklem. Still, as I said, “as far as I know” I was the first.102 It has been suggested that one of the reasons I got the name I did was, partially, to do with Nathaniel Micklem, principal when my grandfather was at Mansfield. So, weirdly, were it not for the College you might have ended up marrying someone called Craig Tapley, or Andy, or Shane. Which would not have been so good.


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survive. There is a handy tearaway sheet at the back, so that you can send your money to them.

That, then, is the College we are at: poor, shabby. Unable even to have an enclosed quad, but also hard-working, led by its conscience, and delighting in being awkward. I like that. That is where we have just been married.


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Ailsa Leonard(1918 – 2001)

In January 2002, the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary announced that Ebrington Barracks in Londonderry was to close. With it went a fortification that had stood, in some fashion, since the Siege of Derry in 1688103, that had been the starting point for the biggest convoy of the Second World War, and that was pivotal in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Ebrington Barracks changes their name to HMS Sea Eagle in 1947, and became the headquarters of the Joint Anti-Submarine School. After the troubles had led to soldiers from Sea Eagle crossing the Foyle to keep order in Bogside in 1969, the base was returned to the Army, and its name became Ebrington once again. In its mess hung a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II painted by Ailsa Leonard, or, as she was then, Ailsa Hanrahan.

Ailsa Leonard was brought up around Liverpool, and met her future husband, Maurice Hanrahan when they were both studying at Clark’s College before the war. She was doing a Secretarial Course, and he was training for his Naval exams. She had enjoyed the theatre, but decided that it was impractical as a career choice, and so was undergoing secretarial training instead104. She later began to train to be a teacher, but did not complete the training.

She was also an accomplished artist, and was commissioned by the Navy to paint a portrait of Captain ‘Johnny’ Walker, the famous hunter-killer of U-boats. It is interesting that there is a certain kind of person who would be considered a borderline psychotic in times of peace, living in an ordinary society, but whose skills are essential during a war. Indeed, in a war it might be a positive boon to have those certain kinds of people fighting with you rather than against you.

Some might argue that Winston Churchill, whose policies in Ireland had led to the violence attendant on the Black and Tans, and who said that it was: “alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Ghandi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace”

103 Although the modern barracks have only stood since around 1841.104 This seems to be something of a theme in the family. My grandfather, Robert Paul, wanted to be an actor or an artist, but decided that he could not afford to, and so borrowed money to go to Oxford, instead. He, too, worked as a commercial artist for a time to make money before leaving for university.


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whilst advocating the breaking up of Ghandi’s Congress Party and the deportation of its leaders, was one105. Captain Frederick John Walker may also have been one.

Captain Frederick John Walker sunk more U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic than any other British or American commander. He was the first to suggest that they should actively seek out and destroy submarines, rather than just defending convoys. His ‘enthusiastic’ attitude to this was shown by his playing ‘A-Hunting We Will Go’ over the tannoy of his ships as they returned to base. He died of exhaustion in July 1944 having successfully defended the ships needed for the D-Day landings against U-boat attacks for two full weeks. As HMS Sea Eagle became the headquarters for the Joint Anti-Submarine School, it was only appropriate that they hang the portrait of the most successful anti-submarine commander of the Second World War there.

Later, Ailsa was also commissioned to paint the 6-foot portrait of the Queen, in dress robes, and the Order of the Garter that was to hang in the mess in HMS Sea Eagle. Unfortunately, in the mid-1960s rheumatoid arthritis meant that she was unable to paint any more.

We can only imagine how difficult the war years must have been for her, knowing that Maurice Hanrahan was a prison in various German camps. She, as did all our grandparents, belonged to a generation that seem to have accepted the tragedies that befell them, and come through them as stronger people. Indeed, it was a time in the world that demanded great sacrifices from people, and enabled us to have the world in which we live now.

In all, then, I shall finish with the words of her daughter, in a email to me, which say, perhaps, most of what needs saying. Ailsa Leonard “had a wicked sense of humour and adored her grandchildren.”

105 See Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study In Failure 1900-1939 (1970) for more on his more ‘colourful’ theories.


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John Tapley(c. 1638 – 1693)Fell from Devon

John Tapley appeared in Salem, Massachusetts in 1666 from out of nowhere. This is obviously not entirely true; he came from somewhere, but we can’t find out where. The two most likely places for him to have come from are the West Country or East Anglia.

Salem was founded in 1628 by a group of planters from the West Country; then, during the Great Migration of the 1630s, it was filled out by people from Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent. These two groups had very different ideas of what the New World should be like: “The West Country and East Anglian conceptions of the ideal community tended to differ in material ways. Salem’s West Countrymen had originated in an area of dispersed and separate farms…East Anglians tended to envision the ideal community as a compact village.”106 This tended to lead to the one group settling the outlying areas in separated farms and homesteads, whilst the other congregated in the towns and villages. John Tapley lived in Salem Neck, near, but not in the actual town of, Salem. We have no idea if this means anything.

Harriet Silvester Tapley suggests that John (or maybe his father) came from the town of Marldon in Devonshire107. She thinks this because there were Tapleys, Endicotts, Peters, Gilberts and Yableys in Marldon in the early seventeenth century, and then, suddenly there were Tapleys, Endicotts Peters, Gilberts and Yableys in Salem by the middle of the century. This seems like a reasonable assumption, despite the fact that Harriet was from a branch of the family who didn’t arrive in America for another 50 years.

In 1666, John Tapley, a fisherman bought three or four acres of land from John Mason. This is the Tapleys arriving in the New World, and it was a wonderful time, by all accounts, to be a fisherman.

Fishing was one of the Colonies’ major industries. The Revd John Higginson, the senior pastor of Salem, said that you could catch lobsters in Salem that weighed 25 lbs, and that “the least boy could catch and eat what he will of them.”108 Undeterred by these gigantic crustaceans, John became a fisherman anyway. Who knows, he may have spent his days

106 Richard Gildrie, “Salem 1662 – 1668” cited in Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer (1989) pp. 183-184.107 Harriet Silvester Tapley, Genealogy of the Tapley Family, quoted in A Tapley Genealogy, Patricia Boudreau (1996) pp. 152 – 162.108 Quoted in Home Life in Colonial Days, Alice Morse Earle (1898) pp. 117.


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wrestling enormous prawns into his boat, and fending off marauding barnacles with his oars.

Another advantage to being a fisherman is that you were excused military service. So dependent was the Massachusetts Bay Colony on fishing, as the one source of abundance the colonists knew how to take advantage of straight away, that the Revd Hugh Peter decreed that no one would have to stop fishing to undergo military training, as all other men had to do. A good example of how important fishing was to New England is that when the Anne arrived from England in 1623, bringing the first colonists’ wives and children, all their husbands could offer were lobsters and water as a welcoming feast109. “Here,” they said, “Take this, which looks like an angry stone, break it open, and eat it; and for afters I’ve got us some brackish water which something may have peed in. Welcome to America!”

On 21st March, 1677, John Tapley sold some land to John Higginson Jr, with the indenture that John T. should also pay to John H. “ye full and just sume of twenty-six pounds and six shillings in refuse or merchantable dry fish at ye current price, at or before the first day of May in ye year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty three.”

There were three grades of fish: merchantable, middling, and refuse. The merchantable fish was of the very highest grade, and was normally exported to Europe, who, being Catholic, couldn’t get enough fish on Fridays110, and were willing to pay a premium for it. The middling fish were eaten at home, or used on board ships, and the refuse fish was shipped to the West Indies for slaves to eat, and became known as ‘Jamaica Fish’. Thus John Tapley could pay John Higginson in either the best or the worst kind of fish (presumably he’d have needed a lot more of the worst kind). My loan companies have all refused to let me repay them in ‘the worst kind of dead fish’, but this is because they don’t know their history.

Whatever John Tapley enjoyed doing in his spare time, it probably wasn’t dressing up. In 1634 the Massachusetts General Council had passed sumptuary laws banning people from wearing gold, silk, silver or lace thread, and forbidding anyone from wearing ‘slashed’ clothes. In 1652, a man was ‘presented’ (‘grabbed by his neighbours, and dragged into a courtroom’) for wearing an “excess in bootes, ribands, gould and silver lace”. This is why Adam Ant sold very few singles in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Indeed, the colony was a highly religious place, and the chances are that John was, too. It has become fashionable to claim, recently, that most people in the New World at this time didn’t care too much about religion, and were only there for some sweet, sweet fishing. This, however, is a serious misrepresentation of the character of the place, as even Salem, as a seaport one of the least religious places in Massachusetts Bay Colony, had more than half of its population registered as a member of a church (and that did not include children).

Most of those who didn’t come to church were young men without property of their own, and it was not possible to be of any great status in the town without being a member of the church. Indeed, in 1680, John signed a petition asking for a new church in Salem, so the chances are good that he was as enthusiastic a Puritan as the next man. Unless the next man was Cotton Mather.

109 Ibid. pp. 117-8.110 There are absolutely no generalisations of any kind in that sentence.


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A deed of 1671 suggests that John had a brother, as it was witnessed by John Tapley, and the helpfully-named, John J. Tapley. Although John did have a son who was called John, he would have been two years old at the time, and would have been unlikely to have been a very good witness, had he been called upon to testify. We know where neither of the brothers came from, and we don’t know where John J. went. John’s son, John became a sailor, and moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Six weeks before he died, John Tapley sold his house to John Higginson, Jr. John’s father (we think111), the Revd John Higginson was the person who told us all about the massive lobsters, was also the man who, in 1698, wrote: “It is known to all men that it pleased God a few years ago to suffer Satan to raise much trouble amongst us…Only one or two persons belonging to Salem Village…bring suspected, were examined, etc. But in the progress of the matter, a multitude of persons both in this and other neighbour towns were accused, examined, imprisoned, and came to their trials…where about twenty of them suffered as witches.”112 John Tapley was living in Salem at the time of its famous witch trials.

Or rather, he wasn’t. The witch hysteria did not actually break out in Salem, but in Salem Village, some miles outside Salem, and the closest we can get to john is to ascertain that he was, at this time, in Salem Neck, another outlying area. Still, that’s not to say that he wasn’t surrounded by witches quite often.

The witch trials in Salem Village of 1692 are often depicted as an isolated outbreak of hysteria, but that simply is not the case. The trials in Salem Village may have consumed a greater proportion of the village’s inhabitants than other outbreaks, but they are similarly bloody to events in Hartford, Connecticut in 1662-3, Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1653, Boston in 1688, and Fairfield, Connecticut in 1692, whilst the Salem witch hangings were happening. It’s fair to say that witch trials were a common feature of early New England, and an especially handy way of getting rid of troublesome neighbours113.

Not that witchcraft trials were even a particular feature of the Puritan landscape in America. When compared to the thousands of witches burned in Catholic Europe, the Puritans seem positively restrained114. Interestingly, witches were burned on the Continent and in Scotland, as witchcraft was a heresy, but only hanged in England and New England, where it was a felony.

111 There were at least two John Higginsons in Salem around at the time. One was the Revd John Higginson, senior pastor at the First Church of Salem, and the other was Captain John Higginson, who met with other town worthies on 22nd September, 1692 to commission an interim report on the trials from Cotton Mather. Revd John Higginson described himself as suffering from “decrepit old age”, at the time. Whether his son is Captain John, or if he is his brother, or if either of them had sons called John we do not know. So I’ve guessed, and am probably wrong. Further research into the Massachusetts General Court Probate Records seems to clear this up. There was a minister (“clericus”) called the Revd John Higginson, Sr, who died in 1708; and a Col. John Higginson (who had maybe been promoted since 1692?) who died in 1720; and, fortunately, a John Higginson, Jr, the son of the minister, whose will went to probate on 13th May, 1718.112 “An Epistle To The Reader”, John Higginson, quoted in Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos (1982) pp.3-4.113 See The Devil In The Shape of a Woman, Carol F. Karlsen (1998) for a more detailed description of how the demographics of those accused as witches broke down, and how often they had property someone else wanted.114 Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (1969)


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On the contrary, despite the fact that a woman in Salem had her tongue held in a cleft stick at the time for daring to upbraid the town elders, the Puritans of the New World were the first people to try to codify liberties in writing, and to extend them to everyone. Thus we read in the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641, that: “Every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free shall have liberty to come to any public Court, Council or Town Meeting, and either by speech or writing to move any lawful, seasonable, and material question.”

In a map made in 1866 of Salem Village as it was in 1692, and where the household involved in the witch-hunt were, there are also markings of what it calls ‘Present Villages’. One of these villages, where households attached to Salem Village stood, is called ‘Tapleyville’. One of the houses that was, by 1866, in Tapleyville, was that of Francis and Rebecca Nurse.

Rebecca Nurse was one of those Tituba, the slave whose testimony really started the trials in earnest, said she had seen worshipping the devil in the fields nearby. Whilst in jail, Rebecca apparently managed to fly several miles in spectral form, and bite Ann Putnam, whilst whipping her with her spectral chain.

Rebecca Nurse was old and almost deaf when she was tried as a witch. The jury initially found her ‘not guilty’. At this, the afflicted girls began shrieking and falling to the floor, and the jury were told to reconsider. They were sent back, but still could not come to a ‘guilty’ verdict until they came back into the court room, and asked Rebecca to explain a comment she had made during her questioning. She failed to hear the question, and was convicted as a result115. When she was told that she was going to be hanged, and why, she wrote to the court offering to answer the question she had not heard she was reprieved, until the girls and the Revd Parris testified against her again, and her reprieve was withdrawn.

Rebecca Nurse was hanged on July 19, 1692. She was a 71-year old woman, whose husband had done rather well for himself, but who had been involved in a dispute over the eastern borders of his farm with the families of those who would accuse his wife. She was not given a funeral, but, having been excommunicated, was thrown in a pit, half-way down Gallows Hill. Later that night, her son, Samuel, and other members of her family came to retrieve her body, to take it back to the farm she had worked with her husband since 1678. Rebecca Nurse lies in Tapleyville to this day, which has absolutely nothing to do with John Tapley. I just wanted to wedge it in somewhere.

Having said that it had nothing to do with John Tapley, I’ll leave you with a couple more facts. What is now (or was in 1886) Tapleyville covered what was in 1692 four homesteads: those of Francis Nurse, Rebecca’s husband, and that of their son, Samuel, and also one belonging to a John Tarbell. Having struggled my way through eighteenth-century transliterations of lots of names, from Battledor to Battleday, to Battleley to Battley, I shall just mention the fact that, at present we do not know exactly where John Tapley lived, but that we do know of a John Tarbell living in what was to become Tapleyville in the vicinity of where John Tapley lived.

John Tapley appeared out of nowhere116 in this New World, where certain things were forbidden, but where he had certain liberties, and where the top 10% of wealthy people

115 Charles Sutherland Tapley, Rebecca Nurse: Saint but Witch Victim (1930) pp. 65116 Or, maybe, Devon.


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only owned 20-30% of the taxable property. As David Hackett Fischer says: “By and large, the more radical the religious principles of any town, the more egalitarian its distribution of lands was apt to be.”117

We don’t know exactly where, but he probably118 lived on the shore of Collins Cove, just off the road leading from Webb Street to Salem Willows, just over what is now the tracks of the Philadelphia Coal Company. He was a fisherman, and petitioned for the opening of a new church in Salem. He was the master of a ketch by 1671. He fits all of the clichés for an early New Englander, and he was the first Tapley of whom we know.

117 “Massachusetts Wealth Ways: Puritan Ideas of the Material Order” in Albion’s Seed, David Hackett Fischer (1989) pp. 166 – 174.118 Patricia Boudreau, A Tapley Geneaology (1998) pp. 1-2.


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Robert S. Paul(1918-1992)

As I write this, there is a Democratic primary underway to decide who should be the party’s nominee for the Senate seat in November. At present it looks as if the anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont is going to beat the incumbent Senator for Connecticut, Joe Lieberman119.

Joe Lieberman has been a Senator for Connecticut for 18 years, a Democrat in a safe Democratic state. You might remember that he was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000. He was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Vice-President of the United States in an election the Supreme Court decided we shouldn’t know who won.

However, ‘Holy Joe’, as he likes to have himself styled120 is a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, and of President Bush in most things. Indeed, he’s gone so far as to suggest that those who criticise the President’s foreign policy are giving succour to our enemies. They probably wish that they could give all terrorists big, sloppy kisses, too, just like the one George W. Bush went out of his way to give Joe Lieberman after the State of the Union address as the beginning of the year. Joe is ‘George Bush’s favourite Democrat’.

Ned Lamont is an anti-war multimillionaire. That is really all I know. However, he has stood on a platform of opposition to George Bush, and the ‘moderate’ Democrats’ desire to be just like him. He has had vocal support from bloggers, and this election is seen across the country as being a bellwether for the Democratic Party across the nation. Should it try and be as non-controversial as possible in November, or should it try and re-energise its base? The result of the election tonight will play a large part in making that decision121.

In 1950 there was another Senatorial election in Connecticut that played a major part in national politics122. The Republicans won the 1950 elections; Dwight Eisenhower became President, and Richard Nixon became Vice-President. However, the Republicans did not

119 About 56% to 44% with 30% of precincts having reported. There, now you can tell exactly when this was written. And yes, I know, I should be in bed. We’ve got lots of wedding things to organise. This is one of them. So nur.120 I much prefer JRB’s ‘Honest John’, or ‘John the Baptist’.121 It probably, of course, will not. This is an idle, ill-informed prediction unsupported by real facts or analysis. But I’m keeping it in.122 Yes, I know this is a primary to decide the Senatorial candidate, rather than a Senatorial election, but…oh shut up! I’m drawing parallels, making connections, what does it matter if they don’t really work? Fine. You write a family history then. I’ll just sit here in silence.


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win control of the Senate. The final tally was 49 Democrats in the Senate, and 47 Republicans. Had one more seat fallen to the Republicans, the Senate would have been evenly split, and it is worth noting that in the event of a tie in the Senate, the Vice-President has the casting vote. Richard Nixon would have been deciding what made it through the Senate and what did not.

The winner of one of the tightest races was William Benton, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, who won the state by around 1,000 votes, out of almost 1 million cast123. It is worth noting with more than a little glee that the person William Benton beat was Prescott Bush, a war-profiteer who just happens to have been the grandfather of George W. Bush. It is still held by Justin Hartman124 that Robert S. Paul and his family may have swung the election for Benton, and thus the Senate to the Democrats.

In September 1949, Justin Hartman wrote to my grandfather to explore the idea of their exchanging churches in 1951. With another member of the family on the way125, and no way of financing the trip, it looked impossible to the Pauls. In March of 1950 Senator Benton gave a speech about a ‘Marshall Plan of ideas’, in which individuals would cross the Atlantic. Spotting an opportunity, Revd Hartman wrote to him straight away, explaining his scheme to exchange churches with Robert Paul.

He received an answer from the Senator’s secretary saying that the Senator had arranged free passage for the Pauls with the Bernstein line, meaning that they could do the exchange. At this point, Justin Hartman began unofficially campaigning on the Senator’s behalf, and he thinks that this could have been decisive in an election which was won by 0.1% of the votes cast.

The link is perhaps tenuous, but in this way he holds that Robert S. Paul had a decisive influence on the country’s policies over the next few years. It in no way compares to being elected an MP in the 1945 Labour victory, but it’s a nice story, and seemed appropriate tonight126.

Like many political promises, the free travel on the Bernstein line did not materialise. Instead, after the election was won, the money had to be raised by donations and gifts to a find set up specifically for that purpose. The Pauls, having played their part in American politics, had to make their own way to the United States127.

Bob Paul was born in 1918 in Walton-Upon-Thames, but life would take him from Surrey to Oxford, the Chateau de Bossey in Switzerland, Connecticut, Pensylvania, Texas, California and Sydney. He was an active œcumenist, and worked, at one point, for the World Council of Churches.

He wanted to be an artist or an actor128, but decided neither was financially feasible, and so, having worked for a year as a commercial artist to make money, having borrowed 123 Eunice M. Paul, “Bob and Politics” (2006)124 A minister from Sherman, Connecticut.125 My mother, Lydia Tapley.126 Update: Lamont 52%, Lieberman 48%, 69% of precincts reporting.127 This is not entirely fair. The Senator did attempt to make other travel arrangements for them, but they did not end up taking them up. These arrangements included an offer of travel on Youth Argosy Airlines, to which the Superintendent of the Congregational Churches in Connecticut responded: “Youth Argosy planes undependable would advise against accepting offer.” For the full story, see Eunice M. Paul “Bob and Politics” (2006)128 For similar ambitions, see Ailsa Leonard, pp 39


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some, and having received an Exhibition at St. Catherine’s College, he went up to Oxford in 1939.

He completed his doctorate in Church History at Mansfield, whilst being minister at Christ Church Congregational, Leatherhead. He married Eunice in 1946, and they lived in the house which my parents now inhabit. My Uncle Tim remembers the parquet flooring being put down. If my French were any better, I’d have a stab at the la plus ça change phrase, but it’s not, so I won’t.

In 1955 he published the first of his seven books, The Lord Protector: Religion and Politics in the Life of Oliver Cromwell. It was reviewed by C.V. Wedgewood in The Observer, and was very successful. Christopher Hill, perhaps England’s most celebrated seventeenth-century historian of recent years, said: “his is the best life [of Cromwell] since Firth’s.”129 Firth’s was written in 1900. The success of the book also helped to pay for the family’s new car, when they moved to the Château de Bossey in Céligny in Switzerland, where Dr Paul took up his post as Associate Director of the Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches.

The World Council of Churches was set up in 1948, in order to unite the Faith and Order Movement, and the Life and Work Movement, and to create a truly worldwide œcumenical body. Its first meeting had delegates from 147 churches around the world.

However, it has not always been uncontroversial. The Roman Catholic Church has always refused to join the organisation, and it has been accused by many fundamentalist, evangelical churches of being too liberal and ‘leftist’. One Reader’s Digest article of October 1971 even suggested that it was a tool of the ‘Marxists’, and supporting godless Communism around the world130.

This criticism came mainly from the actions of the WCC’s Program to Combat Racism (PCR) in the 1970s, which supported activists against apartheid, including members of the ANC. The WCC’s association with liberation theology also led to criticisms, and accusations of Marxism.

However, to criticise a church organisation for opposing apartheid seems counter-productive, and, in these early years, when one of the Presidents of the WCC was the minister persecuted by the Nazis, Martin Niemöller, it was clearly an organisation meant to unify, rather than to divide.

The Paul family moved to America in 1958, for Dr Paul to become Professor of Church History in Hartford, Connecticut. This is fortunate, as otherwise we would not be standing here today. Well, you might, but I probably wouldn’t exist, which would be exceedingly disappointing for me.

Always a keen sportsman131, Bob was also keen to export his love of these games to the Pauls’ new home. My Uncle Martin remembers his taking the cricket equipment along to

129 Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (1970), pp.270130 A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry shows that this has not gone away, with come commentators believing that “it is a socialist organisation, and not a church at all.”131 He was captain of the Mansfield College cricket team, although in a college which only offered postgraduate degrees in theology and church history, there may not have been much competition. Especially during the war, when only the wheezy theologians were left.


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picnics in Hartford, and trying to explain the rules to people. He got Joshua a cricket bat for his twelfth birthday132.

Whilst in America, he became an avid follower of baseball and American football. After church one Sunday, he said: “Lord unite us this morning, and Johnny Unitas this afternoon.”133

In Pittsburgh, once Willy Stargell had hit home runs twice whilst Bob was performing his ablutions, he used to excuse himself to the lavatory every time Stargell came to bat in important situations. I’d make some bad pun referring to him as a ‘relief hitter’ here but you wouldn’t really get it134, and I’m not sure it would really make sense.

Dr Paul went on to be Professor of Church History in Austin, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and taught in Pasadena, California and Sydney, Australia. I am told that my first words to him were something my father had spent a long time teaching me: “Hello, Grandad, I’m going to Cambridge.” It took all of his aplomb not to rise to this heinous calumny, and he replied with remarkable equanimity: “That’s all right. Your father went to some provincial college.”

“He had a good laugh and some funny friends, and his crow's feet crinkled when he smiled.”135 For me, I shall always remember his laugh, his habit of saying “whoop-de-do!” and banging his fist on the table when expressing joy to amuse the children. I shall treasure the fact that it was through his love of humour and drawing that I became interested in Heath Robinson, Fougasse, and cartoons of all kinds, lying on my stomach flicking through the pages of Peanuts or Giles136. I shall always have his voice in my head when reading Winnie the Pooh.

After he had become ill in 1992, I remember him whispering to me: “Don’t get old, Nathaniel, it’s no fun at all.” Bob Paul never did; he was always fresh and funny delighted by life, as I remember him. No matter what, he never grew old, and never will137.

132 Joshua’s twelfth birthday. Anything else would have shown quite remarkable foresight.133 Johnny Unitas was the legendary quarterback of the Baltimore Colts in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.134 Partly because I believe the correct term is ‘pinch hitter’, and that doles up an even more satisfyingly rude pun.135 Martin O.K. Paul, personal correspondence.136 His own cartoons were very good, and the caricatures he did of members of Mansfield College are still retained by the librarian and were on display during the College’s charter celebrations in 1995.137 PS – Ned Lamont won, with 52% of the vote.


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From Battledors to Battleys

Right. This one gets a bit complicated, and without a few weeks hunting through archives in Norfolk, is going to have to be based in no small part on guesswork138. Unfortunately, your antecedents all saw fit to change the spelling of their surname whenever the mood struck them, which seems to have been a fairly common experience:

“What shall we do today, Samuel?”“Well, we could always weave some nets. We are, after all, net-weavers.”“Yes, we could do that. Or…”“Or?”“Or we could think up an absurd way of spelling our surnames, and use it for a brief period of time before changing it back again.”“It’s like you read my mind.”

A lot of this may have been to do with the fact that they could not read or write, and so when the people came around to take the census, they just wrote down what they thought they heard. Which was usually something like: ‘Battlellerlellery’, or variations thereupon. You get the feeling the census-takers just kept adding bits until someone told them to stop.

Another unhelpful tendency of the early Battledors (I’m going to stick with that for the moment, although they did not feel the need to) was their habit of naming their sons after themselves. Thus we end up with five John Battledor/Battleday/Battleys all in a row. At least, we think we do. We have no way of knowing for sure because they are all called the same thing. There may have only been one, who lived for well over a hundred years, and kept re-christening himself, and pretending to be his own father when marrying.

The problems all start in Wymondham, Norfolk, on the 17 th December, 1742, when John Battledor was christened. According to his christening certificate he had a father, who was called… No. You guess. Go on. That’s right, John Battledor. John Sr and his wife Mary had a baby boy and they called him John and they lived in Wymondham, and this was in 1742, which seems fairly clear.

Now there is a gap in the records on 99 years, although we think we know who John Jr’s son was. It was John. But, by this point we think he is the John Battledy listed in the

138 Unlike the rest of this, which is all hugely well-researched and presented and should act as a model for historians everywhere.


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1841 census as living near to his brother Robert, and being 70 years old. This means that he was born around 1771, and would be roughly the right age to be John Jr’s son. If he was John Jr’s son he was obviously something of an explorer, as by had, by 1841, moved to Fundenhall, a mile or two away from Wymondham.

It’s at this point that things get a little clearer, as that last John’s son, John whom I shall call John 4.0 for want of a better name, was born in Wreningham in Norfolk in 1795. He and his wife Naomi Townshend were net weavers, and neither of them could write their names on their wedding certificate when they were married at the parish church in Ashwellthorpe on the 4th August, 1828. By the time of the 1851 census, they are listed as being called ‘Battleley’. Which is almost right.

John and Naomi lived with her father, James Townshend in Hackford, Norfolk139. In the 1841 census, James is listed as being a ‘hooker’, but rather than selling himself to the man-starved women of Norfolk, what he actually did was help John and Naomi in their net-weaving business. Their son Samuel also appears to have worked with them, as, at the age of eleven, he is listed as a ‘bobbin fitter’. Which sounds like a euphemism for ‘hooker’, if you ask me.

By the time James died in April 1847 he had tired of being a hooker140, and turned to bricklaying instead, which isn’t anywhere near as funny. This may have been because by 1847 John and Naomi had stopped their net-weaving, and John had gone into farming, as it states on his son George's birth certificate.

On James’ death certificate, Naomi signs her name as an ‘X’, and she is described as ‘Naomi Battleday’. According to the 1851 census, their children had received Sunday School educations, and they (including your great-grandfather George Battley) may have been the first Battleys to read and write, which may be why very shortly, within a generation, most of them settle on ‘Battley’ as a spelling.

However, between them John and Naomi’s children rack up an impressive three different spellings of their surname between the nine of them. One of them, of course, is a John, and he, George and William all appear to have plumped for ‘Battley’. Only their sister Mary stuck with the ‘-dore’ bit, and she managed to come up with a new spelling all her own: ‘Bateldore’.

George, your great-grandfather, was born George Battelley according to his birth certificate, but became a Battley by the time he moved to London. When he was about 20 years old he moved to Clapham to become a railway guard at Clapham Junction station. He married Adah Maderson the next year in St Paul’s, Clapham. George went through a

139 Francis White's History, Gazetteer and Directory of Norfolk 1854, p. 472: "HACKFORD, a village and parish, 2 miles E. of Hingham, has 64 houses, 255 inhabitants, and 720 acres of land, principally belonging to Lord Wodehouse, the lord of the manor; but Mr. J. B. Storey, Mr. James Howes, Mr. C. Stoughton, and others, are also proprietors. The Church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is a small edifice covered with thatch, with a square tower, and was thoroughly repaired about 14 years ago. The living is a discharged rectory, valued in the King's book at £4 15s. 10d., and returned in 1831, at £240, enjoyed by the Rev. M. B. Darby, of Hingham; patron, B. Gurdon, Esq. The Fuel Allotment, 10a., awarded at the enclosure in 1807, produces about £10 a year, and the poor have the privilege of cutting fuel on it. DIRECTORY-Thomas Bush, vict. Red Lion; Samuel Lain, beerhouse; John Smithson, blacksmith; James Bayes Storey, gent. Farmers-Jeremiah Capps, Elizabeth Crisp, Matthew Green, James Head, James Lain, Frederick Garrett Oddin Taylor, High House; Joseph Taylor, Jeremiah Turner, William Turner, John Wade, and Charles Watts."140 There is really no end to how much fun I can have with this.


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number of different occupations, doing something different each time there was a census141.

In 1881 he was a warehouseman, which I assume means that he worked in a warehouse, rather than his having been the superhero Warehouseman, whose capacious storage facilities foiled crimes across South London. In 1891 he was a labouring engineer. In 1901 he was a machine and hand driller and engineer. The next year, however, he bought his grocer’s shop in Hanbury Street.

In the 1891 census George and his family are living at 23 Elsley Road, Battersea, whence two of his sons, John Rose and another George started their printing firm. That printing firm was to become Battley Brothers.

John and George’s elder brother Sidney had a son, another George, but this time helpfully with a middle initial. George S. Battley had been an apprentice at Battley Brothers before the First World War, and was reluctant to join up. He wrote to JRB: “The reason I have enlisted is because I have, at last, got sick and tired of being asked why don’t I join my friends.”142

Gunner George S. Battley (L/43443) of the Royal Field Artillery, C Battery, 183 rd

Brigade was the “finest horseman of the battery, and one of the most competent signallers.”143 On Friday, 30th June, 1916 he was relaying messages at Ploegstreet near Ypres, and transmitted the following exchange:

“Are you there, Battley?”“Yes, sir.”“Are they shelling you?”“Raining hard, sir!”“Can you stick it, Battley?”“Yes, sir.”

“And as he replied a shell burst immediately outside the dug-out in which George, lying on his stomach, with the receiver at his ears was stationed. A piece of the shell pierced his back, striking a vital part, and the Sergt.-Major, who, within three seconds of the bursting of the shell, rushed to see if George was safe, found he was dead. His features were not disfigured, and with a smile on his face, he was laid all day at the entrance of his Captain’s quarters, where, one by one, the whole of the battery crept up and looked on the face of their favourite ‘kid,’ as he was called.

“The Captain continually uncovered the boy, and gazed with eyes of grief into the face that looked so peacefully strong and so strangely happy in such surroundings.

“The boy had been told he could quite his post, seeing it was so dangerous, but he preferred to run the risk by keeping his ear to the receiver and doing his duty.”144

Apparently, the whole Brigade had wanted to follow at the funeral of the brave boy with the strange smile, but the Captain wouldn’t allow it. There was a war to be fought, after

141 I’m not suggesting he changed jobs because there was a census coming up and he wanted to appear more exciting, but it’s just interesting, that’s all.142 Bernard Battley, Joining His Friends (2006)143 John Rose Battley. Impressions 1916-1917, pp.139144 Ibid. pp.137-139


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all. There was no reason to let a little grief spoil a perfectly good war. Gunner George is described as the ‘entertainer’ of his comrades-in-arms145. For some reason, I do not find this surprising in the slightest.

145 Ibid. pp.137


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Eunice Mary Pickup(1921-)

It’s sad looking back over these chapters that the ones about grandmothers have been shorter than the ones about their husbands. This is a shame. They are a remarkable group of women, encompassing artists, teachers and managing directors. It’s a shame that when I look through my books, I can find so little that I can pull into their stories (it’s all too easy to research the World Council of Churches, Stalag Luft III, the 1945 Labour Government or the Manhattan Project).

In an email to me, Martin Paul says of his mother, “She was an enabler in the best sense of the word.”146 This is perhaps one of the greatest unsung achievements of this group of grandmothers (all of whom had did significant things in their own rights). These women provided the environment in which their husbands could do what they did. Not only did they have careers and successes of their own, they created a family in which our grandfathers could do all of the exciting things I have talked about them doing.

On September 3rd, 1939, when war broke out between England and Germany, Eunice Pickup, then aged 17, was on board the S.S. Letitia, then anchored in the St Lawrence River in Canada. The ship had left Montreal the day before, and none of the passengers were told why it had stopped. On board was a group of girls from Withington Girls’ School, who were on their way home to Manchester, after a three-week trip to Canada, one of whom was my grandmother147.

Eventually, the ship turned around and made its way back to Montreal, where the passengers received the news that the S.S. Athenia148, on which the group of girls had travelled to Canada less than a month before had been sunk by a German U-boat with over 1,000 passengers aboard. The girls were taken to a YWCA camp in the Laurentian Mountains whilst their parents decided what to do to get them home.

There were four options: they could stay with relatives in Canada or America; stay at school in Canada; wait for passage to become available on a British ship; or to return on a neutral American ship. Only one girl’s parents decided that she should wait for a British ship.

146 Martin O.K. Paul, personal correspondence.147 For a fuller treatment of this story see Eunice M. Paul, “Athenia” (2006)148 The sister ship of the S.S. Letitia.


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Eunice Pickup was one of those who was to be sent home on an American ship, and they travelled overnight from Montreal to New York. To their surprise, they were not immediately bundled onto a ship, but were rather given breakfast and shown around the city before boarding the ‘President Harding’.149

They sailed at night, brightly floodlit, with large American flags prominently displayed. The ship which sailed before them was stopped by a German submarine as it crossed the Atlantic. It was on this voyage, trying to get home across U-boat filled waters that Eunice spent her 18th birthday. The floodlights went out when they reached blacked out Southampton. Their schools was evacuated from Manchester to Uttoxeter.

The next year she went to study French and German at Westfield College, University of London, and was evacuated from there to St Peter’s College in Oxford. It was whilst in Oxford that she met Bob Paul.

After she had graduated, and finished her teacher training, during the period in which the V-1 and V-2 rockets were falling on London, she taught French at Northwood College in Middlesex for two years. She married Robert Paul at Leatherhead Congregational Church on 22nd April, 1946.

It is difficult, also, to write about someone who will be able to read the article at the end. You have to be a lot more careful in describing things. Especially when she is one of the people we have to thank for being able to have a wedding like we had at all. Thank you, Granny.

149 Warren Gamaliel Harding is generally acknowledged to be one of the worst, if not the worst president the United States has ever had. As president he gave high-ranking jobs to all of his friends (“the Ohio Gang”) who promptly started robbing the exchequer at every turn, leading to the Teapot Dome Scandal. He had a string of extra-marital affairs, including at least one lovechild, he has been rumoured to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and his speech was so bad that it prompted H.L. Mencken to say: “He writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges, it reminds me of tattered washing on the line, it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through the endless night. It is so bad that a kind of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”


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Edward Jerome Tapley(1913-1969)

A common feature of Mafia novels and films is the code of omertà, under which everyone maintains strict silence. Not in a Trappist way. More in a have just stuffed the body of a snitch in an oil drum, and dropped it into the Hudson River way. No matter what, the police come again and again against a wall of silence. Not only will no one have any information, they will no longer remember what you are talking about, and will sometimes hint that the wise policeman would do well to spend more time dropping his children off at public school #93, and less harassing upstanding members of the business community.

Sometimes it feels like this trying to get information about one’s ancestors. Again, this one will be a little light until I have a lot more time to spend digging around, fishing decomposed bodies out of the reeds.

Until then, here is what I know, or what I think I know. Edward Jerome Tapley was born on the 7th September, 1913, in West Brooksville, Maine. He was the grandson of the Captain Jerome Perkins Tapley we talked about before150. His father was also a Jerome Perkins Tapley, his mother was Ada Littlefield Mills, and they lived at Mills Point. Jerome developed Alzheimers as he got older, as his daughter recalls: "My father, he and my mother had lived down there on the Point since about 1912. That's where they lived all their married life. Dad would come out of the house and start walking up the road. Mother would come out and say 'Where are you going, Jerome?' He'd say: 'I've got to go home. I can't stay down here any longer. There's work to be done. I've got to go home.' He was heading for the home where he was born. No one knew about [A]lzheimers then, but I know full well that's what it had to be."151

Edward had one brother, W. Merle Tapley152 and one sister, Alice Rebecca. At some point he moved, and here I’m not sure if he went to Pittsfield, where he met Janeth (there is a photo of Edward and Emery in Pittsfield), or whether they met in Connecticut. Either way, at some point Edward built his own house in South Windsor, Connecticut, and the family moved there. They had two sons; Dean and Emery, and Edward worked as a plumber.

150 pp. 20151 Rebecca Tapley Grindle, cited in Mills152 The Uncle Merle who died a few weeks ago.


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About the only other fact I know about him was that he was an alcoholic, and that, on at least one occasion, he crashed the car he was driving whilst his sons were in it. This is obviously a hugely-unfair representation of my grandfather, as I am sure that there was a lot more to him than this, but it is, unfortunately, all I have been able to find out. He is not mentioned very often.

One incident, which perhaps tells us why these things are not talked about very often is that during Janeth’s wake, the family heard the light being turned on in the attic. When everyone had left, and they went to see who had been in the attic they found furniture and furs ‘belonging to the Ford family’ having been marked with chalk. Just so they wouldn’t feel any sense of ownership over their mother’s possessions, I should imagine. I nice addendum to this is that they heard the light being turned on because Edward had installed a fan that worked on the same switch, and it was the fan that was audible throughout the house. It shows the practical nature and abilities of a man who was a plumber, who built his own house, and who obviously passed none of those genes on to me.

He died a year after his wife, on the 17th July, 1969. Apollo 11 had left the launch-pad the day before. He missed seeing men on the moon by three days. He was 55 years old.

Again, it is hard to sum up someone who I now know less well (in terms of factual knowledge – although I have obviously had no personal experience) than I know even any of your grandparents. It makes me think that this project hasn’t quite yet reached its end. There are still corner pieces of important puzzles left to discover.

I am wary of reading too much into this sort of thing, though. It’s too easy to excuse or glamorise our behaviour by making easy comparisons with things of which we have little knowledge in the past. In an important way, our grandparents did make us who we are. Without their genes, neither of us would be around. However, the great joy of being a human is being able to do some other than that which your genes might suggest. A fox or a jellyfish does not have that option.

We do not, at bottom, need to know who our ancestors were to know who we are. We are who we make ourselves, and there is nothing our forebears can do about that. We must avoid simplistic genetic determinism; our past does not decide our future. We have the opportunity now to make our own future, and what we make of it is entirely up to us.

The purpose of this exercise was not to suggest the inevitability of our existence, and of our wedding, and to portray it as the culmination of hundreds of years of human existence153, but simply to give us a better knowledge of what happened to those who happened to procreate in a way that, happily, produced us.

These people have fascinating stories, and we may not always like what we find out about them, but they are always entertaining154, and they always give us a greater understanding of other human beings. We just happen to be interested in these ones particularly because they are our family, and because that is a good a place to start as any.

So, here’s to Edward, a man I never met, and wish that I had had the opportunity to. He is a mystery to me, but that mystery is part of his charm. We flatter ourselves when we

153 Although I have sometimes emphasised that for effect.154 I think.


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think that by reading family histories we are learning about those people who went before us, when we are really learning about is ourselves, our own prejudices, what we would like our ancestors to have been. In the end, my understanding of Edward Jerome Tapley is not worse than my understanding of anyone else in this book. I am just more aware of what I don’t know about him. He’s another mystery, and everyone loves a mystery.


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Conclusion

Gah! There’s so much to do and so little time. Or, rather, I left myself too little time to do most of the things I wanted to in this book. I wanted to tell you all about my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, who arrived at Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. I wanted to tell you all about Ann Ashworth and her sons, the fulling millers in Rochdale, whose job was to trample cloth in a mixture of stale urine and water. I wanted to tell you about your Harrison ancestors, “who were Lowland Scots.”155 I wanted to tell you all of these things, because I didn’t have time to find out about them myself, or to write up the things that I did find out.

Still, I’m glad it doesn’t have to be a secret any more. This may not interest you in the slightest, but there are lots of sidetracks to be followed and work to be done. I had hoped to put together something pretty definitive, a collection of everyone else’s work with my name stuck on the front. I was going to present it to you proudly, and retire with a smirk, allowing the bound copy to sit forever on the shelf as a testament to the ages.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Everyone you find had parents of their own. There are always more places to look to find out about them. This hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface. There are probably quite a few things in it that are just, simply, wrong.

Even what I’ve done on the people I’ve done it all has nowhere near exhausted all the ways of finding out about them. JRB and RSP both left their books behind them. Not that they actually left them behind anywhere. They were writers, rather than being forgetful. I haven’t even read everything they wrote. I haven’t seen your grandmother’s portrait of the Queen, and I still know next to nothing about my father’s parents.

There are currently more than 600 people in the family tree I have been putting together for these last couple of months. I can’t have it printed out, because there is no paper big enough. Each one of these people has questions attached to them. Things I don’t know, but think I could find out. And I’ve still got at least a couple of hundred whom I have not yet got around to putting in, because they were people’s brothers or sisters or second wives, and I just didn’t have the time.

I also haven’t had the time to read through it properly. I’ve been up all night and I feel as sick as a slapped stomach, and I’m having trouble focussing on the screen. Fortunately, I’ve got at least a couple of hours to finish writing everything, add all the pictures, turn it 155 Edna Millicent Pickering, Harrison-Hough Family Tree.


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all into a .pdf file156, send it to the printers to get bound, and do all of the rest of the preparation for our wedding. No problems.

So, it’s not the magnificent octopus I’d hoped it might be. It’s probably a cuttlefish of some sort. A small one who hasn’t learnt how to change colours or sharpen birds’ beaks yet. It is, however, something to give you some idea of all of the many, many people who have contributed to our wedding today, even if their contribution was merely momentary, quite pleasurable, and genetic in effect. They all have their stories, and I feel grateful to have been able to spend some time with them. They all seem like very interesting people…

As I mentioned a while ago, I’m afraid the women have come off somewhat short-changed, as I couldn’t so easily go to books and find out about the things they were doing. In any future additions, this is something I’d like to correct, as the whole thing feels not only incomplete but flawed as well. I have to admit, on looking back, that I did spend rather too long reading about pirates, and perhaps not enough time talking to people and following up on their emails.

These articles, then, are just a few, small glasses from the rivers that are coming together in us today. It’s just a taste, and who knows what interesting turn the waters will take next? What rapids are we going to have to ride over, and what are we going to see along the way?

I can’t wait to find out, and I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

I love you, Zoë T. Happy Wedding Day.Natt

12th August, 2006

156 Which is different from a peadophile.


55

Fear for the future…


56

Ancestors of Zoe Susan Battley


57


58

Table of Contents

Ancestors of Zoe Susan Battley........................................................................................................................2First Generation.............................................................................................................................................2Second Generation (Parents).........................................................................................................................2Third Generation (Grandparents)..................................................................................................................2Fourth Generation (Great-Grandparents)......................................................................................................3Fifth Generation (Great Great-Grandparents)...............................................................................................5Sixth Generation (3rd Great-Grandparents)..................................................................................................8Seventh Generation (4th Great-Grandparents)...........................................................................................11Eighth Generation (5th Great-Grandparents)..............................................................................................12

Source Citations..............................................................................................................................................13Name Index.....................................................................................................................................................14


1


First Generation

1. Zoe Susan Battley [2], daughter of David John Battley [68] and Sarah Penelope Susan Hanrahan [69], was born on 20 Sep 1973 in St Thomas' Hospital, Battersea.

Noted events in her life were:

Occupation: Actor, From 1996. Education: BA in Dramatic Arts, 1993-1996, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Wales.

Zoe married Nathaniel Dean Tapley [1] [MRIN: 1], son of Revd Dean Edward Tapley [3] and Lydia Mary Paul [4], on 12 Aug 2006 in Mansfield College, Oxford.

Second Generation: Parents

2. David John Battley [68], son of John Rose Battley [241] and Dorothy Sybil Allchurch [242], was born on 5 Nov 1935 in Battersea, London and died in Jan 2003 at age 67.

Noted events in his life were:

Employment: Actor. Education: : Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, London.

David married Sarah Penelope Susan Hanrahan [69] [MRIN: 33] on 20 Mar 1971.

Children from this marriage were:

1 i. Zoe Susan Battley [2]ii. Emily Martha Battley [70] was born on 24 Dec 1979.

3. Sarah Penelope Susan Hanrahan [69], daughter of Maurice Hanrahan [71] and Ailsa Leonard [72], was born on 12 Apr 1949.

Sarah married David John Battley [68] [MRIN: 33] on 20 Mar 1971.

Third Generation: Grandparents

4. John Rose Battley [241], son of George Battley [249] and Adah Elizabeth Maderson [250], was born on 26 Nov 1880 in Clapham, London and died on 6 Nov 1952 at age 71.


Employment: Apprentice Printer, 1894, London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Residence: 23 Elsley Rd, 1901, Clapham, London. With father, George.

Occupation: Printer / Compositor, 1901. Residence: Hanbury Rd, 1902.1 Membership: Society of Compositors, 1902.2 Occupation: Master Printer, 1904, London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Membership: Non-Conscription Fellowship, 1914-1918. Membership: : Victoria Baptist Church, Clapham, London. Membership: City of London ILP, 1913-1922. Membership: Secretary of Battersea ILP, From 1923. Membership: Clapham Rotary Club, From 1924. President in 1929Election: LCC By-election, 1938, Clapham, London. First Labour representative for Clapham


2


Election: MP for Clapham, 1945, Clapham, London. Membership: Lavender Hill Temperance Choir.

John married Dorothy Sybil Allchurch [242] [MRIN: 87] in Mar 1933.


2 i. David John Battley [68]ii. Bernard Battley [243] was born in 1938.

5. Dorothy Sybil Allchurch [242], daughter of Stanley Allchurch [293] and Annie Hollands [308], was born on 7 Apr 1903 in Battersea, London and died on 1 May 1986 in Dulwich, London at age 83.


Membership: Lavender Hill Temperance Choir. Occupation: Managing Director, 1952-1962, Battley Bros, Clapham, London.

Dorothy married John Rose Battley [241] [MRIN: 87] in Mar 1933.

6. Maurice Hanrahan [71], son of James Hanrahan [81] and Susan O'Hare [82], was born on 28 Mar 1917 in Belfast and died on 10 Feb 2001 at age 83.


Religion: : Belfast. Strict Catholic upbringing led to his turning against organised religion.Education: Clark's College: Liverpool. Military Service: Sub-Lieutenant, 1939-1959. In Fleet Air Arm. Flew Swordfish from HMS

Furious.Captured: by Germans, 22 Sep 1940, Vaernes, Norway. Forced by fog to ditch his Swordfish in a

fjord, he was captured by the Germans and sent to many prisoner-of-war camps, including Stalag Luft III.

Escape: Mar 1944, Stalag Luft III, Zagan, Poland. Although not one of the escapees, Maurice helped prepare the tunnels (Tom, Dick, and Harry) that led to the Great Escape.

Military Service: Lieutenant Commander. Left service as Lieutenant Commander.Employment: Vickers-Armstrong, From 1959. Employment: Greggs Publishers.

Maurice married Ailsa Leonard [72] [MRIN: 34].


3 i. Sarah Penelope Susan Hanrahan [69]ii. Christopher Michael James Hanrahan [73] was born in 1952.

iii. Judith Shelagh Alexandra Hanrahan [77] was born in 1955.

7. Ailsa Leonard [72], daughter of Robert Marsh Leonard [92] and Jessie Hough [93], was born on 1 Sep 1918 and died on 8 Jan 2001 at age 82.


Education: Clark's College: Liverpool. Secretarial TrainingHobbies: Painting. Her portrait of Queen Elizabeth II hung in the Mess at Ebrington Barracks

Ailsa married Maurice Hanrahan [71] [MRIN: 34].

Fourth Generation: Great-Grandparents

8. George Battley [249], son of John Battledor [255] and Naomi Townshend [256], was born on 11 Aug 1847 in Hackford, Norfolk and died on 17 Apr 1914 at age 66.


3


General Notes: George does not appear in the 1861 census for his father's household.

Born George Battelley, at 38 Hackford St, Hackford.1


Moved: 1867-1868, Battersea, London.1 Moved to work as a railway guard at Clapham Junction, sunsequently becoming a warehousemam, then labouring engineer, and eventually running his own corner shop at 13 Hanbury Rd.

Employment: Railway Guard, Cir 1867, Clapham Junction Station, Clapham, London.1 Unitl at least 1872.

Residence: Queens Rd, 1868, Clapham, London. Employment: Warehouseman, 1881.1 According to 1881 census.Employment: Labouring Engineer, 1891. Residence: 23 Elsley Rd, 1891. Brother William, and his wife, Martha, lived with them at the time

of the 1891 census.Employment: Machine hand, driller and engineer, 1901. Occupation: Grocer, 1902, Hanbury Rd, London. Left labouring job to take grocer's shop in

Hanbury Rd

George married Adah Elizabeth Maderson [250] [MRIN: 90] on 25 Dec 1868 in St Paul's, Clapham.

Marriage Notes: Thomas Battley, George's brother, was a witness to the wedding.

In 1881, they had a lodger, Charlotte, A. Hazelgrove. (RG 11/633)1


4 i. John Rose Battley [241]ii. Sidney Ernest Battley [252] was born on 4 Nov 1875 in Clapham, London.

iii. George Maderson Battley [253] was born on 14 Feb 1877 in Clapham, London. iv. Herbert Battley [294] was born in 1870 in Clapham, London and died in Nov 1873

at age 3. v. Ada Emily Battley [295] was born on 4 Feb 1872 in Alford Rd, Clapham, London

and died on 13 May 1952 in Darent Valley, Kent at age 80. The cause of her death was Cardiac Failure.

vi. Arthur George Battley [296] was born on 12 May 1874 in Clapham, London. vii. Clara Amelia Battley [297] was born on 2 Jul 1882 in Clapham, London.

viii. Martha Sussanna Battley [298] was born on 20 Dec 1883 in Clapham, London. ix. Annie Naomi Battley [576] was born on 24 May 1879.

George next married Emma Bird [251] [MRIN: 91].

9. Adah Elizabeth Maderson [250], daughter of Henry Maderson [321] and Elizabeth Burch [322], was born on 7 Feb 1850 and died on 10 Apr 1887 at age 37.


Residence: 8 Braudon St, To 1868, Clapham, London.

Adah married George Battley [249] [MRIN: 90] on 25 Dec 1868 in St Paul's, Clapham.

10. Stanley Allchurch [293], son of Alfred Henry Allchurch [309] and Eliza Cox [310], was born on 31 Mar 1874 in Bedminster and died in 1950 at age 76.


Hobbies: Conductor of Lavender Hill Temperance Choir. Could not read music, and so conducted 'TONIC-SOL-FA'

Occupation: Biscuit and cake maker. At the A-1 Biscuit Factory.


4


Stanley married Annie Hollands [308] [MRIN: 109].


5 i. Dorothy Sybil Allchurch [242]ii. Sydney Allchurch [626]

iii. Gladys Allchurch [627]

11. Annie Hollands [308], daughter of Thomas Hollands [315] and Sarah Willett [316], was born on 20 Mar 1876 in Brighton and died in 1960 at age 84.

Annie married Stanley Allchurch [293] [MRIN: 109].

12. James Hanrahan [81] was born in County Clare, Ireland.

James married Susan O'Hare [82] [MRIN: 37].


6 i. Maurice Hanrahan [71]ii. Sean Hanrahan [83]

iii. Frank Hanrahan [84] iv. Marie Hanrahan [85]

13. Susan O'Hare [82] .

Susan married James Hanrahan [81] [MRIN: 37].

14. Robert Marsh Leonard [92] was born in 1873 and died in 1950 at age 77.

Robert married Jessie Hough [93] [MRIN: 40].


7 i. Ailsa Leonard [72]ii. Edna Millicent Leonard [94] was born in 1915 and died in 2003 at age 88.

15. Jessie Hough [93], daughter of Robert Hough [105] and Sarah Ann (Annie) Harrison [106], was born in 1887 and died in 1965 at age 78.

Jessie married Robert Marsh Leonard [92] [MRIN: 40].

Fifth Generation: Great Great-Grandparents

16. John Battledor [255], son of John Battledy [562] and Unknown, was born circa 1795 in Wreningham, Norfolk.

General Notes: In the 1861 census for Hackford, he is listed as John Battellely.


Alt. Birth: Cir 1799. 1851 census suggests 1799 and born in Fundenhall, but the 1861 census lists him as 66 years old, and having been born in Wreningham. However, the 1851 census rounded people's ages down, so the 1861 date (of c. 1795) is probably more accurate.

Occupation: Net Weaver. Occupation: Farmer, Cir 1845. On George's birth certificate, John is listed as 'farmer'.

John married Naomi Townshend [256] [MRIN: 93] on 4 Aug 1828 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk.

Marriage Notes: Married at the Parish Church in Ashwellthorpe.


5


Neither John nor Naomi could write their names on their marriage certificate.

Whilst living in Ashwellthorpe, both John and Naomi were net weavers. When James Townshend was living with them, he is described as a 'hooker', presumably helping with the weaving, as did Samuel, who, at age 11, is listed in the census as a 'bobbin-fitter'.

According to 1851 census, the children had a Sunday School education.

James and Blitha Howlett witnessed the marriage.

Edmund Holes, Curate, married them.1


8 i. George Battley [249]ii. James Battelley [258] was born circa 1829 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk.

iii. Thomas Battley [259] was born in 1835 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk and died on 18 Jul 1883 at age 48.

iv. Mary Bateldore [260] was born circa 1835 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk. v. John Battley [300] was born circa 1835 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk.

vi. William Battley [301] was born in 1841 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk. vii. Samuel Battelley [302] was born in 1840 and died in 1917 in Downham at age 77.

viii. Maria Battelley [303] was born in 1842 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk. ix. Elizabeth Battelley [304] was born in 1845 in Hackford, Norfolk.

17. Naomi Townshend [256], daughter of James Townshend [257] and Unknown, was born circa 1806 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk.

General Notes: Known as Naomi Battleday on her father's death certificate of 04/04/1847 (copy with Bernard Battley)

Listed as being 35 in the 1841 census, and living with her husband and father.

Naomi married John Battledor [255] [MRIN: 93] on 4 Aug 1828 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk.

18. Henry Maderson [321], son of John Maderson [323] and Mary Blomfield [324], was born circa 1823 in Martlesham, Suffolk, was christened on 15 Jun 1823 in Martlesham, Suffolk, and died before 1881.


Occupation: Linen Draper: Charing Cross, London. Villiers Street, Charing Cross, LondonMoved: to London. Occupation: Linen Draper, 1851. Own business as a linen draper at 3 Neew Portland Place,

Wandworth Rd

Henry married Elizabeth Burch [322] [MRIN: 117] on 13 Jan 1846 in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.

Marriage Notes: Elizabeth is listed as 'head of household' in the 1861 and 1871 censuses, ahereas Henry is not mentioned at all, but they were still having children.1


9 i. Adah Elizabeth Maderson [250]ii. Susannah Maderson [581] was born in 1847.

iii. William Herbert Maderson [582] was born in 1849 and died in 1861-1867 at age 12.

iv. Mary Alice Maderson [583] was born in 1851 and died in 1851. v. Clara Rosa Maderson [584] was born in 1853.

vi. Emily Maderson [585] was born in 1858. vii. Elizabeth Maderson [586] was born in 1860.


6


viii. Annie Maderson [587] was born in 1862. ix. William Herbert Maderson [588] was born in 1867 and died in 1926 at age 59.

19. Elizabeth Burch [322], daughter of Herbert Burch [325] and Phoebe Lane [579], was born on 11 Mar 1825 in South Lambeth, London, was christened on 3 Apr 1825 in Stockwell New Chapel Independent, Lambeth, London, and died circa 1900 in Alford Rd, Clapham, London at age 75.

General Notes: Also worked in Villiers Street, Charing Cross, where Henry Maderson worked.

Frequesntly advertised her services as a dressmaker betwen 1861 and 1881.1


Occupation: Milliner. Occupation: Dressmaker. Moved: 1881.1 To a new property at Alford Rd (it had not existed 10 years earlier). In the 1891

census Annie Batley [sic] is living at 25 Alford Rd. George Battley and Adah also lived at 29 Alford Rd in 1872, were they living with Elizabeth?

Elizabeth married Henry Maderson [321] [MRIN: 117] on 13 Jan 1846 in St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.

20. Alfred Henry Allchurch [309], son of Joseph Allchurch [311] and Sarah Hall [312], was born on 19 Nov 1843 in Bedminster.


Occupation: Brassfounder.

Alfred married Eliza Cox [310] [MRIN: 111] on 2 Jun 1872 in Bristol Registry Office, Bristol.

The child from this marriage was:

10 i. Stanley Allchurch [293]

21. Eliza Cox [310], daughter of William Cox [313] and Ann Toomes [314].

Eliza married Alfred Henry Allchurch [309] [MRIN: 111] on 2 Jun 1872 in Bristol Registry Office, Bristol.

22. Thomas Hollands [315], son of Edward Hollands [317] and Emma Fuller [318], was born on 26 Jan 1852 in Brighton.


Occupation: Journeyman Blacksmith.

Thomas married Sarah Willett [316] [MRIN: 114] on 26 Feb 1872.


11 i. Annie Hollands [308]

23. Sarah Willett [316], daughter of James Willett [319] and Mary Ann Willett [320], was born circa 1854 in Brighton.


Employment: Ironer.

Sarah married Thomas Hollands [315] [MRIN: 114] on 26 Feb 1872.


7


30. Robert Hough [105], son of George Hough [112] and Mary Humble [113], was born in 1837 and died in 1891 at age 54.


Family: 6 Sisters. Catherine (Kate), Jane, Mary (Polly), Sarah, Harriet & Eliza. 'They were a Yorkshire family'.

Robert married Sarah Ann (Annie) Harrison [106] [MRIN: 45] circa 1877.


15 i. Jessie Hough [93]ii. Thomas Hough [107] was born in 1878 and died in 1944 in Regina, Saskatchewan,

Canada at age 66. iii. William Firth Hough [108] was born in 1881 and died in 1961 at age 80. iv. Robert Hough [110] was born in 1882 and died in 1911 in London at age 29. v. Jane Hough [111] was born in 1891 and died in 1958 at age 67.

31. Sarah Ann (Annie) Harrison [106] was born in 1855 and died in 1950 at age 95.


Family: 3 sisters & 1 brother. 'Siblings: James, Emily (died in infancy), Mary Ellen (Nellie) & Jessie. They were Lowland Scots - Dumfries, Wigtonshire, etc.'

Sarah married Robert Hough [105] [MRIN: 45] circa 1877.

Sixth Generation: 3rd Great-Grandparents

32. John Battledy [562], son of John Battledor [563] and Unknown, was born before 1771.

General Notes: In the 1841 census, a John Battleday, aged 70, is living next to Robert Battleday and his family, quite close to John and Naomi. We have no other evidence that this is John Battledore's father. (Naomi's surname is rendered as 'Battleday' on her father's death certificate from 1847.)

John married.

His child was:

16 i. John Battledor [255]

34. James Townshend [257] was born circa 1765 in Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk and died on 4 Apr 1847 in Hackford, Norfolk at age 82.

General Notes: Naomi Battledor, his daughter made her mark on his Death Certificate of 04/04/1847 with an 'X', and is named as Naomi Battleday.

Also known as 'James Townsen'

Francis White's History, Gazetteer and Directory of Norfolk 1854, p. 472: "HACKFORD, a village and parish, 2 miles E. of Hingham, has 64 houses, 255 inhabitants, and 720 acres of land, principally belonging to Lord Wodehouse, the lord of the manor; but Mr. J. B. Storey, Mr. James Howes, Mr. C. Stoughton, and others, are also proprietors. The Church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, is a small edifice covered with thatch, with a square tower, and was thoroughly repaired about 14 years ago. The living is a discharged rectory, valued in the King's book at £4 15s. 10d., and returned in 1831, at £240, enjoyed by the Rev. M. B. Darby, of Hingham; patron, B. Gurdon, Esq. The Fuel Allotment, 10a., awarded at the enclosure in 1807, produces about £10 a year, and the poor have the privilege of cutting fuel on it. DIRECTORY-Thomas Bush, vict. Red Lion;


8


Samuel Lain, beerhouse; John Smithson, blacksmith; James Bayes Storey, gent. Farmers-Jeremiah Capps, Elizabeth Crisp, Matthew Green, James Head, James Lain, Frederick Garrett Oddin Taylor, High House; Joseph Taylor, Jeremiah Turner, William Turner, John Wade, and Charles Watts."


Occupation: Hooker. Whilst living with his daughter and her husband, James is described as a 'hooker', presumably helping them with thteir net weaving.

Residence: With John and Naomi Battledor, 1841, Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk. According to the 1841 census

Occupation: Bricklayer, Cir 1847.

James married.

His children were:

17 i. Naomi Townshend [256]ii. Blitha Townshend [305] was born circa 1808.

36. John Maderson [323], son of Henry Maderson [577] and Sarah Leggate [578], was born on 18 Dec 1791 and was christened in Brightwell & Foxhall Parish Church, Suffolk.


Occupation: Wheelwright, 1823. Occupation: Timber Merchant, 1846.

John married Mary Blomfield [324] [MRIN: 118] on 31 Jul 1821 in Martlesham, Suffolk.

Marriage Notes: Both bride and groom could write well.1


18 i. Henry Maderson [321]

37. Mary Blomfield [324] .

Mary married John Maderson [323] [MRIN: 118] on 31 Jul 1821 in Martlesham, Suffolk.

38. Herbert Burch [325] .


Occupation: Tailor.

Herbert married Phoebe Lane [579] [MRIN: 119] in Chertsey Presbyterian Meeting House, Surrey.


19 i. Elizabeth Burch [322]ii. William Burch [580]

39. Phoebe Lane [579], daughter of Richard Lane [589] and Elizabeth [590], was christened on 8 Nov 1785.

Phoebe married Herbert Burch [325] [MRIN: 119] in Chertsey Presbyterian Meeting House, Surrey.

40. Joseph Allchurch [311] was born circa 1798 in Bedminster and died in 1882 at age 84.



9


Occupation: Schoolmaster. Employment: Sexton. Employment: Clerk. Employment: Agent.

Joseph married Sarah Hall [312] [MRIN: 112].


20 i. Alfred Henry Allchurch [309]

41. Sarah Hall [312] was born circa 1802 in Long Ashton, nr Bristol and died in 1882 at age 80.

Sarah married Joseph Allchurch [311] [MRIN: 112].

42. William Cox [313] was born circa 1813 in Bristol.


Occupation: Ivory, Wood and General Turner.

William married Ann Toomes [314] [MRIN: 113].


21 i. Eliza Cox [310]

43. Ann Toomes [314] was born circa 1810.

Ann married William Cox [313] [MRIN: 113].

44. Edward Hollands [317] was born circa 1816 in Withyham, Sussex.

General Notes: Moved to Brighton.

Research Notes: From BB's Genes Reunited


Employment: Engine Driver, 1852. Employment: Striker, 1871.

Edward married Emma Fuller [318] [MRIN: 115].


22 i. Thomas Hollands [315]

45. Emma Fuller [318] was born circa 1824 in West Tarring, Sussex.


Employment: Laundress, 1871.

Emma married Edward Hollands [317] [MRIN: 115].

46. James Willett [319] was born circa 1826 in Brighton.


Occupation: Waterman.


10


James married Mary Ann Willett [320] [MRIN: 116].


23 i. Sarah Willett [316]

47. Mary Ann Willett [320] was born in 1829 in Brighton.

General Notes: Do not know if 'Willett' was her maiden name. This information taken from BB's Genes Reunited site.


Employment: Ironer.

Mary married James Willett [319] [MRIN: 116].

60. George Hough [112] .

George married Mary Humble [113] [MRIN: 47].


30 i. Robert Hough [105]ii. Catherine (Kate) Hough [114]

iii. Jane Hough [115] iv. Mary (Polly) Hough [116] v. Sarah Hough [117]

vi. Harriet Hough [118] vii. Eliza Hough [119]

61. Mary Humble [113] .

Mary married George Hough [112] [MRIN: 47].

Seventh Generation: 4th Great-Grandparents

64. John Battledor [563], son of John Battledor [564] and Mary [565], was christened on 17 Dec 1742 in Wymondham, Norfolk.

General Notes: Again, the link is not certain here, as this christening record is all we have so far, but it does tell us his parents.

John married.

His child was:

32 i. John Battledy [562]

72. Henry Maderson [577] .

Henry married Sarah Leggate [578] [MRIN: 188] on 16 Nov 1786 in Brightwell & Foxhall Parish Church, Suffolk.

Marriage Notes: Married by licence1


36 i. John Maderson [323]


11


73. Sarah Leggate [578] was christened in 1764 in Brightwell & Foxhall Parish Church, Suffolk.

Sarah married Henry Maderson [577] [MRIN: 188] on 16 Nov 1786 in Brightwell & Foxhall Parish Church, Suffolk.

78. Richard Lane [589] .

Richard married Elizabeth [590] [MRIN: 189].


39 i. Phoebe Lane [579]

79. Elizabeth [590] .

Elizabeth married Richard Lane [589] [MRIN: 189].

Eighth Generation: 5th Great-Grandparents

128. John Battledor [564] .

John married Mary [565] [MRIN: 182].


64 i. John Battledor [563]

129. Mary [565] .

Mary married John Battledor [564] [MRIN: 182].


12

Source Citations

1 Daphne. 2 Dictionary of Labour Biography.


13

Name Index

(No surname)Elizabeth [590]...................................9, 12Mary [565]........................................11, 12

ALLCHURCHAlfred Henry (1843- ) [309]....4, 7, 10Dorothy Sybil (1903-1986) [242]......2, 3, 5Gladys [627].............................................5Joseph (Cir 1798-1882) [311]........7, 9, 10Stanley (1874-1950) [293]............3, 4, 5, 7Sydney [626]............................................5

BATELDOREMary (Cir 1835- ) [260]....................6

BATTELLEYElizabeth (1845- ) [304]...................6James (Cir 1829- ) [258].................6Maria (1842- ) [303]........................6Samuel (1840-1917) [302].......................6

BATTLEDORJohn (1742- )...................................8John (1742- ) [563]..............8, 11, 12John (Cir 1795- ) [255]........3, 5, 6, 8John [564]........................................11, 12

BATTLEDYJohn (Bef 1771- )............................5John (Bef 1771- ) [562].........5, 8, 11

BATTLEYAda Emily (1872-1952) [295]...................4Annie Naomi (1879- ) [576].............4Arthur George (1874- ) [296]...........4Bernard (1938- ) [243].....................3Clara Amelia (1882- ) [297].............4David John (1935-2003) [68]................2, 3Emily Martha (1979- ) [70]...............2George (1847-1914) [249]............2, 3, 4, 6George Maderson (1877- ) [253].....4Herbert (1870-1873) [294].......................4John (Cir 1835- ) [300]....................6John Rose (1880-1952) [241]..........2, 3, 4Martha Sussanna (1883- ) [298].....4Sidney Ernest (1875- ) [252]...........4Thomas (1835-1883) [259]......................6William (1841- ) [301]......................6Zoe Susan (1973- ) [2]....................2

BIRDEmma (1852- ) [251].......................4

BLOMFIELDMary [324]............................................6, 9

BURCHElizabeth (1825-Cir 1900) [322].. .4, 6, 7, 9Herbert [325]........................................7, 9William [580]............................................9

COXEliza [310]......................................4, 7, 10William (Cir 1813- ) [313]..........7, 10

FULLEREmma (Cir 1824- ) [318]............7, 10

HALLSarah (Cir 1802-1882) [312]..............7, 10

HANRAHANChristopher Michael James (1952- )

[73].......................................................3Frank [84].................................................5James [81]...........................................3, 5Judith Shelagh Alexandra (1955- )

[77].......................................................3Marie [85].................................................5Maurice (1917-2001) [71].................2, 3, 5Sarah Penelope Susan (1949- ) [69]

.........................................................2, 3Sean [83].................................................5

HARRISONSarah Ann (Annie) (1855-1950) [106]. .5, 8

HOLLANDSAnnie (1876-1960) [308]..................3, 5, 7Edward (Cir 1816- ) [317]..........7, 10Thomas (1852- ) [315].......5, 7, 8, 10

HOUGHCatherine (Kate) [114]............................11Eliza [119]..............................................11George [112]......................................8, 11Harriet [118]...........................................11Jane (1891-1958) [111]............................8Jane [115]..............................................11Jessie (1887-1965) [93]...................3, 5, 8Mary (Polly) [116]...................................11Robert (1837-1891) [105]...............5, 8, 11Robert (1882-1911) [110].........................8Sarah [117]............................................11Thomas (1878-1944) [107]......................8William Firth (1881-1961) [108]................8

HUMBLEMary [113]..........................................8, 11

LANEPhoebe (1785- ) [579]...........7, 9, 12Richard [589]......................................9, 12

LEGGATESarah (1764- ) [578]............9, 11, 12

LEONARDAilsa (1918-2001) [72]......................2, 3, 5Edna Millicent (1915-2003) [94]...............5Robert Marsh (1873-1950) [92]............3, 5

MADERSONAdah Elizabeth (1850-1887) [250]. . .2, 4, 6Annie (1862- ) [587]........................7Clara Rosa (1853- ) [584]................6Elizabeth (1860- ) [586]...................7Emily (1858- ) [585].........................6Henry (Cir 1823-Bef 1881) [321]. .4, 6, 7, 9Henry [577]..................................9, 11, 12John (1791- ) [323]................6, 9, 11Mary Alice (1851-1851) [583]...................6Susannah (1847- ) [581].................6


14

Name Index

William Herbert (1849-1861) [582]...........6William Herbert (1867-1926) [588]...........7

O'HARESusan [82]............................................3, 5

PAULLydia Mary (1950- ) [4]....................2

TAPLEYDean Edward (Revd) (1944- ) [3]....2Nathaniel Dean (1977- ) [1].............2

TOOMESAnn (Cir 1810- ) [314]................7, 10

TOWNSHENDBlitha (Cir 1808- ) [305]...................9James (Cir 1765-1847)............................6James (Cir 1765-1847) [257]...............6, 8Naomi (Cir 1806- ) [256]......3, 5, 6, 9

WILLETTJames (Cir 1826- ) [319].....7, 10, 11Mary Ann (1829- ) [320]............7, 11Sarah (Cir 1854- ) [316]........5, 7, 11


15

Ancestors of Nathaniel Dean Tapley


1


2

Table of Contents

Ancestors of Nathaniel Dean Tapley................................................................................................................2

First Generation.............................................................................................................................................2Second Generation (Parents).........................................................................................................................2Third Generation (Grandparents)..................................................................................................................3Fourth Generation (Great-Grandparents)......................................................................................................4Fifth Generation (Great Great-Grandparents)...............................................................................................6Sixth Generation (3rd Great-Grandparents)................................................................................................10Seventh Generation (4th Great-Grandparents)...........................................................................................15Eighth Generation (5th Great-Grandparents)..............................................................................................18Ninth Generation (6th Great-Grandparents)...............................................................................................23Tenth Generation (7th Great-Grandparents)...............................................................................................28Eleventh Generation (8th Great-Grandparents)..........................................................................................30Twelfth Generation (9th Great-Grandparents)............................................................................................33Thirteenth Generation (10th Great-Grandparents)......................................................................................33

Source Citations..............................................................................................................................................34Name Index.....................................................................................................................................................35


1


First Generation

1. Nathaniel Dean Tapley [1], son of Revd Dean Edward Tapley [3] and Lydia Mary Paul [4], was born on 29 Nov 1977 in Chelmsford, Essex and was christened in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.


Occupation: Writer-Performer, From 2004. Employment: Director of Strategies, 2001-2004, Cybertrophic New Media Ltd, 23 Oak Rd,

Caterham, Surrey. Employment: Editor-in-Chief, 1998-2001, Citipages Ltd. Degree: BA (Hons) Oxon, 1998, Mansfield College, Oxford. Health: Pelvi-Ureteric Junction Obstruction Removal, 1997, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Health: Appendix Removal, 1996, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. Education: BA (Hons) Oxon, 1995-1998, Mansfield College, Oxford. Travel: Cultural Exchange, 1994, Bangladesh. School: 1987-1995, Caterham School. School: Preparatory School, 1982-1987, Maldon Court Preparatory School, Maldon, Essex.

Nathaniel married Zoe Susan Battley [2] [MRIN: 1], daughter of David John Battley [68] and Sarah Penelope Susan Hanrahan [69], on 12 Aug 2006 in Mansfield College, Oxford.

Second Generation: Parents

2. Revd Dean Edward Tapley [3], son of Edward Jerome Tapley [8] and Janeth Adeline Ford [9], was born on 21 Sep 1944 in Hartford, Connecticut.


Occupation: Minister of Religion. Employment: Minister, 1973-1987, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex. Employment: Minister, 1987-2004, Christ Church URC, Crawley, W Sussex. Employment: Minister, 2004 -, Christ Church URC, Leatherhead, Surrey.

Dean married Lydia Mary Paul [4] [MRIN: 2] on 3 Jul 1971 in Congregational Church, Leatherhead, Surrey.

Marriage Notes: The church is now Christ Church URC, Leatherhead, where DET was minister from Sept 2004.


1 i. Nathaniel Dean Tapley [1]ii. Joshua Paul Tapley [5] was born on 11 Jun 1980 in Chelmsford, Essex.

3. Lydia Mary Paul [4], daughter of Robert Sidney Paul [52] and Eunice Mary Pickup [53], was born on 27 Mar 1950 in Leatherhead, Surrey.


Employment: Teacher, 1988 -, Caterham School. Employment: Teacher, 1987-1988, New Addington High School, Croydon, Surrey. Employment: Art Teacher, 1983-1987, St Peter's High School, Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.

Lydia married Revd Dean Edward Tapley [3] [MRIN: 2] on 3 Jul 1971 in Congregational Church, Leatherhead, Surrey.


2


Third Generation: Grandparents

4. Edward Jerome Tapley [8], son of Jerome Perkins Tapley [11] and Ada Littlefield Mills [12], was born on 7 Sep 1913 and died on 17 Jul 1969 in Manchester, Connecticut at age 55.


Occupation: Plumber.

Edward married Janeth Adeline Ford [9] [MRIN: 4] on 2 Oct 1942.


2 i. Revd Dean Edward Tapley [3]ii. Emery Archer Tapley [10] was born on 3 May 1947.

5. Janeth Adeline Ford [9], daughter of Dean Wilbur Ford [30] and Louisa Caton Tarment [31], was born on 8 Oct 1916 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and died on 5 Jul 1968 in Manchester, Connecticut at age 51.

Janeth married Edward Jerome Tapley [8] [MRIN: 4] on 2 Oct 1942.

6. Robert Sidney Paul [52], son of Robert James Kingsbury Paul [54] and Florence Eliza Reed [55], was born on 10 Jun 1918 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey and died on 27 Jun 1992 in Sutton, Surrey at age 74.


Education: BA (Hons) Oxon in Modern History: St Catherine's College, Oxford. Education: D. Phil. Oxon: Mansfield College, Oxford. Occupation: Academic and Minister of Religion. Employment: Minister, 1945-1954, Christ Church Congregational Church, Leatherhead, Surrey. Book: The Lord Protector, 1955. Employment: Associate Director of the Ecumenical Institute (World Council of Churches), 1954-

1958, Chateau de Bossey, Celigny, Switzerland. Employment: Professor of Church History, 1958-1967, Hartford, Connecticut. Employment: Professor of Church History, 1967-1977, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Employment: Professor of Church History, 1977-1987, Austin, Texas. Employment: 1987, Huntington Library, Pasadena, California. Book: Whatever Happened to Sherlock Holmes?, 1991.

Robert married Eunice Mary Pickup [53] [MRIN: 25] on 22 Apr 1946 in Congregational Church, Leatherhead, Surrey.


3 i. Lydia Mary Paul [4]ii. Timothy Robert Paul [261] was born in 1947 in Leatherhead, Surrey.

iii. Martin Oliver Kingsbury Paul [262] was born in 1954 in Bosse, Switzerland.

7. Eunice Mary Pickup [53], daughter of Herbert Pickup [268] and Jessie Lee [269], was born on 28 Sep 1921 in Stubbins, Lancashire.


Occupation: Language Teacher.

Eunice married Robert Sidney Paul [52] [MRIN: 25] on 22 Apr 1946 in Congregational Church, Leatherhead, Surrey.


3


Fourth Generation: Great-Grandparents

8. Jerome Perkins Tapley [11], son of Captain Jerome Perkins Tapley [14] and Phebe Parker Tapley [15], was born on 20 Jan 1875 in West Brooksville, Maine and died in May 1955 at age 80. The cause of his death was Alzheimers?.

General Notes: From Albert Reed Mills' Real Estate Transactions: '1951 - Percy A. Mills, of Prospect, devises under the last will of Albert R. Mills, in consideration of one dollar paid by Earl Gray, of Brooksville, give, grant, bargain, sell and convey, a certain lot situated in Brooksville. Land is bounded Northerly by land of Jerome Tapley and Edgar Jones; Westerly, Southerly and Easterly by land of George Farnham, containing 40 acres. Dated January 18, 1951.'

Parker or Perkins?

Research Notes: Albert Reed Mills (real estate transaction) is 1.1.1a.2a.1.6a.9 in the Mills Family History.

Medical Notes: "My father, he and my mother had lived down there on the Point since about 1912. That's where they lived all their married life. Dad would come out of the house and start walking up the road. Mother would come out and say 'Where are you going, Jerome?' He'd say: 'I've got to go home. I can't stay down here any longer. There's work to be done. I've got to go home.' He was heading for the home where he was born. No one knew about alzheimers then, but I know full well that's what it had to be." Rebecca Tapley Grindle.


Occupation: Farmer: West Brooksville, Maine. 1920 Census - 'operates farm'1930 Census - 'farmer'

Jerome married Ada Littlefield Mills [12] [MRIN: 5] on 7 Aug 1912 in Brooksville, Maine.


4 i. Edward Jerome Tapley [8]ii. W. Merle Tapley [13] was born on 10 Feb 1920 and died on 28 Jun 2006 at age 86.

iii. Alice Rebecca Tapley [326] was born on 5 Mar 1916.

9. Ada Littlefield Mills [12], daughter of Edward Ellison Mills [328] and Lucy A. Bolton [329], was born on 1 Dec 1887, died on 21 May 1976 in Ellsworth Nursing Home at age 88, and was buried in Mt Rest Cemetery, Brooksville, Maine.

General Notes: "WEST BROOKSVILLE - Ada M. Tapley, 87. died May 21 at an Ellsworth nursing home after a long illness. She was born December 1, 1887, at West Brooksville, the daughter of Edward and Lucy (Bolton) Mills. She is survived by a daughter, Mrs Rebecca Grindle, of Dorchester, Mass; a son, Merle, of South Windsor, Conn; five grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and a nephew. Funeral services will be held Monday at 1 pm at the West Brooksville Conregational Church. Burial will be in Mount Rest Cemetery in North Brooksville. There will be no visiting hours. Arrangements are by the Jordan Home, Ellsworth." Bangor Daily News

Research Notes: Mills Family History has much on Ada and her family.

Real Estate Transaction: '1912 - Joseph Mills, of Los Angeles, California; Horace Mills of Arlington, Mass.; ALice Mills, Mary Mills and Ada Tapley, all of Brooksville, are named in a quit clim deed, for $1 from Lucy A. Mills for land known as the Mills Homestead, consisting of 100 acres. It is the same land conveyed to Edward E. by his father in a will March 31, 1894. Also personal property, including gear in the barn, stock on the farm, and all property, real and personal belonging to the estate of the late Edward E. Mills. Dated October 21, 1912.'



4


Education: Graduated from Castine Normal School. Employment: Teacher, 1917. In 1917 she was paid $80.00 in teacher wages for spring, fall and

winter, according to annual town reports.Residence: To 1986, Mills Point, West Brooksville, Maine.

Ada married Jerome Perkins Tapley [11] [MRIN: 5] on 7 Aug 1912 in Brooksville, Maine.

10. Dean Wilbur Ford [30] was born on 14 Mar 1886 in Orange, Massachusetts and died on 14 Dec 1975 in Sarasota, Florida at age 89.

Dean married Louisa Caton Tarment [31] [MRIN: 14] in 1910.


5 i. Janeth Adeline Ford [9]

11. Louisa Caton Tarment [31], daughter of John Tarment [32] and Mary Ann Caton [33], was born on 12 Feb 1886 in Foxboro, Massachusetts and died on 29 May 1962 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts at age 76.

Louisa married Dean Wilbur Ford [30] [MRIN: 14] in 1910.

12. Robert James Kingsbury Paul [54], son of Henry Paul [56] and Martha Marchant Kingsbury [57], was born on 26 Dec 1885 in Dorchester, Dorset, was christened on 19 Mar 1886 in All Saints, Dorchester, Dorset, died on 4 Mar 1975 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey at age 89, and was buried in Hersham Burial Ground, Hersham, Surrey.


Occupation: Master Builder. Baptism: 19 Mar 1886, Dorchester, Dorset. The Address on the baptism certificate is Bell Street,

Dorchester. He was baptised in the Parish of All Saints, Dorchester, but is registered in the Book of Baptisms of the Primitive Methodists in Weymouth.

Employment: Bricklayer's Labourer, 1901, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. According to the 1901 Census, he was living in Rydens Grove, Walton-on-Thames, in the house of his uncle and aunt, James and Mary Ann (Kingsbury) Bolton. His parents lived two houses away in Rydens Grove.

Military Service: Corporal in Army Pay Corps. During World War I, he was corporal # 11999 in the Army Pay Corps.

Employment: Partner at Poulton and Paul: Hersham, Surrey. The firm was housed for some years in the Round Chapel (Congregational), after the new church was built in Queens Road, Hersham. It was demolished to make way for a petrol station near the Hersham roundabout.

Burial: : Hersham Burial Ground, Hersham, Surrey. Robert's ashes are in Grave 91, Herhsam Burial Ground, Hersham Rd, Walton-on-Thames.

Robert married Florence Eliza Reed [55] [MRIN: 26] on 20 Nov 1915 in Congregational Church, Hersham, Surrey.

Marriage Notes: Minister was A. Cozens Walker and the witnesses were Herbert J. Reed and Henry Paul.


6 i. Robert Sidney Paul [52]ii. June Paul [292]

13. Florence Eliza Reed [55] was born on 20 Sep 1885 in White Roding, Essex, died on 3 Sep 1963 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey at age 77, and was buried in Hersham Burial Ground, Hersham, Surrey.


5



Employment: Parlourmaid. In a house in Old Avenue, Weybridge.Census: 1901, Enfleld, Middlesex. She was staying with her aunt, Emily Slade, at 4 Brook

Cottages, East Barnet Rd, Enflield, Middlesex.Moved: : Weybridge. Two of her mother's cousins had settled in Weybridge, which could be why

she moved there.Burial: : Hersham Burial Ground, Hersham, Surrey. In Grave 91

Florence married Robert James Kingsbury Paul [54] [MRIN: 26] on 20 Nov 1915 in Congregational Church, Hersham, Surrey.

14. Herbert Pickup [268], son of John Pickup [270] and Mary Ellen Greenhalgh [271], was born on 9 Dec 1892 in Stubbins, Lancashire and died on 9 Aug 1957 in Withington, Manchester at age 64.


Occupation: Schoolteacher - Headmaster. Education: Bury Grammar School: Bury, Lancashire. Education: Bangor Normal College: Bangor, Wales. Military Service: Sergeant in Royal Fusiliers. During World War I, and spent last part of the war in

Flanders.

He was in the Public Schools Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and was stationed for a while on Epsom Downs. He was billetted in Ashtead, Surrey.

Employment: Headmaster of Nansen Street School, To 1955, Ardwick. Hobbies: Cricket. Chairman of Manchester Schoolboys cricket for many years.

Herbert married Jessie Lee [269] [MRIN: 97] on 27 Dec 1919 in Stubbins Congregational Church, Lancashire.

Marriage Notes: Best man was John Starkey, a boyhood friend, and the youngest of the six children of John Starkey, a foreman stone mason in Stubbins.

The bridesmaids were the bride's sisters Mabel and Winnie, and her niece, Margaret Smith.

Service performed by the Revd Ernest Jones.


7 i. Eunice Mary Pickup [53]

15. Jessie Lee [269], daughter of Samuel Henry Lee [282] and Lucy Hannah Hyde [283], was born on 9 Jan 1892 in St George's, Wrockwardine Wood, Salop, Lancashire and died on 20 Jan 1961 in Oldham, Lancashire at age 69.


Occupation: Cotton Mill Worker, To 1919. Jessie was a Weaver at Porritt's Mill after she left school, until 1919.

Moved: Cir 1900, Stubbins, Lancashire. The family moved to Stubbins from Shropshire, after an accident prevented Jessie's father from continuing his work as a blacksmith, and there was work for the family in the cotton and woollen mills.

Jessie married Herbert Pickup [268] [MRIN: 97] on 27 Dec 1919 in Stubbins Congregational Church, Lancashire.

Fifth Generation: Great Great-Grandparents


6


16. Captain Jerome Perkins Tapley [14], son of Robert Tapley [16] and Polly Snow Parker [17], was born on 26 Nov 1833 in West Brooksville, Maine and died on 10 May 1911 in West Brooksville, Maine at age 77.

General Notes: 'Capt. Jerome P. Tapley learned the sailor's trade before he was 16 and at that age began to follow the seas. He had command of a vessel at 20.

The 'David Wasson' claimed to be the first ship of its type, the three-masted schooner, ot 'tern schooner.

Parker or Perkins?1, 2


Employment: Sea Captain, 1853 -. Captain Jerome P. Tapley learned the sailor's trade before he was 16 and had command of a vessel at 20.

Shipwreck: 'David Wasson', 23 Aug 1873.2 In 1873 his three-masted schooner, 'David Wasson', was destroyed in the hurricane of August 23rd, whilst in the latitude of Bermuda. After clinging to the ship for six (MLV says four) days, without food and water, the crew was rescued by an English brig and brought to Montevideo. In order to reach home, they had to sail to Liverpool and cross the Atlantic again.

The Mills faimly history also suggests that the brig that they all sailed home on was the 'Hattie E. Tapley'

Dec 14, 1873 - "We have heard sad news over the mighty ocean. Capt. Jerome Tapley in the David Wasson sailed from Brooksville on the 14th August and after being out ten days, we had a terrible gale and every thing was swept from his vessel and his vessel rolled over and they were left to raging waves but four of the crew succeeded in getting to the wreck and three of the crew were lost. They were on the wreck four days without food and water. Not until this weeek have we heard the particulars. They were taken off the wreck and carries to Montevedio [sic]. The Captain and part of the crew were saved but sad to relate that Wasson Jones is lost. He was about 15 years old and he wanted to go on a voyage to see the wonders of the world and his parents were loth to let him go but he wanted to go. So much they consented to this voyage. They thought it would be a pleasant voyage for him. The voyage was short but the sad and dreadful news that came to them this week that there [sic] dear child was gone. Their anguish is very great. God help them to bear this dreadful shock, O heal their wounded hearts. Wasson Jones was a promising lad. He was the idol of their hearts but he is gone never to return until the sea shall give up their dead. Then may parents and grandparents brothers and meet to part no more. God remember those dear parents that have lost their dear one on this voyage." Margaret Lord Varnum

Feb 22 1874 "Wasson Jones funeral sermon was preached yesterday by Rev. Mr. Ives. It was a good and solmn [sic] discourse. The text was in Acts 20, Chapter and 38 verse. Dear boy he will remain until the sea shall give up her dead. Wasson Jones was lost at sea six months ago." MLV

Cargo was lumber from Bangor to Curacao.

David Wasson's father had decided to stay at home on that trip, and lend the boat to Jerome Tapley, but his son, David Wasson went along.

When David Wasson left his parents house he raised a flag in the front garden, and insisted that it not be taken down until he was home. After the gale, Mrs Wasson looked out of the window at daybreak, and saw that the flag had sunk to half-mast. In order that her husband not see it, she began to sneakily dress, but he got up went to the window, and hurried downstairs to raise it before she could see it.


7


Shipwreck: 'Nellie Clifford', 1876, Funchal. While ready to sail for the Canaries at Funchal, the brig 'Nellie Clifford' parted her chains in a hurricane and was driven ashore and wrecked but all hands were saved.

Retirement: From 'Lucia Porter'.

Jerome married Phebe Parker Tapley [15] [MRIN: 6] on 4 Mar 1863 in Brooksville, Maine.

Marriage Notes: Married by Rev. Benjamin Dodge3


8 i. Jerome Perkins Tapley [11]ii. Carrie Freeman Tapley [375] was born on 11 Jul 1865.

iii. Lizzie Chase Tapley [376] was born on 8 Jan 1867. iv. Elsie Cora Tapley [377] was born on 18 Jul 1869. v. Marion Parker Tapley [378] was born on 14 May 1871.

17. Phebe Parker Tapley [15], daughter of Job Tapley [20] and Lydia S. Chase [21], was born on 5 Oct 1840 in West Brooksville, Maine and died on 17 Sep 1928 in West Brooksville, Maine at age 87.

Phebe married Captain Jerome Perkins Tapley [14] [MRIN: 6] on 4 Mar 1863 in Brooksville, Maine.

18. Edward Ellison Mills [328], son of George Vaughn Mills JP [337] and Dorothy Farnham [338], was born on 16 Jan 1851 and died on 14 Oct 1914 at age 63.

General Notes: Real Estate Transaction: '1912 - Joseph Mills, of Los Angeles, California; Horace Mills of Arlington, Mass.; Alice Mills, Mary Mills and Ada Tapley, all of Brooksville, are named in a quit claim deed, for $1 from Lucy A. Mills for land known as the Mills Homestead, consisting of 100 acres. It is the same land conveyed to Edward E. by his father in a will March 31, 1894. Also personal property, including gear in the barn, stock on the farm, and all property, real and personal belonging to the estate of the late Edward E. Mills. Dated October 21, 1912.'

Date of death in Mills Family History means he was not yet dead, when the above quit claim was signed. If true, why did he just not leave everythig to his wife?Andwer - Because these were his brothers and sisters, and the quit claim was on Mills Point, which had been left to his stepmother Nancy. Presumably this waa when she died.4


Occupation: Farmer. Employment: 1893, West Brooksville, Maine. Town Report lists him being paid $3.65 for services

in snow removal.Employment: 1897, West Brooksville, Maine. Town Report lists him being paid $1.80 for plank

for bridge.Employment: Road Repair, 1904, West Brooksville, Maine. He was paid $5.50 for road repair and

$0.60 as a ballot clerk.Employment: Road Worker, 1905, West Brooksville, Maine. Paid $3.81 for road work.

Edward married Lucy A. Bolton [329] [MRIN: 121] on 5 Aug 1875.

Marriage Notes: Performed by E.R.Osgood


9 i. Ada Littlefield Mills [12]ii. Joseph E Mills [332] was born on 5 Sep 1878.

iii. Horace A. Mills [333] was born on 6 Jul 1881 in Brooksville, Maine and died in 1956 at age 75.


8


iv. Alice D. Mills [335] was born on 28 Dec 1885 and died in 1948 at age 63. v. Mary E. Mills [336] was born on 22 Mar 1892, died on 29 Mar 1962 in Castine at

age 70, and was buried in Mt Rest Cemetery, Brooksville, Maine.

19. Lucy A. Bolton [329], daughter of Benjamin Bolton Jr [330] and Relief W. Green [331], was born on 3 Jul 1858 and died in 1936 at age 78.

Lucy married Edward Ellison Mills [328] [MRIN: 121] on 5 Aug 1875.

22. John Tarment [32] was born on 19 Dec 1846 in Flamstead, Hertfordshire and died on 20 Jan 1923 at age 76.

John married Mary Ann Caton [33] [MRIN: 15] on 31 Aug 1870 in Wesleyan Chapel, Luton, Bedfordshire.


11 i. Louisa Caton Tarment [31]

23. Mary Ann Caton [33], daughter of George Caton [34] and Louisa Swain [35], was born in Sep 1847 in Luton, Bedfordshire and died in Mar 1928 at age 80.

Mary married John Tarment [32] [MRIN: 15] on 31 Aug 1870 in Wesleyan Chapel, Luton, Bedfordshire.

24. Henry Paul [56], son of Edmund Paul [58] and Mary Adams [59], was born in 1858 in Fordington, Dorset and died on 19 Jul 1933 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey at age 75.


Occupation: Carpenter (Journeyman).

Henry married Martha Marchant Kingsbury [57] [MRIN: 27] on 5 Jul 1885 in Wesleyan Chapel, Dorchester, Dorset.


12 i. Robert James Kingsbury Paul [54]

25. Martha Marchant Kingsbury [57] was born on 26 Sep 1845 in Blandford Forum, Dorset and died on 11 Oct 1914 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey at age 69.


Employment: General Servant. Before marriage

Martha married Henry Paul [56] [MRIN: 27] on 5 Jul 1885 in Wesleyan Chapel, Dorchester, Dorset.

28. John Pickup [270], son of James Pickup [272] and Harriet Ashworth [273], was born on 13 Jun 1860 in Songstry, Tottington Higher End, Lancashire and died on 9 Mar 1941 in Withington, Manchester at age 80.


Occupation: Fulling Miller, 1881, Porritt's Woollen Mill, Stubbins, Lancashire.

John married Mary Ellen Greenhalgh [271] [MRIN: 98] on 11 Nov 1891 in Stubbins Congregational Church, Lancashire.



9


14 i. Herbert Pickup [268]

29. Mary Ellen Greenhalgh [271] was born on 19 Jan 1863 in Pendlebury, Lancashire and died on 9 Dec 1936 in Bury, Lancashire at age 73.


Occupation: Cotton Warper / Cotton Beamer.

Mary married John Pickup [270] [MRIN: 98] on 11 Nov 1891 in Stubbins Congregational Church, Lancashire.

30. Samuel Henry Lee [282], son of Daniel Lee [284] and Esther Fletcher [285], was born on 6 Dec 1857 in Wrockwardine Wood and died on 31 Jul 1909 in Stubbins, Lancashire at age 51.


Occupation: Master Blacksmith.

Samuel married Lucy Hannah Hyde [283] [MRIN: 104] on 2 Aug 1881.


15 i. Jessie Lee [269]ii. Mabel Lee [560]

iii. Winifred (Winnie) Lee [561]

31. Lucy Hannah Hyde [283] was born on 6 Feb 1859 in School Row, Snedshill, Shitnal, Shropshire and died on 13 May 1936 in Stubbins, Lancashire at age 77.


Occupation: Housemaid, To 1881.

Lucy married Samuel Henry Lee [282] [MRIN: 104] on 2 Aug 1881.

Sixth Generation 3rd Great-Grandparents

32. Robert Tapley [16], son of Peletiah Tapley [18] and Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19], was born on 19 May 1792 in West Brooksville, Maine and died on 5 Jan 1863 in West Brooksville, Maine at age 70.

General Notes: "He was the only son of Peletiah to follow the seas. His home was the old farm of his father, and he became a Master Mariner. Of his nine sons, seven followed the seas, became Master Mariners at an early age, commanding fine vessels and making successful voyages to all parts of the world." A Tapley Genealogy - Patricia Boudreau


Alt. Birth: 10 May 1792. Someone somewhere has miscopied a 9 or a 0. Maybe me.Occupation: Master Mariner. "He was the only son of Peletiah to follow the seas. His home was

the old farm of his father, and he became a Master Mariner. Of his nine sons, seven followed the seas, became Master Marienrs at an early age, commanding fine vessels and making successful voyages to all parts of the world." PB

Robert married Polly Snow Parker [17] [MRIN: 7] on 16 Mar 1820 in West Brooksville, Maine.


16 i. Captain Jerome Perkins Tapley [14]ii. Simeon Parker Tapley [366] was born on 2 Jan 1820 and died in 1903 at age 83.


10


iii. Captain Robert Tapley [367] was born on 16 Jan 1824 and died in Feb 1900 at age 76.

iv. Captain Thomas Tapley [368] was born on 29 Jun 1825 in West Brooksville, Maine and died in 1912 at age 87.

v. Captain William Parker Tapley [369] was born on 19 Oct 1826 in West Brooksville, Maine and died on 30 Oct 1899 at age 73.

vi. Captain Abram Perkins Tapley [370] was born on 5 Sep 1828 in West Brooksville, Maine and died on 29 Jun 1907 at age 78.

vii. Eliza Condon Tapley [371] was born on 10 Sep 1830 and died on 19 Apr 1860 at age 29.

viii. Captain George Henry Tapley [372] was born on 5 Feb 1832 in West Brooksville, Maine, died on 21 Apr 1923 at age 91, and was buried in Mt Rest Cemetery, Brooksville, Maine.

ix. Sarah Frances Tapley [373] was born on 21 Nov 1835 and died on 21 Feb 1868 at age 32.

x. Captain John Payne Tapley [374] was born on 14 Sep 1842 and died on 24 Jul 1908 at age 65.

Robert next married Eliza Condon [419] [MRIN: 145] in Jan 1816 in West Brooksville, Maine.


i. Timothy Condon Tapley [420] was born on 14 Feb 1818 and died on 9 Nov 1894 in West Brooksville, Maine at age 76.

33. Polly Snow Parker [17], daughter of Isaac Snow [38] and Polly Paine [39], was born on 5 May 1795 in West Brooksville, Maine and died on 10 Oct 1885 in West Brooksville, Maine at age 90.


Alt. Birth: 5 May 1796, Sedgwick.

Polly married Robert Tapley [16] [MRIN: 7] on 16 Mar 1820 in West Brooksville, Maine.

34. Job Tapley [20], son of Peletiah Tapley [18] and Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19], was born on 17 May 1803 in Brooksville, Maine and died on 1 Nov 1889 at age 86.

Job married Lydia S. Chase [21] [MRIN: 9] on 10 Nov 1832 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.


17 i. Phebe Parker Tapley [15]

35. Lydia S. Chase [21] was born on 30 Nov 1806 in Newburyport, Massachusetts and died on 23 Dec 1876 in Brooksville, Maine at age 70.

Lydia married Job Tapley [20] [MRIN: 9] on 10 Nov 1832 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

36. George Vaughn Mills JP [337], son of Joseph Mills [344] and Sarah L. Goodwin [345], was born on 22 Nov 1812 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine and died on 1 Apr 1894 at age 81.

General Notes: Colby's Atlas of 1840 lists a Copper Mine at Mills Point.

1830 census does not list George with his father in Cape Elizabeth. He would have been 18 at this time, but is not listed anywhere in the census. He may have been with his brother, Preserved, in Bangor, at the time, as he is said to have come from Bangor to Brooksville. The 1830 census lists extra family members in Preserved's household, including two males between 15 and 20. Neither of Preserved's sons were that old, so one could have been George.


11


Martha Varnum Stayner (a grand-daughter?) refers to G.V.'s Quaker training leading to his hating war. "...so many people found him unapproachable. To me, he was never unapproachable and always possessed a quiet friendliness."5


Occupation: Farmer. Employment: Tinware Salesman, 1829, Bangor, Maine. 'Brooksville records say he was a tinware

salesman from Bangor. He probably became acquainted with the Bagaduce area while selling goods there in 1929.'

Moved: From Bangor to Brooksville, Cir 1830. Land: Mills Point, 1835-1836, Brooksville, Maine.6 Lot number 13, previously owned by Joseph

Webber, from David Douglass.Land: 2 May 1835, Brooksville, Maine. George V. Mills, of Bangor, purchases one-half of a

certain parcel of undivided land in Brooksville from John Tapley for $600. The property begins at stake and stone near so-called Mill Stream, running 19 rods and six feet to county road, Southwesterly 40 rods, running by the road Southeasterly 9 rods back to stream to the place of beginning, together with lone shed and bard [barn?] and all other privileges and opportunities belong. Dated May 2, 1835. David Wasson was Justice of the Peace.

Land: 6 Jan 1836, Brooksville, Maine. George V. Mills, of Brooksville, purchases a certain parcel of land from David Douglass, of Brooksville for $360. The land lies in Brooksville, bounded by head of so-called Long Cove on land of Jeremiah Jones and running Southerly on land of Jones to a lot of land in the possession of John Jones. Southeasterly by the said lot to the watres of the Castine River at Green Point, so-called. Thence as the shore runs down to the river to the first mentioned bounds. Containing 100 acres, the same being deeded to Douglass by Jeremiah Jones October 21, 1831 and was deeded to Jones By Joseph Webber. Dated January 6, 1836.

Land: 19 Apr 1853, Brooksville, Maine. George V. Mills, of Brooksville, purchases one acre of land in Brooksville from John Farnham of Brooksville. The land begins at shore of Castine River, adjoining land owned by heirs of Jeremiah Jones, Southeasterly to Webber Field, now owned by Gersham Farnham, Southwesterly by Webber's Field to Gersham Farnham's south line, then Southwest to river. Dated April 19, 1853.

Land: 27 May 1853, Brooksville, Maine. George V. Mills, of Brooksville, purchases one acre of land in Brooksville for $55 from Gersham Farnham. The land is bounded by the corner of Joseph Webber's lot on the road, runs Southwest to the spring but not including it, from spring to stake and stones at corner of land this day sold by George V. Mills to me, Southeast to Joseph Webber's lot and Southwest to road. Dated May 27, 1853.

Census: 1860, West Brooksville, Maine. Lists George V. Mills (47) farmer, with real estate valued at $1,200 and personal property at $250. With Nancy L. (33), Alice (22), Mary (18), Goerge Jr (15), Emily (13), Dora (11), Edward (9), Albert (7)

Election: State Legislature, 1870. Mortgage: 20 Aug 1875, Brooksville, Maine. George V. Mills pays off mortgage debt to Newell

Osgood, $500. Dated August 20, 1875.Employment: 1893, West Brooksville, Maine. Town Reports list him being paid $1.50 for services

as truant officer.Guardianship: Sarah F. Douglass. Daughter of Joseph Douglass, who died suddenly in 1870. In

1880 she married ALbert R. Mills, G.V.'s youngest son.

George married Dorothy Farnham [338] [MRIN: 124] on 6 Apr 1835.


18 i. Edward Ellison Mills [328]ii. Lucy Milliken Mills [512] was born on 22 Nov 1836, died on 30 Sep 1852 at age 15,

and was buried in Mills Point, West Brooksville, Maine. iii. Alice Farnham Mills [513] was born on 5 Apr 1838, died on 30 Sep 1860 at age 22,

and was buried on 2 Oct 1860 in Mills Point, West Brooksville, Maine. The cause of her death was Consumption.

iv. Susan Walker Mills [514] was born on 10 Feb 1840, died on 11 Jan 1853 at age 12, and was buried in Mills Point, West Brooksville, Maine.


12


v. Mary Barker Mills [515] was born on 25 Jan 1842 and died on 9 Jul 1869 at age 27.

vi. George Vaughn Mills Jr [516] was born on 11 Mar 1844 and died in 1916 at age 72.

vii. Emily Snow Mills [517] was born on 13 Sep 1846 and died on 8 Aug 1876 at age 29.

viii. Dorothy Farnham Mills [518] was born on 22 Sep 1848 and died in 1939 at age 91. ix. Albert Reed Mills [519] was born on 25 Mar 1853 and died on 4 Mar 1942 at age

88.

George next married Nancy Littlefield Wasson [341] [MRIN: 126], daughter of Captain David Wasson [342] and Nancy Littlefield [343], on 18 Mar 1857.


i. Hattie Mills [520] was born in 1867.

37. Dorothy Farnham [338], daughter of Gersham Farnham [339] and Eleanor Varnum [340], was born on 9 Oct 1816 in Brooksville, Maine, died on 28 Feb 1855 in Brooksville, Maine at age 38, and was buried on 1 Mar 1855 in Mills Point, West Brooksville, Maine.

General Notes: "Mrs. Dorithy Mills died yesterday. SHe has left her husband and seven children to mourn her loss and a large circle of other friends. She was a good wife and kind Mother. I saw her a short time before she died and conversed with her. She said she felt loth to part with her family but she desired to be willing. When I saw her again I conversed with her. She said she felt better in her mind. She was very patient. She experstednd [experienced?] fears about dying. I went to hear her funerl sermon preached this afternoon. The Rev. Mr. Palmer preached. The text was 1st Thessalonians, 4 chapter and 14, 15 verses. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again. Even so them also wich [sic] sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the lord. That we wich [sic] are alive and remain unto the coming of the lord shall not prevent them which are asleep." MLV's diary for 1st March, 1855.

Dorothy, according to Martha Varnum Stayner, advised George to marry his second wife, thinking that she would take good care of the children.5, 7

Dorothy married George Vaughn Mills JP [337] [MRIN: 124] on 6 Apr 1835.

38. Benjamin Bolton Jr [330] .8

Benjamin married Relief W. Green [331]9 [MRIN: 122].


19 i. Lucy A. Bolton [329]

39. Relief W. Green [331] .9

Relief married Benjamin Bolton Jr [330]8 [MRIN: 122].

46. George Caton [34] was born on 23 May 1820 in Kempston, Bedfordshire.

George married Louisa Swain [35] [MRIN: 16] on 2 Nov 1843 in St Mary, Luton, Bedfordshire.


23 i. Mary Ann Caton [33]

47. Louisa Swain [35], daughter of William Swain [37] and Sarah Hide [36], was born circa 15 Oct 1820 in Preston Hitchin, Bedfordshire.

Louisa married George Caton [34] [MRIN: 16] on 2 Nov 1843 in St Mary, Luton, Bedfordshire.


13


48. Edmund Paul [58], son of Henry Paul [60] and Isabella West [61], was born circa 5 Apr 1829 in Stinsford, Dorset.


Employment: Seaman. Employment: Labourer.

Edmund married Mary Adams [59] [MRIN: 28].


24 i. Henry Paul [56]

49. Mary Adams [59] was born circa 4 Sep 1821 in Fordington, Dorset and died on 9 Nov 1851 in All Saints, Dorchester, Dorset at age 30.


Employment: Sempstress / Unpholsterer.

Mary married Edmund Paul [58] [MRIN: 28].

56. James Pickup [272], son of Abraham Pickup [274] and Mary Howarth [275], was born To 16 Aug 1824 in Pendlebury, Lancashire and died on 22 Dec 1902 in Stubbins, Lancashire at age 78.


Occupation: Fulling Miller, 1881, Porritt's Woollen Mill, Stubbins, Lancashire.

James married Harriet Ashworth [273] [MRIN: 99] on 6 May 1849 in Rochdale, Lancashire.


28 i. John Pickup [270]

57. Harriet Ashworth [273], daughter of Edmund Ashworth [604] and Jane Shepherd [605], was born on 1 Mar 1829 in Ashworth, Lancashire, was christened on 20 Sep 1829 in St James', and died on 18 Jul 1897 in Stubbins, Lancashire at age 68.

Harriet married James Pickup [272] [MRIN: 99] on 6 May 1849 in Rochdale, Lancashire.

60. Daniel Lee [284], son of William Lee [286] and Sarah Wright [287], was born To 3 Jun 1821 in Church Aston, near Newport, Shropshire and died from 1891 to 1901 at age 70.


Occupation: Master Blacksmith.

Daniel married Esther Fletcher [285] [MRIN: 105] on 21 Nov 1842 in Parish Church, Wrockwardine, Shropshire.


30 i. Samuel Henry Lee [282]

61. Esther Fletcher [285] was born in 1823 in Shitnal, Shropshire and died on 13 Aug 1854 in Dowley, Shropshire at age 31.



14


Occupation: Dressmaker, 1842.

Esther married Daniel Lee [284] [MRIN: 105] on 21 Nov 1842 in Parish Church, Wrockwardine, Shropshire.

Seventh Generation: 4th Great-Grandparents

64. Peletiah Tapley [18], son of Job Tapley [22] and Susanna Fernald [23], was born on 2 Oct 1757 in Kittery, Maine and died on 23 Oct 1830 in Brooksville, Maine at age 73.

General Notes: "He went from his native place to Bagaduce (now Brooksville) in about 1780, and settled on the right bank of the Bagaduce River in a log house which he built. He is mentioned as one of the petitioners for the division of Bagaduce and incorporation of Penobscot. In 1793, he was one of the incorporators of the First Parish Church at Penobscot, incorporated by the Gen. CT. of Massachuetts at the May session of that year. From 1784 to 1871, forty-five Tapley children had been born on the old Tapley place, only one of whom died in infancy. They include the children of Peletiah, his son Robert, the latter's son William, grandson John and great-grandson Joseph." - ATG


Land: Cir 1780, West Brooksville, Maine. Legal: Petition: Penobscot, Maine.10 He is mentioned as one od the petitioners for the division of

Bagaduce and incorporation of Penobscot.Religion: Incorporated First Parish Church, 1793, Penobscot, Maine.

Peletiah married Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19] [MRIN: 8] circa 1783.


32 i. Robert Tapley [16]34 ii. Job Tapley [20]

iii. Susannah Tapley [426] was born on 27 Apr 1784. iv. Lucy Tapley [427] was born on 3 Apr 1786. v. Sally Tapley [428] was born on 6 Mar 1788.

vi. Benjamin Tapley [429] was born in 1789. vii. Rebecca Tapley [430] was born on 5 Sep 1790.

viii. Thomas Tapley [431] was born on 15 Mar 1794. ix. William Tapley [432] was born on 13 Mar 1796. x. Peletiah Tapley [433] was born on 16 Oct 1797.

xi. Elizabeth (Elsy) Tapley [434] was born on 25 Aug 1799 and died on 4 Nov 1879 at age 80.

xii. Mary Tapley [435] was born on 29 Aug 1801. xiii. John Tapley [436] was born on 7 May 1805. xiv. Luther Tapley [437] was born on 1 Apr 1808. xv. Nancy Tapley [438] was born on 29 Mar 1811.

xvi. Joel Tapley [439] was born on 20 Jul 1814.

Peletiah next married Esther Veasey [440] [MRIN: 150] on 25 Nov 1826.

65. Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19], daughter of Nathaniel Stover [610] and Mary Weeks [611], was born on 25 Aug 1768 in Brooksville, Maine and died on 16 Aug 1823 in Brooksville, Maine at age 54.


Alt. Birth: 26 Aug 1768.

Sarah married Peletiah Tapley [18] [MRIN: 8] circa 1783.


15


66. Isaac Snow [38], son of Nicholas Snow [40] and Huldah Watkins [41], was born in 1768 and died in 1848 at age 80.

Isaac married Polly Paine [39] [MRIN: 18].


33 i. Polly Snow Parker [17]

67. Polly Paine [39] .

Polly married Isaac Snow [38] [MRIN: 18].

68. Peletiah Tapley [18], son of Job Tapley [22] and Susanna Fernald [23], was born on 2 Oct 1757 in Kittery, Maine and died on 23 Oct 1830 in Brooksville, Maine at age 73. (Duplicate. See Person 64)

69. Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19], daughter of Nathaniel Stover [610] and Mary Weeks [611], was born on 25 Aug 1768 in Brooksville, Maine and died on 16 Aug 1823 in Brooksville, Maine at age 54. (Duplicate. See Person 65)

72. Joseph Mills [344], son of Eligood Mills Sr [348] and Mary Dyer [349], was born on 18 Oct 1771 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was christened in South Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and died on 14 May 1836 in West Brooksville, Maine at age 64.

General Notes: Joseph does not appear with Eligood in the 1790 census, nor does he appear at all int he Maine census until 1810.11


Alt. Birth: Oct 1770. The 1771 date of birth appears in article on the Mille family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, bit the Bible of Eligood Mills Sr suggests it was October 1770.

Census: 1830, Cape Elizabeth, Maine. '1830 Census lists Joseph in Cape Elizabeth with one male 5 - 10, and one 50 - 60; one female 20 - 30. Joseph, a widower at this poibnt, would be the 50 - 60 year old. The young male would likely be Luke (10). The female could be any one of his daughters.'

Joseph married Sarah L. Goodwin [345] [MRIN: 128] on 2 Jan 1800 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Marriage Notes: Some records have the January date for the marriage, but the September date for the banns is in Limington town records.


36 i. George Vaughn Mills JP [337]ii. Innocence Mills [499] was born on 19 Jan 1802.

iii. Preserved Brayton Mills [500] was born on 2 Jan 1803 and died on 22 Mar 1872 at age 69.

iv. Joseph Mills Jr [501] was born on 18 Nov 1807 and died on 29 Jan 1858 at age 50. v. Mary Dyer Mills [502] was born on 31 Oct 1807 and died on 29 Jan 1858 at age 50.

vi. Lucy Garland Mills [503] was born on 11 Mar 1810 and died on 31 Mar 1887 at age 77.

vii. Miriam Hannaford Mills [504] was born on 23 Nov 1815 and died on 17 Apr 1899 at age 83.

viii. Abigail Mills [505] was born on 15 Oct 1818 and died on 30 Oct 1818. ix. Luke Samuel Mills [506] was born on 23 Nov 1820 and died on 30 Jan 1895 at age

74.

73. Sarah L. Goodwin [345], daughter of Amaziah Goodwin [346] and Sarah Butler [347], was born on 22 Jul 1782 in Limington and died on 18 Nov 1828 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine at age 46.


16


Sarah married Joseph Mills [344] [MRIN: 128] on 2 Jan 1800 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

74. Gersham Farnham [339] was born on 13 Aug 1790, died on 15 Oct 1869 at age 79, and was buried in Mt Rest Cemetery, Brooksville, Maine.

General Notes: Later in like he became known as Gersham Varnum.

Gersham married Eleanor Varnum [340] [MRIN: 125] on 11 Jul 1816 in Bucksport.


37 i. Dorothy Farnham [338]ii. Eleanor Farnham [613] was born on 19 Oct 1817 and died in 1902 at age 85.

iii. Benjamin Farnham [614] was born on 27 Sep 1819. iv. Jane Farnham [615] was born in 1822. v. Farnham [616] was born on 14 May 1829 and died on 16 Jun 1829.

vi. James Farnham [617] was born in 1825. vii. Haskel Farnham [618] was born in 1827.

Gersham next married Elizabeth (Elsy) Tapley [434] [MRIN: 203], daughter of Peletiah Tapley [18] and Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19], on 10 Dec 1830 in Brooksville, Maine.


i. Mary A. Varnum [621] was born on 3 Sep 1831 and died on 12 Nov 1856 at age 25.

ii. Hannah Varnum [622] was born on 14 Oct 1834. iii. John Fred Varnum [623] was born on 14 Sep 1836. iv. George M. Varnum [624] was born on 20 Nov 1838. v. Emeline Varnum [625] was born on 12 Oct 1842 and died on 14 Nov 1858 at age

16.

75. Eleanor Varnum [340] was born in 1794 and died in 1830 at age 36.

Eleanor married Gersham Farnham [339] [MRIN: 125] on 11 Jul 1816 in Bucksport.

94. William Swain [37] .

William married Sarah Hide [36] [MRIN: 17] on 21 Feb 1814 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.


47 i. Louisa Swain [35]

95. Sarah Hide [36] .

Sarah married William Swain [37] [MRIN: 17] on 21 Feb 1814 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.

96. Henry Paul [60], son of James Paul [62] and Jane Coward [63], was born on 28 Apr 1805 in Stinsford, Dorset and died on 21 Jun 1838 in Fordington, Dorset at age 33.


Occupation: Cabinet Maker / Joiner / Carpenter.

Henry married Isabella West [61] [MRIN: 29] on 27 Sep 1824 in Portland, Dorset.


48 i. Edmund Paul [58]


17


97. Isabella West [61] was born circa 12 Sep 1802 in Bockhampton.

Isabella married Henry Paul [60] [MRIN: 29] on 27 Sep 1824 in Portland, Dorset.

112. Abraham Pickup [274], son of James Pickup [276] and Mary (Mally) (Molly) Brearley [277], was born before 7 Jun 1790 in Shuttleworth, Lancashire.


Occupation: Shoemaker: Shuttleworth, Lancashire.

Abraham married Mary Howarth [275] [MRIN: 100] on 3 Jan 1818 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.


56 i. James Pickup [272]

113. Mary Howarth [275] .

Mary married Abraham Pickup [274] [MRIN: 100] on 3 Jan 1818 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.

114. Edmund Ashworth [604], son of Unknown and Ann [606], was born in 1796.


Occupation: Fulling Miller.

Edmund married Jane Shepherd [605] [MRIN: 195].


57 i. Harriet Ashworth [273]ii. David Ashworth [607]

115. Jane Shepherd [605] .

Jane married Edmund Ashworth [604] [MRIN: 195].

120. William Lee [286], son of Daniel Lee [288] and Sarah Davies [289], was born in 1786 in Shitnal, Shropshire and died on 14 May 1856 in Shitnal, Shropshire at age 70.


Occupation: Blacksmith, 1842.

William married Sarah Wright [287] [MRIN: 106] on 15 May 1809 in High Ercall, Shropshire.


60 i. Daniel Lee [284]

121. Sarah Wright [287] was born on 8 Aug 1790 in High Ercall, Shropshire and died in Oct 1826 in Church Aston, near Newport, Shropshire at age 36.

Sarah married William Lee [286] [MRIN: 106] on 15 May 1809 in High Ercall, Shropshire.

Eighth Generation: 5th Great-Grandparents

128. Job Tapley [22], son of William Tapley [24] and Rebecca Bryer [25], was born on 14 Sep 1736 in Kittery, Maine.


18



Occupation: Caulker.

Job married Susanna Fernald [23] [MRIN: 10] circa 1756.


64 i. Peletiah Tapley [18]ii. Sally Tapley [441] was born on 25 Mar 1761.

iii. Susanna Tapley [442] was born on 26 May 1767. iv. John Tapley [443] was born on 26 May 1767. v. Ellis Tapley [444] was born on 26 Oct 1771 and died in Dec 1794 at age 23.

vi. Joshua Tapley [445] was born on 30 Aug 1774. vii. William Tapley [446] was born on 5 Apr 1776.

viii. Joel Tapley [447] was born on 6 Feb 1778 and died on 14 May 1781 at age 3.

129. Susanna Fernald [23] was born on 29 Jul 1740 in Kittery, Maine and died on 23 Jul 1826 in Saco, Maine at age 85.

Susanna married Job Tapley [22] [MRIN: 10] circa 1756.

130. Nathaniel Stover [610] .

Nathaniel married Mary Weeks [611] [MRIN: 199].


65 i. Sarah (Sallie) Stover [19]

131. Mary Weeks [611] .

Mary married Nathaniel Stover [610] [MRIN: 199].

132. Nicholas Snow [40], son of Joshua Snow [42] and Hannah Paine [43], was born in 1742 and died in 1821 at age 79.

Nicholas married Huldah Watkins [41] [MRIN: 19].


66 i. Isaac Snow [38]

133. Huldah Watkins [41] was born in 1745 and died in 1828 at age 83.

Huldah married Nicholas Snow [40] [MRIN: 19].

144. Eligood Mills Sr [348], son of Captain Luke Mills [355] and Hannah Lang [356], was born on 25 Aug 1744 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was christened 6 Jul 1745 ? in South Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, died on 6 Jan 1832 in Waterborough, Maine at age 87, and was buried in Elder Grey Meeting House Cemetery, North Waterborough, Maine.

General Notes: Gravestone Inscription: Mills, Eligood, Aug 25 1744 - Jan 6, 1832. He was an officer on board the American privateer Grad [sic] Turk during the Revolution. The vessel was captured by the British and he was confined in the prison at Halifax five years until after the end of the war.

A 1785 proprietor's plan map of Waterborough includes a plot on the northern edge of Waterborough labeled 'Eligood Mills 185 acres No. 91' bordered on the north by the Little Ossipee


19


River, to the east by an unnamed road that runs north-south, and three unowned plots to the west and south.

Eligood was with his father when he ws swept out to sea, so he had gone to sea by 1764.

Some local historians wonder if Eligood was actually buried on his property and then moved to the Elder Grey Cenetery. That is because the earliest grave there, according to local tradition, is 1833.

'Grand Turk' was outfitted by the Laighton family.

'A Brief Sketch of the Mills Family' from The Granite Monthly in 1921 says that Eligood escaped form the British betwen Halifax and Boston.

"In Waterborough, 1st inst. Mar. Elligood Mills, ages [sic] 87. He settled in Waterborough, near Limerick in 1776, when there were but four families in Limerick - Joseph Hedgedom, James Perry, Benjamin Durgin and Isaiah Foster - and four families in Cornish. During the Revolutionary War, Mr Mills, in a privateer of 21 guns, was taken by a British man of war, of 60 guns. From this ship, he and some of his companions escaped. While she lay anchored about a mile from land near New London, in the night, with the connivance of a friendly sentinel on the forecastle, they were received and clothed and returned home. In 1808, during a little reviving, he professed religion in the [C]ongregational [C]hurch at Limerick, on the same day with seven others. In a revival of his own neighbourhood and family sometime before his death, he was greatly quickened. During an illness of several months he looked forward to his dissolution with calmnes and hope." - Eligood Mills' Obituary - Kennebunk Gazette and Maine Palladium, Sat. Jan 14, 1832.

"In Waterborough, 1st inst. Mr. Elligood Mills, ages [sic] 8-?. He settled in Waterborough, near Limerick in 1776, when there were but four families in Limerick - Joseph Hedgedom, James Perry, Benjamin Durgin and Isaiah Foster - and four families in Cornish. During the Revolutionary War, Mr Mills, in a privateer of 21 gune, was taken by a British man of war, of 60 guns. From this ship, he and some of his companions escaped. While she lay anchored about a mile from the land near New London, in the night, with the connivance of a friendly sentinel on the forecastle, they silently let themselves down from the bows into the sea and swam to shore; where they were cordially received and clothed and returned home. In 1798, during a little reviving, he professed religion in the Congregational Church in Limerick, on the same day with seven others. In a revival of his own neighbourhood and family sometime before his death, he was greatly quickened. During an illness of several months he looked forward to his dissolution with calmnes and hope." - Eligood Mills' Obituary - The Morning Star, Limerick, Friday, January 6, 1832

"He was well-educated and for some time was mate of a vessel engaged in the West India trade commanded by Capt. Charles Blunt, who was afterwards taken by the pirates off the island of St Thomas after a desperate resistance and chopped to pieces and fed to their hogs." Rev Charls Blunt Mills, 'A Brief Sketch'

ABS suggests that , when escaping, Eligood sand two others escaped overboard and swam three miles, reaching shore near a fisherman's hut below the mouth of the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire.12, 13


Membership: Congregational Church: Limerick, Maine. Alt. Christening: 6 Jul 1744. Unfortunately for the Mills Family History, this date occurs before

Eligood is meant ot have been born. I have amended it by a year, on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

Guardianship: 24 Jun 1752. Father, Captain Luke Mills, is granted guardianship over himLand: 7 Jan 1769, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells building and land in Portsmouth to nephew

Luke Mills Laighton, son of Paul Laighton, of the same place, for ten shillings.Legal: Voiding of a deed, 18 Jan 1771. House of Representatives of the Province of New

Hampshire agrees to consider bill by Eligood Mills to have a deed made void.Legal: 3 Sep 1771. Loses lawsuitElection: Petit Juror, 28 Sep 1771. Voted as one of six Petit Jurors to sit in the Inferior Court.


20


Legal: Settlement of lawsuit, 14 Oct 1771. Named in lawsuit to recover judgement against him in the amount of 64 pounds. Agrees to satisfy it with one half of dwelling house and some adjoining land.

Land: 8 Jun 1773. Gives up right to real estate of Benjamin Haley, late of Biddeford and his son, John, to Joseph Haley, of Biddeford, for two pounds.

Land: 10 Mar 1775, Biddeford, Massachusetts. Buys 20 acres of land in Biddeford from John Dyer, of Biddeford in the County of York and the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England, for 33 pounds, six shillings and eight pence.

Land: 1 Nov 1775, Biddeford, Massachusetts. Sells 20 acres of land in Biddeford to Thomas Cutts, of Pepperrallborough in the County of York, for 33 pounds, six shillings and eight pence.

Residence: 1775-1776 ?, Massabesick Plantation. Residence: Waterborough, 1776. Employment: Officer on 'Grand Turk', Cir 1780.12, 14, 15 On second voyage captured by a British

frigate and taken into Halifax, where the officers and crew were held prisoner until the treaty of peace had been signed. The Laightons were ruined by this and other losses, and Eligood, who had left property in their care, shared in their losses.

The ship was not built until 1781, and its history never lists it as being captured, although it was in many skirmishes with the British.

The fact that she was known to have sailed around England, makes the claim in ABS that she sailed 'up the English channel' somewhat more plausible than it might have appeared.

Land: 22 Mar 1779, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells building and land in Portsmouth to btoehr-in-law Paul Laighton, of Portsmouth, blockmaker, for two hundred ninety two pounds and fifteen shillings and seven pence.

Legal: Petition, 20 Sep 1779, Limerick, Maine. Signs petition of inhabitants of Limerick to General Court.

Imprisonment: Cir 1780, Halifax. Captured by the British, and imprisoned in Halifax for five years until the war's end.

Escape: From the British, Cir 1784.13 One story tells of Eligood escaping from the British, 'A Brief Sketch of the Mille Family' in 1921 edition of 'The Granite Monthly'.

Eligood is meant to have escaped from a ship carrying prisoner from Halifax to Boston, whence they would be taken to England for execution.

ABS suggests that , when escaping, Eligood and two others escaped overboard and swam three miles, reaching shore near a fisherman's hut below the mouth of the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire.

ABS also suggests, and this is confirmed by Azro Mills' recollection (who says he heard the story directly from Eligood) that the prisoner had been told that the war was lost, Washington and the Continental Congres had ben hanged, and that they were to be transported and executed. This was when they decided to escape.

Employment: Surveyor of HIghways, 19 Mar 1792. Election: Committee, 2 May 1796. Chosen to serve on 'a Committee to build a bridge over the

Little Ossipee River.'Religion: Purchases Pew, 13 Sep 1797, Limerick, Maine. Purchase pew # 20 in Limerick

Congregational ChurchElection: Hayward and Fence Viewer, 1 Apr 1799. Land: 14 Mar 1806, Waterborough, Maine. Buys 164 acres of land, lot number 91, in

Waterborough, the same on which the said Mills now lives. From John Bromfield for 76 dollars.

Employment: Surveyor of Highways, 7 Apr 1807. Land: 13 Nov 1807, Phillipsburg. Buys 50 acres of land, lot # 91 in Phillipsburg, from John

Simpson, of Phillipsburg, for 250 dollars.

This is the second time he has bought a lot number 91.Legal: Discontinuation of Town Road, 1 May 1809. A town meeting votes to discontinue 'the town

road from a Certain white pine tree marks with the letter M = to Eligood Mills's dwelling house.'


21


Legal: Discontinuation of Town Road (ii), 9 May 1814. A town meeting votes to discontinue "the town road leading from John Hill Jr to Eligood Mills'."

Land: 1 Dec 1827, Waterborough, Maine. Sells 50 acres of land (3/7 of lot 91 in Waterborough) "It being the same lot on which I now live" to Luke Mills [son?] for 1,500 dollars.

Land: 12 Oct 1829, Waterborough, Maine. Buys 50 acres of land (3/7 of lot #91) "It being the same lot on which I now live" from Luke Mills for 1,500 dollars.

Eligood married Mary Dyer [349] [MRIN: 130] on 13 Nov 1770 in First Congregational Church, Biddeford.


72 i. Joseph Mills [344]ii. Eligood Mills Jr [485] was born in 1774, was christened in South Church,

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and died in 1824 at age 50.

Eligood next married Lucy McLucas [352] [MRIN: 132], daughter of John McLucas [353] and Lydia Webber [354], on 29 Aug 1774 in First Congregational Church, Biddeford.


i. Lucy Mills [486] was born in 1776 and died in 1855 at age 79. ii. Luke Mills [487] was born in 1778 and died in 1856 at age 78.

iii. William Mills [488] was born in 1784 and died in 1824 at age 40. iv. Lydia Mills [489] was born in 1789 and died in 1842 at age 53. v. John Mills [490] was born in 1789 and died in 1842 at age 53.

vi. James Mills [491] was born in 1792 and died in 1883 at age 91.

145. Mary Dyer [349], daughter of Thomas Dyer [350] and Elizabeth Melcher [351], was born on 13 Aug 1753 in Biddeford, was christened on 19 Aug 1753 in First Congregational Church, Biddeford, died on 13 Mar 1774 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at age 20, and was buried in Elder Grey Meeting House Cemetery, North Waterborough, Maine. The cause of her death was Complications in childbirth.

Mary married Eligood Mills Sr [348] [MRIN: 130] on 13 Nov 1770 in First Congregational Church, Biddeford.

146. Amaziah Goodwin [346] was born in 1739 and died in 1798 at age 59.

Amaziah married Sarah Butler [347] [MRIN: 129].


73 i. Sarah L. Goodwin [345]

147. Sarah Butler [347] .

Sarah married Amaziah Goodwin [346] [MRIN: 129].

192. James Paul [62], son of Thomas Paul [64] and Elizabeth Plowman [65], was born circa 27 Dec 1782 in All Saints, Dorchester, Dorset.


Employment: Thatcher.

James married Jane Coward [63] [MRIN: 30] on 5 Dec 1803 in Stinsford, Dorset.


96 i. Henry Paul [60]


22


193. Jane Coward [63] was born circa 14 Mar 1784 in Stinsford, Dorset.

Jane married James Paul [62] [MRIN: 30] on 5 Dec 1803 in Stinsford, Dorset.

224. James Pickup [276], son of Joseph Pickup [278] and Margaret Healey [279], was born in 1754 in Rochdale, Lancashire.

James married Mary (Mally) (Molly) Brearley [277] [MRIN: 101] on 5 Apr 1779 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.


112i. Abraham Pickup [274]

225. Mary (Mally) (Molly) Brearley [277] was born To 30 Jun 1754.

Mary married James Pickup [276] [MRIN: 101] on 5 Apr 1779 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.

229. Ann [606] .

General Notes: The fact that she is Edmund's mother is a surmise based on the fact that she ran a company of fulling millers: Ann Ashworth and Sons, in Rochdale in 1828.16, 17


Occupation: Fulling Miller, 1828, Rochdale, Lancashire. She is listed as: Ann Ashworth and Sons, Fulling Millers, Bellfield Mill, Rochdale

Occupation: Tavern Keeper, 1828, Rochdale, Lancashire.17 An Ann Ashworth is also listed as proprietress of the Blue Bell Tavern.

Ann married.

Her child was:

114i. Edmund Ashworth [604]

240. Daniel Lee [288], son of Thomas Lee [290] and Sarah [291], was born circa 1753 in Madeley / Stockton, Shropshire and died in 1823 in Shitnal, Shropshire at age 70.

Daniel married Sarah Davies [289] [MRIN: 107] on 30 Dec 1783 in Madeley, Shropshire.


120i. William Lee [286]

241. Sarah Davies [289] was born on 22 Mar 1765 in Madeley, Shropshire.

Sarah married Daniel Lee [288] [MRIN: 107] on 30 Dec 1783 in Madeley, Shropshire.

Ninth Generation: 6th Great-Grandparents

256. William Tapley [24], son of John Tapley [26] and Anne Lewis [27], was born before 1710 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and died in Kittery, Maine.

General Notes: "The line from the emigrant John to William can not be wholy proven as records in many cases are meagre."He is first mentuioned as of Portsmouth, N.H. where his first five children were born. He subsequently moved to Kittery. This may be the William Tapley who, in 1718, bropught suit against Capt. Andrew Robinson of the sloop 'Squirrel' for ill treatment while on a fishing trip in Gutt, of Cansoe (Boston Court Files, Vol. 119, p 51, case 12915). In later life, however, he was a sailor by occupation.


23


"William Tapley, of Kittery, gavce general power of attorney to his 'Trusty Friend' William Pepperrell, junior, of Kittery (Boston Court Files Vol. 211, p. 61 case 26057). William Tapley married March 19, 1726-7 Rebecca Briar of Portsmouth. She renewed covenant at Portsmouth 10 Oct. 1728 and joined church NOv. 7, 1736." - ATG

To reconcile his birth date with his bringing suit in 1718, might it be wise to reconsider his birth as being about 1700? (NDT - 06/07/2006)

William "Of Ye Shoals"18, 19


Legal: 1718-1719. Wm. Tapley signed deed of Richard Ffaye of Kittery to Roger Mitchell 1718-19.

Tax: 1727, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Legal: 6 May 1761.19 "6 May 1761 Lady Pepperell, widow of Gov. Wm. Pepperell gets execution

against Wm. Tapley, Taylor and Job Tapley, Corker and others for 1 pound, 18 shillings. Balance due on land." York (ME) Registry

William married Rebecca Bryer [25] [MRIN: 11] circa 19 Mar 1726/27 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Marriage Notes: Children's baptisms were performed by Rev John Emerson and Rev William Shurtleff og Portsmouth.


128i. Job Tapley [22]ii. Sarah Tapley [450] was christened on 20 Oct 1728.

iii. Thomas Tapley [451] was christened on 20 Oct 1728. iv. Mary Tapley [452] was christened on 19 Oct 1729. v. William Tapley [453] was christened on 24 Jan 1730/31.

vi. Elizabeth Tapley [454] was christened on 10 Aug 1735. vii. Joseph Tapley [455] was christened in 1733.

viii. James Robert Tapley [456] was christened in 1754. ix. Peletiah Tapley [457]

257. Rebecca Bryer [25] was born on 17 Jan 1707/08 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

General Notes: Also known as Rebecca Briar.


Religion: Renewed Covenant, 20 Oct 1728, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Membership: Church, 7 Nov 1736.

Rebecca married William Tapley [24] [MRIN: 11] circa 19 Mar 1726/27 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

264. Joshua Snow [42], son of John Snow [44] and Elizabeth Ridley [45].

Joshua married Hannah Paine [43] [MRIN: 20].


132i. Nicholas Snow [40]

265. Hannah Paine [43] was born in 1713 and died in 1768 at age 55.

Hannah married Joshua Snow [42] [MRIN: 20].


24


288. Captain Luke Mills [355], son of Edward Mills [360] and Agnes Moore [361], was born on 20 Jun 1713 in Northampton County, Virginia, was christened on 19 Apr 1742 in Newington, and died from 20 Jun 1764 to 29 Aug 1764 out of Portsmouth, NH at age 51. The cause of his death was Lost at sea.

General Notes: Nathaniel Morrell deposition 1748:-"The Deposition of Nathaniel Morrell of Portsmouth in the Province of New Hampshire in New England Marienr of Lawfull Age testyeth and Saith. -- That He this Deponent was well acquainted with One Peter Friend Late of Margate in the County of Kent in the Kingdom of Great Britain Mariner (but now Deceased). That the said Peter Friend sometime in the Month of September Lastpast did Ship himself on Board a Certain Vessell called the Brig Stetham in the Capacity of a Mate whereof Luke Mills was then Master, said Vessell then being bound to the Island of Jamaica from the Harbour of Portsmouth. In New England afores & that He this Deponent did Likewise ship Himself of Board said Vessell int he Capacity of a Seaman sometime in the afores Month of September, and that He ythis Deponent together with the afores Peter Friend and others did proceed on thier Voyage tot he aforesaid Island of Jamaica in their Capacity aforesaid, but on or about the fourth Day of January Last past, He this Deponent being then on board the aforenamed Vessell witht he afores Peter Friend, Did then & there here the afores Peter Friend Openly Declare & Disclose his full mind and Intent how He the said Peter Friend would have his Estate both Real & Personal Disposed off. In Case He should Die. He being At that time greatly indisposed. This Deponent Likewise Saith that on or about the Sixth Day of said January the aforesaid Peter Friedn Departed this life. And Further this Depon Saith that the afores Peter Friend had at Sundry times Informed him the said Deponenet that He had left in the hands of a Certain Person whom He called by the Name of his Aunt Brown (who as the said Peter Friend declared Liv'd at a place Called Margate in the County of Kent in the Kingdom of Great Britain afores) the Sum of One hundred pounds Sterling, which said Sterling Sum the afores Peter Friend did at the time above mentioned, He being at that time In his perfect mind & Memory to the best of His this Deponent's knowledge Declare it was his Desire and Will that the afores Sterling Sum should be given unto his Lawfull wife Sarah Friend then Living in Portsmouth In New England afores And Further this Deponent Saith not."

Luke Mills' deposition April 26, 1748:-"The Deposition of Luke Mills of Portsmouth in the Province of New Hampshire In New EnglandMarin testifies and Says -- That He this Deponent was well knowning to all the Circumstances as Set forth in the foregoing Deposition made by the aforenamed Nathan Morrell, and that the aforenamed Peter Friend sis Serve him the said Deponent on Board his Vessell in the Capacity oas aforementioned in the said Deposition, And this Deponent Likewise Declares that He had sundry times heard the aforementioned Peter Friend Say, that he Had left in the hands of a Person in Old England (whom he called his Aunt Brown) the Sum of One hundred pounds Sterling. And further this Deponent Saith that he had Likewise heard the said Peter Friend Say, In Case he should Die he design'd the afores Sum of One hundred pounds Sterling for the Use of his Lawful Wife Sarah Friend now Living in Portsmouth aforesaid. And Further this Deponent Saith Not."

Captain Luke's first son is named Edward, and he has no other relations we know of named Edward, suggetsing again that he might be the Edward above's son.

Medical Notes: He was swept overboard in a a gale of 1764. His son, Eligood, tried to jump in after him, but was restrained by the crew. The voyage was to the West Indies.


Alt. Birth: 1718. If he is Edward Mills' son, this is the birth date given.Occupation: Master Mariner. In the Mediterranean trade.Land: 10 Oct 1745, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Received one acre of land to the north of his

dwelling house from his father-in-law John Lang.Land: 2 Nov 1745, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Purchases kand in Pickerins Neck in Portsmouth

from Mary Pray, of Portsmouth, widow, for £139, mentions it includes a wharf, a warehouse and a dwelling house.


25


Land: 4 Nov 1745, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Turns over land purchased from Mary Pray to John Lang, husbandman & commonfate housewright of Portsmouth, to pay off debt to Pray [?] (£144 15s).

Employment: Brig 'Mosepony', 1746-1747, Piscateque. From a shipping list at 'Port of Piscateque' 1746-1747

Employment: Brig 'Stetham', 1748. Master or brig from Portsmouth, NH, to Jamaica.Legal: Guardianship of children, 24 Jun 1752. Probate Record of the Province of New Hampshire -

Guardianship of John Mills, Luke Mills, Alligood Mills, and Mary Mills granted ot their father, Luke Mills, of Portsmouth. June 24, 1752, being children by his wife, Hannah Mills, deceased.

Bond of Luke Mills of Portsmouth, mariner, with John Banfill of Portsmouth as surety, in the sum of £1,000, June 24, 1752 for the guardianship of John Mills, Luke Mills, Alligood Mills, and Mary Mills, minors; witnesses William Parker and Thomas Walden.

Legal: Petition, 11 Jan 1754. House of Representatives of the Province of New Hampshire entertains petition by Luke Mills and others Jan 11th, 1754

Land: 12 Jan 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Receives right to land from John Wills, of Portsmouth, shipwright, willed to him by his grandfather, John Lang, for £47.

Land: 12 Jan 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Recives right to land from William Wills, of Portsmouth, shipwirhgt, willed to him by his grandfather, John Lang, for £47.

Land: 12 Jan 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Receives right to land from Joseph Wills of Portsmouth, shipwright, willed to him by his grandfather, John Lang, for £50.

Land: 5 Jun 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells 15 acres of land in Portsmouth, once belonging to Grace Lang, first wife of John Lang, to Samuel Langdon for £90.

Land: 24 Jun 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys land formerly belonging to her father, John Lang, from Mary Adams, widow of William Adams pf Portsmouth, seaman, deceased, for £400, including a dwelling house.

Land: 24 Jun 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys two lots of land adjoining the plot where uke now dwells in Portsmouth from Elisha Plaisted, of Berwick, County of York, gentleman, for £50.

Religion: 8 Nov 1754, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys rights to a certain part of a pew in the South Meeting House formerly belonging to John Lang, from John Banfield of Portsmouth, husbandman, for £30.

Election: Constable, 1755. According to Portsmouth Town Record.Land: 1 May 1755, Barrington, New Hampshire. Sells two acres of land in Barrington, originally

owned by John Lang, to John Montgomery, of Barrington, for £6.Land: 4 Nov 1755, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Receives right to land from Benjamin Wills, of

Portsmouth, Mariner, willed to him by his grandfather, for £50, excepting that parcel of land which came by his grandmother, which was formerly of the place of William Brooken, deceased.

Religion: 14 Nov 1755, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys rights to pew formerly owned by their father, John Lang, from Joseph and Grace Grey, of Georgetown, County of York, for £25.

Legal: Witness, 9 May 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He was a witness to the will of Elizabeth Fernald of Portsmouth, May 9, 1756, according to Probate Records of Province of New Hampshire.

Land: 6 Jan 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Receives right to land and pew from Edward Wills, of Portsmouth, Shipcarpenter, willed to him by his grandfather, John Lang, for £50, excepting that parcel of land which came by his grandmother, which was formerly part if the place of William Brooken, deceased.

Land: 20 Jan 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys land in Portsmouth adjacent to Luke Mills' land from Mary Pray, of Portsmouth, widow, for £300.

Land: 12 May 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys small strip of land adjoining his property from William Plaisted, of Berwick, son of Elisha Plaisted, for £49.

Land: 13 Sep 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys 3/4 of a lot in Portsmouth on Pickerins Neck from Mary Pray, widow, and William Plaisted for £300.

Land: 6 Nov 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys land on Pickerings Neck in Portsmouth from Mary Pray, Cyprian Jeffry, Olive Jeffry, William Doak and Jean Doak for £80.

Land: 30 Nov 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Receives right to land from Benjamin Wills, of Portsmouth, Mariner, willed to him by his grandfather, John Lang, for £50, excepting that


26


parcel of land which came by his grandmother, which was formerly part of the place of William Brooken, deceased.

Land: 2 Dec 1756, Barrington, New Hampshire. Sells nine acres of land in Barrington, originally owned by John Lang, to John Montgomery, of Barrington, Joiner, for £6.

Land: 8 Dec 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys 1/4 lot in Portsmouth on Pickerins Neck from John Gerrish, of Rhode Island, Merchant for £100.

Land: 8 Dec 1756, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys land in Portsmouth, on Pickerins Neck, from Joseph and Sarah Chadbourne, of Berewick, County of York, for £20.

Employment: Sloop 'Neptune', 1756. From Antigue to Port of PiscatawayCaptured: 12 Aug 1757. Captured by the French between Barbados and Portsmouth. The

Frenchmen, with eight guns and 36 men, kept him and his men prisoner for four days before they were released and allowed to go to St Christopher's. Their vessel was kept by the French.

Land: 10 Dec 1757, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells land bought from Joseph Gray, heirs of John Wills and also his own interest in land inherited from John Lang, to Samuel Langdon of Portsmouth, Gentelman, for £550.

Land: 15 Nov 1758, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys land in Portsmouth from Joseph Grey, of Brunswick, County of York, for £90.

Land: 20 Jun 1759, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells 100 square rods of land to John Philips of Portsmouth, Mariner, for £100.

Land: 12 Jan 1760, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells 2 1/2 acres of land in Portsmouth to John Bartlett, of Portsmouth, Mariner, for £200.

Legal: Surety, 30 Apr 1761. He signed on as a surety with Ephraim Ham for the sum of 500 pounds on the bond of James Leach, of Falmouth, Maine, shipwright, April 30, 1761, sccording to Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire.

Land: 7 May 1761, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buys three acres of land in Portsmouth from John Savage of Portsmouth for £45.

Election: Petit Juror, 10 Nov 1762. Listed as a Petit Juror in Province of New Hampshire Superior Cout in November 1762.

Land: 23 Aug 1763, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Sells seven acres of land in Portsmouth to John Bartlett, of Portsmouth, Mariner, for £1,200.

Will: Proved, 29 Aug 1764. Land: 1 Jan 1769. Land sold by Deborah to settle Luke's debts.

Luke married Hannah Lang [356] [MRIN: 134] on 5 Dec 1734 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Marriage Notes: Records of marriage say that Captain Luke Mills was born in Virginia - New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 25.


144i. Eligood Mills Sr [348]ii. Edward Mills [478] was christened on 8 Feb 1735/36 and died before 1764.

iii. John Mills [479] was christened on 6 Mar 1736/37 and died circa 1758 at age 21. iv. Jonathon Mills [480] was christened on 10 Jul 1738 and died circa 1738. v. Luke Mills [481] was born in 1741 and died before 10 Feb 1773. The cause of his

death was Lost at sea. vi. Mary Mills [482] was born on 28 Mar 1746 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, died in

1823 at age 77, and was buried on 8 May 1823 in South Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Luke next married Deborah [359] [MRIN: 136] after 1752.

289. Hannah Lang [356], daughter of John Lang [357] and Grace Brooklin [358], was born in 1715 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was christened on 7 Aug 1715 in South Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and died from 1746 to 1748 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire at age 31.

Medical Notes: Died in infancy.


Confirmation: First Communion, 2 May 1725, South Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.


27


Confirmation: Received into covenant, 16 Nov 1735. Religion: Received into full communion, 22 Apr 1735.

Hannah married Captain Luke Mills [355] [MRIN: 134] on 5 Dec 1734 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

290. Thomas Dyer [350] was born in 1720 and died before 1770.

Thomas married Elizabeth Melcher [351] [MRIN: 131].


145i. Mary Dyer [349]

291. Elizabeth Melcher [351] was born in 1720 and died after 1770.

Elizabeth married Thomas Dyer [350] [MRIN: 131].

384. Thomas Paul [64], son of Thomas Paul [66] and Susanna Allen [67], was born circa 21 Oct 1759 in Fordington, Dorset.

Thomas married Elizabeth Plowman [65] [MRIN: 31] on 20 Sep 1781 in Fordington, Dorset.


192i. James Paul [62]

385. Elizabeth Plowman [65] was born circa 19 Nov 1757 in Dorchester, Dorset.

Elizabeth married Thomas Paul [64] [MRIN: 31] on 20 Sep 1781 in Fordington, Dorset.

448. Joseph Pickup [278], son of George Pickup [280] and Ann Clegg [281], was born To 28 Jul 1717 in Rochdale, Lancashire and died on 5 Mar 1795 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire at age 77.

Joseph married Margaret Healey [279] [MRIN: 102] on 27 Feb 1753 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.


224i. James Pickup [276]

449. Margaret Healey [279] was born To 15 Jun 1719 in Rochdale, Lancashire.

Margaret married Joseph Pickup [278] [MRIN: 102] on 27 Feb 1753 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.

480. Thomas Lee [290] .

Thomas married Sarah [291] [MRIN: 108].


240i. Daniel Lee [288]

481. Sarah [291] .

Sarah married Thomas Lee [290] [MRIN: 108].

Tenth Generation: 7th Great-Grandparents

512. John Tapley [26], son of John Tapley [28] and Elizabeth Pride [29], was born on 7 Apr 1669 in Salem, Massachusetts.


28


General Notes: "She was left property by father's will 1712-1713. He was taxed in Salem in 1691 only. It is probably he who removed to the Portsmouth area.' - ATG


Occupation: Sailor. Land: 1740, Kittery, Maine.18 Sells part of homestead lot in Kittery, Maine (that his wife inherited

from her father).Land: 1744, Kittery, Maine.18 Sells part of homestead lot in Kittery, Maine.Land: 1759, Kittery, Maine.18 Sells part of homestead lot in Kittery, Maine.

John married Anne Lewis [27] [MRIN: 12] pre-1712 in Kittery, Maine.


256i. William Tapley [24]ii. Mary Tapley [469]

513. Anne Lewis [27], daughter of Peter Lewis [448] and Grace [449], was born in 1671 in Kittery, Maine.

General Notes: She was left property by her father's will 1712-13.18

Anne married John Tapley [26] [MRIN: 12] pre-1712 in Kittery, Maine.

528. John Snow [44], son of John Snow [46] and Mary Small(ey) [47], was born in 1678 and died in 1738 at age 60.

John married Elizabeth Ridley [45] [MRIN: 21].


264i. Joshua Snow [42]

529. Elizabeth Ridley [45] was born in 1678 and died in 1736 at age 58.

Elizabeth married John Snow [44] [MRIN: 21].

576. Edward Mills [360], son of Mark Mills [364] and Mary Eligood [365], was born in 1686 in Sussex County, Delaware and died in 1751 in Sussex County, Delaware at age 65.

General Notes: "It is unconfirmed that an Edward Mills born in 1686 in Sussex County, Delaware, is the father of Captain Luke Mille. This Edward and Agnes Mills did have a son named Luke, born roughly the same time, and in the same location from where Captain Luke migrated before settling North.However, Mark Mills, assumed to be Captain Luke's grandfather, is said to have arrived in America in 1636. This would make Mark at least in his 50s when Edward is born. So some of the information doesn't quite add up correctly. There was an Edward Mills born in 1688 that was the son of Edward and Anne Barnes. So this Edward could have been the grandson to Mark Mills, and father to Captiai Luke."Mills Family History, Kevin Clark Mills

Edward Mills' will was written in 1750, and states that his son, Luke, is still alive, as is ours.

Edward married Agnes Moore [361] [MRIN: 137] in 1704.


288i. Captain Luke Mills [355]ii. Ann Mills [471] was born in 1704.


29


iii. Bowman Mills [472] was born in 1712. iv. Littleton Mills [473] was born in 1714. v. Nathan Mills [474] was born in 1716.

vi. Susannah Mills [475] was born in 1720. vii. Agnes Mills [476] was born in 1722.

viii. <Unknown> Mills [477] was born in 1722.

577. Agnes Moore [361], daughter of Thomas Moore [362] and Elizabeth Gelding [363], was born in 1678-1690 in Sussex County, Delaware.

Agnes married Edward Mills [360] [MRIN: 137] in 1704.

578. John Lang [357] was born in 1673 and died in 1752 at age 79.

John married Grace Brooklin [358] [MRIN: 135].


289i. Hannah Lang [356]ii. Mary Lang [483]

579. Grace Brooklin [358] was born in 1665.

Grace married John Lang [357] [MRIN: 135].

768. Thomas Paul [66] .

Thomas married Susanna Allen [67] [MRIN: 32] on 15 Apr 1750 in Fordington, Dorset.


384i. Thomas Paul [64]

769. Susanna Allen [67] .

Susanna married Thomas Paul [66] [MRIN: 32] on 15 Apr 1750 in Fordington, Dorset.

896. George Pickup [280] was born circa 1689 in Rochdale, Lancashire.

George married Ann Clegg [281] [MRIN: 103] on 25 Dec 1714 in Rochdale, Lancashire.


448i. Joseph Pickup [278]

897. Ann Clegg [281] was born To 16 Oct 1696 in St Chad, Rochdale, Lancashire.

Ann married George Pickup [280] [MRIN: 103] on 25 Dec 1714 in Rochdale, Lancashire.

Eleventh Generation: 8th Great-Grandparents

1024. John Tapley [28] was born circa 1638 in England and died on 6 Dec 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts at age 55.

General Notes: Was John J. Tapley the brother mentioned in ATG?

"John Tapley was, with his brother, one of the colony of fishermen, and lived at Salem Neck. The locality cannot be determined accurately, but it is quite probable that his house stood on the shore of Collins Cove on the left of the road leading from Webb Street to Salem Willows, just over the tracks of the Philadelphia Coal Co. He is mentioned in the Salem Court files as a master of a ketch in 1671." - ATG


30


Rev Hugh Peter of Salem excused fishermen from military service.


Occupation: Fisherman, 28 Jun 1666, Salem, Massachusetts. In the Essex Registry in Salem is a deed dated 28/06/1666, in which John Mason conveyed 3 - 4 acres of land in Salem to John Tapley, a fisherman.

Land: 3 - 4 Acres, 28 Jun 1666, Salem, Massachusetts. In the Essex Registry in Salem is a deed dated 28/06/1666, in which John Mason conveyed 3 - 4 acres of land in Salem to John Tapley, a fisherman.

Legal: Petition against imposts, 1668. Legal: Witness, 21 Oct 1671. A deed of 21 Oct, 1671 states that John Webb sold his share of the

above land to James Froude, seaman, the deed witnessed by John Tapley and John J. Tapley.

Who is John J. Tapley? (NDT - 06/07/2006)

Land: Sells house, 21 Mar 1677/78. Sold to John Higginson Jr: "Upon ye highway southerly; with ye land of James Frude, westerly: with ye great cove northerly and easterly." It consisted of his house and one and a half acres.The following indenture in connection with this transaction is also recorded: If John Tapley shall pay to John Higginson Jr "ye full and just sume of twenty-six pounds and six shillings in refuse or merchantable dry fish at ye current price, at or before the first day of May in ye year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty three," then this indenture was to be void. Signed, John Tapley, with a seal.

Indenture: 21 Mar 1677/78. The following indenture in connection with this transaction is also recorded: If John Tapley shall pay to John Higginson Jr "ye full and just sume of twenty-six pounds and six shillings in refuse or merchantable dry fish at ye current price, at or before the first day of May in ye year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty three," then this indenture was to be void. Signed, John Tapley, with a seal.

Codfish was in three grades: "marchantable, middling and refuse". The first grade was exported to Europe for use on fast days. The second was eaten at home and on ships, and the third was exported to the West Indies, where it necame known as 'Jamaica Fish'. Thus the indenture can be paid in the highest quslity of fish, which woudl usually have been used for export.

Legal: Petition for new church, 1680, Salem, Massachusetts. Tax: 1680, Salem, Massachusetts. County tax of 2s 8d, and a tax of 4s 5d for the support of the

minister.Tax: 1689, Salem, Massachusetts. The last tax he paid in Salem, although his name is mentioned in

1690.Land: Sells house, 14 Nov 1693, Salem, Massachusetts. Sold to John Higginson Jr, from whom he

bought the house.

John married Elizabeth Pride [29] [MRIN: 13] on 6 Dec 1663 in Salem, Massachusetts.


512i. John Tapley [26]ii. Elizabeth Tapley [461] was born on 20 Jan 1663/64 and was christened in Jan

1692/93. iii. Mary Tapley [462] was born on 10 Dec 1667 and died on 14 Jul 1668. iv. William Tapley [463] was born on 30 Aug 1670 and died before 1715. v. Hannah Tapley [464] was born on 21 Apr 1672.

vi. Robert Tapley [465] was born on 17 Dec 1673. vii. Mary Tapley [466] was born in Jun 1678.

viii. Samuel Tapley [467] was born in Feb 1682/83. ix. Benjamin Tapley [468] was born on 3 Feb 1687/88.


31


1025. Elizabeth Pride [29], daughter of John Pride [458] and Unknown, was born in 1640 in Salem, Massachusetts and died in 1720 in Salem, Massachusetts at age 80.


Residence: With daughters. Lived with two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, alternating, after John's dath in 1693, until her own death in 1720.

Elizabeth married John Tapley [28] [MRIN: 13] on 6 Dec 1663 in Salem, Massachusetts.

1026. Peter Lewis [448] .

General Notes: "He was taxed in Salem in 1691 only, when it is probable that he remved to the vicinity of Portsmouth." - ATG18


Census: Salem, 1691.

Peter married Grace [449] [MRIN: 151].


513i. Anne Lewis [27]

1027. Grace [449] .

Grace married Peter Lewis [448] [MRIN: 151].

1056. John Snow [46], son of Nicholas Snow [48] and Constance Hopkins [49], was born in 1638 and died in 1692 at age 54.

John married Mary Small(ey) [47] [MRIN: 22].


528i. John Snow [44]

1057. Mary Small(ey) [47] was born in 1647.

Mary married John Snow [46] [MRIN: 22].

1152. Mark Mills [364] .

General Notes: "According to Mills family legend, and the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Mark Mills was the firts in the family to migrate to America. Tradition states that he cames to Jamestown, Virginia in 1636 and was the father to Captain Luke. That is impossible, but what may be likely is that Mark is the grandfather or great grandfather to Captain Luke."There was an Eligood family in Virginia, and it is speculated that Mark may have married a Mary Eligood there."Mills Fanily History - Kevin Clark Mills

"If Mark was the first, you'd think you would find that name somewhere else in the line." David Rudge


Immigration: To Jamestown, Virginia, 1636, Jamestown, Virginia.


32


Mark married Mary Eligood [365] [MRIN: 139].


576i. Edward Mills [360]

1153. Mary Eligood [365] .

General Notes: "The Ellegood family of Virginia was fairly prominent. Ellegood is of Anglo-Saxon derivation, from Aethelgeard, which appears in tongues closely allied to the English as Ellegaard or Elgert, and has the meaning of 'Noble Guardian'. As is the case with names of ancient origin, the etymology varies, but as their name is by no means a common one, doubtless all these families had a common ancestor."The ancestor of this family was Thomas Ellegood, of Northampton County, Virginia. He was probably a descendant of Richard Ellegood, of Tostock Parish, Sussex, England. He immigrated to America before 1658. He died in 1689. He married Mary Field, daughter of Henry Field. They had a daughter named Mary. Secondly he married a woman named Elizabeth."Mills Family History - Phillip J. Murphy

Mary married Mark Mills [364] [MRIN: 139].

1154. Thomas Moore [362] was born in 1652.

Thomas married Elizabeth Gelding [363] [MRIN: 138].


577i. Agnes Moore [361]

1155. Elizabeth Gelding [363] was born in 1655.

General Notes: Surname is either Gelding or Getting.

Elizabeth married Thomas Moore [362] [MRIN: 138].

Twelfth Generation: 9th Great-Grandparents

2050. John Pride [458] .

General Notes: The two daughters inherited John Pride's estate.

John married.

His children were:

1025 i. Elizabeth Pride [29]ii. Mary Pride [459]

2112. Nicholas Snow [48] was born circa 1599 and died in 1676 at age 77.

Nicholas married Constance Hopkins [49] [MRIN: 23].


1056 i. John Snow [46]

2113. Constance Hopkins [49], daughter of Stephen Hopkins [50] and Mary [51], was born in 1606 and died in 1677 at age 71.

General Notes: Her steeple hat is in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth.20


33


Constance married Nicholas Snow [48] [MRIN: 23].

Thirteenth Generation: 10th Great-Grandparents

4226. Stephen Hopkins [50] was born in 1578 and died in 1644 at age 66.

Stephen married Mary [51] [MRIN: 24].


2113 i. Constance Hopkins [49]

4227. Mary [51] died in 1613.

Mary married Stephen Hopkins [50] [MRIN: 24].


34

Source Citations

1 Patricia Boudreau, A Tapley Genealogy. 2 Kevin Clark Mills, Mills.(2004), Sailing Days on the Penobscot. 3 Patricia Boudreau, A Tapley Genealogy, p. 35. 4 Kevin Clark Mills, Mills.(2004), 1.1.1a.2a.1.6a.8 Edward Ellison Mills. 5 Ibid, A Small Tribute to a Really Big Man. 6 Ibid, George V. Mills. 7 Margaret Lord Varnum, Diary of Margaret Lord Varnum. 8 Kevin Clark Mills, Mills.(2004), Under (7) 1.1.1a.2a.1.6a.8 Edward Ellison Mills. 9 Ibid, (7) 1.1.1a.2a.1.6a.8 Edward Ellison Mills. 10 Patricia Boudreau, A Tapley Genealogy, p. 12. 11 Kevin Clark Mills, Mills.(2004), Joseph Mills. 12 Ibid, Eligood Mills Sr. 13 Ibid, A Brief Sketch of the Mills Family of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 14 Ibid, The Grand Turk. 15 Ibid, A Brief Sketch of the Mills Family of Portsmouth, New Hampdhire. 16 Patricia Boudreau, A Tapley Genealogy, 5. 17 Pigot & Co's National Commercial Directory for 1828-9.(1828), p 286. 18 Patricia Boudreau, A Tapley Genealogy, 4. 19 Ibid, p. 7. 20 David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folways in America, p 142.


35

Name Index

(No surname)

Ann [606].........................................18, 23Deborah (1710-1786) [359]....................27Grace [449]......................................29, 32Mary ( -1613) [51].........................33Sarah [291]......................................23, 28

ADAMSMary (Cir 1821-1851) [59]..................9, 14

ALLENSusanna [67]....................................28, 30

ASHWORTHDavid [607].............................................18Edmund (1796- )...........................18Edmund (1796- ) [604]......14, 18, 23Harriet (1829-1897) [273].............9, 14, 18

BATTLEYDavid John (1935-2003) [68]...................2Zoe Susan (1973- ) [2]....................2

BOLTONBenjamin Jr [330]...............................9, 13Lucy A. (1858-1936) [329]..........4, 8, 9, 13

BREARLEYMary (Mally) (Molly) (To 1754- )

[277].......................................17, 22, 23BROOKLIN

Grace (1665- ) [358]..........27, 29, 30BRYER

Rebecca (1708- ) [25].............18, 24BUTLER

Sarah [347]......................................16, 22CATON

George (1820- ) [34].................9, 13Mary Ann (1847-1928) [33]............5, 9, 13

CHASELydia S. (1806-1876) [21]..................8, 11

CLEGGAnn (To 1696- ) [281]..............28, 30

CONDONEliza (1797-1819) [419]..........................11

COWARDJane (Cir 1784- ) [63]..............17, 22

DAVIESSarah (1765- ) [289]................18, 23

DYERMary (1753-1774) [349]........16, 21, 22, 27Thomas (1720-Bef 1770) [350]........22, 27

ELIGOODMary [365]........................................29, 32

FARNHAM(1829-1829) [616]..................................17Benjamin (1819- ) [614].................17Dorothy (1816-1855) [338].....8, 12, 13, 17Eleanor (1817-1902) [613].....................17Gersham (1790-1869) [339].......13, 16, 17Haskel (1827- ) [618]....................17

James (1825- ) [617].....................17Jane (1822- ) [615]........................17

FERNALDSusanna (1740-1826) [23]. . .15, 16, 18, 19

FLETCHEREsther (1823-1854) [285].................10, 14

FORDDean Wilbur (1886-1975) [30]..............3, 5Janeth Adeline (1916-1968) [9]........2, 3, 5

GELDINGElizabeth (1655- ) [363]...........29, 33

GOODWINAmaziah (1739-1798) [346]..............16, 22Sarah L. (1782-1828) [345]........11, 16, 22

GREENRelief W. [331]...................................9, 13

GREENHALGHMary Ellen (1863-1936) [271].........6, 9, 10

HANRAHANSarah Penelope Susan (1949- ) [69]

.............................................................2HEALEY

Margaret (To 1719- ) [279]......22, 28HIDE

Sarah [36]........................................13, 17HOPKINS

Constance (1606-1677) [49]............32, 33Stephen (1578-1644) [50]......................33

HOWARTHMary [275]........................................14, 18

HYDELucy Hannah (1859-1936) [283]........6, 10

KINGSBURYMartha Marchant (1845-1914) [57]......5, 9

LANGHannah (1715-1746) [356].........19, 27, 30John (1673-1752) [357]..............27, 29, 30Mary [483]..............................................30

LEEDaniel (Cir 1753-1823) [288]......18, 23, 28Daniel (To 1821-1891) [284]......10, 14, 18Jessie (1892-1961) [269]...............3, 6, 10Mabel [560]............................................10Samuel Henry (1857-1909) [282].6, 10, 14Thomas [290]...................................23, 28William (1786-1856) [286]..........14, 18, 23Winifred (Winnie) [561]..........................10

LEWISAnne (1671- ) [27].......23, 28, 29, 32Peter [448].................................29, 31, 32

LITTLEFIELDNancy ( -1827) [343].....................13

MCLUCASJohn [353]..............................................22Lucy (1749-1832) [352]..........................22


36

Name Index

MELCHERElizabeth (1720-After 1770) [351]....22, 27

MILLS<Unknown> (1722- ) [477]............29Abigail (1818-1818) [505].......................16Ada Littlefield (1887-1976) [12]........3, 4, 8Agnes (1722- ) [476].....................29Albert Reed (1853-1942) [519]...............13Alice D. (1885-1948) [335].......................9Alice Farnham (1838-1860) [513]..........12Ann (1704- ) [471].........................29Bowman (1712- ) [472]..................29Dorothy Farnham (1848-1939) [518]......13Edward (1686-1751) [360].........24, 29, 32Edward (1736-Bef 1764) [478]...............27Edward Ellison (1851-1914) [328]..4, 8, 9,

12Eligood Jr (1774-1824) [485].................22Eligood Sr (1744-1832) [348]...16, 19, 22,

27Emily Snow (1846-1876) [517]...............12George Vaughn JP (1812-1894) [337]...8,

11, 13, 16George Vaughn Jr (1844-1916) [516]....12Hattie (1867- ) [520]......................13Horace A. (1881-1956) [333]...................8Innocence (1802- ) [499]...............16James (1792-1883) [491].......................22John (1737-Cir 1758) [479]....................27John (1789-1842) [490]..........................22Jonathon (1738-Cir 1738) [480].............27Joseph (1771-1836) [344]..........11, 16, 22Joseph E (1878- ) [332]..................8Joseph Jr (1807-1858) [501]..................16Littleton (1714- ) [473]...................29Lucy (1776-1855) [486]..........................22Lucy Garland (1810-1887) [503]............16Lucy Milliken (1836-1852) [512].............12Luke (1741-Bef 1773) [481]...................27Luke (1778-1856) [487]..........................22Luke (Captain) (1713-1764) [355]. .19, 24,

27, 29Luke Samuel (1820-1895) [506].............16Lydia (1789-1842) [489].........................22Mark [364]..................................29, 32, 33Mary (1746-1823) [482].........................27Mary Barker (1842-1869) [515]..............12Mary Dyer (1807-1858) [502].................16Mary E. (1892-1962) [336].......................9Miriam Hannaford (1815-1899) [504].....16Nathan (1716- ) [474]....................29Preserved Brayton (1803-1872) [500]....16Susan Walker (1840-1853) [514]...........12Susannah (1720- ) [475]...............29William (1784-1824) [488]......................22

MOOREAgnes (1678- ) [361].........24, 29, 33Thomas (1652- ) [362].............29, 33

PAINEHannah (1713-1768) [43].................19, 24Polly [39]....................................11, 15, 16

PARKER

Polly Snow (1795-1885) [17]. .7, 10, 11, 16PAUL

Edmund (Cir 1829- ) [58]...9, 13, 14, 17

Henry (1805-1838) [60]..............13, 17, 22Henry (1858-1933) [56]..................5, 9, 14James (Cir 1782- ) [62].....17, 22, 28June [292]................................................5Lydia Mary (1950- ) [4]................2, 3Martin Oliver Kingsbury (1954- )

[262].....................................................3Robert James Kingsbury (1885-1975) [54]

.................................................3, 5, 6, 9Robert Sidney (1918-1992) [52].......2, 3, 5Thomas (Cir 1759- ) [64]...22, 28, 30Thomas [66].....................................28, 30Timothy Robert (1947- ) [261].........3

PICKUPAbraham (Bef 1790- ) [274]...14, 17,

18, 22Eunice Mary (1921- ) [53]........2, 3, 6George (Cir 1689- ) [280]........28, 30Herbert (1892-1957) [268]...............3, 6, 9James (1754- ) [276]...17, 22, 23, 28James (To 1824-1902) [272]........9, 14, 18John (1860-1941) [270]............6, 9, 10, 14Joseph (To 1717-1795) [278].....22, 28, 30

PLOWMANElizabeth (Cir 1757- ) [65].......22, 28

PRIDEElizabeth (1640-1720) [29].........28, 31, 33John.......................................................31John [458]........................................31, 33Mary [459]..............................................33

REEDFlorence Eliza (1885-1963) [55]...........3, 5

RIDLEYElizabeth (1678-1736) [45]...............24, 29

SHEPHERDJane [605]........................................14, 18

SMALL(EY)Mary (1647- ) [47]...................29, 32

SNOWIsaac (1768-1848) [38].........11, 15, 16, 19John (1638-1692) [46]................29, 32, 33John (1678-1738) [44]................24, 29, 32Joshua [42]................................19, 24, 29Nicholas (1742-1821) [40]..........15, 19, 24Nicholas (Cir 1599-1676) [48]..........32, 33

STOVERNathaniel [610]...........................15, 16, 19Sarah (Sallie) (1768-1823) [19]10, 11, 15,

16, 17, 19SWAIN

Louisa (Cir 1820- ) [35].......9, 13, 17William [37]......................................13, 17

TAPLEYAbram Perkins (Captain) (1828-1907)

[370]...................................................11Alice Rebecca (1916- ) [326]...........4Benjamin (1688- ) [468].................31Benjamin (1789- ) [429].................15


37

Name Index

Carrie Freeman (1865- ) [375]........8Dean Edward (Revd) (1944- ) [3] 2, 3Edward Jerome (1913-1969) [8]......2, 3, 4Eliza Condon (1830-1860) [371]............11Elizabeth (1664- ) [461].................31Elizabeth (1735- ) [454].................24Elizabeth (Elsy) (1799-1879) [434]...15, 17Ellis (1771-1794) [444]...........................19Elsie Cora (1869- ) [377].................8Emery Archer (1947- ) [10]..............3George Henry (Captain) (1832-1923)

[372]...................................................11Hannah (1672- ) [464]...................31James Robert (1754- ) [456].........24Jerome Perkins (1875-1955) [11].3, 4, 5, 8Jerome Perkins (Captain) (1833-1911)

[14].........................................4, 7, 8, 10Job (1736- ) [22]....15, 16, 18, 19, 24Job (1803-1889) [20]....................8, 11, 15Joel (1778-1781) [447]...........................19Joel (1814- ) [439].........................15John (1669- ) [26]........23, 28, 29, 31John (1767- ) [443]........................19John (1805- ) [436]........................15John (Cir 1638-1693) [28]..........28, 30, 31John Payne (Captain) (1842-1908) [374]

...........................................................11Joseph (1733- ) [455]....................24Joshua (1774- ) [445]....................19Joshua Paul (1980- ) [5]..................2Lizzie Chase (1867- ) [376].............8Lucy (1786- ) [427]........................15Luther (1808- ) [437].....................15Marion Parker (1871- ) [378]...........8Mary (1667-1668) [462].........................31Mary (1678- ) [466].......................31Mary (1729- ) [452].......................24Mary (1801- ) [435].......................15Mary [469]..............................................28Nancy (1811- ) [438].....................15Nathaniel Dean (1977- ) [1].............2Peletiah (1757-1830) [18]...10, 11, 15, 16,

17, 19Peletiah (1797- ) [433]..................15Peletiah [457].........................................24Phebe Parker (1840-1928) [15]......4, 8, 11Rebecca (1790- ) [430].................15Robert (1673- ) [465].....................31Robert (1792-1863) [16].........7, 10, 11, 15Robert (Captain) (1824-1900) [367].......10Sally (1761- ) [441]........................19Sally (1788- ) [428]........................15Samuel (1683- ) [467]...................31Sarah (1728- ) [450]......................24Sarah Frances (1835-1868) [373]..........11Simeon Parker (1820-1903) [366]..........10Susanna (1767- ) [442].................19Susannah (1784- ) [426]...............15Thomas (1728- ) [451]..................24Thomas (1794- ) [431]..................15Thomas (Captain) (1825-1912) [368].....11Timothy Condon (1818-1894) [420].......11

W. Merle (1920-2006) [13].......................4William (1670-Bef 1715) [463]................31William (1731- ) [453]....................24William (1776- ) [446]....................19William (1796- ) [432]....................15William (Bef 1710- ) [24]..18, 23, 24,

28William Parker (Captain) (1826-1899)

[369]...................................................11TARMENT

John (1846-1923) [32]..........................5, 9Louisa Caton (1886-1962) [31]........3, 5, 9

VARNUMEleanor (1794-1830) [340]...............13, 17Emeline (1842-1858) [625]....................17George M. (1838- ) [624]...............17Hannah (1834- ) [622]...................17John Fred (1836- ) [623]...............17Mary A. (1831-1856) [621].....................17

VEASEYEsther ( -1852) [440].....................15

WASSONDavid (Captain) [342].............................13Nancy Littlefield (1827-1916) [341]........13

WATKINSHuldah (1745-1828) [41]..................15, 19

WEBBERLydia [354].............................................22

WEEKSMary [611]..................................15, 16, 19

WESTIsabella (Cir 1802- ) [61]..........13, 17

WRIGHTSarah (1790-1826) [287]..................14, 18


38

tapley-battley family history aug 2006

Documents

chateau de bossey

commanding fine vessels

ye current price

david hackett fischer

christ church urc

janeth adeline ford

mt rest cemetery

mount rest cemetery