John Smith's Family Tree Website

Wyatt family

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Part 1: Samuel Wyatt Sr (c1764 - 1831)

Early life and marriage to Elizabeth Skinner

The earliest known Wyatt was Samuel Wyatt who was born c1764, most likely in Modbury, Devon. There is a baptism record for a Samuel Wyatt, son of George and Ann Wyatt at St George Church, Modbury, 04 April 1766. However, on Samuel’s marriage record he is recorded as ‘Samuel Wyatt Junior’, implying his father was also called Samuel.

It is not certain what Samuel did but on his daughters’ marriage records he was described as a labourer and also a farmer. He and his family lived in the Modbury area on land owned by John Bulteel Esq. and assessed at £1/11/8 which was about 10 days’ wages for a skilled labourer (worth about £70 today). The village of Modbury lies in south Devon, about 10 miles east of Plymouth (since 1960 it has been part of the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). Its economy was based on the woollen industry and at the turn of the 19^th century, about half the population was employed by it. However, unlike the north of England, the industry did not mechanise, the woollen industry went into decline and people moved away in search of work. [1] There is no indication of what Samuel farmed – it might have been arable land rather than raising sheep.

Samuel married Elizabeth Skinner (c1769 - 1835) 27 January 1797 at St James the Less Church, in the nearby parish of Kingston where Samuel was apparently living at the time. Neither of them had any education and Elizabeth was described as a ‘sojourner’, which indicated she was a temporary resident of the parish (not having been born and bred there).

They had seven children: Ann, George, John, James, Samuel, Betsy and Harriet. It is not certain where the family lived when the children were growing up. The older children were baptised in Modbury and gave that as their birthplace in census records, the younger children baptised in Kingston, and gave that as their birthplace, However Samuel and Elizabeth were later both buried in Modbury.

It is quite likely most of their children received some education: the two youngest were able to sign their names upon marriage (an indication of some form of schooling) – although their brother James was unable to sign his marriage record. Modbury had had schools since the time of the Restoration (1660 - 1688) and there were various ‘dame schools’ when the children were young [2]. These schools were generally run by elderly or unmarried women out of their own homes for the children of the working classes. The children would learn the ‘Three Rs’ until they were old enough to go out and work. [3] Kingston apparently also had some similar types of schools in the 1810s. [4]

Samuel died in 1831, aged 67, and was buried in St George’s Churchyard, Modbury, 19 September 1831. Elizabeth died in 1835, aged 66, and was buried 08 March 1835 in St George’s Churchyard.

Children of Samuel and Elizabeth

Ann (c1798 - 1861) was baptised in St George’s Church, Modbury, 02 September 1798, although she listed her birthplace in census records as actually being in Kingston, a nearby parish, where many of her siblings were born. Ann married Richard Cove (c1799 - 1872) at St George’s Church 28 December 1821. Richard was a cooper (a wooden barrel/cask maker). Ann and Richard had five children, two of whom died in infancy: Richard (1822 - 1823), Ann (1825 - 1826), Richard (c1827 - c1883), Ann (c1830 - 1910) and John (c1833 - 1882). Ann and Richard apparently lived their whole married life in Church Street, the main street through Modbury (now the A379). The stone, multistorey buildings are still there and are mostly shops nowadays. The Coves would have shared the premises with one or two other families rather than having the whole building to themselves.

Women’s work (paid or otherwise) was not always recorded by officials on census returns for married women but in the 1851 census Ann was listed as a laundress and mangler. Her two sons left for Plymouth in early adulthood but by 1881, both had moved away completely from the South-West to live in Essex and Staffordshire, but sadly died soon after. Ann Jr stayed with her parents for much longer working as a laundress but she also moved to Plymouth eventually and married a widowed shipwright pensioner. Ann Sr died in 1861, aged 62, and was buried in St George’s Churchyard, 05 July 1861. Richard died 05 April 1872, aged 72, and was buried five days later in St George’s Churchyard.

George (c1801 - 1870) was baptised 18 January 1801 in St George’s Church, Modbury. He married Maria Willis (c1802 - 1847) 05 September 1824 at St George’s Church. George started life as an agricultural labourer but later worked as a road labourer and spent all his life in Modbury. He and Maria had seven children: William (c1825 - ?), Ann (c1827 - 1906), George (c1829 - 1890), John (c1831 - 1890), Harriet (c1834 - ?), Samuel (c1836 - ?) and James (c1838 - ?). Sadly Maria died in 1847, aged 45, and was buried in St George’s Churchyard 28 December.

It was often the case that a widower with many children would marry again within a few years, the new stepmother able to look after the children while the husband earned the lion’s share of income. However in George’s case, with his youngest child being nine and at least one older sister at home to help look after him, it was eleven years before he decided to remarry. He and house servant Mary Bowhay (c1811 - 1893) married 28 October 1852 at St George’s Church. Mary had grown up and worked about ten miles away in Blackawton and Slapton and had no known connection to Modbury, so how she and George met can only be guessed at. Mary had two daughters, Maria Pinhey (c1832 - c1920) and Mary Ann (1839 - ?) but their father(s) were not known and they were raised by their maternal grandparents. George died in 1870, aged 69, and was buried in St George’s Churchyard 17 June 1870. Mary stayed living in Modbury for at least a decade, working variously as a general servant and an agricultural labourer and bringing up a grandson. By 1891 she had moved to Chivelstone to live with her daughter Maria. She died there in 1893, aged 77, and was buried 07 September.

John (1803 - 1829) was born 15 April 1803 and baptised 24 April the same year in St James the Less Church, Kingston. He died (or was buried) 15 July 1829, aged 26, and was buried in St George’s Churchyard, Modbury.

James (c1805 - 1893) was born 28 September 1805 in Modbury and baptised 13 October the same year at St James the Less Church, Kingston. He worked as an agricultural labourer for most of his life. James married Sarah Prout (c1810 - 1887) 23 September 1832 at St Michael’s Church, Blackawton, where Sarah had grown up. James, coming from another parish, was described as a ‘sojourner’. They had nine children: Ann (1832 - ?), Mary (1834 - 1922), Elizabeth (1837 - 1908), Samuel (1839 - ?), Harriet (1842 - 1943), James (1843 - 1932), Sarah (1848 - ?), William Prout (1849 - 1919) and Susanna (1852 - 1863). In the early 1840s, not only did Sarah have four children to look after but she was also raising an infant girl, Francis, referred to as a ‘nurse child’ in the 1841 census. Francis would have been like a foster child (quite possibly illegitimate) and her mother would have paid the Wyatts a small sum to look after her, enabling the mother to work.

The family lived in Blackawton village, described by an 1850 gazetteer as ‘a straggling village of indifferently built houses’. [5] There was more than one National School available which the children would have been able to attend. By the late 1840s the family had moved a mile away to live on the Oldstone estate, with James one of three labourers working for William Dimes Esq. on 105 acres (the size of sixty soccer pitches or Vatican City). [6] By 1861, the family had moved to Townstal Farm, on the outskirts of Dartmouth where James was now employed as one of two labourers working the 190-acre farm of William Ellis. (The farm is still standing today and is now a B&B.) Aged in his 70s, James moved into Dartmouth and worked as a gardener, a less labour-intensive work. Sarah died in 1887, aged 76, and was buried 16 March at St Clement’s Church, Townstal. James moved in with daughter Harriet’s family and died in 1893, aged 87. He was buried 29 June at St Clement’s Church.

Harriet was the second longest-lived of any known relative of Cecelia Higgins: she died in December 1943, just short of her 102^nd birthday. Her 101^st birthday celebration was reported in the Devon newspapers (she declared she was 31 at her party!). For her 100^th birthday she had received a congratulatory telegram from King George VI (a tradition dating back to 1917 and his father George V).

More information about Samuel (1808 - 1886) appears in Part 2.

Betsy (1811 - c1889) was born 08 June 1811 in Kingston and baptised 16 June the same year at St James the Less Church. She was ‘Betsy’ almost her whole life and it was not until her husband died that she renamed herself ‘Elizabeth’. It is not known what she did in her early adulthood but by 1851 she was a servant to Susan Harris Bulteel in Plymstock, south-east of Plymouth. Susan was likely the niece of John Bulteel who owned the land Betsy’s father had lived on so that might be how Betsy came to work for her. Susan died later that year and perhaps some money came to Betsy (although she was not mentioned in Susan’s extensive will!). Betsy married cattle dealer George Rodd (c1817 - 1870) 3 September 1856 at Stoke Damerel Parish Church. George had been married five years earlier to Ann Hynes (c1823 - ?). There is a death record for a Hannah Rodd in 1856 which could be the same person.

By 1861, George had moved away from animal husbandry and become a beerhouse keeper at 39 & 40 Union Street, East Stonehouse. The Beer Act (1830) had created a new type of drinking establishment, namely the ‘beerhouse’, where only beer could be sold (and not spirits such as gin, which was seen as causing widespread drunkenness and problems in society). For 2 guineas (£2 and 2 shillings, ten days’ wages for a skilled tradesman – about £140 today), anyone could buy a licence and brew and sell their own beer. [7] Union Street, the longest, straightest street in Plymouth was built in 1815 to link Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport and originally had been quite a genteel location. However by the time Betsy and George moved there, it had developed an unsavoury reputation as a red-light district with numerous pubs frequented by sailors on shore leave.

The western end of Union Street became Edgcumbe Street and Betsy and George moved there to run the Stonehouse Tavern. They did have to contend with trouble caused by sailors: a report p3 in the ‘Western Morning News’ 07 February 1870 mentioned a private in the Royal Marines who appeared before a magistrate accused of stealing a blanket from George! Beerhouses now had such seedy, criminal reputations that the Wine and Beerhouse Act (1869) was brought in to clean up the industry. Within three months of the Act coming into force, George and a dozen other beerhouse keepers appeared at the Stonehouse Brewsters Sessions before magistrates who spent “[s]everal hours … occupied in hearing objections to beerhouse-keepers whose premises were the resort of prostitutes and soldiers” (p4 Western Morning News, 11 September 1869). Every application was refused on the grounds the beerhouses were little more than brothels – except for George. No one made any objection to his application! He and Betsy must have run a very honourable beerhouse!

Betsy and George never had any children and George died 28 February 1870, aged 52. Betsy continued as an ‘innkeeper’ in Edgcumbe Street with her brother-in-law John Rodd as her assistant (it is not certain if this was the Stonehouse Tavern). She died 17 January 1889, aged, 77, leaving a personal estate valued at £172 (about £14,000 today).

Harriet (1815 - 1896) was born 11 December 1815 in Kingston and baptised 07 January 1816 at St James the Less Church. Both her parents had died by the time she was 19, so she might have left Modbury to look for work. She married William Bight (c1818 - c1897) 30 December 1837 at St Andrew’s Parish Church, Plymouth when she was two months pregnant with their first child. Harriet and William had ten children: Richard (1838 - 1919), Elizabeth (1840 - 1842), William Henry (1841 - ?), Elizabeth Wyatt (1843 - 1912), Harriet (1845 - 1920), Anne (1847 - 1848), Anne Wyatt (1849 - ?), John (1851 - 1941), Philip Samuel (1855 - 1864) and David Bartholomew (1857 - 1858).

Four children (William, Anne Wyatt, John and Philip) were baptised on the same day in 1855. This type of ‘baptism party’ was not so unusual by the 19^th century. The improved infant mortality rate reduced the need to hastily baptise children within a week of their birth (as the Anglican Church used to order parishioners to do in the 16^th and 17^th centuries) and parents could wait to baptism several children together. [8] Sadly three of Harriet and William’s children died in infancy and there is no evidence they were baptised. They also endured the tragic death of 9-year-old Philip Samuel, known as ‘Samuel’. He was playing with friends by Stonehouse Lake and drowned after accidentally slipping and falling in. The coronial inquest was reported p2 in the ‘Western Daily Mercury’ 23 May 1964.

In the marriage register, William was recorded like his father as a cordwainer (another name for shoemaker, distinct from a cobbler who repaired shoes). However on every census afterwards he was listed as a sawyer (timber worker) working at HM Dockyard. He was retired by his early 50s which was young at the time so perhaps he had been injured. As he had worked at the Dockyard he was entitled to a pension (and later referred to himself as a ‘civil service pensioner’).

The Dockyard dominated life in the area. In the period just before World War I, some 10,000 people were employed by the Dockyard, both civilians and military. It was estimated about half of the males in Devonport were in the navy in the 1890s and early 1900s. [9] It is not surprising therefore that two of Harriet and William’s surviving sons joined the navy and three of their daughters married mariners. John was the only one with no maritime connections: he became an apprentice carpenter but then he soon moved away to London and eventually shifted from working with wood to metal.

Harriet died in 1896, aged 81, and William died c1897, aged 79.

Next: Samuel Wyatt Jr

Footnotes

[1] The Unique Heritage of Modbury website (https://modbury-heritage.co.uk)

[2] Modbury School (https://modbury-heritage.co.uk/historical-topics/public-services/)

[3] Chapter 5: 1750-1860 Towards mass education in Gillard, D. (2018) Education in England: a history (www.educationengland.org.uk/history)

[4] Kingston Parish Council website, History of the parish (http://kingstonparishcouncil.co.uk/other-2/history-of-the-parish/)

[5] p481 ‘History, Gazetteer, and Directory of Devonshire’ by William White (1850)

[6] Dimes’ daughter Laura died in mysterious circumstances at Oldstone in 1884 and then the mansion house mysteriously burned down in 1895. The ruins are now a listed building.

[7] Union Street: night and day (www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2006/07/12/union_street_community_feature.shtml); What was a beerhouse? (https://historyhouse.co.uk/articles/beerhouse.html)

[8] ‘Birth-Baptism Intervals for Family Historians’ by Stuart Basten (https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Birth-Baptism_Intervals_for_Family_Historians)