The next phase in sorting out the Townley family, or the story of how I tried to disprove a strange hint and ended up proving it!
Regular readers may remember that I blogged last year about my Townley family and the strange propensity people have of assuming that William Townley, victualler of London was the Reverend William Townley of Orpington, Kent. We now have him tracked down to Charlton next Woolwich in Kent where his father John was a gardener. Through combing the parish registers, his siblings Robert, John, Mary, Thomas, and Joice (the only one to be baptized in Charlton) were discovered. A satisfying number of DNA descendants of this Townley family matched with my family through this line. So what now?
If there is no trace of them in the Charlton parish register before the 1790s, where were they before then? And could I pin down exactly who was John’s wife Betty?
There was a multitude of possibilities for baptisms of my ancestor William, so I decided to focus on Robert, a less common forename.
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Colin Park
Let’s disprove the Buckland Townleys!
I could find one baptism that fit well with the known facts in all respects except one. It was a long LONG way from Charlton. A Robert Townley was baptised to John and Betty on 11 Nov 1787 in Buckland, Gloucestershire. Buckland is a little Cotswolds village near the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire border. 100 miles away from Charlton. As I began to research further it was with the thought of disproving this was the correct Robert, not proving it.
So I leapt into the Buckland parish registers. Wait, there was also a son William baptised on 29th August 1779 to John and Betty! Another perfect fit. Interesting. Was there also a Mary, John and Thomas, the other siblings that had married in Charlton? No. Okay then. Probably not the right family, right? There were however baptisms for a Sarah in 1770, and two James’s in 1785 and 1786.
A Full House of Townleys
So who were the John and Betty Townley of Buckland? The only John Townley and Betty (or Elizabeth) that I could find a marriage for were John Townley and Betty Oldaker in 1769 in Withington, 13 miles away. Could this be them? It would fit with Sarah being baptised in 1770. But there was a big gap between her baptism and William’s in 1779. Was I looking at two separate families? I spread the net a little wider. At Chipping Campden, less than 5 miles away, a John and Elizabeth Townley had baptised Mary in 1772, John in 1775 and Elizabeth in 1777. This perfectly filled the gap, accounted for two of the other known children and added one more unknown. Still, just because it fits, doesn’t mean it’s true. It still could be coincidence.
A London link
I looked for burials around Buckland of any of the children that I knew to have grown to adulthood and settled in the Charlton area in an attempt to rule them out. None of them was buried in the area. I did notice though that many burials in the second half of the 18th century were of people ‘of London’. So plenty of Londoners seem to have been recruited to Buckland for work in this timeframe. Perhaps it wasn’t so unlikely that John Townley had gone 100 miles for work after all. I have found no record of major works occurring in this time period in or around Buckland but perhaps the Lord of the Manor, Thomas Thynne (at that time 2nd Viscount Weymouth) needed workers for his lands and gardens.
Townley as a name in the Buckland parish registers seemed to be confined to this family, though there were some Townley families in Winchcombe, just a few miles away.
Who was Betty Oldaker?
What about Betty Oldaker, the wife of this John Townley, where was she from? Her baptism to Thomas and Mary Oldacre was found in the Buckland parish registers in 1747. She had siblings Robert, Mary, James, Thomas, Sarah, William and…Joyce! Many names already known to have been given to Charlton John and Betty’s children. And Joyce was actually baptised in Charlton. I was beginning to believe that these were in fact the same family. Betty Oldaker’s paternal ancestry shows many Joyces through the generations, so though it wasn’t a really common name at this time, it had significance in her particular family.
If the John and Bettys were the same people, given that they moved to Charlton when their eldest child was still only in her teens, I should be able to find records of her and the other previously unknown children Elizabeth and James in the Charlton/London area then, right?
Sarah Townley 1770
Once I knew of Sarah’s existence, she wasn’t hard to find. She married in 1793 to John Embleton at St Botolph Bishopsgate. How do I know it was the Buckland Sarah Townley? A witness was James Oldaker, now known to be her uncle.
Elizabeth Townley 1777
Elizabeth Townley was also found quite quickly. She married John Blasdall in 1804 at St George the Martyr, Southwark. Not only was this where her brother William was baptizing children at the time, but her brother Thomas had married Frances Blasdall there the year before.
James Townley 1785 and/or 1786
James remains a sticking point. I can find no trace of him yet. Was he baptised twice? If so, why? Is the second baptism actually a misrecorded burial? Or is one of the baptisms actually a misrecorded Thomas for whom I have not yet found a baptism but who is known to be part of this family? The search continues. This did sow a seed of doubt, the one thing that didn’t fit, until…
The Death of John Townley’s Mother-In-Law, Mary Oldaker
Mary Oldaker (nee Bravel) of Buckland died in 1786. Her probate documents sealed the deal. The administrators of her estate were James Oldaker her eldest son (Betty’s brother) of Charlton, Kent and John Townley of Buckland (remembering that John and Betty were still in Buckland at that time). There is the definitive link to Charlton, and to the James Oldaker who witnessed Sarah Townley’s marriage!
James’ signature on each document was definitely made by the same person…
So there was much circumstantial evidence that led me to believe that Buckland John and Betty and Charlton John and Betty were one and the same. But this single document definitively tied the places and people together.
John Townley, born 1738 in Chelsea, moved to Buckland sometime before 1769, met and married local girl Betty Oldaker, moving back south together in the late 1780s with their family. They settled in Charlton, where Betty’s brother was already living and John’s living siblings were close by. Just waiting for some DNA pings from the descendants of the ‘new’ children now!
RootsTech Pass Giveaway Winner!
Congratulations to Becky Smith who won the three-day pass to RootsTech in Salt Lake City next week. Have a wonderful time!
A reminder to those who aren’t making the journey that virtual RootsTech is free to attend online. If you haven’t yet registered there is still time…and while you are at it, Relatives at RootsTech is happening again, giving you the chance to find cousins and compare notes. Why not register for that too?
