by Harry Beaves
As a boy I remember my father telling me of some strange line in our ancestry which linked us with a charity many generations back. In 1980 he received an invitation from his cousin John Marchment to a family reunion for all of those descended from William Beaves and Mary Jane Brackstone, my paternal great-great-grandparents. I went with him and my young family to Kimpton Village Hall where John Marchment told more than a hundred of us about the family history.
It transpired that he was an enthusiastic genealogist at a time before the internet made this hobby much easier. He was also a keen local historian and gathered together a huge number of ancient photographs (the John Marchment Collection) telling the story of Andover and the surrounding area. For this he was awarded an MBE.
John Marchment had traced our family back through Mary Jane Brackstone (my great-grandmother) to John and Frances West.
John West was born in 1641 in Twickenham. He was a scrivener and a very successful businessman who became Master of the Clothworkers’ Company. He was a friend of Pepys and Sir John Moore and moved in the best London circles. He and his wife, Frances Seakes, died in 1723 and 1725 respectively but they had no children. By their wills and indentures in their lifetime, charities were set up to provide pensions and scholarships for the blind and the poor, particularly their poor kin (being childless they have no direct descendants). John West was a Governor at Christ’s Hospital and it is through Trustees of Christ’s Hospital that the charity is administered today.
The kin of John and Frances West are entitled to apply for bursaries to Christ’s Hospital School, Horsham. Applicants must be able to prove consanguinity.
I have registered the family down to me with the authorities at Christ’s Hospital. Our pedigree is officially described in the following manner:
JOHN WEST’S mother ELIZABETH STARE had a sister
JANE who married JASPER RANDALL
And had issue JOHN who married ANSTICE MERCER
And had issue THOMAS who married JANE WELLS
And had issue THOMAS who married MARY
And had issue MARY who married THOMAS SMITH
And had issue THOMAS who married SARAH HOLDAWAY
And had issue MARY who married STEPHEN HOLDAWAY
And had issue ELIZA who married JOSEPH BRACKSTONE
And had issue MARY JANE who married WILLIAM BEAVES
And had issue HARRY ALBERT who married NORAH ANNIE ELKINS
And had issue HOWARD HARRY who married KATHLEEN NORA WILLIAMS
And had issue HARRY WILLIAM who married BARBARA ANN JACKSON
And had issue etc etc etc
Appendix 2
The Hammond Family Story
I began researching my ancestry with my mother’s family, the Williams, who were shepherds from the village of Shrewton on Salisbury Plain. The research was easy, but I quickly realised that the tree was really a bit boring, as for nine generations they neither moved nor married more than two miles from where they were born. I might have expected the same with my father’s tree as knew that my great-grandfather, William Beaves (1858–1929), was a brickmaker from the village of Tangley in Hampshire, as was his father, George Beavis (1823–1879) – the spelling varies – and his grandfather William Beavis (b.1765). George Beavis was married to Eliza Hammond (1823–1910), who, I noticed in the 1841 census, was described as a silk-weaver. Knowing nothing about the history of silk-weaving, I though it strange to find a silk-weaver in Hampshire, but several other members of Eliza’s family were shown in the same employment. They were all born and lived in Andover, but, unusually, Eliza’s father, Uriel Hammond (1802–1835) had died in Shoreditch, London. Since several of Uriel’s children were weavers and his father John Hammond (b.1775) was a weaver, it is fair to assume that Uriel worked in the same trade. A number of Uriel’s siblings had been born in Andover, had also moved to Shoreditch and died in New Zealand. These three facts – silk-weaving, migration from Andover to Spitalfields, and emigration to New Zealand – seemed very unusual. Unravelling the story has been fascinating and provides an interesting illustration of the great hardships faced by my ancestors at a turbulent time in English history.
This is the story of one generation of the Hammond family in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is the story of my great-great-great-grandfather Uriel Hammond and his siblings.
* * *
Uriel Hammond’s father was John Hammond, born in Andover in 1775, the son of William Hammond (1746–1820) and Ann Hooper (1740–1820). John Hammond was married twice, firstly to Ann Dumper (1771–1799) and secondly to Uriel’s mother, Sarah Knight (1774–1855). Sarah Knight was born in the village of Shalbourne, near Marlborough. Coincidentally, I was born in the same village and christened in the same church 173 years later. On his son Henry’s marriage record in 1844 John Hammond was described as a weaver (deceased) while his wife Sarah is listed as a silk-weaver in the 1841 census. John had ten children; at least seven of them are recorded at some stage in the Victorian records as weavers. Uriel Hammond was born in Andover in 1802 and in 1821 married Jane Druly (1800–1850).
The techniques of silk-weaving were brought to Britain by Huguenot weavers fleeing from religious persecution in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. They initially settled in Spitalfields, east of the City of London, before moving out into the country. Macclesfield in Cheshire became the other major centre for silk-weaving, but by the eighteenth century silk manufacture was undertaken in many small country towns throughout England. Andover, having grown with the wool trade, was one such town where a thriving community of silk-weavers became established.
Uriel and the silk workers of that time worked at home and literally lived round the loom. The work was hard, unhealthy and poorly paid. In April 1851 Charles Dickens was publishing a weekly journal called Household Words. In it he wrote four articles on life in Spitalfields in the East End of London which gave graphic descriptions of silk manufacture, from the comfortable living enjoyed by the silk trader who sold the finished product, to the grinding poverty and appalling living conditions of the weavers who made it.
England in the early-nineteenth century was in a state of great unrest. Silk-weaving, like many industries, was in serious decline, mainly because of cheap imports from Europe, but also because of improved technology which required less manpower. The new mechanised looms were much faster and produced a better product than the silks woven by traditional methods, but were neither practical or affordable for the home weaver.
But at that time most people in England were employed working on the land and in a country town like Andover you would have expected agriculture to be the alternative for the jobless silk-weaver, but other trades were experiencing similar difficulties. The rural poor who worked on the land were being particularly hard hit. Age-old methods of farming were changing. Small fields were consolidated into larger ones, then fenced or hedged, frequently denying their use to families who had farmed them for generations. The war with Napoleon made imports difficult and pushed food prices up. Farmers got rich but did not increase the wages of their labourers, and the introduction of new agricultural machinery reduced the numbers of men required to work the land. There was serious unrest and the Government had well-founded worries about revolution. They took a number of steps that were intended to improve things, but in most cases these were perceived, usually correctly, to benefit the landed and the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
On 20th November 1830 approximately 300 labourers marched into Andover. This was one of a number of random episodes in a wave of agricultural riots in the south of England known as the ‘Swing Riots’. The rioters were demanding better pay and conditions for farm workers. They moved up the High Street to the Angel Inn, where the local magistrates were meeting with the farmers, and forced their way in. They then moved on to Taskers Iron Foundry, where agricultural machinery was manufactured, and destroyed a large amount of property.
Fourteen men were subsequently charged; ten were sentenced
to death. For nine the sentence was commuted to transportation. There was no one named Hammond among those charged, but Uriel and his siblings would have known some of those involved and, although the Hammonds were silk workers and not farm workers, they would have shared many of the rioters’ grievances.
Against this background of civil unrest Uriel and seven of his siblings chose to leap from the frying pan of rural poverty and unemployment in Andover into the fire of urban overcrowding, disease and pollution in Spitalfields. Perhaps they felt there might still be hope of employment in the place that was the historic centre for the silk trade in England. Certainly, around that time thousands of silk-weavers were registered in the Spitalfields area. Maybe there was just a ‘Dick Whittington’ belief that London or Spitalfields was a land of opportunity with streets paved with gold.
Whatever their reason the Hammonds were not alone. Many people moved to the cities for employment in order to escape the hardships of working the land. The number of factories increased, causing the towns or cities to grow rapidly. A consequence of the rise in city populations was a decline in the quality of local resources such as clean drinking water, sewerage removal and water drainage. Illnesses like cholera were endemic. Spitalfields was hopelessly overcrowded and in Household Words Dickens wrote:
From fourteen to seventeen thousand looms are contained in from eleven to twelve thousand houses – although at the time at which we write, not more than nine to ten thousand are at work. The average number of houses per acre in the parish (Spitalfields) is seventeen; and the average per acre for all London being no more than five and a fifth, Spitalfields contains the densest population, perhaps, existing. Within its small boundaries, not less than eighty-five thousand human beings are huddled.
Uriel Hammond’s youngest son, George, was baptised in Andover in 1833, so Uriel must have moved to Spitalfields with his family at some time after this. He was not there long as he died on 12th August 1835 at the age of thirty-six. He was buried in Christ Church Spitalfields and his address was given as Pelham Street (now Woodseer Street, off Brick Lane). The requirement to register Births, Marriages and Deaths did not become law in England until 1837, so no reason is given for Uriel’s early demise. However there was a cholera pandemic in London between 1826 and 1837 so it is reasonable to suspect that this was the cause. Dickens illustrates one of his pieces in Household Words with an engraving of Pelham Street, where Uriel died. He described it as:
… lined with weavers’ cottages, distinguished by the long windows of the weaver’s lofts upon the top floor.
Two of Uriel’s sisters stayed in Andover, Ann and Mary. Ann Hammond (1792–1874) married William Hobbs (1789–1849), remained in Andover and was employed as a silk-weaver. Mary Hammond (1808–1866) married George White in Andover. George died in 1834 when he was knocked over by a cart. In the 1841 census Mary (Hammond) White was listed as a widow. Her mother Sarah (Knight) Hammond, also a widow, was living with Mary and her family in New Street, Andover. Both Mary and Sarah were listed as ‘silk-weavers’. By then fewer silk-weavers worked from home and between 1823 and 1856 two silk mills functioned close to New Street in Andover, employing up to ninety women. In 1841 Mary married Edward Laney (1811–1882), a baker and confectioner.
Uriel and those siblings who went to London all, at some stage, lived in the Spitalfields area.
William Hammond (1794–1866) married Elizabeth Crawford (1807–1862), an Irishwoman, at St John’s Hackney in 1830, so obviously moved to London sometime before then. In the 1841 census he was listed as a silk-weaver, living with his family in Pleasant Row, Mile End.
Thomas Hammond (1804–1877) and his family moved several times between Andover and Spitalfields.
James Hammond (1806–1874) married Hannah Hayward (1791–1866) in Andover in 1828. His youngest child, Edward, was born in Andover in 1832, so the family must have moved to London some time after that, as in the 1841 census James is listed as a brickmaker in Newcastle Street, Bethnal Green.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Hammond (1819–1907) married Samuel Ardley (1820– 1904) from Essex, in Stepney in 1840. The wedding record gives her address as 26 Newcastle Street, Bethnal Green, the same street as her brother David Hammond was living in at the time. Perhaps she had moved to Shoreditch as a single woman and stayed with her brother David before she married. In the 1851 census she is a silk-weaver and Sam is a shoemaker and they were living at 10 Old Castle Street this time, close to her brother Henry Hammond.
David Hammond (1810–1892) married Mary Ann Harfield (1810–1893) of Andover in 1835 in St Leonard’s, Shoreditch. On his son John George’s baptism registration David is listed as a warehouseman living at York Street, Shoreditch. In the 1841 census he is a carter living in Newcastle Street, Bethnal Green, close to his brother James. In the same census his wife Mary Ann is a weaver. In Making it Happen, Making Do: The Story of David and Mary Ann Hammond and their Family, Ian Hammond suggests that ‘Perhaps the main reason for the decision to emigrate to New Zealand can be found in an old newspaper report published in 1892 at the time of David’s death’:
As a young man he removed to London but the state of his health was such that his medical advisors warned him that unless he left the fogs of London he could not live two years. Thereupon he decided to emigrate.
Henry Hammond (1812–1851) probably moved to Spitalfields as a weaver, found it impossible to make a living so joined the Army, as he enlisted in the Grenadier Guards (Army No 2094) on 25th November 1830 at Queens Square, Westminster. He is not shown in the 1841 census, because he was serving in Canada with the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards from 26th April 1841 to October 1842. This would also explain why he chose not to go to New Zealand when his siblings emigrated in 1842. He was promoted Corporal in 1843, and in 1844, when he married Maria Ham in Hoxton, his marriage registration describes him as ‘a Private in the Army in Portland Street Barracks’.
On 28th August 1845 he was discharged from the Army for medical reasons described as ‘Obstructed circulation with dilation of the blood vessels. He has been ‘three months under treatment’. Sadly, Maria died in 1849, but on 4th November 1850 Henry married Sarah Phillips, a weaver. Henry is also described as a weaver, living in Old Castle Street, Bethnal Green, close to his sister Betsy (Hammond) Ardley who was living at 10 Old Castle Street.
Henry died in 1851 of ‘acute bronchitis’, probably brought on by poor living conditions. His address at the time of death was 6 Old Castle Street, Bethnal Green. Like his brother Uriel, he was only in his thirties at the time of his death.
Joseph Hammond (1818–1866) married Mary Box (1811–1865) in Canonbury, Islington, on 2nd August 1835. Their eldest son, Henry, was born in Bethnal Green in 1838. On his baptism registration his father, Joseph, is described as a weaver, address Boreham Street. By the 1841 census he could no longer support his family as a weaver and is shown at the same address as a traveller. In the 1851 census he is living at 22 Princes Street, Stepney and is employed as a blacking maker.
The New Zealand Company was a commercial organisation whose aim was to further the colonisation of that country. Like many companies of the time the commercial activities were supposedly supported by ethical beliefs. In this case the view was held that population growth, regarded as desirable, was related to food production. Mass starvation could be remedied by moving people from overcrowded Britain to the open spaces of countries like New Zealand. The social balance would be maintained by selling parcels of land to people who would be expected to become the employers, create industry and promote wealth, while free passages would be offered to agricultural labourers and mechanics (traditional rural craft workers such as builders or blacksmiths). In the early 1840s the company began to advertise vigorously with the promise of a better life and greater opportunities in New Zealand.
The chance to escape the appalling drudgery and dreadful conditions of Andover and Spitalfields and make a new life in a faraway land must have appealed to the Hammonds, particularly in the light of Urie
l’s untimely death in 1835. So it was that on 21st September 1841 William and Elizabeth Hammond with seven children under fourteen, James and Hannah Hammond with three children aged between ten and fourteen, and David and Mary Ann Hammond with three children under twelve set sail for New Zealand aboard the barque Lord Auckland. The voyage took more than 120 days and the ship was one of the earliest immigrant ships to drop anchor in Nelson, New Zealand, when it arrived on 23rd February 1842.
Mary (White-Hammond) Laney never joined her brothers in Spitalfields. She would have learnt of their plans in Andover and took the opportunity to emigrate a little later than they did. Mary, Edward Laney, the baker, and three children under ten set sail on the Olympus on 16th June 1842. They arrived in Nelson on 28th October 1842 after 129 days at sea.
To embark on such a journey was a massive leap of faith. The Lord Auckland was 114ft long and just 29ft 6in in the beam. On board were 171 passengers, forty-two crew, eighteen sheep, eighteen pigs, numerous geese, ducks and chickens for food and ninety-five tons of fresh water. The Olympus was a little smaller. Conditions were cramped and there was minimal privacy. There was barely enough water for people to drink, so bathing was not a high priority. It was difficult to keep clean, and caring for young children would have been very difficult. In 1803 the English Parliament had passed a law that made every vessel of fifty persons or more carry a surgeon, but despite this medical care was very rudimentary. A common illness in an individual was a threat to the whole ship and could frequently result in deaths. On the Lord Auckland’s voyage in 1842 there were five deaths and two births. In foul weather the ship would have been swept by waves and in the tropics it would have been impossible to escape the heat. The passengers would have spent days enduring seasickness. Despite all these hardships, the Hammonds were actually fortunate as, by the standards of the day, both the Lord Auckland and the Olympus were well organised and under responsible leadership. On other ships there were frequent stories of bullying, ill-treatment and an almost total lack of care. The only cause for complaint on the Lord Auckland seems to have been that the drinking water was stale – hardly unexpected.