Jonathan (1625?-1675) and Mary (1634-1715) WILLIAMSON of Tallentire in Bridekirk
New page 15 July 2019
Links:
Immediate ancestors: Possibly Humphrey and Dorothy WILLIAMSON; William and Jane BOWES
Immediate descendant: William WILLIAMSON
The Williamson story - WILLIAMSON 1 research notes
index of surnames
I will be honest, it is not as sure as the later generations. My ancestor William WILLIAMSON of Allonby had property at Tallentire, which he left to his widow in his will, and property at Tallentire was also specified in wills of later generations of the Williamson family. There is no record of William's birth in Allonby and indeed no Williamsons in the Quaker registers there in the 17th century at all. [research note, record the results of a search in the C of E registers even if equally negative] Extending the search for William's birth to Tallentire reveals a baptism of the right name and age, to Jonathan and Mary, according to a published transcript of the Bridekirk parish register. This Tallentire William is not recorded there as having married, baptised any children, or been buried in the parish of Bridekirk. Also William called his own firstborn son Jonathan, and it was quite common to name the first son after the paternal grandfather (4 of the next 5 generations in my Williamson line did so). So I think it is likely that my ancestor William was the son of Jonathan and Mary baptised in 1669. The Williamson pedigree published by James Gorton Brooker agrees.
Jonathan's parents are less certain still. Although there are earlier Williamsons in Bridekirk, Jonathan was not baptised there. His descendants in later generations held a property called New Hall in the parish of Crosthwaite, and James Gorton Brooker identifies Jonathan with a baptism in Crosthwaite to a Humphrey and Dorothy WILLIAMSON of the New Hall Williamson family. There is apparently a document naming Jonathan, Mary, their fathers and their residences or perhaps property holdings in Carlisle Record Office, but I only have third-hand sight of a brief note about it.
Mary was definitely the daughter, perhaps the only child, and appears to have been the heir of William and Jane BOWES of Tallentire. She, Jonathan and their first four children are named in William's will.
If Jonathan was indeed of the Crosthwaite Williamsons, he was the second of five children, all boys. They were a landowning family, and I think had relatives at least with trappings of gentility such as coats of arms. There are more details on the New Hall Williamson page.
I believe that at least one Crosthwaite Williamson family may have held land in the parish of Bridekirk, and that there were other family connections between Bridekirk and Crosthwaite Williamsons. The Reverend Joseph WILLIAMSON, vicar of Bridekirk from 1625 to 1634, was part of an armigerous Williamson family from Crosthwaite. There is, or has been, apparently a stone achievement of the Williamson arms on a house in Tallentire. So it is very much plausible that some family connection may have led a second son from a branch of the Crosthwaite Williamsons coming to the parish of Bridekirk to find a wife and/or land.
Mary I think may have been the only child and therefore the heir of her parents, and so represented both a wife and land to the lucky man who could win her hand. More details on her parents' page.
I cannot find a marriage record for Jonathan and Mary, though I would have expected it in the bride's parish of Bridekirk. If they married in some other parish altogether it might shed light on where or how they got together.
Jonathan and Mary enter the spotlight of genealogical record with the baptism of their children. There are some complications here so I will first reiterate what I now think their children's names and dates are, then discuss the evidence for piecing these together. The children as I understand them were:
Mary 1654 (baptised 4 August)
Jane 1656 (baptised 15 November)
Dorothy 1659 (baptised 30 January 1659/60)
Thomas 1662 (baptised 30 September)
maybe Ann 1663 or 64, or possibly early 1670s (no baptism record)
Agnes 1665 (baptised 4 June)
Isabel 1667 (baptised 6 October)
William 1669 (baptised 31 October)
John 1670 (baptised 23 February 1670/71)
The baptism records in the transcript I have of Bridekirk parish registers are:
1654 Aug 4 Maria filia Jonathan Willimson de Tallentyre
1656 Nov 15 Jane fili Jonathan Willimson de Tallantire
1659 Jan 30 (blank) fil Jonathan Willmson de eod [Tallantyre]
1662 Sept 30 Tho: Williamson [no parents given]
1665 June 4 Agnes filia Jonathan Williamson de Talentyre
1667 Oct 6 Isabella filia Jonathan Williamson de Talentyre
1669 Oct 31 Gulielmus filius Jonathan Williamson de Talentyre
1670 Feb 23 Johanes filius Jonathan Williamson de Talentyro
The family as given in Brooker is:
Mary, b 22 Nov 1654
Jane, b 15 Nov 1656
Thomas b 30 Jan 1659
William b 31 Oct 1662
Agnes b 4 June 1665
Isabella b 6 Oct 1667
John b 23 Feb 1677
Dorothy
Ann
Finally, the will of their grandfather William BOWES, written in June 1663, lists Mary, Jane, Dorothy and Thomas in that order.
So, I think Mary and Jane pose no problem as the first two, and their baptisms are recorded straightforwardly. The family clearly needs a Dorothy and on the strength of her appearance in third place in William BOWES' will I assign her to the nameless baptism in 1659 in the PR transcript. The family also needs a Thomas by 1663, and he is named fourth in his grandfather's will, so I assign the parentless Thomas baptism in 1662 to this family.
Brooker puts an Ann in the family, who is problematic because there's no baptism for her, and no PR evidence of her at all, unless you count a burial of an Ann WILLIAMSON with no other identifying notes in 1662. Brooker thinks Ann grew up and got married so the 1662 burial can't be Brooker's Ann. She must then have been born after June 1663 as she is not named in that will. So the places she might fit would be later in 1663 or in 1664, or on the end after the 1670/71 baptism of John. But it is quite possible that Brooker has added her erroneously.
Agnes and Isabel are no trouble again (I anglicise the spelling of Isabel, taking Isabella as just the Latin version, like Maria for Mary). I'm going by the PR transcript's date of 1669 for William's baptism, rather than Brooker's 1662 which I take as a reading error. Likewise I will follow the 1670 date for John's baptism in the PR, especially given the date of death of Jonathan the father.
William BOWES, Mary's father, called himself a yeoman, someone who owns and works land. As he seems to have had no son to take over his land, I imagine that Jonathan, his son-in-law, was more or less in this position and that he and Mary would have been taking over the agricultural and house work and management as her parents got older. They may have lived in the same house--it seems they did live in the same settlement Tallentire. In 1663 William died and Jonathan would I think have become the male head of the family. In 1672 Mary's mother Jane also died and so probably the family came down to the nuclear unit again.
However, in 1674/75 Jonathan himself died and was buried on 2 February in Bridekirk. No will survives and so this may have been very sudden. He was (if the Crosthwaite baptism is him) probably not quite 50. He left the children all under 20, with little John only just about 5, and their mother aged 40.
Mary does not seem to have remarried or moved far away, so I guess she held the family together and managed the land and its workers as well as the house. She buried at least one of her daughters during her long widowhood, and was herself buried in Bridekirk on 16 November 1715, aged 81. I suppose before then, as the children grew up, she may well have either rented the farm out altogether, or handed its day to day management over to someone in the younger generation.
I don't have a will for either Jonathan or Mary, but in later generations the Allonby Williamsons also held property at Tallentire and I imagine this was an inheritance from these two. I would be interesting to figure out exactly what property was involved. Also interesting to figure out the dynamic between the three sons of this family, which of them inherited what land initially, and how much of it ended up with our line, the descendants of the second son.
Mary married a William THOMPSON of Allerby in the neighbouring parish of Aspatria on 20 June 1676 in Bridekirk.
Jane married a John DODSON, according to Brooker.
Dorothy died aged 22, unmarried, being buried in Bridekirk on 22 January 1683/84
Thomas, according to Brooker, became Tide Surveyor of Whitehaven. Whitehaven was a growing port on the west Cumberland coast (its heyday was later in the century and it handled a greater tonnage of shipping than any other English port bar London from 1750 to 1772, but its growth began in the 17th century when the local coal mines took off), and Tide Surveyor the senior customs official there, responsible for charging taxes on goods passing through the port and checking for smuggled goods. See Dictionary of Old Occupations and Instructions to the Tide Surveyor's deputy. There was certainly a Thomas WILLIAMSON who was promoted from Tide Waiter (the deputy role, I believe) to Tide Surveyor in 1711, upon the decease of the previous surveyor William Harrison (and succeeded as Tide Waiter by Joshua Nicholson): see Treasury Warrant Book. There is a Thomas WILLIAMSON baptising, in St Nicholas church Whitehaven: Stephen 1702, Ellin 1704 died 1707, Thomas 1705, Mary 1707, mother now named as Jane. There is also an Elizabeth in 1723 - with the same parents' names but perhaps unlikely to be the same family after a 16-year gap? Perhaps they were passing off an illegitimate grandchild as their own? Anyway, I have only Brooker's word so far that this Whitehaven tidewaiter is my Thomas, and only speculation that the father in the baptisms is the same. Brooker does think he was back in Bridekirk when he died though, being buried there on 23 June 1724.
Brooker says Ann married Thomas CALVERT, 26 July 1697. I haven't so far found a record of this myself, and I can only imagine it is in the marriage record that she is described as daughter of the late Jonathan WILLIAMSON of Tallentire or something, because nothing I have found puts her in this family at all.
Brooker has no further information on Agnes or Isabel, but the parish register transcript has a burial for an Isabell WILLIAMSON on 25 November 1680. There are no other identifying details but ours is the only Isabel WILLIAMSON baptised, and there are no Isabels marrying a WILLIAMSON, so I think it seems possible that this is her. In which case she would only have been about thirteen.
William is our next ancestor and has a page of his own.
Brooker says John became a grocer in Cockermouth and left a will in 1713. I think this might be worth getting--though I can't find it in the online catalogue for Carlisle. There is a tantalising entry (reference YDB 8/78/2) for the conveyance to a John WILLIAMSON of a burgage in Cockermouth in 1710, but the archive says it's mostly illegible.
If you are interested in this family I'll be pleased to hear from you. Click this link to email me at deletethis.ianwilliamson161@gmail.com but delete everything up to and including the first dot, leaving just my name and number @ service provider.
Links:
Immediate ancestors: Possibly Humphrey and Dorothy WILLIAMSON; William and Jane BOWES
Immediate descendant: William WILLIAMSON
The Williamson story - WILLIAMSON 1 research notes
index of surnames