Jonathan (1699-1779) and Rebecca (1707-68) WILLIAMSON of Allonby
New page 15 July 2019
Links:
Immediate ancestors: William and Mary WILLIAMSON and John and Ann WILSON
Immediate descendant: Thomas WILLIAMSON
The Williamson story - WILLIAMSON 1 research notes
index of surnames
Jonathan and Rebecca are recorded as the parents of my next ancestor Thomas in the Quaker registrations of his birth (RG6/1247) and marriage (RG6/1316). Jonathan also names Thomas, along with other children and grandchildren, in his will (Cumbria Archives Service, Carlisle, PROB/1779/W230).
Jonathan's parents were William and Mary WILLIAMSON of Allonby.
Hannah's parents were John and Ann WILSON of Graythwaite.
Jonathan was I think the eldest child and only son of William and Mary WILLIAMSON. William was a yeoman in the coastal Cumberland village of Allonby (in the parish of Bromfield). He and Mary were Quakers. Jonathan's childhood is covered more fully at his parents' page.
I don't know anything of his younger adulthood so far but he presumably helped to run his father's farm. He married aged about 35, which wasn't all that old in a culture where men like him came into their independence only when their fathers began to retire.
Rebecca was (according to Brooker--I haven't been able to verify this myself) also from a Quaker family, at Graythwaite in Mosser, near to the Quaker meeting house at Pardshaw Hall, further inland in the county of Cumberland (Brigham parish I think, or maybe Dean). If Brooker's identification of her parents is right, she was about 28 when they married.
I have the year of Jonathan and Rebecca's marriage from Brooker. I haven't yet found a record of it. I have a suspicion that they may not have married under the auspices of the Quakers. In the Quaker births register, their first three children appear in one group, suggesting to me that the first two at least may not have been registered at the time of their birth. I'll need to check back to the original document again, but the triple record must have been made in or after 1743 when the third child was born, suggesting that the couple spent about 8 years 'out of Unity' (not officially Quaker members). Marrying in the church of England might explain this. Why they would have done this when they were both from Quaker families I am not sure. Perhaps the Quakers raised some objection to their marriage? I suppose they may even not have married at all, but I imagine that this would have been treated with even less forgiveness by the Quakers.
Jonathan and Rebecca lived at Allonby. They had three sons and two daughters, and I have information that most of them survived childhood:
Thomas, 16 December 1736
Sarah, 27 June 1740
Ann, 4 December 1743
Jonathan, 6 August 1747
William, 10 July 1749
Note that Brooker gives another child to this family: Hannah (born 1746, died 1819, unmd). I find no record of this birth in the Quaker registers, and she's not mentioned in Jonathan's will made in 1777, though it looks very much as if he otherwise mentions all his children and grandchildren living at that date. I do notice that these dates match those implied by a burial record of a Hannah WILLIAMSON aged 73 in 1819 in Allonby. The burial is of Thomas's wife Hannah nee ROBSON (and is stated as such) but with the dates matching and the lack of any other evidence that there was a Hannah born in this family I'm going to conclude that Brooker (or his informant Mabel Petrie nee Williamson) somehow noted just the name and dates and then mistakenly took them for another person born in this family.
Jonathan's family had the status of 'yeoman', people who both owned and worked their land. The only time this word is mentioned in a record of Jonathan that I can find, it isn't totally clear whether it pertains to him or his son, but at any rate he both inherited and bequeathed lands and business so I infer that he was a man of some property, though not a gentleman of leisure.
Rebecca was buried in Friends Burying Ground in Allonby on 11 January 1768, when her youngest would have been about 18.
Joseph lived about a decade as a widower. From his will, I guess he may have retired to a house that was not the main farmhouse, possibly with his unmarried daughter Sarah. He may have been ill in 1777, as he made his will then (aged about 77). But he survived until 31 March 1779. He was buried at Allonby like Rebecca.
Jonathan left property in Allonby and elsewhere, and some cash gifts. Thomas, the eldest son, gets the husbandry (farming) gear, which I believe can be read as saying he has already taken over the main family farm land and buildings. He also gets 'the Trunk the Writings are in after the Writings are viewed and returned to whom they will belong'. This is not the only bequest of paperwork infrastructure to the eldest son in my family history, and I'm inclined to read it as signifying the transfer of ultimate responsibility for the sorts of matters that need paperwork.
The next son Jonathan (or his heirs) ultimately gets some property ('freehold messuages and tenements') called Newhall near Keswick. However the will first stipulates that it shall be held jointly between younger children William, Sarah and Ann for eight years, for a fixed rent of ten pounds a year, and with restrictions on felling wood there. After the eight years it goes to Jonathan. (Jonathan appears to have kept it for most of his life, and then sold or otherwise transferred it to new owners in 1810, the same year he died--see Carlisle record office reference DX 2158/1)
Now, the fact that this property is Newhall near Keswick is extremely interesting to me, because it forms a long-range tie-in between the Allonby Williamsons and the Crosthwaite Williamsons of New Hall. I don't have documented step by step connections at every generation, but this link does give me considerable confidence that they are related, and probably ancestral.
William, the youngest son, gets a house, with outbuildings and a 'piece of ground' called Conels Land and Conels Croft in Allonby, plus a hundred and fifty pounds in money.
Sarah, the eldest daughter, was bequeathed two hundred and sixty pounds money, and the house her father had been living in (which I guess was a retirement cottage rather than the main family house) as long as she remained unmarried, and the furniture and contents of that house outright. However, she did not survive to collect her legacy--see below.
Ann her younger sister, already married (see below) got seventy pounds in money, to top up a gift she had already had (I guess on her marriage) of one hundred and ninety.
Finally there were two guineas each to various grandchildren and to Jonathan's married sister Sarah, a pound to someone called James Graham, no known relation, and the residue to be split between William, Sarah and Ann.
Thomas grew up, married and had children. He is our ancestor and has his own page
Sarah did not marry. I might speculate that as her father willed her the house he was living in, as a widower in his late 70s, she may have been living with him and looking after him and the house. However, as it turned out she died two months before he did, on 1 February 1779, aged 38. She was was buried in the Friends' burying ground at Allonby.
Ann married John STORDY of Great Orton in the Quaker meeting at Kirkbride in 1766. They had five children, of whom the eldest three, John, Jonathan and Thomas, are mentioned in their grandfather's will. The next, William, is not, though he had been born in 1775, so I infer he may have died young. The youngest, Rebecca, was born in 1778 after the will was made.
Jonathan junior lived at Allonby and died on 15 December 1810. He was buried at Penrith on the other side of Cumberland, so I guess that is where he died.
According to Brooker, William was living in Ireland in 1779.
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: William and Mary WILLIAMSON and John and Ann WILSON
Immediate descendant: Thomas WILLIAMSON
The Williamson story - WILLIAMSON 1 research notes
index of surnames