THE STORY OF OUR FAMILY
GENERATION FOUR
CHARLOTTE KEEBLE AND THE KEEBLES
James
Keeble (b. 1730s) and Mary – my gggggrandparents
James (b.1757) and Sarah Haggar (b.1762)
– my ggggrandparents
John
(1801-1870) and Mary Mower (1801-1840) – my gggrandparents
Charlotte (1838/9-1904)
and James Tait (1840-1919) -– my ggrandparents
Ada Agnes Tait
(1879-1936) and James O’Donoghue (1874-1965) – my
grandparents
This is a story of country folk from the eighteenth to the nineteenth
century, through the turmoil of the agricultural and industrial revolutions
with a few migrations into the Victorian East End.
A gradual transformation of the
traditional agricultural system began in Britain in the 18th century. Aspects of this complex period of
change, which was not completed until the 19th century, included the
reallocation of land ownership to make farms more compact and an increased
investment in technical improvements, such as new machinery, better drainage,
scientific methods of breeding, and experimentation with new crops and systems of crop rotation. The enclosure of
communal lands into today’s boundaried fields was fundamental to this period.
My great grandmother, Charlotte
Keeble, and her family were right in the middle of these changes, but it does
not appear that the industrial revolution, ie factory work, really affected her
family much. Most of them remained in
agriculture as labourers.
The villages of Baylham (see left) and
Nettlestead (see later) in Suffolk are at the heart of this story and while marriage extended the residential places, it wasn’t really by
much. Just like in rural Ireland people
met their future spouses, or had their matches made, within a very small
geographic area.
In 1841, the Keeble name was very geographically concentrated: Suffolk 328
people, Essex 200, London 168 with minimal numbers elsewhere. By 1911 this distribution had moved to:
Suffolk 874 people, Essex 552, London 708.
While this might seem to make the
task of tracing them easier, the use of the same Christian names actually means
it’s quite testing to know whether one has the right James or Mary or whatever.
I had to consider
in what order to tackle this family as I have taken it quite a long way
back. I will tell Charlotte’s story
first and then go back through her siblings followed by the earlier generations.
Charlotte’s story
Charlotte Keeble
was born in Baylham, in 1839, and baptised at Baylham St Peters (see left). The village is about seven miles north west
of Ipswich and in the C of E deanery of Bosmere.
Her father John
was an agricultural labourer and her mother was Mary Mower. They were married in 1823 in Baylham. I am guessing a bit to say Mary was born in 1799
in nearby Elmsett to a Robert and Abigail.
She died in 1840.
Charlotte was the
youngest of eight children. Other Keebles
in the village in 1841 were her grandmother, Sarah, age 75, and her uncle
William and his family.
By 1851 the family
had moved to Great Blakenham, and ten years later Charlotte was employed as a
servant in the household of a woollen draper in Ipswich.
Charlotte was living in
Plaistow, West Ham in 1871 with a George Reed and two children, Mary b.1868 and
Augustus b.1869. George was a carpenter
and was born in Gravesend, Kent. I have been unable to find a marriage, but
George died in 1874 leaving Charlotte with two little kids. Non-married relationships were reasonably
common in the 19th century; perhaps Charlotte was not the marrying
kind. Her children, however, took the
Reed name.
On Ada’s birth
certificate in 1879, her mother is described as Charlotte Tait, late Reed
formerly Keeble, but two years later, in the 1881 census, she is described as
Charlotte Phillips (and Ada also as Phillips, presumably because her parents
weren’t married yet). Charlotte is shown
as housekeeper and a widow. Perhaps after
George Reed died Charlotte set up house with a Mr Phillips before meeting
James. Or perhaps it was just an
enumerator’s cock up. It’s all rather
confusing. The census enumerator was the
person who appeared at your door to record who lived at your house.
My suspicion is
that she was not married to either of these gentlemen, as it took four years
from Ada’s birth for her to marry James Tait - in 1884 at St Paul’s Bow Common
(right).
I wondered what
happened to Charlotte’s Reed children.
Mary Emma (Charlotte’s mother and sister’s names) was born in Plaistow
and Augustus George in West Ham.
Mary Emma’s story was
uncomfortable for a while. In 1881 she was
recorded as a visitor (with surname Reeve, I am not sure the enumerator was
concentrating!) in the Tait household.
Odd I thought, why not as Charlotte’s daughter like Ada. In 1891
Mary was in the Poplar Workhouse (see left) working as a machinist and in the same year
gave birth to a boy, Henry. Unmarried
pregnant
Augustus is a
virtual blank in terms of knowledge of his life. I know his birth and his death date, 1947 in
East Ham, but nothing in between except that he was an engine driver on
tugboats. He’s out there in the records
somewhere, but I haven’t found him yet.
Charlotte died in
the last quarter of 1904, almost certainly in 18 Cotton Street.
The village of Baylham
and the life of an agricultural labourer
It was recorded in the
Domesday Book (1086) as Beleham. So its
history goes a long way back. But our
period is the 18th and 19th centuries when the process of
enclosure changed humble country folk’s lives for ever.
Enclosure was the division or consolidation of
communal fields, meadows, pastures, and other arable lands in western Europe
into the carefully delineated and individually owned and managed
farm plots of modern times. Before enclosure, much farmland existed in the form
of numerous, dispersed strips under the control of individual cultivators only
during the growing season and until harvesting was completed
for a given year. Thereafter, and until the next growing season, the land was
at the disposal of the community for grazing by the village livestock
and for other purposes. To enclose land was to put a hedge or fence around a
portion of this open land and thus prevent the exercise of common grazing and
other rights over it.
In England the movement for enclosure
began in the 12th century and proceeded rapidly in the period 1450–1640, when
the purpose was mainly to increase the amount of full-time pasturage available
to manorial lords. Much also occurred in the period from 1750 to 1860, when it
was done for the sake of agricultural efficiency. By the end of the 19th century the
process of the enclosure of common lands was virtually complete.
John
Clare (1793–1864) was an English Romantic poet, who grew up in a village near
Peterborough. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations
of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. He finished school at 11 and was self-taught. As a nature lover and inveterate rambler, I like
his stuff. The Cottager is
relevant to our story and I have included the first sixteen lines below.
True as the church clock hand the hour pursues
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
And at the blacksmith's shop his hour will stand
To talk of 'Lunun' as a foreign land.
For from his cottage door in peace or strife
He neer went fifty miles in all his life.
His knowledge with old notions still combined
Is twenty years behind the march of mind.
He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes
And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise.
On steam's almighty tales he wondering looks
As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books.
Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth,
He toils in quiet and enjoys his health,
He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer
And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
And at the blacksmith's shop his hour will stand
To talk of 'Lunun' as a foreign land.
For from his cottage door in peace or strife
He neer went fifty miles in all his life.
His knowledge with old notions still combined
Is twenty years behind the march of mind.
He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes
And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise.
On steam's almighty tales he wondering looks
As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books.
Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth,
He toils in quiet and enjoys his health,
He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer
And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.
After this somewhat sanitised description
of one single man’s rural life, what of a family’s accommodation?
The Rev. James Fraser, afterwards
Bishop of Manchester, one of the Assistant Commissioners in the inquiry made in
1867-68 into the conditions of the agricultural labour (an inquiry nominally
confined to the employment of women and children, but really extending to the
whole subject), reports that "the majority of" cottages that exist in
rural parishes are deficient in almost every requisite that should constitute a
home for a Christian family in a civilised community. They are deficient in
bedroom accommodation, very few having three chambers, and in some chambers the
larger proportion only one. They are deficient in drainage and sanitary
arrangements; they are conveniences as they have are often so situated as to
become nuisances; they are full enough of draughts to generate any amount of
rheumatism; and in many instances are lamentably dilapidated and out of repair.
"It is impossible to exaggerate
the ill effects of such a state of things in every aspect, physical, social,
economical, moral, intellectual. Physically, a ruinous, ill-drained cottage,
cribbed, cabin'd, confined, and overcrowded, generates any amount of disease,
fevers of every type, catarrh, rheumatism, as well as intensifies to the utmost
that tendency to scrofula (disease of the lymph nodes) and phthisis (tuberculosis)
which, from their frequent intermarriages and their low diet, abound so largely
among the poor.
"The moral consequences are
fearful to contemplate. … Modesty must be an unknown virtue, decency an
unimaginable thing, where in one small chamber … two and sometimes three
generations are herded promiscuously, … where the whole atmosphere is sensual,
and human nature is degraded into something below the level of the swine. It is
a hideous picture, and the picture is drawn from life."
If that was in the mid-19th
century what must it have been like in the 18th? These conditions were not much
different from our ancestors in North Kerry.
Our Keebles were certainly not very long lived, although I have not done
a complete search on death dates.
In 1841 Baylham had
275 residents, eight farms and almost all the employment was driven by them
In 1870-72, John Marius
Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described the village like this:
BAYLHAM, a
parish in Bosmere district, Suffolk; on the river Gipping and the Eastern Union
railway, 1 mile NNW of Claydon station, and 7 NW by W of Ipswich. Post Town
Claydon, under Ipswich. Acres, 1,332. Real property, £2,276. Pop., 327. Houses,
65. The property is all in one estate. The living is a rectory in the diocese
of Norwich. Value, £256. Patron, W. Downes, Esq. The church is old but good.
Baylham
Hall, an early
17th century manor house with alterations from later 17th to mid-19th
centuries, which is now a Grade II listed building. The house stands within a partly infilled
mediaeval moat. It is now a rare breeds
farm open to the public.
Baylham Mill
comprises a watermill and mill house. The house is in two sections - early 16th
century or earlier, and mid-19th century. The mill is of the early or mid-19th
century. This is also Grade II listed
Parts of Baylham
Church date back to the early 
1100s and then bits from the centuries
thereafter. In 1870-1, the Rector at the time (the Revd W E Downes referenced above) was
determined to restore the church, which was reported to have suffered from
‘neglect and injudicious care’. The
work cost £1000 of which 50% was paid for by the Acton family who were the
lords of the manor.
1100s and then bits from the centuries
thereafter. In 1870-1, the Rector at the time (the Revd W E Downes referenced above) was
determined to restore the church, which was reported to have suffered from
‘neglect and injudicious care’. The
work cost £1000 of which 50% was paid for by the Acton family who were the
lords of the manor.
The River Gipping
flows through the village. The source is in
the village of Mendlesham Green about 7.5 miles north east. It is fed by waters
drained from fields.
How did the characteristics of the village change over the next 50 years? By 1891 there were 6 (vs 8) farms. The same trades were still there but there was also a separate farrier, two farm bailiffs, a scrap collector/sweep and a pork butcher. And there was a teacher for the Governor’s School.
There was only one
Keeble family in the village by 1881 and they were unrelated to ours as far as
I can see.
The number of
people living in the village today hasn’t changed much at all – 250 (25 less
than in 1841)
Charlotte’s
parents and siblings
John Keeble
(1801-70) and Mary Mower (1799-1840) - my gggrandparents
Mary Harriett (b.& d.1823)
Eliza (1826-69) and Thomas
Buckingham (1825- ) from Claydon
Emma (1828- ) and George Manby
(1824- ) from Creeting St Mary
John (1830- ) and Susan Whiting (1830-
) from Leiston near coast
Caroline (1832- ) and John Buckle
(1822- ) from Earl Stonham
James (1834- ) and Margariet (1846-
) from Co. Wicklow, Ireland
Ann (1836- ) and Robert Squirrel
(1829- ) from Darmsden
Charlotte (1838- ) and George
Reed (1840- )
and James Tait (1840- ) – my
ggrandparents
It was a pretty good
record to only lose one child to an early death.
Apart from the two
indicated in italics and, of course, Charlotte who went to London, as far as I
can see all the children met, married and stayed in the area in places 3-4
miles from Baylham. James’s Irish wife
Margariet probably came over for the annual hiring of Irish farm workers to
help with the harvest, and stayed.
All the men remained
agricultural labourers. Of the children James added
grocer and gardener to his repertoire, and John rose up the ranks to farm 170
acres on his own account.
Charlotte’s ancestors
James Keeble
(b.1730s) of Nettlestead and Mary (b.1730s)– my gggggrandparents
James Keeble (1757- ) and Sarah Haggar (1762-
) –
my ggggrandparents
James (1782-3)
buried in Nettlestead
Sarah
(1784- ) and John Caley (1781- ) from Yaxley
Elizabeth
(1786- ) and John James from Barking
James
(1788- ) and Sarah Barrell
and Mary Morris (1785- ) from Debenham
William (1790- )
and Charlotte Barrell (1801- ) from Nettlestead
and
Amy Holland (1803- ) from Somersham
Charlotte
(1800-22)
John
(1801-70) and Mary Mower (1799-1840) - my gggrandparents
I have concluded that James Keeble (b.1757) was from
Nettlestead, a small, dispersed village on the northern outskirts of Somersham
and less than two miles from Baylham.
For some reason it is not shown on the A-Z map scan included earlier; I
have no idea why.
This was where the family resided in the first half of
the 18th century. I can’t be
absolutely certain that I have the right family, but there are a number of
pointers.
James and Sarah were married in Baylham in 1782. Their first son, James (1782-3), died young
and was buried in Nettlestead. As you
see above, they named a later son James which, at a time when infant mortality
was high, happened quite often.
My ggggrandfather James was the son of James Keeble and
a Mary. This couple had thirteen
children in Nettlestead between 1756 and 1777.
Many of their Christian names are repeated over later generations. I have shown all their children in Appendix One.
The village of Nettlestead
In Nettlestead there were two manor houses: The Chace
and High Hall. Both are shown on the
attached old map. Our agricultural
labourer ancestors may well have worked on one or both of them.
The Chace belonged to the Earls of Richmond and then passed over the centuries to Peter II, the Count of Savoy, Richard de Tiptoft, the Despencers and the Wentworths. It became Nettlestead Hall (shown as such on map)
under the ownership of the latter family and retains an ancient gateway,
bearing the arms of the Wentworths. From the 13th to the 16th centuries the
Nettlestead families were patrons of the house of friars minor in Ipswich. It is now called Nettlestead Chace and is Grade II listed.
What was a manor house? During the European Middle Ages, it was the dwelling of the lord of the manor or his
residential bailiff and administrative centre of the
feudal estate. The medieval manor was generally fortified to
the degree of peaceful settlement of the country or region in which it was
located. The manor house was the centre of secular village life, and its great hall was the scene of the manorial court and the place of assembly of the tenantry. The particular
character of the manor house is most clearly represented in England and France, but under different names similar
dwellings of feudal overlords existed in all countries wherein the manorial system developed.
By the 18th century it was where the local major
landlord lived, who will have employed many local
people.
High Hall dates back to the 16th Century and was
built by Huguenots who had fled from France during
series of religious persecutions. It is Grade II listed.
The Church of St Mary is mainly dated to around 1500, but with the core from the 12th century and later. There are some very historic decorations and the font is early 15th century. The church is Grade I listed.
Located to the north-west of Ipswich and 11 miles from Stowmarket, the village’s population in 2005 was 90.
The Keeble name
Suffolk shows the largest
proportion (35%) of Keebles in England in 1891.
Originally the name was from South
Germany as Kübel, a metonymic (the substitution of an associated thing)
occupational name for a cooper, from Middle High German kübel which means a
‘tub’ or a ‘vat’.
Sources & acknowledgements
https://www.britannica.com/topic/agricultural-revolutionhttps://www.britannica.com/place/Mid-Suffolk
https://catalogue.millsarchive.org/watermill-baylham?page=2&sort=lastUpdated&sortDir=desc&listLimit=20
https://your-family-history.com/surname/k/keeble/
https://portoflondonstudy.wordpress.com/2017/11/
https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/7023
https://www.britannica.com/topic/enclosure
https://www.flickr.com/photos/john_fielding/20461444600
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101033260-baylham-watermill-and-mill-house-baylham
Agricultural
worker wearing a smock, University of Reading
https://www.britannica.com/technology/manor-house
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101251559-nettlestead-chace-nettlestead#.XrwpJG5FxPY
Appendix
One
The
Keebles of Nettlestead
James Keeble (b.1730s)
and Mary (b.1730s) of Nettlestead – my gggggrandparents
Mary (b.1756)
James
(b.1757)
Samuel
(b.1759)
Elizabeth
(b.1761)
Sarah
(b.1765)
John
(b.1766)
Martha
(1766-67)
Ann
(1768-74)
Joseph
(b.1769) and Martha Pratt (b.1771)
Joseph (1796-97))
William
(1797-98))
Susannah
(b.1798)
Mary
(b.& d.1800)
Mary
(b.1802)
Lucy
(b.1802)
Joseph
(b.1804)
Harriot
(b.1816)
Frederick
(b.1814)
Lydia (b.1770)
Nathaniel
(b.& d.1772)
Amy
(b.1773)
Jeremiah
(b.1777)
To be noted
· - the
use of the same name for a future child after first child has died
· - names
repeated in next two generations: Mary, James, Elizabeth, Sarah, John, Martha,
Ann, William, Harriot, Frederick.
