Stoke St Gregory History Pages
Stoke Family Names - Revised September 2024 See HERE
The earliest record of the Hembrow family we have in Stoke is William Hinborow, whose son, also William, was one of the first baptisms to be recorded in the parish, in 1562. By 1604 the spelling is Himborow. After a brief appearance of Hemborrow in 1626, the following year saw one of the ‘r’s being dropped. Hemborow remained, but the rest of the 17th Century saw many more variations. Hemborowe, Henbrough, Hembry, Hembury, Henborow, Henbrough, and Henbury all appear in the registers. In 1743 Hembrow appears for the first time, but is still greatly outnumbered by the other spellings. It is not until 1800 that Hembrow becomes the common spelling and the other variants disappear from the registers.
Garlant was another family already in the village when records began to be kept, and they soon became the Garlands that remained for the next 500 years. The Chedzoy name does not appear until 1663, when Robert and Elizabeth’s son Edward was baptised, but by the time their daughter Judith was baptised in 1671 their name was written Chidzoy. In the mid 18th Century Joseph and Hannah were recorded as Chedzey, Chedzoy and Chedzy at different times. To complicate things further there was also a Walter and Jane Chedgzoy. In contrast, the House family, who first appear in the registers in 1569, when John House married Margaret Hobbs, vary very little in later times, apart from a few instances of Howse.
A third name of interest is our modern day Boobyer. In the early 17thC it was spelt Boobier or Bowbier. Later on in that century the names Booby and Boobey appear. The 18thC saw Boobeer and Boobyer appear, but Booby, Boobey, and even Boobby were still around at the end of the century. 1838 saw the last use of Boobier in the parish records, and all that remained was Boobyer.
Lost Names
During the 16th and 17th centuries village family names included Backaller, Blode, Coom, Furse, Gent, Kinglake, Lekie, Shewbrooke and Titeford. Apart from the Kinglake family, who became important landowners, and Gent, these names disappear from the register, but depending on the sex of children this can often happen as daughters marry into other local families. Another family name that is one of the first in the 16th Century parish registers is Dight. The name does not appear after 1700, so we can assume that the male line either died or left the area. Of the females, Fate married Thomas Wilmott in 1570, Anstice married John Jenkins in 1576, Joan married Robert Furze an 1576, Edith married John Brice in 1595, Elizabeth married Philip Browne in 1596, and Agnes married Robert Lekie in 1605. So the blood line may well still be in the village today.
What the Dight family did leave behind was the name of the farm in Slough Lane. Benedict Barrington is recorded as owning and occupying Dight’s in the 1840 Tithe Apportionment book, together with the land currently surrounding Dykes Farm. According to the 1841 Census, William Franklin, 30 year old farm labourer, lived just up from the farm in a cottage on the other side of the road, with his wife Elizabeth and their three children. Twenty years later another William Franklin, a 75 year old farmer with 20 acres, was living at Dight’s, and yet another Franklin was living across the road, which was still known as Dight’s Hill rather than Slough Lane. On the 1868 parish map (still stored under the stage in the village hall) the farm was still called Dight’s. On the first OS map, the name appears as Dyke’s Farm. This is also the name used by Thomas House who farmed 82 acres there in 1881. He was 26 and his sister Rosie, age 15, still at school, lived with him, together with Emily Winchester, an 18 year old domestic servant.
New September 2024 - The Davidge Family
Another family name which disappeared before the end of the 17th Century is ‘Davidge’. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 had brought many immigrants with new names. Among these were the ancestors of the Davidge family. The name David, from which it derives, was quite popular as an honor to the biblical king of that name, but in Britain it had the further advantage of being the name of the patron saint of Wales.
At the time surnames were characterized by a multitude of spelling variations, largely due to the fact that the Old and Middle English languages lacked definite spelling rules. Since medieval scribes and church officials recorded names as they sounded, rather than adhering to any specific spelling rules, it was common to find the same individual referred to with different spellings. The name has been spelled Davidge, Davidis, Daivilla, Daivile and others. In Stoke we also have Davidg and Davadge.
Elizabeth, James, John & Mary Davidge were born in 1584, 1590, 1592 & 1596 respectively. We have no record of their father. In 1584 Walter Raleigh sent Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the Outer Banks of Virginia (modern-day North Carolina), with a view to establishing an English colony; Towards the East the Russians conquered Siberia. In 1596, eight years after the Spanish Armada had been defeated, A second attempt to invade England in 1596 was met, as before, with a preemptive strike against the fleet in Cádiz.
By 1603, marked by the death of Queen Elizabeth I and the ascension of James VI of Scotland to the English throne as James I, Robert Davidge and his wife, Catheryne, had two children, Robert and Raynold ( also spelt Raignold). I wonder how long it would have taken for the news have taken to reach Stoke, and whether it would have made any difference to everyday life? The Davidges had three more children by 1610 - twins Roger & Thomas, Martha and Sarah.
Thanks to the Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, in a 1961 piece, we do know one story about Raynold. It concerns the practice of indentured labour, a form of contract labour in which people entered into an official agreement with their employer certifying that they would work for the employer either for a fixed length of time or until a debt had been paid. The debt was usually understood to include the costs that the employer charged the worker for transport from their home location as well as for housing and food. It could also include costs associated with the apprenticeship or other training that was, ostensibly, provided by the employer. Often, indentured workers made agreements unwillingly or unknowingly and were exploited by their employers.
The law stated that “if any servant shall withdraw from service before the end of an agreed term without reasonable cause he shall be liable to imprisonment and no-one shall receive him into service”. The news article describes how various cases had been dealt with over the years, including this report:
“In July 1614, Raignold Davidge, son of Robert Davidge, of ‘Gregorystoke’, was granted discharge from his master and dame, William and Eliza Eason of Taunton, and his indenture declared void on the grounds that ‘he had not sufficient meat and drink and other necessaries fit for an apprentice’”.
An even worse case was that of John Oland, apprenticed to a Taunton weaver: “On examination the local justices had found that the apprentice had not received sufficient to eat or drink, nor provided with enough clothing and lodging and in their opinion he was almost ‘starved to death and eaten out with lice’”.
John and George Davidge raised families in the next generation, but Robert’s wife Eliza gave birth to Anne, the last recorded Davidge in the parish, in 1668, the year Nell Gwynne took over from Barbara Castlemaine as the King’s mistress. The family line remains in the village, though. In 1585 an Elizabeth Davidge had already married into one of the largest landowning families, the Powells. Later, Elizabeth Davidge married William Parker, and another Elizabeth Davidge married Thomas Winslade. So if your family comes from Stoke you may well be related to Raignold Davidge.