SKIRWITH: WILLIAM AND JOHN, TWO GENERATIONS

SKIRWITH: WILLIAM AND JOHN, TWO GENERATIONS

1664-1757

William and Margaret Braithwaite, both born in the mid-1600s, are the authenticated progenitors of our Braithwaite family which now, in 2010, extends down through 10 further generations. There are some earlier generations of Braithwaites registered in the parish of Penrith, going back to the mid-1500s, but none of these can be reliably sourced as ancestors of William Braithwaite.

The story starts in the village of Skirwith in Cumberland. The village is clustered on either side of Skirwith beck in the midst of farmland with the fells in the distance (Plate 2). There is a manor house in Skirwith, called the Abbey (Plate 3), built by Thomas Addison, mason, in 1768-74 for John Orfour Yates, who spent some years in India. There was another manor house on the site previously, and the land may have been held once by the Knights Templar. A church and a school were not built until the nineteenth century.

William (1664-1721) and Margaret (1668-1713)

William and Margaret were married in 1687. Little is known about the lives of William and Margaret or about their children or grandchildren other than the dates of births, marriages and deaths, all of which were in the county of Cumberland. The family lived in the parish of Kirkland, in the village of Skirwith. William and Margaret had three daughters, one of whom was Tamar (b. 1698) who married John Pearson in 1724 and had three children. William and Margaret had only one son, John (b.1688), who was our ancestor.

John (1688-1731) and Elizabeth (1691- )

John married Elizabeth Pearson in 1713 when he was 25. As Skirwith was such a small village, it is likely that John and his sister Tamar married a brother and sister Pearson. John and Elizabeth remained in Skirwith and had seven children between 1714 and 1731, four girls and three boys.é We know nothing about six of the seven children other than their birth dates. The third son of John and Elizabeth was another John (b.1727). This John grew up in Skirwith and he married Ann Bolt in the Melmerby Church of England in 1757. Ann’s family had lived in Melmerby for several recorded generations, and that is where John and Ann made their home and started their family. neé

I visited Skirwith (pronounced ‘Ske/wth’) in 1988. It is a small village, with only a few hundred residents. There are several houses still standing that would have been there in the 17^th and 18^th centuries when the Braithwaites lived there. We were invited in to a lovely 17^th century house, which had heavy oak beams, taken from an old galleon. We saw what used to be the old smithy, where perhaps John worked as a blacksmith before he married Ann and moved to Melmerby.

Plate 4 shows a close-up view of present-day Skirwith. Plate 5 is a modern map showing the locations of Skirwith and the other nearby villages where the Braithwaites lived.

Plate 2 . Aerial vew of present-day Skirwith

Plate 3. The Abbey manor house, Skirwith

Plate 4.  The Village of Skirwith

Plate 5.  Modern Map of central England, showing the approximate locations of Skirwith, Melmerby, Eamont Bridge, Cliburn, Great Strickland.

Family Tree 2 - Melmerby, three generations: John, John and Thomas