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 17th
and 18th centuries when the Braithwaites lived there. We were
invited in to a lovely 17th 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 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 |
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