The Bacon Family Gone Before: April 2014

John Ashley and Mary Wood

Heath, Scarcliffe and Clowne parishes are strung along the Nottinghamshire border about 2 miles into Derbyshire. John Ashley was born in Clowne in March of 1772 and Mary Wood was born a month earlier in Heath. When they married 19 ½ years later they chose Palterton which was half way in between in which to live.

Since the history of a village is the history of the common people, it is to the village of Palterton that we look to gain insights about our ancestors, John and Mary Wood Ashley and their children. Palterton is linked closely to the village of Scarcliffe since the two are only roughly one mile apart and historically linked. It is a hamlet in the Scarcliffe Parish, about one mile to the west of the main village.

The Romans reached the area about A.D. 50 and lived side by side with the native Celtic people. By the year 1000 the Anglo Saxons had arrived and been firmly converted to Christianity. Wulfric Spott gave the manor of Palterton to Burton Abbey around this time. After the Norman conquerors surveyed in 1066 the estates of Palterton and Scarcliffe were given to Ralph Fitzhubert De Rye, a soldier who came with King William . Centuries passed until the black death which reached Derbyshire in 1349 gravely affected Palterton. "No tenant survived and the land lay uncultivated for twenty five years." The Frechville family continued as owners of the estate for hundreds of years during the middle ages until the death of the last Frechville lord when it passed on to the Cavendish family and later to the Duke of Devonshire. (Richards, 2001)

Farm track and hillside west of Palterton

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the Ashleys were villagers, "more far-reaching changes took place. Throughout these two hundred years, Palterton had remained a quiet rural village.” (Richards, 2001) The first Enclosure Act in the county of Derbyshire, however, took place in 1726 in the parish of Scarcliffe and Palterton. The medieval open fields and manorial commons and wastes were then enclosed by mutual consent of the landlords and tenants in order to increase agricultural poductivity. Until this time agricultural laborers , cottagers and small farmers were neighbors, living similar lives, sharing much in common. Now villagers were separated and those without ownership of land became known as the peasantry. The Scarcliffe Poor Rate assessment of 1832 lists a John Ashley as having only a cottage and garden.

The census records of 1841, 1851, and 1861 all state that John Ashley was one of those villagers who worked as an agricultural laborer. At the time of the last census he was 89 years old. We might assume that he was still working to some extent at this time. Like the Ashleys the people of Palterton were mostly agricultural laborers and associated tradesmen until the 1880s when the scale of mining increased. “They were mostly poor, uneducated: yet through their customs, folk songs, games, proverbs, and l religious life - all dating back more than a 1000 years - they were conscious of the close-knit culture of [the] village life.”(Richards, 2001) The population of the parish containing both Palterton and Scarcliffe villages was only 524 in 1831.

Steeplechase was often part of a picnic given by landowners for farmers.

John and Mary and their children must have participated in the traditions and activities of the community. The Scarcliffe parish records show that Mary gave birth to six children from 1795 to 1811: John, Elizabeth from whom we descend, George, Isaac, Mary and Sarah. The children likely learned early to work hard as did their parents but they probably were able to join in with the traditional activities of Palterton. They may have watched the Bolsover or Heath steeple chases, participated in the ‘Mischievous Night’ activities of All Hallows Eve, acted in the mummer’s plays of Plough Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Night), celebrated Shrove Tuesday before Lent with football games and feasts of pancakes. They may, also, have met with friends and family at the May Day and Harvest Festivals or ambled the route down to the fields to play in the bogs and watch dragonflies and damselflies. (Richards, 2001)

View of Scarcliffe

            Opportunities for play were, however, no doubt, few as their mother, Mary, died when only 42 years old. She was buried in the winter on February 20^th when Sarah was just a toddler of three. Elizabeth, our ancestor, at the age of fourteen must have had to take on the responsibilities of her mother. Her older brother, John, married that same year a few days before his twentieth birthday. He and his wife, Charlotte Naylor, of Chesterfield, presumably left home.

             Eventually, the other children married, all but, perhaps, George of whom no marriage records have been found. Elizabeth, who was called Betty, was married at the age of 28 to William Bacon, also in Chesterfield; her sister, Sarah, was witness to the ceremony. Isaac married Eliza Nancy Unwin at the age of 21 with William Marsh and Mary Unwin acting as witnesses. Mary married James Wright, a local man of Scarcliffe, when she was 29 years old. Sarah, the youngest child, married Joseph Unwin, also of Scarcliffe Parish at the age of 21 with her sister, Mary, as witness.

            At the time of Mary’s marriage her husband may have moved in with the Ashley family. No one else, except, possibly George, were living at home. The 1841 census lists John, widower, as the head of household with his daughter, Mary, and her husband, James, also an agricultural laborer, and their children George and Emma, ages four and two. The third son, Isaac and his wife, Mary, are at this time living in Bolsover with their children, Mary, William, Joseph, John, and Samuel ages 13 to two.   Elizabeth and her husband, William, were living in Newbold, a suburb of Chesterfield, with their children, William, John, Mary, George and Emily ages 12 to 3 months. John, Jr., John and Mary’s oldest child had already died years before in his late forties a few months after his mother.

St. Leonard's Church, the core of which is ancient Norman.

It appears that John had the benefit of many grandchildren living close by during his later years. Three years before his death he was still found living with his daughter, Mary Wright and her family. Other grandchildren can be found as close as the few miles to Bolsover or Newbold. John Ashley died in November, 1864, at the age of 93 in Palterton where he had lived most of his life. He was buried, no doubt, with Mary in the Scarcliffe churchyard where they were married 71 years before.

The Bacon Family Gone Before

Friday, April 4, 2014

The Ashleys of Palterton

John Ashley and Mary Wood

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