Could it be the Lyfords of Pangbourne?

 

Sometimes there is not enough information about people to be able to trace their families back further. There might be an approximate year of birth, but no indication of where that may have happened. Searching for possible matches if the surname is fairly common borders on the impossible. But on occasions a ray of light – a clue in a descendant’s name, for example – may help solve the puzzle.  Pea-Bee thinks he may have crack the code to trace back – at least on one side - a couple called John and Elizabeth Bradley. To show his workings, Pea-Bee will start in the middle of the story.

John and Elizabeth Bradley were living in Fulham, south west of London, from at least 1810, when their first known child, Henry, was born there on 26 June 1810 and baptised at All Saints’, Fulham, 19 days later. Over the next decade, Henry was joined by two siblings that we know of for sure – Mary Bradley, baptised at All Saints’ on 3 December 1815, and Jane, baptised 20 September 1818.

Their father’s occupation on both occasions was listed as labourer.

There is a possible fourth child, John, baptised at All Saints’ on 4 February 1821 but his father’s occupation is given as maltman and no further records have been found.

Sometime before 1824, John and Elizabeth moved their family down the Thames to the Deptford and Greenwich area. This is where their next child, William, was born on 5 August 1824. However, he was not baptised until the following Easter – 3 April 1825 – and he had been taken back to All Saints’, Fulham, for this event. Once again, his father was listed as a labourer.

On 30 March 1827, another son was born to John and Elizabeth and he was baptised George at St Alfege’s, Greenwich, on 10 August 1828. The family’s home was given as Greenwich Road and John was described as a coal porter.

Young George died when he was just two years old and was buried at St Alfege’s on 19 April 1829 when the Bradleys were living in Blackheath Road.

The next recorded event effecting the Bradley family was the marriage of Henry to Mary Ann Briant from Greenwich. The marriage took place at St Luke’s, Charlton, on 19 February 1837. The church of St Luke in Charlton became a popular venue for marriages in the Bradley family: certainly William was married there in 1850 and it is believed that Jane was wed there in 1841.

The 1841 census reveals much about the Bradley family – but sadly not quite enough as will be seen later.

Most of the family were living in Lewisham Road and the household comprised: John Bradley, aged 55, coal porter; Elizabeth, also 55; Mary, 25; Jane, 20, dressmaker; William, 15, coal porter; and Lydia, 7 months. John, Elizabeth, Mary and Jane were all said to have been born outside the county of Kent, while William and Lydia were born in the county.

The three roads – Greenwich Road, Blackheath Road and Lewisham Road – converge at the foot of Blackheath Hill in the area known then as Limekilns.

Henry and his new bride Mary Ann were just round the corner in Friendly Place and Henry, like his father and brother, was a coal porter.

Lydia Matilda Bradley was the illegitimate daughter of Jane, born on 27 October 1840 and baptised at St Paul’s, Deptford, on 24 January 1841. In the baptismal records, the “father” was recorded as William Bradley, coal heaver of Lewisham Road, Limekilns. In fact, this was Jane’s teenage brother who was probably acting as Lydia’s godfather.

The 1841 census was taken on 6 June and Mary Bradley was listed without an occupation, probably because she was unwell: she died shortly after the census, on 17 June, and was buried at St Alfege’s on 27 June.

In the third quarter of 1841, Jane married George Mayze, a horse keeper from Great Stoughton in Essex, and Lydia was to take his surname.

More about the Mayze family and the later life of Lydia can be found in a series of blogs written several years ago and published by Pea-Bee under the title The Barham Saga.

During the 1840s Henry and Mary Ann moved to Westminster. In 1851, they were at 47 Peter Street, between the Millbank Penitentiary and Westminster Abbey. Henry was described as a labourer at a wharf and Mary was a laundress.

Ten years later, they were still in the same area, at 44 Charles Street, and Henry was a horse keeper but no occupation was given for Mary.

A decade further on, they had crossed the river and were living just the other side of Lambeth Bridge, at 15 Little Canterbury Place. Henry was by then a carman.

It would appear that Henry and Mary Ann never had any children – or, if they did, none survived to be recorded in any census. It is not known when Henry or Mary Ann died.

William Bradley remained in the Deptford/Greenwich area, working as a carman, coal heaver, and eventually as a coal wharf manager. He married Tabitha Morton in at St Luke’s, Charlton, on 14 January 1850. Tabitha already had an illegitimate daughter, Sarah Ann, who was born on 23 January 1847 in Bucklebury, Berkshire. After the marriage, Sarah Ann was given the Bradley surname, and William and Tabitha had another four children, all born in Deptford:

Evangeline Bradley, born 3 March 1854

John Morton Bradley, born 3 February 1857

Henry Liford Bradley, born 2 March 1861

Albert Edward Bradley, born late summer 1867

 

Going back in time

 

At the beginning of this blog, Pea-Bee said he was starting this story in the middle – and it has been fairly easy to trace the descendants of John and Elizabeth Bradley. It is their origins which are harder to ascertain.

John Bradley died on 6 July 1846 and was buried at St Alfege’s on 12 July. His age was given as 64, putting his birth as 1782.

His widow Elizabeth died two years later on 2 October 1848. She buried at St Alfege’s on 8 October and her age was stated to be 62 – putting her year of birth as 1786.

The only other information we have on them is from the 1841 census which tells us that neither was born in Kent. Great! That just leaves the leaves the rest of England – plus Wales. (The census would have noted if either were born in Ireland, Scotland or overseas).

However, it is known that they were in Fulham region when their first child was born in 1810. Looking at possible marriages in the 10 years prior to 1810 of a John Bradley to anyone called Elizabeth, there were 89 entries in Findmypast. Of course, many of these were duplicate transcriptions of the same event made by different organisations. Some were records of the banns or the issue of licences as well as the actual marriages themselves, but all in all, there were dozens of possibilities. However, the Bradley surname was more common in Northern England and so Pea-Bee concentrated on those in the south and the ones close to the end of the decade.

 

The Lyford Possibilty

Of all the various possible brides, the most likely is “Elizabeth Lyverd” who was married to John Bradley on 23 July 1809 at St Marylebone.

However, it is most unlikely that her surname was Lyverd – the marriage is the only record of anyone with this name – and it is more likely that her name was Lyford, sometimes spelt Liford, the error occurring because the clerk making the entries in the parish records misheard the name. Both bride and groom could only make their marks in the register and so would not have seen the error.

If she was Elizabeth Lyford or Liford, it would explain why one of her grandchildren was named Henry Liford Bradley.

There are only two other instances of anyone with the Lyverd spelling in either Ancestry or Findmypast databases – one, an Ann Lyverd who was married in Tring, Hertfordshire, in 1598; the other Sebastian Lyverd who was married in Reading, Berks in 1609/10. These published records are transcriptions, and therefore suspect – and indeed Sebastian appears as Lyverd in one transcription and as Lyvord in another. While the spelling Lyvord sometimes appears in census returns for Farnborough in Berkshire, the parish records record the same people as Lyford.

 

The Pangbourne Possibility

The Elizabeth Lyford who most closely matches the bride of John Bradley was born in Pangbourne, Berkshire, early in 1786 – she was baptised on 15 January, the second daughter of John and Mary Lyford. Her elder sister was Jane who was baptised on 2 March 1784.

John Lyford was baptised on 12 February 1748. His parents were John Lyford and Martha (nee Wells) who had married in Pangbourne on 19 December 1746.

There is no record of the younger John’s marriage to Mary, and so her maiden name is not known, but they did have a third child, Richard, who was baptised on 6 May 1788, just four days before his mother was buried (10 May 1788). Richard himself only survived a few months and was buried on 16 August 1788.

With two young daughters, aged 2 and 4, to look after, John remarried on 6 December 1788. His new wife was Anne Mitchell, who was born in about 1753, but her origins are as mysterious as so many others in this tale.

John died in Pangbourne in 1813 and was buried on 12 September. Anne survived until 1841 and was buried on 3 January.

It is possible that John and Anne had a late addition to the family. In 1800, when Anne would have been about 47, a child called Martha Lyford was baptised on at Pangbourne with the parents given as John and Anne Lyford. There were no other Lyfords in the parish at that time but it could have been that John and Anne were claiming parentage to protect one of John’s daughters – Jane would have been 16 and Elizabeth 14 at that time.

Martha stayed in Pangbourne and married Jeremiah Pidgett there on 2 December 1820. Nothing more is known about Jeremiah – or indeed anyone else with that surname, but Martha Pidgett was buried at Pangbourne on 25 May 1826.

So if Elizabeth Lyford was the person who married John Bradley in Marylebone in 1809, what happened to her sister Jane? There is no record her in Pangbourne but there was a Jane Lyford who married Joseph Burgess in St Andrew’s, Holborn, on 10 October 1811. Unfortunately it has not been possible to trace either Jane or her husband after then.