JOHN HILL 1826-1896
Ann Priest nee Hill appears to have had an illegitimate son John who was baptised on 22 October 1826 at Dudley St Thomas, described in the Register as the ‘son of Ann Hill of Rowley’.
In the 1841 Census John was living with John and Jane Hackett in Perry’s Lake. John and Jane Hackett already had six children at that time so again, the house must have been fairly crowded and one wonders why they also took in a lodger. The answer quickly becomes apparent when I realised that Jane was Ann Hill’s sister, married to John Hackett in 1828. More of Jane elsewhere. But John was still very much in the care of the Hill family.
The next event I can find for John Hill (who is my first cousin 4x removed, through Timothy Hill) is his marriage to Fanny Cole, also of Perry’s Lake, (who is also my first cousin 4x removed but through Edward Cole) on 19 October 1851 at Dudley St Thomas. They had five children: Thomas (1852), Phoebe (1856), Edward (1859), Joseph (1861-1864) and John (1866). John and Fanny remained in Perry’s Lake for the rest of their married lives, Fanny only moving a little way away after John’s death.
John Hill died on 4 January 1896 and was buried at St Giles on the 8th January, aged 70, of Perry’s Lake. Probate was granted to his wife Fanny in February 1896 in the sum of £50.
Fanny later moved to Hailstone Terrace, Tippity Green and was living there in the 1901 Census, (where she was wrongly recorded as Frances, she had actually been baptised as Fanny) with her daughter Phoebe Ann and Phoebe’s second husband Alfred Brewer. Incidentally this was next door to none other than Reuben Ingram, who with his wife Mary Maria, Timothy Hill’s half-sister, had witnessed the marriage of John’s brother or half-brother Timothy all those years before.
Fanny Hill, nee Cole died in 1908 and was buried on the 11th April at St Giles, aged 80 and her abode given as Tippity Green – she had never lived more than half a mile from her roots in the Lost Hamlets.
TIMOTHY PRIEST OR HILL 1830-
Timothy was something of a mystery to me for a long time. Timothy is listed in the household of Ann and David Priest in the 1841 Census. The 1841 does not give relationships but he is the first of the children listed as aged 10 (and children are shown with their actual ages in the 1841, not rounded up or down). As Ann and David were married in November 1830, it would be reasonable to assume that he was their eldest son.
[There is another Timothy Priest, son of Benjamin and Sophia Priest of Old Hill who was born in the same period in 1828 and many of the references I have found in my research relate to him so are not listed here. A marriage in Dudley in 1851 to Susannah Penn was for Benjamin’s son and a death of a Timothy in 1852 (suggested by another tree on Ancestry as being this Timothy) was for a child aged less than a year, so not our Timothy again.]
I could not find my Timothy Priest anywhere in the 1851 Census when he would have been about 20. But there was no death or burial recorded for any other Timothy Priest in the whole country between 1841 when he was present with his presumed family in Gadd’s Green and 1851 when he is not.
But there was someone called Timothy living with David and Ann Priest in the 1851 Census at Gadd’s Green who was aged 22 and a coal miner but his name is shown as Timothy Hill and he is listed at the end of the family list along with John Hill who was 24. As related earlier, John was the illegitimate son of Ann Hill, and I have puzzled during previous researches about where this Timothy Hill fitted in to the Hill family tree as I could find no baptism for him in the area.
Now I wondered whether Timothy was also an illegitimate son of Ann? David Priest and Ann Hill were married in November 1830 and Timothy was said to be 10 in the 1841 Census so born in about 1830 or 1831. So it is quite possible that he was born in 1830 before that marriage, was shown as Priest in the 1841 Census and reverted to the name of Hill later. This was before Civil Registration began so there are no clues to be found there. I cannot find a baptism under either name nor trace that Timothy to any other family.
But to all intents and purposes Timothy Priest, having appeared in the 1841 Census, disappears without trace after that date.
Interestingly, I then found a marriage on FreeREG for a Timothy Hill on 11 September 1853 at Dudley St Thomas, when he married Hannah Slater of Dudley, he was of full age (21 or over). There is no information entered in the Register for the father of this Timothy which implies that he was illegitimate. He was a miner and his abode was given as Dudley which fitted with the missing Timothy. (Remember that parts of Turner’s Hill and Oakham came under Dudley parish and many members of the Hill family used Dudley St Thomas for baptisms and marriages). One of the witnesses to this marriage was Reuben Ingram and the second was Mary Priest. And where was Reuben Ingram (born in about 1833 so pretty much a contemporary of Timothy Hill) living in the 1851Census? Why, on Turner’s Hill, just a few hundred yards from the Priest family. Was the Mary Priest the Mary Maria Priest who was the daughter of David Priest and Ann Hill, so a half sister to Timothy Hill/Priest? It seems likely to me. I later discovered that Mary Maria Priest married Reuben Ingram just three months later on 18th December 1853 at Dudley St Thomas when the witnesses were apparently Timothy Hill and Hannah Slater (which is slightly odd as she was Hannah Hill by then but it takes brides a while to get used to their new names!) so the ties are strong.
The presence of these two, both of Gadd’s Green and Turner’s Hill as witnesses to this marriage made me consider that Timothy Hill and Timothy Priest might be one and the same person.
At the time of their daughter Eliza’s baptism at St Giles on 26 November 1854, Timothy and Hannah Hill were shown as living in Tippity Green, so very much in Hill home territory. By 1861, Timothy was living in Peartree Street, Old Hill, (another address which recurs in my research on this family) with Hannah and their children Eliza (1854), David (1856), John (1858) and Elizabeth (1860). Again, interesting names, especially David which may have been a nod to Timothy’s stepfather. Many of the men living in Peartree Street in that census were miners, either in coal or in stone mining so they may have moved to be near the mine where Timothy was working. In the 1871 Census, the family had moved to Halesowen Road, Old Hill with the same children and also an Elizabeth and a Stephen Slater, all born Rowley Regis, these latter two were the mother and brother of Hannah.
In 1873 there was a death registered for a Timothy Hill of the right age and a burial at St Luke’s, Reddal Hill which gave his abode as Old Hill. Hmm, could this be him? I could not find my Timothy Hill in any other records after this date.
So I splashed out and bought the digital image (£3.00!) of this Timothy’s death certificate to see whether there were any clues there. And oh, yes, there were clues, worth every penny, whoop, whoop! The place of death was Old Hill, the date of death the 19th February 1873 and the occupation of this Timothy as Colliery labourer, all of which fitted my existing information. The cause of death was ‘chronic bronchitis’, poor Timothy who had been a miner all his working life.
Copyright: GRO.
But the real bonus of this certificate for me was when I reached the information about who registered the death. I saw that the death was registered not by his wife Hannah as I expected but by Ann Priest of Gadds Green, Rowley Regis. The very person I had suspected was his mother! Perhaps she had helped to nurse Timothy in his chronic illness. So far as I am concerned this is the clincher which confirms my theory – which documents the definite connection between Timothy Hill in Old Hill and Ann Priest nee Hill in Gadd’s Green.
So these were John and Timothy Hill, illegitimate sons of Ann Hill with no clue as to their fathers. But remaining very much part of the family of Timothy and Maria Hill, it seems and adding another nine Hill great-grandchildren to the tally in Perry’s Lake and Old Hill.
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 