On to the last two children of Timothy and Maria Hill
Joseph Hill 1817-1866
Joseph was Timothy’s second son, born (or at least baptised) 17 years after his older brother Benjamin and after four girls. Timothy named him after his own father but Joseph was, in any case, one of the favourite names in the Hill family. Joseph was baptised on 6 April 1817 at St Giles and was already married by the time of the 1841 census.
Joseph married Elizabeth Jones on 7 November 1836 at Dudley St Thomas. They had five children: John (1836), Caroline (1840), Honor (1847), Sarah Jane (1851), and Amelia (1856). In 1841 and 1851 the family were living at Gadd’s Green, by 1861 they had moved to Perry’s Lake. Joseph was a coal miner.
Joseph died in 1866, aged only 49 and was buried at St Giles on 27 March.
In 1871 the widowed Elizabeth was living in Siviters Lane, along with the two youngest girls Sarah Jane and Amelia, with her daughter Honor and her husband Joseph Westwood and their two sons. And they are all living in the household of James Whittall who was the second husband of Elizabeth and Joseph’s daughter Caroline. Three families in one small house!
Joseph and Elizabeth’s children:
John Hill (1836-1845)
John is shown in the 1841 Census, aged 5 which would mean that he was born in about 1836, the year his parents married in November. So it is possible that he was born before they were married. This was just before the start of Civil Registration so there are no hints there and he was not baptised until 9 March 1845 when the entry in the baptismal register said that he was eight years old. He was still only eight when he died of measles in September of that year and was buried at St Giles.
Caroline Hill (1840-1911)
Caroline was born in about 1840 but no Christian name is recorded in her birth registration so perhaps her name had not been finally agreed? She was baptised as Caroline on 27 September 1840 at Dudley St Thomas. Her name is indistinct and over written in the 1841 Census but appears to be recorded as Catherine. However, for the rest of her life, she appears as Caroline in most records. In 1841 and 1851 she is with her family in Gadd’s Green as Caroline. In 1856, when she was about 16, Caroline had an illegitimate daughter whose birth was registered in the intriguing name of Joyce Taylor Siviter Hill – make of that what you will, there may well be clues to the father’s identity there! But when Joyce was baptised on 11 January 1857, she was just named Joyce Hill, daughter of Caroline Hill of Tippity Green. It appears that the priest was not prepared to go along with Caroline’s name choices as the Registrar did!
On 23 May 1858 when she was about twenty, Caroline married nailer Joseph While (1833-1861) at Dudley St Thomas and their daughter Patience was born in 1859. I think that another daughter Ellen was born and died in the first quarter of 1861 but cannot find a baptism or burial to confirm this. Joseph was a Rowley boy, he had grown up in Tippity Green which is where he and Caroline were living in the 1861 Census, with Joyce and Patience and a few doors from his family. Sadly Joseph While died later that year, aged 29 and he was buried at St Giles on 24 November 1861.
Four years later, Caroline married her first cousin James Whittall at Dudley St Thomas on 15 May 1865. James was the son of Henry Whittall and Mary Hill and was a miner. In the 1871 Census, Caroline once again becomes Catherine – was it a family alternative to Caroline?
James and Caroline had seven children: Joseph (1866-1866), Alice (1867-1867), Mary Jane (1868-1868), Abraham (1869-1870), Eliza (1870 – ), John Fred (1875- and James 1879-1879. It appears that only Eliza and John Fred survived early infancy, so sad but by no means exceptional. And then James himself died in June 1879 and was buried at St Giles on 15 Jun, aged 47. So Caroline was a widow for the second time.
In the 1881 Census, Caroline, Patience, Eliza and John Frederick were living in 5 Siviters Lane, with Caroline’s illegitimate daughter Joyce, by now married to Thomas Southall with their two children Kate, aged 4 and Samuel aged 2, plus Caroline’s grandson Joseph Hill, aged 6. Caroline, Joyce and Patience were all nailmakers and Eliza and the other children were scholars.
On 6th November 1881, Caroline married her third husband John Payne at Dudley and by 1891 they had moved to 23 Hackett Street, Blackheath. By this time, only John Frederick remained at home. Caroline was 50 by this time and John Payne about five years her junior. They had no children of their own. Caroline and John were still in Hackett Street in 1901, now at number 40. Whether they had actually moved along the street or whether the houses had been renumbered is unknown. By 1911, John and Caroline had moved to 12 Powke Lane.
Caroline died in December 1911, aged 72. She was buried at St Giles on 28 December 1911. I have been unable to find a death or burial for John Payne after the 1911 Census.
Caroline had lived a long life with three husbands and ten children, of whom six had died in infancy. What a hard time that must have been for parents. Blackheath was expanding rapidly with streets of houses which we now know had inadequate sanitary provision and poor water supply. It must have been very hard to keep living conditions suitable for small babies, especially as the causes of cholera and similar diseases were not known or understood by most people. My own great-grandmother, living in Beeches Road, lost six of her eight babies in infancy in this period and mains drainage was still being installed in many areas of Rowley Regis. Matilda Hackett was not the only mother to lose babies like this, but perhaps with very different causes.
Honor Hill (1847-1901)
Honor was born in the third quarter of 1846 and was baptised on the 17 September 1848 at St Giles. In 1851 she was in Gadds Green with her family and in 1861 in Perrys Lake.
On 27 December 1864 she married Joseph Westwood (1848-1910) at Dudley St Thomas. Joseph was a Miner and had been born in Tippity Green in 1848, according to the 1911 Census which he completed. By 1851 he and his parents Caleb and Rosannah (nee Hipkiss) were living in Blackheath with their three sons William, Joseph and David, all born in Rowley.
Joseph and Honor had two sons William, born in 1865 and Joseph, born in 1866. They were all were living in Siviter’s Lane, with Honor’s widowed mother and other family in 1871, but by 1881 they had moved north to ‘Company Terrace’ in Darfield, Yorkshire where Joseph was working as a coal miner. They remained in that area for the rest of their lives and both died there, Honor in 1901, aged 55 and Joseph in 1910, aged 62.
Sarah Jane Hill (1851-1901)
Sarah Jane was born in the last quarter of 1851, just missing the 1851 Census. In 1861 she was living in Perrys Lake with her family and in 1871 she was again with family and her mother in Siviters Lane.
On the 14 September 1873 Sarah Jane married Jonathan Lowe at Dudley St Thomas. Jonathan, a rivet maker, was from a Rowley family and grew up in Rowley Village. They were another family who lost several babies. They had six children – Henry (1873-1874), Frank (1875), Joseph (1876-1876), Sarah Ann (1880-1880), James (1881-1881) and Jonathan (1884). The last of these, Jonathan was born on 25 January 1884, (according to the 1939 Register) just a few days after his father’s death.
Jonathan Lowe died on 7 January 1884 at 15 Siviters Lane of Anaemia and Syncope, certified by his neighbour Dr Beasley. He was buried on 13 January 1884. I can trace Frank after his father’s death and also Jonathan but these were the only surviving children of this marriage.
On 15 Sep 1886, Sarah Jane married again to William Blakeway, a bricklayer, of Powke Lane. William’s wife Phoebe had died in childbirth in March 1885, leaving him with several children. William Blakeway was a great-grandson of Timothy and Maria Hill, descended from Mary Hill, their eldest daughter born in 1801 and Henry Whittall, through Sarah Maria Whittall who had married John Blakeway. Sarah Jane was a granddaughter descended from Joseph, Timothy and Maria’s youngest but one child born in 1817, so a generational gap! So they were first cousins, once removed.
In 1891 William, Sarah Jane and their blended family were living at Powke Lane and also in 1901 by which time only Joseph Blakeway, 18 and working at the quarry and Jonathan Lowe 17 and working as a nut and bolt dresser, remained at home with them. It is possible that William and Sarah Jane had children together, there are three births locally to Blakeway/Hill parents – Mary Jane in 1889 , Elizabeth in 1890 and Sarah in 1892 but in each case there are also deaths for babies of those names under the age of one and none of them appear with the family in later records. But Sarah Jane was about forty by this time and it is also possible that there was another Blakeway/Hill marriage of which I am not aware!
Sarah Jane died in 1901 and was buried on 6 June at St Giles, aged 49, of Powke Lane. William married again to Ellen Jeavons at Quinton on 21 December 1901. They appear to be living in Oldbury in the 1911 Census. William died there in 1918, aged 70, of Rood End Road and was buried at St Giles on 28 May 1918.
Amelia Hill (1856-1877)
Amelia, the last of Joseph’s children was born in the first quarter of 1856 and baptised at St Giles, on 16 March 1856. She was with her family in Perry’s Lake in the 1861 Census and with her mother in Siviters Lane in 1871.
On 25 December 1874, when she was 18, Amelia married Thomas Cox at Dudley St Thomas.
Thomas Cox was born in 1856, the illegitimate son of Sarah Cox. His mother had later married James Daniels in 1858, so Thomas appears in the 1861 Census as Thomas Daniels, also in 1871, living in Siviters Lane, a few doors away from Amelia. Thomas’s mother Sarah had died in January 1871 but James Daniels obviously continued to look after Thomas. He is described as the ‘son-in-law’ of James Daniels which meant step-son, so it appears that Thomas was not his son.
Amelia and Thomas Cox had a son William, born in the second quarter of 1876 and a daughter Sarah Ann who was born in 1877 but died, aged 5 months in January 1878 and was buried at St Giles. Amelia died of typhoid fever on 29 December 1877 at 8 Tump Road (later known as Beeches Road) and was buried at St Giles on 1 January 1878, aged 21, of Blackheath. The death was registered by James Daniels of Siviters Lane, ‘father-in-law’.
James Daniels had re-married after Sarah Cox’s death and in the 1881 Census little William Cox, aged 6, son of Thomas Cox and Amelia nee Hill, was living with James Daniels and his wife Martha nee Hadley and family at 13 Siviters Lane, described as ‘grandson’. Thomas Cox was not living there. James and Martha clearly brought William up as he was still there in the Daniels household in 1891 and in 1901, when he was working as a stonebreaker. Yet again, James Daniels was shown to be a kind man, he had reared his stepson and then he had brought up Amelia’s son little William Cox as his grandson when it seems very probable that he was no blood relation at all. I think that Thomas Cox had also remarried and moved away from Rowley village but have not yet confirmed this.
Samuel Hill (1823-1913)
Samuel, the last of Timothy and Maria’s children, was born in 1823 and baptised at Dudley St Thomas on 17 August 1823, son of Timothy and Maria Hill of Rowley. In 1841 he was living with his widowed mother in Blackberry Town (in the Springfield area but exact location unknown). No occupation was shown for Samuel who was then15 but his mother was a nailer and he may well also have been nailing.
On 26 February 1843, Samuel married Amelia Smith at Christ Church, West Bromwich, both bride and groom gave their address as Bromford Lane and Samuel gave his occupation as an engineer. This may have meant that he operated the stationary pumping engines which were used to drain mines, rather than an engineer as we think of them today.
By 1851 they were living in Springfield (possibly in the same houseas he and his mother had lived in in 1841) with his wife Amelia, and he was listed as an engineer. In 1861 he and Elizabeth were living in Perrys Lake, (three doors away from his brother Joseph) and he was working as a coal miner. With them were their children Harriet Maria (1846-) , Elizabeth Maria (1849-), and Enoch, (1851-1858), then aged 1 month.
Amelia died, of consumption, or what we now know as tuberculosis, according to a note in the Burial Register, in 1852 and was buried at St Giles on 29 August 1852 aged 29 and of Perry’s Lake.
Samuel married again to Elizabeth Bate on 28 December 1856 at Christ Church, West Bromwich. They had a daughter Anne Eliza in 1857.
Samuel’s children:
- Harriet Maria Hill
Harriet was baptised on 2 June 1846 at St Giles but her birth was registered in the last quarter of 1845. In 1851 she was with her parents in Springfield but her mother died in 1852 and in 1861she was living in Tippity Green with her father and stepmother and her sister Elizabeth and half-sister Ann.
Both her birth registration and her baptism record her name as just Harriet but at her marriage to Richard Pockett in 1866, she was recorded as Harriet Maria. I have noticed that a large number of the Hill granddaughters and great-granddaughters bore the name Maria, presumably after Maria Hill, nee Hipkiss, the matriarch!
Richard Pockett (1846-1872) and Tewkesbury connections
Unlike most Hill spouses, Richard Pockett was not a local boy. He had been born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire in 1846 where his father was a Toll House Keeper on the Toll Road to Gloucester. In the 1851 census the family was in a Toll House at Tutnall and Cobley, near Bromsgrove and by 1861 his father had become a labourer in the Railway Carriage Works in Oldbury – the railways led to the end of most toll-roads, so that was rather a case of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’!
Richard was a carpenter. Carpenter, Tewkesbury – bells were ringing in my head, at this point.
I was interested to reflect that my Hopkins ancestors were also in Tewkesbury and later Gloucester at about this time and my 2xg-grandfather Edwin/Edward Hopkins had been born there in 1839, about five years before Richard. Edwin’s father James was a carpenter, too. It seems almost certain to me that my Hopkins family members must have passed through that Tollgate on many occasions to visit James’s family in Gloucester, a tollgate manned by Richard’s father.
How weird it is then, that these two Tewkesbury born boys, with carpentry connections – my Edwin/Edward Hopkins and this Richard Pockett, both of whom moved away from Tewkesbury in early childhood, should have ended up marrying such closely connected girls from the same tiny hamlet on consecutive days? Edwin/Edward married (his second wife, his first wife had been her first cousin Ann!) Elizabeth Cole on 25 December 1866 at Dudley St Thomas and Richard married Harriet Hill on 26 December 1866 at Dudley St Edmund. Elizabeth, born in 1844, grew up in Perry’s Lake, Harriet, born in 1845, in Tippity Green. It is probably pure coincidence for the boys but the girls at least must have known each other all their lives. Harriet’s first cousin Thomas Whittall had married Elizabeth Cole’s sister Phoebe (b.1843) in 1861. Yet another example of how close-knit these families were!
Harriet and Richard lived on the Oldbury/Rounds Green/Portway side of Rowley and they had three children, Annie (1867-1881), John (1870-?) and Elizabeth (1872-?). Richard, who had been working at the Railway carriage Works, died of meningitis in 1872, aged only 26 and was buried in the Oldbury Public Cemetery on 10 April 1872. So Elizabeth, whose birth was registered in the last quarter of 1872, was a posthumous baby. The family were living in Shidas Lane, off Portway Road and later in Brades Road, Oldbury and on 23 May 1875 Harriet re-married to John Allen, (who had also been born in Gloucester – another Gloucestershire connection – is it coincidence or might John and Richard have been friends?) and they continued to live in the Rounds Green area for the rest of their lives. Harriet was a widow in the 1901 Census and so John must have died between 1891 and 1901 but I have not identified his death for certain and cannot find a burial for him.
Harriet’s children:
Annie Pockett died in December 1881, aged 14.
John Pockett, baptised on 15 June 1870 at Oldbury, married Emma Dutton on 24 June 1894 at Christ Church, West Bromwich. They had six children: John (1895), Annie Eliza (1897), Samuel Wilfred (1899), and Elizabeth Maria (Lizzie) (1902). Twins Joseph and Maria were born and died in the second quarter of 1905. John and Emma lived at 2 Shidas Lane in 1901 and 4 Rounds Green in 1911, John working as a Boiler stoker in 1901 and 1911 at the Railway carriage works in Oldbury. His mother Harriet was living with them in both censuses. John was admitted to Barnsley Hall Asylum on 6 November 1912, suffering from General Paralysis of the Insane (late stage untreated syphilis), and died there on 5 April 1915, aged 44, of that and pneumonia. I now know of at least two people on my tree who died of this, in about this period, both of them, strangely, living in Oldbury. It is also possible that this disease affected their children,
Elizabeth Pockett, the posthumous baby, lived with her mother until her marriage to Joseph Harvey, at St Giles, Rowley Regis on 25 December 1895. One of the witnesses was Reuben Ingram, who has appeared so often linked to the Hill family.
Joseph, son of John Harvey and Keziah Hill had been born and grew up in Oldbury (and no, I haven’t established a link between Keziah and the Rowley Hills yet, she was also an Oldbury girl).
A short diversion to the Harvey family of Oldbury/Langley/Rounds Green
All of the Hill family on my family tree are on my dad’s side, the Hopkinses. Looking at Joseph Harvey’s family, I remembered that my 2xg-grandfather on my mum’s side was a Thomas Harvey who had also come from Oldbury. Anyone on my family tree from outside Rowley and Blackheath in this period is somewhat unusual so I wondered whether they were the same family, this Oldbury connection was worth investigating.
There was no immediately obvious connection and my research revealed that many family trees on Ancestry had assigned the wrong father to John Harvey which led to serial errors. Fortunately FreeREG had transcribed the marriage at Handsworth between John Harvey, a boat loader and son of John Harvey, also a boat loader and Keziah Hill, Keziah is a helpfully unusual name! The boatloader information helped to identify the families in the censuses.
Oldbury was surrounded by canals, the Birmingham Canal, opened in 1722, passed round the centre of Oldbury. With the opening of the loop bypass in 1858 it became impossible to enter the town without crossing a canal. So the Harvey men may have loaded boats in numerous places. But the Harvey family lived in Summer Row, Rounds Green and it seems very likely that they may have worked loading stone and coal, from Rowley, at the canal wharf and basin at Titford, Whiteheath.
This photograph, copyright Anthony Page, is somewhat later than my Harveys but the work and working conditions would have been much the same.
So I plodded through the various Harveys, building up the tree with siblings and marriages and looking for common ancestors. And eventually, after two or three days of meticulous cross-referencing, and tantalising recurring names such as Esther, John, Joseph and Thomas generation after generation and the link finally dropped into place! Joseph Harvey is my 3rd cousin 3xremoved on my dad’s side, Thomas Harvey is my 2xg-grandfather on my mum’s side. Their common ancestors were Job Harvey (1733-1808) of Oldbury, married to Esther Jones (1733-1796). Job and Esther Harvey were great-grandparents to Thomas Harvey (1832-1894) and great-great-grandparents to Joseph (1871-). So Joseph and Thomas were second cousins, once removed. Would they have known each other? Probably not, it seems to me. They were different generations. Thomas had been born in Oldbury but lived in Blackheath most of his life, Joseph stayed in the Shidas Lane/Portway area between Oldbury and Rowley all his life so they were unlikely to have been close.
I cannot tell you how ridiculously satisfying it was to me to to establish that connection, connections between the Rowley families are very common in my research but it was very pleasing to detail the connection between these Oldbury Harveys on different sides of my family tree about whom I had not been able to find much in my original research forty years ago. The advent of computers, online resources such as Ancestry and Find My Past, the availability of Bishop’s Transcripts online and above all, FreeREG have transformed the research situation. The benefits I derive from FreeREG in particular make my many hours of transcribing Parish Registers for them worth every moment. Perhaps it is time I revisited some of my early research!
This week, the Staffordshire Co-ordinator told me that every register in the Rowley Regis Parish (that can be found, some Methodist Registers have not yet been found) has now been transcribed and added to FreeREG, except one twentieth century burial register for St Luke in Cradley Heath and that is currently being transcribed. Staffordshire researchers are especially fortunate to have this resource. It is hoped now to extend transcribing to some of the nearby Worcestershire parishes not yey transcribed, notably St Paul’s in Blackheath and Dudley St Thomas which was used by many Rowley people.
So… Back to
Joseph Harvey and Elizabeth who had six children – Joseph (1895), William (1900), Ada (1902), John (1907), Alfred (1909) and Cissie (1910). So, adding a few more to the descendants of Timothy and Maria Hill!
Harriet appears to have had no more children after Richard Pockett died and she appears to have lived with her son and, after his death, her daughter-in-law in Rounds Green, Harriet died in 1922, although I have not yet found details of her burial.
Elizabeth Maria Hill (1848-1932)
Elizabeth appears not to have married and I have not been able to trace her in some censuses. However, it appears that she went into service so may have been living elsewhere and her name is not distinctive enough for me to trace her in the wider area. In 1871 she was a servant to Richard Bate and his family in Tippity Green (who may well have been connected with Elizabeth Bate, the second wife of Elizabeth’s father. I was next able to find Elizabeth in 1901 when she and her father were living with her half-sister Anne Eliza in Malt Mill Lane, Blackheath, described as a Domestic Housekeeper which tallies with the domestic servant status in 1871. In 1911 she was living with her father in Beaumont Road, Blackheath and she continued to live there after his death, and was still there, according to her probate record, when she died in 1932. I have not been able to find burials for either Elizabeth or her father and it seems possible to me that they were buried in St Paul’s graveyard in Blackheath which would have been their nearest church. The burial records for St Paul’s may be transcribed for FreeREG over the next few months so I will check again at some point.
Enoch Hill (1851-1858)
Sadly Samuel and Amelia’s son Enoch died, aged 7, in March 1858 and he was buried at St Giles on 11 March 1858.
Annie Eliza Hill (1857-1906)
Annie Eliza was Samuel Hill’s daughter by his second wife Elizabeth Bate. The Bates were another long-term established family in the hamlets and were often in business of one sort or another, keeping pubs and in at least one case described in the census as a ‘nail manufacturer’ which implies employing others and being rather more than a simple nailer. However Richard Bate, this manufacturer, still lived in Tippity Green so was not too grand!
Elizabeth herself was born in Withymoor, or Darby Hand, near Netherton and her father was described as a scythe smith, later an engineer and an ‘Inspector of Engines’. There were a number of scythe smiths around, this was obviously a particular set of skills to produce a long bladed item, much in demand for farm work and for export and from what I have seen of some scythe smiths in Clent village, it was a skill often passed from father to son. In 1861 Elizabeth was with her father and mother in Perry’s Lake and in 1871, they had moved to Northfield Road, Netherton.
On 17 June 1879, Annie married David Raybould at St John’s, Kates Hill. In 1881 and 1891, they were living in Terrace Street, Blackheath and in 1901, they were in Malt Mill Lane with Annie’s parents also living with them. They appear not to have had any children.
Annie Eliza died in 1906, aged 48. She was buried at St Paul’s, Blackheath on 13 January 1906.
David Raybould appears to have remarried in 1910 to Eliza Haden, at Quinton Church and the couple were living at 9, Edward Road, off Long Lane in 1911 and in 1921, they were living at 5, Holt Road, Blackheath. He died in 1928. I have been unable to find details of his burial or any Probate Record.
So Annie Eliza Hill is the last of the grandchildren of Timothy Hill and Maria Hipkiss of Gadd’s Green, the last of my more than 200 fourth cousins, in what has turned out to be a much longer and more involved research project than I had originally anticipated. I shall make one last piece on this family summing up what I have learned about them. The end is in sight! I think…
rowleyregislosthamlets.co.uk 