PDA

View Full Version : Who was Phoebe? (I'll never be able to prove this....)


Phoenix
05-11-22, 13:31
Phoebe Fox marries Edward/Edmund Edwards in Holt, Norfolk in 1776

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/61043/images/4177768_00035?pId=2692957

Neither could write their names, and they used serial witnesses.

I have no problems with Edward: he was probably known as Ned or Eddie all his life, and didn't really care what the clerk wrote in his book.

Phoebe, on the other hand, springs from nowhere.

They spent their married life in nearby Edgefield, and Phoebe was buried there 23 Feruary 1835 aged 80:
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/61044/images/61043_b938995-00019?pId=1505249075

The then rector was not brilliant at record keeping in this period, and indeed has squeezed in the burial, six weeks earlier, of Susanna Edwards aged 4 into the same entry.

This puts Phoebe's birth somewhere between about 1754 and at the very latest 1760.

Her last known child was born in 1798, and the record helpfully describes her as late Phoebe Fox spinster, coinciding with the the marriage details
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/61636/images/48393_b406446-4115464_00956?pId=833634


Nobody has found Phoebe's baptism. Holt is a market town, so there is quite a large catchment area. But...

one Robert Fox married Anne Beck in Acle. Robert moved to Aylmerton, just north east of Holt, and he and Anne had a large family, including twins, Elizabeth and Amy in 1753.
By the early 1770s the family had moved to Letheringsett, just west of Holt, possibly to work at Bayfield Hall as Robert was a gardener. Two of the sons were married in Letheringsett, and Robert and Anne were buried there. Their son George was buried in Holt in 1810, aged 65, and his burial entry gives Ann's maiden name as Beck.

So, a large Fox family, centred on Holt. I cannot discover what happened to Amy. No burial recorded that I can see, no nieces called Amy. On the other hand, in the next generation, a couple of Phoebes, daughters of Robert Fox.
Is it possible that Phoebe was misheard as Amy? I'll never know, but Phoebe's youngest son was called Robert, and her second daughter Ann.


btw the waters of research are slightly muddied by the fact of there being a JEX family in Letheringsett at the same time!

Olde Crone
05-11-22, 13:40
A bit of a stretch, but I have loads of Phoebes in my tree, variously recorded as Phioebe,Pheobe, Feby and... Faby. Faby's not a million miles from Amy, is it?

(On the other hand, some of my Amys are recorded as Emmy, lol).

OC

kiterunner
05-11-22, 13:42
Have you checked witnesses at the weddings of Robert and Anne's children to see whether there is an Amy or a Phoebe among them?

Phoenix
05-11-22, 14:09
The ones that I have found tend to use serial witnesses, or men. Robert remarried, and he was literate. But it was a large family, and they seem to have seeded themselves across North Norfolk, so there are still several marriages to chase down.

I was stunned to discover that the Acle marriage was correct, as it is well out of area, even if the only Robert/Ann marriage in the period. (And there's asettlement examination for me to look at, next time I get to Norwich!)