The Brooksby Family
Previous: Map of Leicestershire | Contents | Next: Brooksby of Stoke Golding
This is just slightly the oldest, and in the number of living descendants very much the largest, of the Brooksby families in England. It is also the branch which has stayed nearest to its roots, in Leicestershire and Nottingham, although some members have gone further afield in the last half century.
The earliest traceable member of this family actually lived and died in Loughborough, but his descendants spent two hundred years in Mountsorrel, hence the distinguishing name.
Loughborough is the second largest town in Leicestershire, and Mountsorrel a rather large, ugly village about five miles away, between Loughborough and Leicester. Both of these are on the very important road we call the A6, both of them had markets dating from mediaeval times. Loughborough had the wool trade, Mountsorrel its granite quarries, so both were prosperous, likely to attract people either out of the surrounding countryside, or out of nearby Leicester.
The first mention of the Brooksby family is in the year 1564, when Thomas Bruxby (d. 1594) of Loughborough had his eldest child baptised in the parish church. Probably he was a mercer, a tradesman in wool, woollen goods, hosiery, haberdashery and the like. His eldest son and eldest grandson were mercers, so it was probably his trade too. It seems as though this Thomas (d. 1594) was an incomer to Loughborough. The town has a particularly good set of parish records, dating from 1536, but this baptism is the. first BROOKSBY entry.
The interesting thing about this Thomas is that he is called Bruxby Turley at his death. Two of his children are christened as Bruxbie alias Turlie, and one as Turlie alias Bruxbie. Yet another is christened as "Bruxbie alias Turley, sone of Thomas Turley". When his first wife dies, Thomas is called Bruxby alias Turley, and when he marries again the year afterwards he is called Bruxbie In other words the two names were interchangeable, and continued to be so for three generations. The last entry under the name is in 1656.
There is, as far as I know, only one possible reason for this long co-existence of surnames. The first Thomas (d. 1594) was, it may be presumed, the illegitimate son of a father called Bruxby and a mother called Turlie or Turley, sufficiently recognized by the father to make Bruxby acceptable, and from a sufficiently important family to make them anxious to keep the name. Bruxby is more likely for the father and Turley for the mother because at the time Bruxby was an important Leicestershire name and Turley a relatively unknown one; the lesser name was probably the legal name, therefore, and the greater name, though illegal, was the more desirable.
There is an obvious candidate for the father of this family. It may have been Thomas, that second son of the main Brooksby line who was Recorder of Leicester 1526-1536. The dates fit and we know he was a mercer. Another Thomas Brooksby or Bruxby was entered as freeman of Leicester in 1555, and this may have been our Thomas Bruxby Turley (d. 1594). His first child was baptised 1564, so he should have been born somewhere between 1534 and 1540. If at the earlier date, 1555 is about right for the end of his seven year's apprenticeship and entry as freeman.
There are objectives to this conjecture, however A list of burials in London parishes shows quite a group of Brooksbys between the years of 1563 and 1576 (see page 11). Two of these are named as Jeffrey, an unusual Brooksby name, and Thomas Bruxby Turley calls his eldest son Geffraye (1564- 1612), so it seems clear that there must be a connection. What that connection may be must be left to some other researcher to try and unravel.
So far as the known facts go, these are in the Loughborough, Mountsorrel, and neighbouring church registers, and in one or two extant wills.
Thomas Bruxby Turley (d. 1594) was married twice, first to Margaret (d. 1577) and then to Margaret Bramiche (f.1594). He had four children by his first wife and three by his second.
For the purposes of this study the first family may be disregarded: it seems to have flourished in the mercery and other trades in Loughborough, Shepshed and Nottingham for more than a hundred years. At the 1664 Hearth Tax there was a Joseph Bruxby living in Shepshed and taxed on two chimneys. This was presumably the prosperous grocer who issued his own trade tokens, one of which is to be seen in the Newarke Houses Museum in Leicester, dated 1667, and stamped with a sheep's head in reference to its place of origin. The last holder of the name in that area appears to have been a Thomas Brooksby who died in Shepshed in 1710. His sister, Deborah Haddon, administered his estate, which is fairly clear indication that he left no descendants.
But it will be found later that there some doubts about the line of this family in the eighteenth century, when it seems to go through an illegitimacy in Mountsorrel to reappear in Loughborough and Nottingham (see below). It would probably repay a future researcher to go very much more carefully into the Loughborough and Shepshed family: a number of sons were born and have not, as yet, been traced further. There was a Geffraye (c.1587), Francis (c.1590), Lawrence (c. 1596), Thomas (c.1603), Geffraye (c.1613), Thomas (c.1618).
In the second family of Thomas Bruxby Turley (d. 1594), the youngest child and only son of the second wife, Robert (1587-1650), founded the Mountsorrel family.
He was a baker, and in 1646 he was paying threepence halfpenny rent for his house and orchard. In the Leicester Archdeaconry Book he and his wife are listed among others (no date given) as being in trouble for "not receiving communion at Easter, for absenting themselves and not paying the clarke's wages". They were fined sixpence. This must mean that they were either Catholics or Dissenters rather than, like the defaulters in another list, "haunters of alehouses".
The only one of Robert's three sons to survive was called Francis (1634-1691), and so Francis, with Thomas running it a close second, became the preferred family name for a number of generations. Indeed, as Frank it continued well into the twentieth century, the last Frank on the family tree being born as late as 1939
The first Francis (1634-1691) married a Frances (surname unknown) and their son Francis (1673-1752) was also a baker. Although they did not count as householders for the purpose of the Hearth Tax (1664), when Francis died in 1691 he had property to leave. He left Francis (1673-1752) the "bakehouse" and the "west parlour", so the dwelling was large enough to split into two, the rest of it going to the widow and her younger children.
The family prospered. By 1741 this Francis (1673-1752) called "the elder", and his son Francis (1702-1794) called "the younger", were both freeholders and eligible to vote in parliamentary elections.
Francis (1675-1752) is the last common ancestor of this family. It now splits into two. Francis (1702-1794) is the ancestor of two modern Bruxby families and of nearly all the modern Leicester Brooksbys. Thomas (1705- 1771) his younger brother, is the ancestor (probably) of the Nottingham Brooksby families.
They will be dealt with separately but for those who find the variations confusing, this may be the place for a note on "Bruxby" and "Brooksby".
The earlier spellings, as has been said before, were many and various. The place became Brooksby quite early on -- probably it is easy to think of the word "brook" in connection with a place. The main county family settled for "Brokesby", but that has quite died out in modern times.
The common country spelling was typically "Bruxby". The Mountsorrel family stuck firmly to that spelling, and those who could write always signed themselves so. But in the nineteenth century, when one branch of the family became poor and illiterate, the name was often entered in the register as Brooksby by educated parsons who in their minds connected the name and the place. It is worth noting that this could only have happened because the owners of the name pronounced it "Brooksby" however they spelt it. Those who still spell it "Bruxby" now pronounce it "Brucksby" which is obviously a fairly recent change.
(divides into "Brooksby" and "Bruxby")
Francis (1702-1794) was a baker, a yeoman (that is, he was a small proprietor) and a freeholder like his father before him. By the end of his very long life he was even referred to as "gentleman" though this was a slight exaggeration. Very old age brings increasing respectability.
The Mountsorrel he lived in may have been what someone once called "an unkempt little town", but it was on a very important road. During Francis lifetime it was the road by which Prince Charles Edward Stuart and his army of raggle-taggle Scotsman marched south for London, although they lost heart at Derby, a day's march north of Mountsorrel, and turned for home. It was a road that saw much traffic, and therefore Mountsorrel developed in ribbon form, with numerous inns and stables for changing horses. A tradesman in such a place, though it may look like a village to us, was an important person, well-to-do, and well in touch with the larger world.
This Francis is mentioned in Nichols' History of Leicestershire. "There is not yet any monument", wrote Nichols (or his correspondent), describing the chapel at Mountsorrel, "for Francis Bruxby, gent, who died July 1, 1794, aged 93". So, evidently, at the time a monumental inscription was planned. Whether it was erected or not we do not know. The chapel has been very thoroughly altered at least twice since then, and many monuments may have been lost along the way.
Francis (1702-1794) was married twice but had children only by his first wife, Margaret Sharp, whom he married at St. Margaret's Leicester, in 1732. There was a single surviving son of this marriage, another Francis (1735-1814) who, at least according to his father's will, was thoroughly unsatisfactory. He too married twice, in 1756 Sarah Waldram of Barrow, and in 1769 Ann Marson of Walton-on-the-Wolds. The evidence points to a man spoilt by drink and idleness.
From the first marriage, to Sarah Waldram, came a single son, also Francis (1759-1848), who was given a good education, went to Cambridge, became a parson, and officiated at various churches in the area, mainly as curate at Syston, where there is a Bruxby Street named after him. He died unmarried, and in every way carried on the traditions of his grandfather Francis Bruxby "gent", who almost certainly provided the money and encouragement for his education, and made him the chief legatee and executor of his will.
The old gentleman had some hard things to say about his son, the intermediate Francis. "If my son Francis Bruxby shall become a Sober and an Industrious Man and his future conduct in Life deserving to be encouraged, and taken Notice of, then..." he would get an allowance from his father's estate. As the will was signed in 1779, and not altered in the fifteen years which followed before the old man's death, it is reasonable to presume that Francis (1735-1814) continued to drift downwards, a presumption born out by the fact that his son from his second marriage, Thomas (1774-1853) had none of the educational chances of his half-brother, but remained an illiterate farm labourer all his life.
Thomas (1774-1853) married Dorothy Marson in 1796, and had ten children. It is necessary to take an interest in three of them who have descendants alive today. They were William (1797-1860), Thomas (1800-1887), and Elizabeth (b. 1804) Owing to the confusions over spelling which have been mentioned before, they will be distinguished as the William Bruxby, the Thomas Brooksby, and the Elizabeth Bruxby families.
William (1797-1860) was christened in Thrussington, whereas his nine brothers and sisters were christened in Swithland. This was either because his young parents were more mobile in their first year or two of marriage, and then settled permanently at Swithland, or perhaps because Dorothy went home to her mother to have her first child, which was very frequently done. Until there were other children in the house, the husband could be farmed out to neighbours, and the young wife went home to the experienced support of her own mother, often giving birth in the same bed in which she had been born.
It may be that young William (1797-1861) was given some help by his half-uncle the parson. At a later date he turns up in Syston, working as a miller, a job that probably meant an apprenticeship. He married Elizabeth (? Hayes 1804-1877), and prospered well, becoming the landlord of the Railway Inn at Syston which was built when the new Midland County Railway came through in the late 1640's. The inn, now called the "Midland Railway", still stands by the railway bridge, although there is now no railway station for it to serve.
There is more research to be done on William's family. His elder son William (1835-1869) died young, but children are mentioned in his mother's will. At present no trace of these children has come to light, it is possible that the young widow remarried and the children took their step-father's name. (This may be quite a frequent explanation of why families seem to disappear, especially in early times when life expectancy was low and multiple marriages very many).
The younger son John Hayes (1840-1887) is named in his mother's will as "brewer's clerk of Burton". He may have worked for the firm of Truman and Hanbury, in which both his son and grandson reached the position of chief cashier, according to their descendants. Like his brother William (1855-1869) he died young. His wife, Annie (? Pares 1839-1886) had died the year before and they left no fewer than ten children, the eldest having reached the age of twenty-one. Three of the sons, William Pares (b. 1866), James Harry (b. 1869), and William (b. 1670) are not at present traceable. They clearly had to make their own way in life and may have emigrated or joined the forces. If they flourished abroad somewhere, their descendants may yet turn up.
Only John Stableford (1867-1921) has descendants in this country as far as can be ascertained, but the explosive effect on a family of such a catastrophe as both parents dying within twelve months should not be underestimated.
What happened to the children? Who took them in? How were they split up? A family researcher with an interest in this particular branch could be sure of making some interesting discoveries by tracking back to 1887.
John Stableford's descendants are only aware of one sister, which indicates that indeed the ten young people lost contact with each other. He was chief cashier for Truman and Hanbury's, did well for himself, and lived at a house called The Elleray, Barton-under-Needwood. His first wife Alice (b.1915) gave him six children, of whom four were sons.
John Stableford (1867-1921) m. (i) 1867 Ann (d.1915) and had issue: m. (ii) 1916 Alice Anderson (d. 1918)
Thomas (1800-1887) was born in Swithland, lived there at least until his first three children had been baptised, and moved to Burton-on-the-Wolds, where four other children were baptised. He married twice, first Mary Bree (d. 1842) and then, the year after her death, Elizabeth Tacey, a widow. A man with a young family, in this case six living children between eighteen and six, the eldest girl only fifteen, was well advised to marry again as fast as he could. The business of running a family on a labourer's wage was one which needed a great deal of hard work and considerable expertise.
The eldest son Thomas (1824-1857) is the only one whose descendants are alive today. He is described at one time as a labourer, at another as a railwayman, and was no doubt one of many whose fortunes improved with the coming of the railways. Wages were good, and there were opportunities for advancement, but people had to be prepared to move around. Thomas's youngest child was christened at Sutton Bonington in 1855.
He married in 1847 Martha Tacey and died in 1857. She then married a man named John Tuckwood, and went with him and her two young Brooksby children to Leicester, where it seems that the boy Thomas Brooksby (1851-1909) got more opportunity of schooling than would have been the case in a country village. In the 1871 census he is described as a clerk.
This upheaval in his life, caused by his father's early death and the subsequent move to Leicester, caused a curtain to drop over Thomas's antecedents. Perhaps he was happy to forget them. All the present Leicester Brooksbys have a clear memory of Thomas (1851-1909) as their ancestor, and they have quite lost sight of earlier generations. Several of Thomas's grandchildren, and very many of his great-grandchildren, are still living.
In 1870 he married Sarah Ann Farmer of Thornton (1858-1931) and had four children, two sons, and two daughters. Both the sons founded very large families. Harry (1870-1961) was a groom in his youth, but he spent most of his working life in the shoe trade in Sileby. Frank (1872-1961) worked for the Dunlop Rubber Company in Leicester.
The increasing mobility of the years since the Second World War has scattered members of this family, but on the whole the family of Harry has remained round Loughborough and further North, while the family of Frank has stayed in and around Leicester, especially on the south side, Wigeton and Blaby.
Even twentieth-century mobility does not scatter families as finally as might sometimes appear. Many whose work takes them far afield, tend to drift back towards their relations and their roots and their childhood homes, and it seems reasonable to forecast that Brooksby will remain a Leicester name well into the future.
Thomas (1851-1909) m. 1870 Sarah Ann Farmer (1658-1931) and had issue:
Harry (1870-1951) m. 1892 Maria Yates and had issue:
Frank (1672-1961) m. 1696 - Herbert, and had issue:
m. (ii) 1932 - WEST, and had issue:
m. (2) 1979 - Foster
Elizabeth was the sister of William Bruxby and Thomas Brooksby, whose families have been traced on previous pages. In 1857 she married a man called Thomas Lines, but before that date she had certainly one, and probably two, illegitimate children, William (1828-1902) and Charles (1835-1907).
William has surviving descendants. No doubt they will wish to research further to find out for sure whether he was illegitimate and if so whether Elizabeth was his mother. The evidence is that he gave "Swithland" as his birthplace in the census form and there seems to be no legitimate family to whom he could belong. The other children of the family were all christened in Swithland parish church, but he was not. At the time there were three unmarried sisters any of whom might have had an illegitimate child, but it seems reasonable to assign William to the one, Elizabeth, who quite certainly had another one later. (Charles, b. 1835, was definitely an illegitimate child of Elizabeth.) When they were men, William and Charles lived in the same village, worked in the same quarry at Mountsorrel. This does not prove they were brothers, but the assumptions are that this was so. William's marriage certificate would probably settle the point.
William (1820-1902) married in 1650 Jane (name unknown) and they had five children. He left a Bible, now in the possession of his great-grandson, which gives the dates of birth and indicates that they were members of the Primitive Methodist congregation in Barrow-on-Soar. There were three sons: Tom (b. 1653) who has no surviving descendants, Eli (b.1855) who is believed by family tradition to have emigrated to Australia, and Charles (b. 1660). He married first Harriet Bailey in 1680; she died the next year in childbirth. He married secondly Margaret Haddon in 1883, and had one son, Walter Charles, who left Leicestershire for Northamptonshire, where his family continues.
Charles (1860-1943) m. (i) 1880 Harriet Bailey (d. 1881) m. (ii) 1683 Margaret Haddon (d. 1922), and had issue:
We return now to Mountsorrel at the beginning of the 18th century. For three generations there had been only one surviving son in each generation, so the bakery continued to provide a good family living, but Francis (1702-1794), the common ancestor of all the families so far dealt with in this chapter, had a younger brother Thomas (1705-1771) who took to the hosiery business. They were prosperous in this too, owning cottages and knitting frames which were let out to knitters. This was how the hosiery trade was conducted, as a cottage industry organised by middlemen.
Thomas (1705-1771) had sons and grandsons, but the legitimate line died out in 1823, and continuation is through the illegitimate line. Or, at least, that is the presumption, which is by no means water-tight and needs more research.
Thomas had a daughter Elizabeth (c. 1730), and this Elizabeth had an illegitimate son William (1758-1840). So much is fact: William was both christened and buried in Mountsorrel. It is a reasonable assumption, but only an assumption, that this was the same William who married Elizabeth Gamble in Loughborough in 1783, and there had three children, Mary (c. 1783), Sally (c. 1785), and Richard (c. 1787), all of whom, and a possible brother John, got married in Nottingham.
The dates for this assumed history correlate reasonably well, and the trade of both William references is the same -- framework knitter or stockinger. The distance between Mountsorrel and Loughborough is short and easily travelled.
The only seed of doubt is sown by the fact that in this model William has to move from Mountsorrel, to Loughborough, to Nottingham, and back to die in Mountsorrel, leaving his family in Nottingham. It is not impossible: it simply removes William's history from the class of "near certainties" to that of "doubtful cases".
There are two families of Nottingham Brooksbys, both represented by living members. The first, which we may call Nottingham Richard (1787-1855) is very well documented. The second is Nottingham John (m. 1806). It has been presumed that the second is related to the first, but this really needs more research.
Richard had a son William (1809-1881) who is well remembered by his descendants. He was a limeburner and stonemason by trade (at one time employing six men) in the village of Bulwell, north of Nottingham, now part of the city. His nickname was "Quicksilver" because of his speed at work, and especially, so his great-grandson reports, because of his habit of running along the ridges of the roofs he was working on, instead of using the ladder in the more normal way. He was also, it was said, a very fine swimmer, not a usual skill in those days, and used to dive off the old Trent Bridge every Sunday.
He was married in 1838 to Maria Bradley (1812-1861) and at the time of his marriage he was stated to be the son of Richard, a point-net maker. This establishes him beyond reasonable doubt as the son of Richard (1787-1855), and as William was obviously a prosperous man it is sad to find that his father died in the workhouse.
Nothing else about Richard (1787-1855) has come to light. If William was born in Bulwell, as he stated on the census return, he was certainly not baptised in the parish church there. But it is very possible that the absence of information about this family is due to the fact that they were Methodists.
William (1809-1881) had seven children, the first four of whom died young. Climb the steep Bulwell churchyard to the top of the northerly slope, and you will find a slate gravestone against the wall; in summer it is quite hard to find among the cow parsley. It records the death of four children, the mother, and finally William himself. No doubt the final inscription was carved by his surviving son Henry (1848-1916), himself a stonemason of Bulwell.
Henry (1848-1916) married in 1873 Maria (name unknown). This marriage, according to their grandson, was in the Wesleyan church, as were the marriages of the next two generations. This Methodist connection suggests, as has been said before, a reason for a shortage of information about the earlier generation. Further research on this family is needed.
Henry (1848-1916) had no fewer than sixteen children, of whom only one, the eldest son William (1875-1952) had children to carry on the Brooksby name. No fewer than nine of the sixteen died before the age of five. Of the other seven, four were daughters, and two sons, Frederick (1888-1944) and Edwin (1899-1945) seem to have died unmarried.
William (1875-1952) m. 1897, and had issue:
There is nothing to prove or disprove the relationship between this family and that of Nottingham Richard above. The whole of Nottingham needs more research.
John Brooksby was married in Nottingham in 1806. A John Brooksby was named on his son's marriage certificate in 1647 as being already deceased. He was a cordwainer, and so was his son Thomas (1826-1663) who married Ann Pearson in 1847. The family seems to have moved from house to house within the rapidly growing suburb of Sneinton. They were obviously poor people, rather different from the family of William ("Quicksilver") of Bulwell, but not so different from William's father, who died in the workhouse.
Thomas (1826-1863) had a son Thomas (1848-1898). This Thomas married twice, or at least had two establishments. The second may have been a common law marriage, since at present there is no indication of a registered marriage. In 1867 he married a woman who is variously referred to as Sarah Ann and Charlotte. Her surname was certainly Hayes, not to be confused with the Bruxby family of Burton-on-Trent who also had Hayes as a family name brought in by a wife.
m. (i) 1867 Sarah Ann (? Charlotte) Hayes, (1842-1678), and had issue:
m. (ii) and had issue:
Previous: Map of Leicestershire | Contents | Next: Brooksby of Stoke Golding
Last updated $Date: 2005/02/10 $ by Richard Brooksby.