John and Hannah are named in the parish records for Alcester, Warwickshire, as the parents of a William Woodward, baptised in 1760, the main contender to be the husband of the earliest proven ancestor, Elizabeth Richards. Extensive research suggests that her husband was this William, therefore making John and Hannah the next ancestors back in-line.

Background

The oldest proven member of the family is Elizabeth Richards, born 1762 in Alcester, Warwickshire, who married a William Woodward in Alcester in 1789. No marriage record can be found for any John and Hannah couple that fits around William Woodward's birth in 1760. The records do not show any other children of John and Hannah baptised in Alcester, but there is a baptism of a Betty Woodward at Quinton (Lower Quinton) near Stratford on Avon on 4 July 1762, the daughter of John and Hannah Woodward. It must be the same family. Quinton is eight miles from Alcester, but the parish record for Betty's baptism states that her parents were from "Mote House", which is a manor house at Dorsington, five miles from Alcester. This location links with another Woodward family from Quinton and Stratford on Avon.

Quinton & Dorsington

A John Woodward born in Quinton in 1707 had a son John, baptised in Stratford on Avon in 1739. There are no other Stratford based records for these two Johns. The 1739 John had a cousin, Thomas Woodward, who lived at Clifford Chambers near Stratford with his wife, Hannah (nee Charlton). Thomas' parents came from Quinton. Thomas and Hannah had four children in Clifford Chambers, one in Stratford and one, another John, in Quinton in 1760. When this 1760 John was baptised, the parish record states that Thomas and Hannah were also from Mote House. This means that both Thomas and the 1739 John were living in Dorsington, working at the same manor house (Mote House), which links with the birth of Betty Woodward in 1762, from Mote House.

The population of Dorsington in 1851 was only 98 people, let alone a hundred years earlier, and it is only slightly bigger today. It is inconceivable that two Woodward families living in and having children in this tiny village at the same time would not be related in some way. The Quinton family tree shows how they must have been cousins.

Dorsington church and half of the village burnt down in 1754. After the fire, most of the tenant families, mainly agricultural labourers, were dispersed to the surrounding area. Thomas and Hannah were in Clifford Chambers until 1759 but John and Hannah may have moved to Alcester. This would account for why their son William was baptised in Alcester in 1760. It also goes some way to explain why John and Hannah did not stay in Alcester for Betty's baptism in 1762, as it seems that they returned to Dorsington (Mote House) after the village and church were rebuilt in late 1760.

Why did John and Hannah only have two children?

If William and Betty were the children of the 1739 John from Stratford, it raises the question as to why he and Hannah only had two children when the average for the time was five or six. It's possible that John or Hannah (or both) died after Betty's birth in 1762, hence no more children. However, there are no obvious deaths in the records around that time and no obvious second marriages. It is however interesting to note that there was no Woodward witness at the marriage of William Woodward and Elizabeth Richards in Alcester in 1789 which suggests that his parents might have been dead. If they had died then William and his sister Betty could have been raised by his uncle and aunt or father's cousin in Quinton. If John and Hannah had moved far away from Dorsington after Betty's birth, it would be unlikely for William to later have married Elizabeth Richards in Alcester. The fact that in 1762 they were in Dorsington, five miles away, suggests that they lived locally, which makes the marriage to Elizabeth Richards much more feasible, especially as Alcester was a major (former Roman) market town.

We don't know what happened to Betty Woodward, John and Hannah's daughter. There are no obvious marriage entries in the parish records or early deaths. There is a death (burial) of a Betty Woodward aged 84 years on 27 November 1846 at the Chapel of Bartholomew Hospital, Gloucester, an age that fits prefectly with Betty's birth in 1762.

If John and Hannah's son William did not marry Elizabeth Richards in Alcester, then what happened to him, who did he marry and where? There is another intriguing link that could be significant. It involves a family with the name Hawton/Hawtin/Horton//Houghton, which the dictionary of English surnames says are all the same name.

Hawton, Hawtin, Horton and Houghton links

Elizabeth Richard's eldest brother, Samuel, married a Rachael Houghton in Alcester in 1786 and her elder brother, Johnathan, married Jane Howton, also in Alcester in 1780. Samuel had children in Alcester and lived there until at least 1826. The brother of the 1760 John Woodward from Quinton married a Mary Hawtin in Stratford in 1790, and their aunt, Lydia Woodward, married a William Horton in Stratford in 1773. Lydia had a son, John Horton, who married in Alcester in 1810 and had three children there. These marriages provide a strong link between the Stratford/Quinton and Alcester based Woodward, Richards and Hawton families.

Another link is that Sarah Richards, the younger sister of Elizabeth Richards, married a Joseph Woodward in Alcester in 1797. His elder brother, James, married a Mary Horton at Coughton near Alcester in 1793, very close to the same time that the Richards brothers also married Hawtons, which suggests that they could have known each other and met through family links. The 'Hawton' wives didn't have to be sisters or anything, just cousins that were part of a larger family.

Conclusion

None of this explains why only two children can be found born to John and Hannah and does not prove that their son, William Woodward, married Elizabeth Richards in Alcester in 1789. However, the family link to the Quinton/Stratford Woodwards does fit together quite well, especially the Hawton links, although it was not an especially uncommon name. It is often impossible after 250 years to be absolutely certain about any family relationships, especially when the family members were mere agricultural workers and the information comes from only three main sources, ie. baptisms, marriages and burials, all of which had scant detail at best. Unless you owned property, were famous, notorious or wrote a will, nothing much was recorded about you. Without details of a couple's age and the names of their parents being recorded at weddings etc, as they are today, family trees can often only be compiled by a process of elimination; the page for Other Williams shows how far this process of elimination sometimes needs to go.

On the evidence gathered so far, it seems quite probable that John and Hannah Woodward are ancestors, that they originally came from Quinton or Stratford on Avon and that their son William married Elizabeth Richards in Alcester in 1789.

Compiled by Graham Woodward, Nottingham, England (UK).