The Wealth of the Edgars; Johnson and His Children

What happened to the Edgar family in the nineteenth century is simple: Johnson Edgar (my great-great-grandfather) was a prosperous tenant farmer and owner of a fine windmill and the land it was built on. He died in 1872 and some time in the next ten years financial disaster struck, and Thomas (my great grandfather) plunged downwards in society, probably ending his working life as a domestic servant.

But tracing this story in the documents available to me isn't so easy. I'll try to do so in two posts: the first is about Johnson Edgar and his children in the period ending with Johnson's death, and the second about the fate of his children thereafter.

Johnson was born sometime around 1794, in Preston (now Preston St. Mary, Suffolk). On October 20, 1818 he married Sarah Makin from the neighbouring parish of Kettlebaston and in March 1820 their first child, John, was born.

We first learn something of Johnson's economic activities in the middle of the 1830s when he bought a 'post' mill, one of two windmills in Preston St. Mary.[1] One of the things that differentiates mills is the way their sails are turned to catch the wind, and a site on the windmills of neighbouring Essex describes the way this happened with a postmill:

With the post mill, the sails are built into the wooden body which houses the machinery. The whole mill body is pivoted on a massive wooden post, allowing the body and hence the sails to be turned to face the wind. The body is turned either by using a long lever called a tailpole which can be pushed around by the miller or by animal power, or else by a fantail. ((a system of gears)).[2]

Johnson's mill was a simple affair, with no roundhouse, and using the tailpole method of sail turning.

The 1837 court case I described in the previous post[3] gives us a glimpse of this mill at work: Johnson clearly employed a number of people as the man found guilty of embezzlement was a dismissed foreman. The sale of flour and bran to a pub in Lavenham shows us that the Edgar windmill, like most others at the time, was in  the business of grinding grain into flour. By 1844 at the latest Johnson had passed the mill to his son John (1820/21-1874), and soon after that he put into action an ambitious plan to build a more modern windmill, as we shall see.

We can learn something of the farming side of Johnson's activities from tithe maps drawn up in 1839. Traditionally farmers had to give a tenth of their produce to the Anglican church as a 'tithe' (tenth); this became an economic burden, so in 1836 the Commutation of Tithes Act substituted a direct money payment instead of one in kind; this means that maps had to be drawn up and the value of the land assessed. The Preston St Mary maps show that Johnson was renting a small area of land from a landowner called Johhny Green - who also owned the other windmill in Preston -  but much larger acreages from Sir Samuel Shepherd and Ebenezer Osborn.

Johnson was farming both arable and pasture land, mainly the former. He also had a house, garden, outbuildings, pond and stackyard - an enclosure where stocks of hay, straw or grain in sheaf are stored.

The total rental amounted to about 235 acres and he was expected to pay just over £57 in tithes.

It's hard to decide how much this is worth in modern terms as it depends on what criteria you use; this quote from a 'historic value of the pound' site will give you an idea:

If you want to compare the value of a £57 0s 0d Income or Wealth , in 1839 there are three choices. In 2014 the relative:
historic standard of living value of that income or wealth is £4,480.00
economic status value of that income or wealth is £74,120.00
economic power value of that income or wealth is £180,800.00[4]

In other words, however you calculate it, he was a substantial tenant farmer with a broad range of activities - and the owner of a windmill as well.

The Census taken on June 6, 1841 shows Johnson and his wife Sarah (nee Makin) living at an unspecified location in Preston St. Mary. Johnson (age given as 45) and Sarah (aged 40) have a large family:

John (aged 20)

Edmund (aged 20)

Henry (aged 15)

Sophia (aged 15)

Richard (aged 10)

Everyone was born in Suffolk and Johnson is described simply as 'farmer'. No hired labourers are noted, but I don't know if that was a general practise for this early Census. It's unlikely he had no help but his family to farm over 200 acres.

The 1843 Tithe Map shows Johnson renting 44 acres - in nearby Thorpe Morieux, again from Ebenezer Osborn. The tithe is £11.17.6.  I don't think this meant Johnson had abandoned his rentals in Preston, although it's possible he did so to concentrate on the windmill. I think it more likely that Thorpe Morieux was mapped later than Preston and that he was continuing to farm and pay tithes as in the 1839 maps. If he had cut back on farming this was temporary, as we shall see when we reach the 1851 Census.

In any case by 1846 business was going well and Johnson, described as a 'yeoman', which usually means a small-scale freeholder, bought a piece of land from Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie,  a London knight for £60; it was the opposite side of the road from his mill, and on it he built a fine new 'tower' mill'[5] that made the older post mill redundant - after an attempt to sell it in 1848 it was demolished. The tower mill, which had its own house, is where we find John Edgar in the 1851 Census.[6] The Essex source cited above describes the essence of a such a mill:

The main structure of the tower mill is built of brick or stone and so cannot be rotated. The sails are mounted in a separate wooden cap which is arranged so that it can turn on the top of the tower. This cap is rotated either by hand, usually using gearing worked by chain from below or by a drive from a fantail.[7]

The miller's work was hard and dangerous - there was a lot of potential for accidents. He also had to possess a wide variety of craft skills to do emergency repairs. And he had to work long hours when the winds were favourable.[8]

In the 1851 Census Johnson is described as a farmer of 270 acres employing ten labourers. Edmund and Richard are unmarried and described as farmer's sons employed on the farm, while young Thomas (aged 8) is a scholar, the usual word for schoolboy - watch Thomas: he's my great grandfather and the progenitor of our branch of the Edgars. They also have a domestic servant: Susanna Manning of Kettlebaston, the next parish along.

Where are John and Henry? John, the eldest son, is still in Preston St Mary, but now he's running the tower mill, married to Mary, with three sons of his own, and employing two men, which number probably doesn't include the live-in apprentice. He's got a servant too. Henry, the third son, is doing the same: he's the miller master at Felsham, near Stow, employing one man. This was a post mill, first mentioned in 1824 and which moved to Gedding in 1867 (after Henry had left for another line of work).[9]He married Sarah in 1849, and on the day of the Census she was off visiting her father, a widowed innkeeper in Stow.

The family address in the 1851 Census is Down Hall -  a farm whose owner I haven't yet been able to ascertain. However, in 1853 Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie offered for sale various timbers (oak, ash, elm) on the land of Down Hall Farm, those on the corn fields not being removable until after harvest.[10]  

Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Barone

Sir Benjamin owned land in different parts of Suffolk including the Preston area, so he's a good candidate for the owner of Down Hall Farm - he was the one who sold Johnson the land for his tower mill.

Parts of Down Hall farmhouse date back to the fourteenth century - this is a detail from some recent repair work: http://www.traditionaloakcarpentry.co.uk/projects-repair-down-hall.php

The 1861 Census shows that things have remained stable for Johnson. He now has 300 acres and is employing seven labourers and two boys, with Edmund  still at home and presumably working on the farm. Richard has left - but Thomas (remember he's the 'founder' of our branch of the Edgars) is now 18 and has probably taken his place as family labourer. But one interesting development is the appearance of Sophia Edgar, aged 6, and listed as 'granddaughter'. Edmund and Thomas are both 'unmarried'; Thomas would have been only 12 when she was conceived, so she might be Edmund's 'illegitimate' daughter, or alternatively from another branch of the Edgars come to live in a more prosperous household. There's a Sophia Edgar whose birth in Thingoe is recorded for the first quarter of 1855, but the Census lists this Sophia as born in Preston and Thingoe is about 15 miles away, close to Bury St Edmunds.

Elsewhere things are also going well: Richard married Sarah Elizabeth Wright, a woman ten years younger than himself in 1861 and is now a 'malster and merchant' employing two men in Bury St. Edmunds. The family have one servant, but she must have been busy as they're listed as occupying numbers 85, 86, 87 and 88 of their street. John is still a miller but now he too is at Bury St. Edmunds. He and Mary have three sons aged 12, 10 and 8, all born in Preston, and a daughter aged 1 born in Bury - so this might seem a recent move. But the evidence is confusing: in 1853 John is still listed as the miller of Preston, while in 1855 the mill is occupied by Robert Bear, who's a tenant, as the Edgars still own it.[11] It's possible John fell out with his father, but the evidence of childbirth suggests he was still visiting Preston, so perhaps he simply went off to pioneer another Edgar enterprise. Henry's also married in 1861 but he's left the mill business for inn-keeping in Essex, this is the first time one of 'our' Edgars is recorded as leaving Suffolk, but he's not gone far as Dedham is only 17 miles from Preston and is on the Suffolk-Essex border. He's host at the Sun Inn and he and his wife have one servant and married couple as lodgers.

In March 1869 Down Hall Farm, 'occupied by Johnson Edgar', and said to be of about 180 acres, was offered for sale at auction. It was one of three farms for sale in Preston, and the auction was to be at the Rose and Crown in Sudbury at the end of April.[12] Another advert, this one on April 30 tells us that all of the farms are in first class agricultural district in easy distance from the important market towns of Bury, Hadleigh, Sudbury and Stowmarket and they have responsible tenants at moderate rents who, with one exception, have four years left on their leases at Michaelmas next. The sale had been put back to May 18 and  George Coote was the auctioneer. 

Courtyard of the Rose and Crown, destroyed by fire in 1922
http://virtualmuseum.sudburysuffolk.co.uk/recent-research/sudburys-freemasons-and-their-hall/

Whether or not this attempt to sell the farm succeeded, Johnson was still tenant of Down Hall Farm in 1871.

What can we learn from the 1871 Census, the last before Johnson's death?

It shows him now employing six men and a boy and farming 172 acres - as this si roughly the size given for Down Hall Farm in the 1869 adverts, it's possible that he was framing both this and other land in 1861. Edmund, on the other hand, has left home and set himself up at Hill Farm in Preston St. Mary with wife Emily, 17 years his junior, and employing five men and two boys and farming 152 acres. The family have two sons and a daughter and two servants. On the day of the Census brother Richard - the malster - was staying with them - the significance of this will become clear in a future post, but if the reader would like to take a guess, it will help to know that Richard and Sarah's son, Harry James Wright Edgar, a five year old 'scholar', appears as 'grandson' in Johnson's household at Down Hall Farm.

When did Edmund start work on his own farm? In June 1869 preliminary notice was given of the intention to sell Preston Hill Farm, which was said to be just under 145 acres and in the occupation of Edmund and Johnson Edgar with possession next Michaelmas.[13] A later notice stipulated this sale too would take place at the Rose and Crown. The only tenant mentioned this time was Edmund and the land described as 'productive' arable and pasture mix.[14] On July 3 the notice added a farm house and 'premises' to the items on sale. In other words, it looks like as if some time in the 1860s Johnson and Edmund leased Hill Farm, but as the decade went on and Johnson got older, he allowed Edmund to take responsibility for it.

John Edgar, the eldest son, seems to have come down in the world a little. He's a miller in Stowmarket and seems to be employing no-one, not even his sons, as only wife Hannah is left at home.  In April 1870 the Preston mill was let to Maurice Pyke.[15] The 1871 Census has him and his wife Harriet at Mill House, Mill Road. We don't know why John left the Preston mill. Henry's still keeping the Sun Inn in Dedham.

It's not clear if Johnson's business was declining, or if he was simply downsizing with age, but although his operation has shrunk in size, as has eldest son John's the family can't be said to be doing badly. The two farmers have about 324  acres between them and are employing 11 men and three boys as well as their domestic servants. John and Richard are at work in other rural trades. And everyone's still in Suffolk or close by.

In other words, although Johnson's own financial position may or may not have been what it once was, it seems the family as a whole was maintaining its economic security and social status, and remaining content to stay in the corner of England where the Edgars had been for over 600 years. Things, of course, were about to change.

Johnson died on March 2, 1872 still at Down Hall Farm.[16]

What happened on Johnson's death isn't clear - I'll have to read his will to find out - but whatever exactly transpired it meant changes for our family. I'll explore these changes in the next post.

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[1] http://www.suffolkmills.org.uk/newsletters/072%20November%201998.pdf, page 4.

[2] http://www.essex.gov.uk/Activities/Heritage/Documents/Windmills_In_Essex.pdf

[3]https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1658241216551312320#editor/target=post;postID=6911499649072867312;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=0;src=postname

[4]http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/relativevalue.php?use%5B%5D=CPI&use%5B%5D=NOMINALEARN&year_early=1839&pound71=57&shilling71=&pence71=&amount=57&year_source=1839&year_result=2014

[5] Preston St Mary, Tower mill, TL 942 508 

[6] http://www.suffolkmills.org.uk/newsletters/072%20November%201998.pdf

[7] http://www.essex.gov.uk/Activities/Heritage/Documents/Windmills_In_Essex.pdf

[8] https://www.essex.gov.uk/Activities/Heritage/Documents/Windmills_In_Essex.pdf

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_windmills_in_Suffolk

[10] The Ipswich Journal, Saturday June 11, 1853. Also in BNP, June 15, 1853, 1.

[11] http://www.suffolkmills.org.uk/newsletters/072%20November%201998.pdf

[12] Bury and Norwich Post and Suffolk Herald, Tuesday March 9, 1869, 1.

[13] Ipswich Journal, Saturday June 12, 1869.

[14] Ipswich Journal, Saturday June 26, 1869.

[15] http://www.suffolkmills.org.uk/newsletters/072%20November%201998.pdf, page 2.

[16] The Ipswich Journal,  Tuesday March 5, 1872,1.