The Early History of the Stephensons

New records on Find My Past enable us to learn a little more about the early history of our Stephenson ancestors. What I knew already can be found here:

the-william-stephensons-two-yorkshire.html

The baptismal record of the first William Stephenson is now available, and this shows that he was born in 1779, not 1781 as I stated in the post above (the age there was estimated on later census returns which are often unreliable). He probably had an older sister, Hannah, who was baptised on November 5, 1774 - but the record gives the father's name only, so we can't be sure. He would have had a sister, Ann, except that she had died on December 15, 1777 and was buried the next day. Another sister, also named Ann, was buried in the Thorp Arch church on June 27, 1784. Life was precarious in pre-modern times, as we shall see.

We now also know that his father was also a William, and his mother was Ann - these now become our first known Stephenson ancestors. Interestingly he was baptised in an Anglican Church. This might mean that William (the one born in 1779) or even his son William (born in 1821 ) was the convert to Methodism (see post referenced above) or it might mean simply that the 1779 William's parents had him baptised in an Anglican Church because there was no Methodist chapel close by - as I explained in the original post, while some Methodists distanced themselves from Anglicans, others (like John Wesley) considered themselves Anglicans of a particular tendency.

In any event, there's no doubt that William was baptised in the church at Thorp Arch (or Thorparch as it appears at the top of the page) on December 15, 1779.



All Saint's Church, Thorp Arch
By John Davidson, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9144549

Now, in the original post I'd said that this born-in-1779 William married a Mary (maiden name unknown) who was the mother of born-in-1821 William and thus our ancestor. So I was disturbed to find 1779 William marrying Hannah Rennyson in Thorp Arch on August 29, 1807! However, a bit of searching turned up a Hannah Stephenson, who died on February 4, 1810. Hannah died in Askham Bryan, so this establishes the latest possible date for the family's move from Thorp Arch. Like later members of our family, she's buried at St. Nicholas's:



By Ken Crosby, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3052230

Who was Mrs Hannah Stephenson? Research is difficult because of the varying forms of her maiden name, but I think this is the most likely genealogy.

The baptismal record tells us that Hannah Renneson (sic) was the daughter of Matthew and Ann Renneson, Matthew being a labourer of what looks like Thelaugh. This turns out to be Healaugh by Tadcaster where Matthew Rennison from Marston married Ann Bovill of Healaugh on August 6, 1780. Helaugh is just under 6 miles from Thorp Arch, while (Long) Marston is five miles from Healaugh:



Matthew might have been a servant, but I'm not sure about the significance of this part of the entry. In any case, he was probably the Matthew Rennison who was baptised in Askham Richard - about three and a half miles from Marston - in 1754.

As I said above, William Stephenson married Hannah Renyson/Renneson/Rennison in late August 1807. The couple had a daughter, Mary, on April 30, 1809. On May 14 she was baptised in Askham Bryan. One page of the Bishop's Transcript of Burials tells the sad story: Mary, daughter of William and Hannah Stephenson, was buried on December 21, 1809. Hannah followed her daughter to the grave on February 4, 1810. Was it the case that neither mother nor daughter recovered from the effects of a difficult birth? Or did they both die of the same infectious disease? Or were the two deaths unrelated?

I've not been able to find a record of William's marriage to his second wife, Mary. His new wife was 10 years younger than him. Our ancestor William Stephenson (the third of that name we've encountered) was their first surviving child, and born in 1821; this suggests the marriage took place around 1819 or 1820, unless the couple married earlier and had a number of children who did not survive (reliable contraception was almost non-existent at the time).

William obviously continued to think fondly of his first wife as he named a daughter, born in about 1824, Hannah.