Mary's parents-in-law

Mary Squire's Almshouses

This is the sixth post in my series reporting my research into Mary Squire's Almshouses in Walthamstow, London, formerly in the county of Essex; and of Mary Squire herself. Official name: The Squire's Almshouses.

To complete the St Mary parish register records that I found at the Walthamstow Local Archive I'll next write about Mary's parents-in-law.

I found either four or even six children baptised at St Mary's Walthamstow whose oldest son looks to be William Squire who went on to marry Mary (all my research points to William being the right man, I have not found any contradiction).  The children were baptised, and probably born, between 1724 and 1731.

I then looked for the marriage of William's parents, i.e. Mary's parents-in-law.

It wasn't very surprising that this marriage was not to be found in the parish register of St Mary's Walthamstow.  People back in those days usually got married in the bride's parish, and if the bride wasn't from the same place as her husband-to-be, then that could be anywhere.

I looked at Essex parishes to begin with, because the village of Walthamstow was in the county of Essex in the 18th Century.  In family history research terms that might be called casting your net widely.  Thankfully I got lucky!

© Society of Genealogists

I went to the Society of Genealogists for their excellent collection of records. The SoG and its library is at 14 Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA - just around the corner from  Barbican tube station.  To use the library you can either buy access time on the day or become a member (pdf form), which I can recommend.  The SoG has some records that are unique to them so this library is a great resource to check out. Have a look at the online catalogue SoGCAT to see what they have. The membership page gives more information on their holdings.

At the time of writing, their current fees are £5, £10 or £18 for 2 hours, 4 hours, or a day pass respectively. The annual subscription of £54 (plus a one-off joining fee of £10) is very good value. If you expect to go more often than three days in a year then being a member really pays off.

I found a marriage record that mentions Walthamstow as the parish of origin for William (and Elizabeth too!), so it is likely to be the correct marriage.  Mary herself did not mention anyone named Stubbing but then she didn't much refer to her husband's family in her will either.  She does list a nephew-in-law, and his sister.  More on them in a later post.

This marriage is at exactly the right time: a year before the oldest son William (Mary's future husband) was baptised in Walthamstow, and in roughly the right place, Essex.  Thaxted (Great Dunmow) is a village located a little North-East of Stansted Airport.  It is 37 miles from Walthamstow.


I don't recall how I found this specific marriage, I may have checked Boyd's Marriage Index, or just gone through all the Essex parishes.  The SoG has very good books on many Essex parishes that contain typed entries presumably transcribed from parish registers.

The marriage information is as follows (not verbatim):

Marriage on 11 Aug 1723 of William Squire and Elizabeth Stubbing - Thaxted, Essex, both of the parish of Walthamstow

Now it is a bit strange that they are both listed as 'of the parish of Walthamstow'.  Because of this phrasing, William must have lived there prior to marrying (I haven't found his origins yet: he wasn't baptised in Walthamstow, his children were), and I am fairly certain that Elizabeth Stubbing was not born in Walthamstow either.  At the London Metropolitan Archives I found a record of her baptism in Thaxted:

Baptism 13 Sep 1698 Elzabeth daughter of Richard and Frances Stubbing

The LMA reference is: ES/R 136 BAP 1660-1812
ES/R 72 also lists their marriage: 11 Aug 1723 William Squire & Elizabeth Stubbin
The family name is usually spelled Stubbings in Thaxted records and occasionally Stubbin.
In the handwritten ES/R 135 volume her name is also given as Stubbin but her first name is even more mangled as: ‘Elzabelh’. Go figure.

The reference to them both being of the parish of Walthamstow must mean that Elizabeth also lived in Walthamstow before she married William Squire Sr.  Thaxted was where she was from and I imagine that they married in Thaxted so her family could attend the wedding.

The marriage in 1723 took place before Elizabeth's 25th birthday (if she was also born in September when her baptism took place).  25 is quite an average age to marry even back then.

I have not found William Squire Sr's baptism.  It looks like he was not originally from Walthamstow and I am still looking for a sign of him and the two cousins I could identify: Henry (Croydon) and Thomas (boxmaker in the City of London). I may have found Thomas's father John who was a fruiterer.  No sign yet of William or Henry's parents.


I found records of two burials in the St Mary Walthamstow register:

William Squire buried 14 May 1742:

I believe that this must be Mary's father-in-law.  If this was William his son then he can't have been Mary's husband because he died in 1763 when he left a will leaving everything to Mary.  I am going with the father-in-law.  It makes sense too.

And Elizabeth Squire buried 23 Sep 1744:

Now this could be husband-to-be William's sister Elizabeth.  That this Elizabeth was not named a widow could potentially point to that.  I don't know if women were only referred to as widows if they had lived by themselves without family.  After her husband's death two years earlier, Elizabeth née Stubbings would have still lived in Walthamstow with her surviving children.  I believe this is the entry of her burial.  I can't know for sure though.


I believe that William moved to gthe city of London after his parents' death but I have not been able to find information on this, let alone when it happened or if any of his siblings moved with him.  He was 20 years old in 1744.

I do know that in 1743 his brother Thomas started an apprenticeship at 15 (a year later than usual) and this is what I'll write about next.


If you are wondering why I am writing about Mary Squire's Almshouses then have a look at this first blog post.

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Mary Squire - discovering her will

Mary Squire's Almshouses

This is the fourth post in my series reporting my research into Mary Squire's Almshouses in Walthamstow, London, formerly in the county of Essex; and Mary Squire herself. Official name: The Squire's Almshouses.


I queried the online catalogue of the National Archives in Kew and found a few Mary Squire wills, and one for 1797 that turned out to be the right one.  This was incredibly lucky but then the conditions were right for it to be included (let me know if you want to know more about these conditions).

I paid to initially download the transcript of Mary's will from the National Archives website.  It was very exciting when I could tell that I had found the correct will: it mentions the almshouses in Walthamstow! This was really tremendous and deeply satisfying.  So often you'll find an interesting record but there is no way to be sure that it is the right one.  I copied out the whole text in my previous blog post here.

I had gone wrong before I found the right will because I looked at a will of a Mary Squire in Bedford.  Please don't ask me why I thought that the first Mary Squire will I found could be the right one?  In my defence I can merely say that I literally only just started the research a few days earlier. Very much a novice researcher.  Ahem.  I learned at least this much since then: don't assume.

I am thinking of writing a separate post on the red herrings that I went after, each for a while. It might be amusing and might also help someone who is doing their own research.
The up-the-wrong-garden-path post would show Clerkenwell, King George the III's map collection, a different Mary Squire and husband in the Oxford Street and Kensington area (including a magazine subscription!), some Parrotts and their wills, and a Carter or two. But that's for then, this is now.

The download was of a clerk's transcript - all wills were rewritten in these big ole' ledgers that must be massive: you only get to download/print whatever pages you want, but you don't get access to these ledgers. These have a different code [PROB 11] than the actual original wills [PROB 10 - bundled by first letter of last name].  If you get someone telling you that you CANNOT look at the original then do make sure that whoever you are talking to isn't thinking of the ledgers. You can indeed see the original will if it is at TNA - quote the PROB 10 code reference to try and break through the misunderstanding.

It happened to me and this lady kept arguing with me (I had already seen the will once!). It took me ages to clear up that we were at cross purposes, and her reaction in the end was of being rather miffed that I hadn't been clearer. I guess you get to meet all sorts of people.

Page 1 of Mary Squire's original will

The big reason why I wanted to see her original will, and this justified why I needed to see it, was to see and photograph* Mary's original signature.  That cannot be seen by looking at the transcripts, so I got to handle her actual, real-life will. Wow. I found this really moving and so very thrilling! This is the document that Mary herself handled in 1797!  And that's 220 years ago this year.

The map room is very strict about what they let you walk in with (and obviously that what you walk out with), the security person will let you know. There are more lockers at this level so you don't have to run all the way back downstairs to the main lockers.  Staff there will tell you what you need to do and look out for, and what you can't do.

I must also say that I only realised in the last few weeks how fortunate I was that I found Mary Squire's original will at all and at the National Archives, London. Not all original wills can be found there, many original wills were returned to the executors by the court.  These original wills do not have individual reference numbers, they are bundled by the first letter of the last name. I am extremely lucky that the 'S' bundle yielded her original will!

I was incredibly excited to see her signature and take a photo of it. Here's where a thinking error slipped in that hindered me for a while: I wasn't sure how many people were educated enough to be able to read and write, and do things like sign official documents. I had seen marriage registers that carried a big X mark, but not all that many.

Mary's signature was quite wobbly in the two down strokes: the 'y' of Mary and also the 'q' of Squire.  It didn't look like the signature of someone who was much used to signing her name - I even wondered if she needed to write much in her daily life.  But to think that the wobbliness was related to her level of education was a logical misstep. It made me look for signatures in parish registers where the bride signed her name just as unevenly as she did in 1797.

Wrong. At least I think so. I still need to figure out if I now know her age in 1797, I think she was in her sixties or seventies - she could have easily had a mild stroke or arthritis which made it difficult for her to write evenly.

It is a shame I committed to this assumption at the time, what would turn out to be the beginning of three years looking for the parish register entry of her marriage!  

When I decided to research her I wanted to know all kinds of things about her, where she was born, how old she got, how old she was when she married and where she came from. For that I needed her maiden name which I would only know once I found her marriage record.  And that turned out to be rather difficult and made me spend three years on this project.

I now think that I had come across the right record, I just didn't recognise it at the time. I was still missing the vital bit of information that allows me to identify it now.  More about that later!

My next blog post will be about what I discovered in the parish registers about her husband's family when going to the local Walthamstow archive in the beautiful Vestry House Museum.

*: I am very sorry, my photos of the original will are fuzzy.  I didn't know how to use the macro function properly. This is why I want to go back and revisit this, hopefully a bit later this year.


Research tip:  look at the research guides on the National Archive website. There is a lot of information there that may help you narrow things down, and inform your decision about whether you need to go visit the archive in person.


If you are wondering why I am researching and writing about Mary Squire's Almshouses then take a look at this first blog post.

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