John Thompson - his birth and family of origin, and military record | DBHome | Family History | Jessup family |
John Thompson, my gg grandfather, who came to Tasmania, then Van Deimen's Land,
in 1826 with the British army unit the Royal Veterans (RV) had previously served
in the First Regiment of Foot (or Grenadier) Guards as explained in the web
page John Thompson Grenadier Guard.
His son Augustus born in Tasmania married Mary Ann Featherstone and their daughter
Maud who married Henry Jessup was my mother's mother. We have been hoping to
find his place of birth and hence a way of discovering of his family of origin
from evidence contained in the Army records of his recruitment into the First
Foot Guards, but the lead we had in the past year turned out to be a real puzzle.
John Thompson, was discharged from the Grenadier Guards at Westminster in May
1825, joined the Royal Veterans at Mullingar in Ireland later that year and
came to Tasmania with them in 1826. His certificate
of discharge (see the report this document) gives his place of birth as
Lamesbury in the county of Lancaster. As there is no such place in Lancashire,
or elsewhere in Britain, I wanted to investigate the possibility that Lamesbury
was a copying error from an earlier unknown document in which his native place
was given as Samlesbury, Lancs. This report follows a visit to Preston, Lancs.,
where in the County Record Office I was able to search the parish registers
of Samlesbury which is a rural locality a few miles east of Preston, today just
to the east of the Preston exit from the M6 motorway on the road to Blackburn.
There is little more there now than the church, St Leonard the Less, Samlesbury,
and a farm named Church Farm with a few other houses within view in a rural
setting of gentle hillsides with pastures and hedgerows. At the time in question
it was a chapelry with a curate and associated with the parish of Blackburn.
From the number of births, deaths and marriages in the late 1700s it must have
had a population of several hundred people engaged in agriculture and cottage
industries, especially spinning and weaving.
The birth of John Thompson is indeed recorded in the baptismal register of Samlesbury.
It was a few months later than it should have been according to his discharge
papers, being early in 1786 rather than in the previous year:-
John Thompson, Fa: John Thompson, Mo: Alice Thompson, Born: 16th Feb. Bapt.:
17th Feb. 1786.
The military record says that when discharged from the Guards on 16 May 1825
he had served 21 years and 234 days since his 18th birthday, which would indicate
a birth date of 24 September 1785. So when he enlisted "at the age of eighteen"
on 25 November 1803 he put his age up about five months. There can be little
doubt however that the boy born at Samlesbury is the man who was discharged
in 1825 and came to Tasmania the following year. Besides the military record,
even with its errors of detail, there is some corroborating evidence concerning
his family in the Samlesbury registers. (See also below what more I have learned
from the military records I was later able to examine in more detail at the
National Archives.)
The baptismal entries at this time did not give the mother's maiden name although
there had been a short period around 1780 when much more useful information
on the parents of baptized children was recorded. In that period the bishop
had instructed clergy to include surnames on both sides and grandparents names
and the occupations of the men, but unfortunately for us the practice was not
sustained. There were however several Thompson entries in that more detailed
form, and that has been very useful although not for the baptism of other children
of John and Alice Thompson; and I could not find their wedding. There was one
older child of John and Alice: James Thompson, b. 30 Dec. 1784, bapt. 30 Jan.,
1785. The name James there is significant because it was the name of John the
father's grandfather, to which I will return. Besides James b. Dec 1784 and
our John b. Feb 1786 acknowledged as the two sons of John and Alice Thompson,
there is another possible child: the birth of an illegitimate son to Alice Cross,
Christened George 27 April 1783.
I don't know how many other young women named Alice there were at Samlesbury
at that time, but I saw no others so named in the registers, and there is a
neat co-incidence which links Alice Cross with the Thompson family. The baptism
of her child George was in the period in which the unusual amount of information
was given on parents: she was described as the daughter of Thomas Cross of Samlesbury,
Son of Isaac Cross, Samlesbury, Yeoman. In 1780 there had also been another
child named George Cross, the son of John Cross and Margaret Smith. That John
Cross was described as the son of another John Cross, so in a different line
at that point from Alice daughter of Thomas Cross, but probably related and
using a traditional family name. At about the same time there was a marriage
on 13 March 1783 between Augustine Thompson and Ann Cross. Augustine was described
in an entry for a baptism as being of Samlesbury, weaver, son of Edward Thompson
of Samlesbury, weaver; and his wife Ann Cross was described as the daughter
of Thomas Cross of Samlesbury. The name Augustine reminds us that our John had
a son in Tasmania named Augustus, my great grandfather, so it would be strange
if there were not a close relationship of Augustine Thompson and his wife Ann
to John and Alice Thompson the parents of our John. My guess is that Ann Cross
who married Augustine was the sister of Alice Cross. They were both daughters
of Thomas Cross. And so I think this Alice was same Alice as the mother of James
and John and married John their father after giving birth to George. I would
not be quite certain that John Thompson the father of James and John was also
the father of George, although it seems quite likely. Age is a consideration
and the name George appeared several times in the Cross family rather than the
Thompson family, but most interestingly one such George Cross was a witness
at the marriage of an earlier generation John Thompson and his wife Esther Forrest
on 15 Oct., 1761. John the father of our John b. 1786 was the son of John and
Esther Thompson, born 15 May and bapt., 31 May 1764. So Alice Cross gave her
son George the name of a man who was a witness to the marriage of our John Thompson's
grandparents, that is, the parents of John Thompson b. 1764. I think Alice married
John at about the time it appears that her sister Ann married Augustine Thompson,
but it is a pity the marriage of John and Alice was not found.
You would think that in a small community it would be possible to document all
the relationships but I have often found in working with small village populations
that they moved around a good deal more than we might expect, often between
neighbouring parishes, but it is difficult to discover where the relevant records
might be if they are outside the parish we know, and it is also possible to
miss some entries. There are often patches of writing that are almost if not
entirely illegible or where the microfilm or fiche copy is too faint to make
out. I am not completely sure of the name Cross although I must have seen more
than a dozen examples of it. The way letters were formed in handwriting in those
day was sometimes quite different from the way we write, in Cross especially
the r and the double s, even the o was often not clear, and that in addition
to the fact that not everyone wrote as neatly as we would wish - but then who
am I to say that! At one point I thought the name could be Cowper or Crofts,
but some old entries from around 1750 make it fairly clearly Cross.
I am reasonably confident of John b. 1764 and Alice, whose birth I did not find,
being the parents of our John b. 1786. I said that James Thompson b. 1784, the
brother of our John, would have been named after his father's grandfather. We
are fortunate in this search that John and Esther Thompson, the grandparents
of our John who married in 1761, were still having children around 1780 when
the unusual amount of detail on family backgrounds was being recorded. Earlier
John and Esther had the following children baptized at Samlesbury: Esther 17
Aug. 1762, John [apparently our John's father] 15 May 1764, Frances bpt. 15
March 1767, Sarah bpt. 12 Feb. 1769, Elizabeth bpt 24 March 1771, William bpt
5 July 1772, Sarah (2) bpt ? May 1775, Matthew bpt 3? March 1777, Michael b.
17 March, bpt. ? July 1778, and Henry bpt. 13 June 1780. The second last of
them, before Joseph b. 26 bpt. 28 October 1783, was Peter b. 18 March, bpt 21
May 1782, recorded as son of John Thompson of Samlesbury, weaver, son of James
Thompson of Samlesbury, weaver, by Frances his wife [i.e. wife of James] Daughter
of John Hallathon of Liverpool; and [child's mother:] Esther, Daughter of John
Forrest of Balderstone, weaver, by Sarah Daughter of Thomas Barker of Pleasington,
weaver. So there we have a nice little family tree and some social history all
in one baptismal entry, and when combined with the births of their other children
including John b. 1764 it establishes them as a separate line of Thompson descent
apart from that of Augustine Thompson, son of Edward, who married Ann Cross
the apparent sister of Alice. If it were not for this separation I might have
been inclined to investigate the possibility that Ann and Alice Cross were the
same person and so perhaps were Augustine and John, so Alice/Ann would then
have a married of our John's parent under the name Augustine about the right
time although only a month before James was born, but Augustine and John the
father have different fathers if the description of "Augusting Thomson"
as son of Edward Thompson at the baptism of a child with Ann in October 1783
is correct and John b. 1764 to John and Esther is the John who married Alice.
Then there is the closeness of the births of a child of Augustine and Ann btp.
in April 1783 and George the son of Alice born in June 1782. They are probably
different people and John would have named his son Augustus in Tasmania having
in mind an uncle by marriage, the husband of his mother's sister, who was probably
also a relative on his father's side but no closer than a first cousin of his
father - i.e. in addition probably to remembering a colleague in the Royal Veterans,
Augustus Walsh.
Before the marriage of John Thompson and Esther Forrest in 1761, which is the
earliest record in our direct Thompson line that I have found, there were several
children born at Samlesbury to Lawrence and Mary Thompson (sometimes Thomson)
John 28 Sept 1751, twins Mary and Martha 7 Jan 1754, William 8 June 1756, Ann
7 Dec 1761. Lawrence and Mary might have had other children, I was not necessarily
recording all Thompsons. Now I think I should have noted them all, and also
all the Cross entries. I looked for Thompson baptisms back as far as 1744 but
had to stop then. We do know however that John who married in 1761 was the son
of James Thompson and Frances Hallathon whose father John came from Liverpool,
and that his wife Esther was the daughter of John Forrest and Sarah Barker whose
father Thomas came from Pleasington, so that takes us back to some of my and
my siblings 5xg and 6xg grandparents in the early 1700s and late 1600s, although
we have not (yet?) documented all the vital events for them.
There were several Cross households apparently from about 1750 and probably
earlier. I saw Thomas son of John Cross and Mary 2 Dec 1751, and their daughter
Ann 24 Sept. 1750, and Bart? 8 Nov 1753. This Thomas Cross would not be the
father of Alice for his father was said to be Isaac, not John, and his birth
is too late. In a different family there was William son of Isaac (note Isaac,
above, the Yeoman grandfather of Alice) and Ann Cross 17 Dec 1769, as well as
Elizabeth dau of James and Ann Cross 23 Jan 1763, and Ann dau of Lawrence and
Jane Cross 10 Dec 1769. Then there was the more detailed entry for George Cross,
bpt 9 August 1780, son of John Cross son of John Cross of Samlesbury, Farmer,
by Ann Daughter of James Ainsworth of Balderstone, Husbandman; and [child's
mother] Margaret, Daughter of John Smith of Samlesbury, carpenter. If Alice
was about the same age as her husband John Thompson b. 1764, her father Thomas
might have been born about 1730-1740 and grandfather Isaac perhaps around 1700
+ or - 20 years or so. The Isaac noted here would be likely to be a later generation.
So the indications are that there were several lines of descent in the people
named Cross at Samlesbury and we do not have any further definite links to earlier
generations for Alice although more work might reveal some.
I should have looked at burials too in case some of the people I believe were
in our tree died young and to order to help with the identification of people
who were otherwise close to each other, but I was pressed for time and anxious
not be too late and driving back tired on the very busy motorway to Birmingham
after starting out just after 6 a.m. I did take time however to go to Samlesbury,
which as noted above, is quite convenient and it was worthwhile. It is in a
pleasant and productive rural environment and the local church is still active
with regular services and community activities in a joint benefice with Walton
le Dale. In the churchyard I saw two later John Thompson gravestones. There
were probably more Thompsons but I did not have time to search the whole yard.
One was John Thompson who died Sept. 16th, 1881 aged 86 years and his wife Catherine
who died March 13, 1897 aged 71 years. He would have reached almost back to
the period I was studying. Another was "John Greaves Thompson 10-10-1867
to 7-11-1957 son of T. R. and A. T. of this parish at one time a manager of
coal mines in this County Palatine of Lancaster". I would not be surprised
if we still have relatives living in the area although most of the families
there in past centuries would have moved away with the economic and social changes
of the last 300 years, the period over which we can now trace our Thompson history.
Just when our John or his parents made the move south is unknown but it would
be a point of interest if there were any way of finding out, such the places
of birth of later children. I did not search much past the time of our John's
birth but I did not find any more children of John and Alice at Samlesbury and
I would not be surprised if they moved when John was still quite young. Against
this one might put the fact that his occupation, no doubt before his recruitment
in 1803, was given in his discharge certificate as weaver. He came from a family
of weavers and this might suggest he was still close to his origins at the age
of "eighteen", but not necessarily. It could simply have been the
traditional occupation of his people. He was enlisted in the Guards at Horsham
in Sussex and might already have had the example over some years of his parents
being prepared to be more adventurous in moving and over a longer distance than
would have been typical of the agricultural workers and cottage weavers of Samlesbury
from which they came. If I am right about Alice being the daughter of Thomas
Cross and granddaughter of Isaac a yeoman then her family would have been a
little better off than most, having freehold title to their farm land, although
in the circumstances of her having a child before marriage she might not have
felt as welcome a member of the family as otherwise. These things might have
helped them to act more independently, while John the father of our John coming
from a very large family of brothers and sisters with few assets to share would
had an incentive to move on and make his own way, especially at a time when
the textile industry was being forced out of the cottages into factories. In
any case joining the army was a good way for a young man to make his way into
broader fields, and he certainly did that, serving overseas against Napoleon,
and finishing up on the other side of the world.
Since writing the above I have been again to the National Archives in Kew and
discovered a little more of John Thompson's military history during his 21 years
in the First Foot Guards as they were known when he enlisted and which were
given the title of the Grenadier Guards after their contribution to victory
at the Battle of Waterloo. First I established without doubt that there was
only one John Thompson who served in that regiment in the relevant period. There
was no other at least up to 1854, so the idea of there being perhaps two of
them was not a solution to the problem we had of his being called Sgt J Thompson
on his medal for the Peninsular War despite the fact that his discharge specified
that he spent his whole time of 21 Years and 234 days since his 18th birthday
as a private, to which we added the apparent contradiction of the policy that
recruits into the Royal Veterans Company were required to have served previously
in British units as NCOs. Both in the WO 97 series of discharge records and
in the actual listing of members of the regiment in the pay musters over many
years I found one and only one John, but plenty of other Thompsons. I also went
carefully through the series of discharge papers which are in alphabetical order
for all the guard regiments and saw that his was the only one among those who
had at least served long enough to qualify for a pension. The index now available
on line at Kew for those who served up to 1854 also had only the one John Thompson,
the one born at "Lamesbury" (which we now know to have been Samlesbury),
Lancs. But there is a solution. He served as a Serjeant for a little over a
year from about the end of the Peninsula campaign until a few weeks after Waterloo,
so if those officials who verified qualification for the award had taken his
rank from the regimental records for the year in which that part of the war
against Napoleon ended he would have been listed as Serjeant (the spelling is
that in those records). I did not find the actual date of his appointment as
Serjeant, but it must have been in the first half of 1814 for he was amongst
the privates before and he appeared among the serjeants in subsequent musters
of his company until that of June to December 1815, when his name was among
the serjeants with a note "To private 12 July 1815" and also among
the privates "From Sjt. 13 July 1815".
There was no explanation for this reduction in rank. It was unusual. It may
be significant that it was a few weeks after Waterloo which was fought on 18
June 1815 , and that he was listed among those of his company who were still
"In Foreign Service" but not at Waterloo. Those who fought in the
great battle were listed separately with a red line down the page beside their
names and the word Waterloo written in red in the margin beside it. That practice
of separately listing the Waterloo veterans, with their special designation,
within each rank in each company, was continued for several musters after the
event. They always took precedence over the others in later lists. Whether John
Thompson missed out because of some misdemeanor which also led to his demotion
is something we will probably never know. He might, like others, simply have
had duties elsewhere unrelated to the reason for reduction of his rank, but
the majority of his company, like most of the regiment, did take part at Waterloo.
One consolation for his descendants is that it might have saved his life. While
they so distinguished themselves that they are the only regiment to have been
given an official name won on the field of battle, the Grenadier Guards suffered
a significant number of deaths even if a smaller proportion of casualties than
the British Army as a whole which had 13,000 casualties out 24,000 men. (That
was in an allied force of 74,000 with similar losses.) I saw several lists of
names of a dozen or so deaths in various Grenadier companies. Anyway he survived
and whatever the reason for his demotion he was content to remain in the regiment
for another 10 years. He was still listed among the privates in 1825. The discharge
certificate was simply wrong and should have included the number of days he
had served as a serjeant, in the column where provision was made for it, but
perhaps he did not wish to challenge the record and thus be required to explain
how he was still a private. Later he could still have used his experience at
that rank as a qualification for entering the Royal Veterans.
The discharge certificate is also contradicted by regimental muster returns
in regard to the date of his recruitment. The muster return for the half year
25 June to 24 December 1803 lists John Thompson among several recruits whose
service began on 25 October. The discharge document says: Period of Service:
From 25 Novr. 1803 to 16 May 1825. So there are several points at which it cannot
be relied upon, including this and his age and service at other ranks. That
first return in which his name appears was made from Barham Downs. The next
several returns up to the period ending 24 December 1805, but for which the
last actual report was dated 8 April 1806, were made from Chatham. The next
was from Westminster 2 July 1806, but that does not mean that they were there
at that time for the return for June - December 1806 stated that most of his
company were "In Foreign Service". When they were abroad the returns
were always made from Westminster with no statement of just where they were
in fact at that time. From December 06 to December 07 the returns were made
from Deal and then there is another period of foreign service in 1808 which
we know to be the time when Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington)
led an expeditionary force to Portugal and Spain after Napoleon had invaded
Portugal. John's company was briefly back at Chatham at the end of that year
but from June 1810 returns were continually made from Westminster until after
Waterloo and John Thompson was specified as among those serving in foreign parts
for several years from the latter half of 1810. It was in the following years
that the victories of the Peninsula War were won until the last at Vittoria
in October 1813 forced the French to leave Spain, and Wellington invaded the
south of France early in 1814. Allies invaded from the north after the defeat
of Napoleon near Leipzig in 1813 and he resigned in March 1814 - for the first
time. It appears that John Thompson remained abroad with those companies that
did not return until he was among the men in the muster reported from Windsor
25 July 1816. (Incidentally, I noticed a Samuel Beswick among those at Waterloo,
and earlier a Jonathan Beswick in the regiment in 1804.) I did not have long
enough for the time consuming task of reading through the long lists of names
for each half year (it takes hours to do few years) to discover where he was
in each of the following years, but his company was last reported during his
term of service from "Tower" mid 1825, and the following report was
made from Westminster. So he was in London somewhere when he was discharged,
but not necessary at Westminster as I previously reported. He was within the
central area in which it would have been easy for him to have known and married
Harriet if she did come from Newington and with her to have planned a new way
of life. (Added note:- But, now that I have seen the signature of the John Thompson
who married a Harriet at Newington, I think it was someone else, because it
is different from the signature in his discharge papers.)
I should record also that Hazel and I went to Mullingar in County West Meath
when we were in Ireland about a month ago and saw the place where John Thompson
was recruited into the Royal Veterans, which brought him to Tasmania. His place
of abode was then given as Lynnbury and we wondered whether Harriet his wife
came from there and whether it is where they might have been married or perhaps
if they married elsewhere such as Newington, Surrey, they might have visited
her people there. I found that there is no place called Lynnbury now but the
area on the southern outskirts of the town of Mullingar is called Lynn and that
name occurs in several places such as courts of houses or streets and the Lynn
Industrial Estate, and there is a locality called Lynton. According to old maps
in the National Library in Dublin, in earlier times the parish to the south
and south east of the parish of Mullingar was called Lynn. Unfortunately I was
advised at the Library in Dublin that the records of both parishes were destroyed
in the Four Courts fire during the civil war in 1922, so we have no prospect
of finding a marriage if it was there and little chance of any further information
on Harriet's family if that was her home, not at least without knowing her surname,
even if she did come from there. But I think John is more likely to have been
there briefly in connection with the military and that if Harriet was Harriet
Conybear who married a John Thompson at Newington soon after our John was discharged
nearby in London in 1825 then her family is likely to have come from Somerset
or Devon. Indeed I saw some Connebere (various spellings) entries at Colebrook,
Devon, when I was researching the family of Richard Olding Cummins. (But as
noted above that John and Harriet was probably a different couple.) However
they did it, John and Harriet made a new start in 1825 when John was nearly
40 and made the big move to Van Deimens Land for John to earn his crust as an
old soldier guarding convicts, a class in the population from which came later
those with whom at least some of their descendants would intermarry.
DB 11 August 2004
See also John Thompson's family and life in Tasmania
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