Saunders and Lancey

Updated May 2024

In 1837, Richard Lancey and his wife Betty (nee Delbridge Grimshire) were living at Hoar Oak Cottage along with their daughter Mary, aged 20.  Richard Lancey was a labourer.  It is unclear if he was a general or agricultural labourer, but it is likely he was employed by the Vellacotts to work on one of their nearby farms – Furzehill, Sparhanger or Ilkerton.

Note: the name Lancey sometimes appears in records as Launcey.

Also living at Hoar Oak in 1837, was George Saunders aged 24, born in Monksilver, Somerset whose occupation was given as a Thatcher.  It seems likely that George was also employed by the Vellacotts and may have been boarding with the Lancey family at Hoar Oak Cottage.

Certainly Mary Lancey and George Saunders got to know each other somehow as they married, on 6th July 1837, in St Mary’s Parish Church in Lynton.  They are both recorded on the marriage certificate as residents at Hoar Oak Cottage along with Mary’s parents.  Their witnesses were William Vellacott, John Vellacott, Alexander Vellacott and Emma Saunders.  Emma Saunders could have been George’s sister or possibly his mother who had come from Monksilver for the wedding.   The relationship of George Saunders, or indeed the Lanceys, with the Vellacotts named on the marriage certificate is unknown – relatives, friends, employers or possibly all three?  At that time Alexander Vellacott was the Lynton Parish Clerk which might explain his witnessing of the marriage.

This Saunders/Lancey marriage is something of a ‘first’ for Hoar Oak Cottage.  Birth, marriage and death certificates were introduced as a legal requirement on the 1st of July, 1837.  Mary and George’s marriage registration, registered on 6th July, 1837, shows that it is recorded as Number 1 in the Parish of Lynton.

The parish covered quite a large area and it is exciting to have the first official registration of a marriage linked to Hoar Oak Cottage.  Below is the certificate with that all important number “1” in the far left column.

Mary and George Saunders had a baby daughter, Elizabeth, on 30^th  January 1838 and her birth registration shows they were living at Hoar Oak Cottage.   Just like the combined Rawle and Squires household in the 1810s it is likely that Mary and her mother Betsy must have been a great help to each other, especially with a new baby.  But as Hoar Oak Cottage was still, in the 1830s, a 1 ½ storey one up one down cottage , it must have been a bit of a squeeze that winter of 1838/39.  The year of 1838 is recorded as a particularly cold one with higher-than-average rainfall and snowfalls in October continuing into May.  It must have been a challenge for the combined Lancey and Saunders families.  For more information see:  https://www.pascalbonenfant.com/18c/geography/weather.html.

Baby Elizabeth Saunders was followed by a brother – Richard Lancey Saunders – born in 1839 at Cherry Bridge.  The move to Cherrybridge may have been linked to the death of Richard Lancey, on 17th January 1839, at Hoar Oak Cottage.  Richard was 50 when he died and his death certificate, below, shows he was still working as an agricultural labourer and died of “inflammation”. His daughter Mary is the informant and has signed ‘by her Mark X.’  This seems to reinforce the probability that occupancy of Hoar Oak Cottage was linked to Richard Lancey’s employment by the Vellacotts and that after his death the cottage was needed for another worker.  As a consequence, Mary, husband George, baby Elizabeth and, widow, Betsy Lancey moved to Cherrybridge near Barbrook.

By the 1841 census, the Saunders family are living back in George’s home village of  Monksilver in Somerset.  The couple have had three more children; George, Elizabeth and Ann all born in Monksilver but the appearance of a second Elizabeth born in 1845 does not bode well.  And sadly, it transpired that baby Elizabeth born at Hoar Oak Cottage died, aged just 5 years old, on 12th October 1843 at  Monksilver.  Her death certificate tells us that she died of scarlet fever, her mother Mary was present at her death and it was Mary who registered the death on the 16th October 1843 at the Sub District of Stogumber.  On 24^th November 1850 Mary also died, age 32, and was buried at the Church of All Saints in Monksilver, shown below.

Also in the 1841 census, we find Betsy Lancey living in Lynton with William & Elizabeth Bowden.  No occupation is given for her and in the same year she married Richard Farthing, a widower and a carpenter. She is about 50 years old at the time and gives her father’s name as Richard Delbridge.  She and her new husband lived in Lynton town but only for a couple of years as on the 30^th January 1843, Betsy died of inflammation of the bowels.  She is buried in Lynton.

The family tree below, created by the Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage trustee and genealogist Nicky Rowberry, summarises the information we have about the Saunders/Lancey families and their links to Hoar Oak Cottage.  It will, in due course, be updated to reflect the new information we have found about the Lancey/Saunder families. 

Thanks go to Philip Saunders (below) who contacted The Friends of Hoar Oak Cottage to share this information about his Saunders and Lancey ancestors.