What happened to my ancestor’s family after his suicide?
QI was shocked to find a newspaper article relating to my 3x great grandfather, Henry Bowers. He committed suicide in 1798 (two years after my great great grandfather Daniel Bowers was born) leaving my 3x great grandmother (Ann née Woolrich) and six children. They lived in Sandon and Stone, Staffordshire. Ann died in 1836 in Tittensor, but was buried in Sandon.
Ann’s father, John Woolrich, yeoman of The Romer, Sandon, died in 1796. His will was proved in 1797 in which he left everything to his son James (died 1829), and nothing for Ann, Henry or his grandchildren. I assume therefore that the reason for the suicide was debt. But what happened to Ann and their children between 1798 and 1836? Marilyn Roberts
AThe item in the newspaper the Staffordshire Advertiser dated 15 September 1798, available on the British Newspaper Archive at britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, stated that Henry Bowers, a farmer at Spot near Hilderstone, had on the previous Tuesday morning “told his wife he was going to Stone market and bid her not to wait for him as he might not return that night”. However, when someone went into the stable next to the farmhouse in the evening, they “found him hanging and quite dead”. The coroner’s verdict was “lunacy”.
Sadly, Ann would appear not to have stayed on the farm, because a notice in the same newspaper on 6 October 1798 announced an auction sale to be held on the premises five days later. “All the livestock, hay, corn, implements in husbandry, household furniture, etc of Mr Henry Bowers of Spot Farm near Stone in the county of Stafford, deceased” were to be auctioned.
The livestock included horses, cows and pigs; the corn consisted of wheat, barley and oats; and the furniture included bedsteads, tables, chairs, an oak bureau, a large oak cupboard and shelves, and double and single chests of drawers. The farm itself was not Henry’s to bequeath, as the land-tax redemption records of 1798 (digitised on Ancestry at ancestry.co.uk/search/ collections/2319) show that Henry was renting the farm from someone named Robert Garner.
To be fair to Ann’s father, John Woolrich, when he made his will in September 1796 (with the Staffordshire parish records on Findmypast; findmy past.co.uk), he was not to know that his son-in-law would take his own life two years later. Leaving his farm to his son James would have seemed the natural thing to do, because John would have expected Henry to provide for Ann.
According to the oath sworn by Ann to obtain probate administration of Henry’s estate, the value of his goods, chattels and credits did not exceed £300. Notices were published in the
Staffordshire Advertiser in April and September 1799 to Henry’s debtors and creditors requesting them to pay or claim payment respectively from Ann.
In October 1799, a further notice appeared in the Staffordshire Advertiser stating that Henry’s creditors might receive a dividend of his effects by applying to Edward Stringer of Stafford. Other items in the newspaper make it clear that Edward Stringer was an overseer of the poor in the town of Stafford, so it seems likely that Ann and her six children were now living in the workhouse.
According to Peter Higginbotham’s website The Workhouse at workhouses. org.uk/Stone, a parish workhouse was built in the town of Stone in 1793. I suggest you get in touch with Staffordshire Record Office ( staffordshire.gov.uk/heritage-andarchives) regarding the workhouse’s admission and discharge records.
As to why Ann was in Tittensor in 1836, at least one of her children lived in this hamlet in the north part of Stone parish in the 1830s. Sarah, the first wife of her son Henry, died in Tittensor in 1837 aged 39. A few months later, Henry junior married a widow named Ann Davis; both resided in Tittensor. Alan Stewart