Where was my 3x great grandfather John born?
QJohn Roberts, my 3x great grandfather, was born about 1815 and died (above right) on 4 June 1850 of typhus fever, while living at 110 White Cross Street, Cripplegate St Giles, Middlesex. John was buried in the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery on 9 June 1850.
He married in 1840 at the church of St Botolph without Bishopsgate, his abode recorded as Lambeth and his profession as cheesemonger. His father was Thomas Roberts, cheesefactor. The 1841 census shows John Roberts, cheesemonger, living with his wife and child at 260 Poplar High Street, and indicates he was born outside the county. I have found a burial for Thomas Roberts dated 1823 at St Luke’s, Old Street. The address for him is White Cross Street.
Where was John Roberts born, and who was his mother?
AThe will of Thomas Roberts, dated 25 October 1823, was proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury and can be found online at Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk). In the will, Thomas stated that he was “now of the h Blackboy, Whitecross Street, St Lukes s in the County of Middlesex, London, victualler” and left his entire estate to “my dear wife Ann Roberts”, who was s named as his executrix. The Blackboy (or Black Boy) was a public house that dated back to at least 1791, but was destroyed during the bombing in the Second World War.
I searched the parish baptisms on Ancestry and Findmypast ( findmypast. co.uk) for a John Roberts baptised between 1813 and 1817, whose parents were named Thomas and Ann. . There were seven of these baptisms s in England, and five in Wales. The most interesting was a John Roberts baptised in the church of St Leonard, Shoreditch (quite near St Luke’s, Old Street), but the father Thomas was a painter and Shoreditch was in the same county as Poplar (Middlesex). The others were in Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire; Anston, Yorkshire; Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire; Kemsing, Kent; Neston, Cheshire; Llandyssil, Montgomeryshire; Llanfair Caereinion, Montgomeryshire; Llanferres, Denbighshire; Prestwich, Lancashire; and Woodchester, Gloucestershire, but none of the fathers had an occupation that matched that of cheesefactor. There was one baptism in Overton, Flintshire, that gave no father’s occupation.
I also checked ScotlandsPeople ( scotlandspeople.gov.uk), but there were no relevant baptisms in Scotland. Nor did I find any in Ireland using similar searches.
You may want to investigate these baptisms further as well as keep an eye out as more baptisms come online. It may also be worth checking the five other Roberts cheesemongers in London who were recorded in the 18511 census. In addition, you may wish to look at London Metropolitan Archives’ record of Thomas Roberts’ fire insurance for the Black Boy, which is dated 1 July 1822.
Through a Google search, I found that “Mrs Roberts, Black Boy, Whitecross Street” had subscribed one guinea (£1 1s) to the Licensed Victuallers’ School in Kennington Lane, Lambeth, between Lady Day (25 March) 1824 and 1825.
I also found a PDF report entitled
The Archaeological Experience at St Luke’s Church, Old Street, Islington.
In 2000, Oxford Archaeology carried out a survey of St Luke’s prior to its refurbishment. This involved exhuming all 1,053 burials in the churchyard and crypt, before later reburial. The report has an analysis of the medical condition of the skeletons of 231 named individuals, including a Thomas Roberts. He suffered from a number of bone disorders (osteochondritis dissecans, osteitis), degenerative joint disease (including osteoarthritis), spinal joint disease and periostitis. Alan Stewart