Firsby

St Andrew's Parish Church, Firsby.

This is another of the articles written by Susan for the benefit of delegates to the Hundleby Convention in May 2007 (with a few interpolations by Roger).

We believe we have traced our ancestors back to Robert Hundleby, who died in 1766, leaving a will in which he is described as 'a Graiser in Firsby'.

(A 'graiser' is probably someone who owned/lived on/worked a patch of meadow; or a reaper who cut grass with a sickle for fodder.)

This Robert Hundleby married Elizabeth Gresswell in Great Steeping on 27 May 1740. Based on the information in his will, he and Elizabeth had five children: Mary, Robert, Ann, Elizabeth and John (born about 1756).

We think it was Robert and Elizabeth's eldest child, Robert, who married Elizabeth Dawson in Irby on 11 July 1777. Robert junior and Elizabeth's first two children (Elizabeth and Ann) were baptised in Irby but thereafter in Firsby.

(It is interesting that this second Robert underwent an adult christening a week before he married Elizabeth, which would have been necessary for the ceremony in an Anglican church.)

Following Elizabeth's death in 1811, Robert junior married his second wife, Sarah Cheales, in Firsby on 16 April 1812. Like his father, Robert left a will when he died on 2 December 1824. This refers to farms in Firsby, Ashby by Spilsby and Ingoldmells.

It was Robert (senior) and Elizabeth's youngest child, John (b ca 1756), who married, we believe, Mary Cockson on 30 January 1789 at Firsby.

The Anglican parish church was dedicated to St Andrew and was rebuilt from local stone in 1856, presumably on the same site as the one in which John and Mary married.

John and Mary Hundleby had three sons: John (bap 1791), Robert (b 1793) and Thomas (b 1794). We don't know exactly where John and Mary lived, but John junior was baptised in Great Steeping; Robert was also born, according to census records, in Steeping (although he appears to have retired to Halton Holegate after farming for many years in Surrey). Thomas was born in either Firsby or Steeping.

(Robert died aged 82 in 1875. Nothing is known about any progeny.)

John Hundleby senior was, we think, buried at Monksthorpe Baptist Chapel on 21 July 1793, aged 37.

(This means that Mary was pregnant with Thomas when her husband died and had two other sons less than three years old.)

In 1841 the two brothers John and Thomas were living with with their families in Ashby by Partney. Almost everybody at the convention were descended from one or other of them.

(Other known 'Hundlebys' descend from Thomas and John's uncle Robert (the one christened as an adult in 1776), and include the antipodean branches.

There is a record of a Hundleby earlier than the original Robert (the graiser), namely Elizabeth (bap 1682 in Willoughby), who married William Sizer in 1721. Her latest descendant, her great (times seven) granddaughter is nearly ten!