garethboxing on Family Tree Circles

Allycat posted:

Thomas DOWDSWELL born abt 1778 probably Gloucestershire England
married 24th November 1803 at St Mary De Lode Gloucestershire England to Ann HEWLETT. The couple had three known children: 1.Thomas DOWDSWELL christened 24th November 1803 St Mary De Lode Gloucestershire died 1804, 2.Ann DOWDSELL (sic) christened 25th December 1804 Stroud Gloucestershire, and 3.Thomas DOWDSWELL born 1806 Gloucestershire.

She then detailed the descendants of Ann, but mentioned that she had no knowledge of what happened to the surviving Thomas. I can provide some info.

Thomas married an Ann (surname unknown) and they had Thomas (b 4 Dec 1829), Nathaniel (1834), George (1837), Caroline (1840), Mary (c1843) and James (1845). In 1841 the family are in Barton St, Barton St Mary, with Thomas sen listed as a labourer. By 1851 he is a farm bailiff at Sneedham's Green, Upton St Leonards, employing four men; 1861 names the farm as Actons Farm; 1871 has him still there, but by now a widower.

The 1881 Census has a Thomas Dowdeswell, 75, widower, lodging with the Dutson family in Barton St, Barton St Michael, but he is described as a former edge tool maker, born at Powers Mill Quay. There is nobody else around of the right age, so this may be our man. A likely TD died in Gloucester in 1888.

Eldest son Thomas (known as Tommy) is at home in 1841, but then moved to the South Wales Valleys and as yet has not been found in 1851. He married an Ann Moses in Monmouthshire, but again no official record can be found of the event, nor of the birth of eldest daughter Mary Ann (c1857). A son, Thomas Henry, was born 6 Oct 1858 in Pontypool - he went on to become High Sheriff of Carmarthen in 1908-09 - before wife Ann died (between the 1861 Census and 1864), again an event seemingly unrecorded, although Tommy is listed as a widower on the certificate marking his second marriage on 7 Oct 1864 to Mary Ann Scott, of Merthyr Tydfil, the youngest daughter of Scots-born Robert Dodds Scott. Tommy was by this time working as a railway contractor and is thought to have been used by RDS, who ran a wharf on the Glamorgan Canal before becoming a publican.

Tommy and Mary Ann had Margaret Helen (1865), Caroline (aka Minnie) (1868), Jessie (1870), William (1872), Ralph (1875), Robert Orton (1877) and Sidney (1882). Tommy died at Blackbrook Villa, Treharris, on 3 Apr 1881 and is buried at Llanfabon.

Sid Dowdeswell married Maud Mary Scott (whose grandfather John was a sister of Sid's mother Mary Ann) in Merthyr on 10 Sep 1902 and they had five children: Vernon Scott (1904), Grace Mary Scott (1907), Peggy (1909), George Scott (aka Boysie) (1912) and Betsy (aka Betty) (1914). Sid died of TB on 20 Jun 1915 at the age of 33. Peggy was my mother.