Ann Shakespeare

Family History

Much of the material used here was originally researched by my father, the late Francis Victor Winchurch.
I dedicate these pages to him.and to Jeanne, his sister, who died in 1949.

The name Winchurch, or Winchurst, or Winsthurst is believed to be Saxon in origin.The earliest records are from Dudley, in the West Midlands of England. The Winchurch family seems to have been involved in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution , in what became known as the 'Black Country' as a result of the toll of mining and industrialisation in that area to the North West of Birmingham. The family's primary occupation by the late eighteenth century was nailmaking,which transferred to glass manufacture in the early eighteen hundreds with a partial migration to Aston, north Birmingham.

The Sixteenth,Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The earliest record of a name resembling Winchurch that Dad found is in Dudley, Saint Edmond's Parish register:

1605 Humphrey Winsthurst buryd October the XXIIjth

Earlier records do not contain the name Winsthurst, or similar, but several Winst. It is likely that this was the same family, so this may be the entry for Humphrey's birth:

1559 Homforri sonne to Jhon Winst baptized September XVIjth

Records are typically sketchy for this period, but the name Winchurst appears regularly in the registers of both Dudley, Saint Edmond's and Rowley Regis. By the end of the seventeenth century the father's occupation is sometimes included in birth entries e.g.:

1698 15 January, Humphrey, the son of Thomas Winchurst, naylor and Elizabeth his wife.

The christian names John, Humphrey,Thomas and William, Elizabeth Mary, Katherine and Ann are the most common during this century and the line of my ancestry is almost certainly there, just a few more facts are needed !

By the time we reach 1780, the facts become clearer:

On 9th July 1780, Paul Winchurch married Sarah Shaw. They had eight children, five boys and three girls.

The eldest boy Thomas married Mary Holt on 8th May 1808, but they seem to have had no surviving children and Mary died in 1812 in Dudley. Thomas remarried on 25th March 1820 in Tipton, taking as his wife Ann Shakespeare. This union produced four children, Thomas, William, Ann and Benjamin and it is at this point that registry entries start to become part of family memory, because Benjamin was my Great Grandfather.

click image for more

He was born in Birmingham in 1829 and christened on 13th February 1839. In 1861 he married Ellen Eliza Tester

(pictured here at Percy and Marion's marriage in 1910)

in London. Originally a glassblower, he and Ellen later ran a pub, the Cross Keys in Upper Windsor Street in Aston Birmingham and Percy, my Grandfather, their second youngest of eight children became a life long teatotaller because of witnessing, as a child, the effect that alcohol could have on the way people behaved.

Benjamin and Ellen's children were:

Albert Edward b. 26 March 1865 d.3 March 1902 He had one son and one daughter

Alice Ann b. 9 January 1867 d.in 1950's. Alice married ?Shaw. They had one son and one daughter

Frederick William ('Uncle Fred') b.12 March 1868 died c. 1949. He married Jinnie Twist. They had two sons and three daughters.

Harry Edgar b.11 June 1870. Married Clara Elizabeth Goodyear on 5 July 1896.They had one daughter.

Benjamin Ernest b.14 ? 1872. He married ?Eastwood and they had 'about five children'.

Charles Herbert b. 23 November 1879 and died in 1909. He married Amy Eastwood. They had two sons.

Percy Walter b.15 April 1882 d. 9 September 1953. He and Marion Brown married 10 April 1911. They had one son Francis Victor and one daughter Jeanne Marion

Roland Victor b. 14 April 1883 d. ?1956 he married Alice Wood . They had one son and three daughters.

 

Charles Winchurch

click to enlarge

achieved fame as a cyclist; at one time (I believe) holding the British cycling speed record.(facts to be confirmed !)

Notes