Thomas Doolittle and Joan

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Husband Thomas Doolittle

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           Born: 1550 - of Aggborough, Worcestershire, England
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 12 Dec 1597 - Aggborouth Farm, Warcestershire, England

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         Father: Thomas Doolittle (Abt 1525-1579)
         Mother: Joan Hyll (      -1597)

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       Marriage: Abt 1571

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Wife Joan

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 1613 - Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England
         Buried: 

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Children

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1 M John Doolittle

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           Born: Abt 1571
     Christened: 
           Died: 1629 - Kidderminster, Worcestershire, England
         Buried: 

         Spouse: Joane Howell (      -1615)
           Marr: 22 Aug 1591 - Alveley, Shropshire, England

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2 F Elizabeth Doolittle

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

         Spouse: John Ayborough (      -      )

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3 M Humphrey Doolittle

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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4 M Thomas Doolittle

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

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5 F Margery Doolittle

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           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: Died Young
         Buried: 

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General Notes (Husband)

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Husbandman.

Dollittle notes that the Kidderminster experienced bad harvests and famine between 1594 and 1599. She notes that the mixture of wheat and rye noted in Doolittle inventories at this time were eaten when wheat flour was not available, usually by the poorest people. I don't know if that was true, I think that rye wasn't only grown in times of famine and that the middling sort of people like the Doolittle's ate it as well. It was simply described in the inventories as being of a different quality from the better grain products that they also had. Dollitle mentions unpalatable sour bread that people ate when they were really hungry. Sour dough was what people in that time used for leavening, and most people today love sourdough bread. Clearly they could afford to have ham. Dollittle needs to broaden her range of experience. She could learn different ethics, different food, everything.

There is no doubt that the Doolittle family did suffer, though less than people around them. It is also true that from the 16th through early 20th centuries, people in England people of perfectly adequate means who were thrifty and ambitious characteristically skimped severely on the quality of their food, subsisting on the poorest quality of porridges, gruels and bread when they could afford a good quality balanced diet, and their health suffered as a result. They believed variously that God had ordered them to live like this, and that that is just what one eats. This sort of behavior cost my perfectly prosperous great-great grandfather half of his family to tuberculosis. Once illness gets going even prosperous people are likely to catch it. Thomas died at age 47, in 1597. Two weeks later his young son Peter died, and shortly after that his widowed mother died.

There is no record of the marriage of Thomas and Joan in Kidderminster, nor of the birth or baptism of their son John. Gillian Dollittle thinks they probably married and John was born elsewhere, and she thinks most likely in the parish of Stone. Stone did not begin to keep parish records until 1601. Aggborough in the parish of Kidderminster, and the village of Hoo in the parish of Stone, were less than a mile apart. The village of Stone with teh church was only two miles from Aggborough. Note that these events did not necessarily take place in Stone, but for once it is reasonable to suspect that they did.

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General Notes (Wife)

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There were many Thomas - Joan pairs among Doolittle's in Kidderminster, and the details of this will sound familiar. I wonder if it could be that Van Kempen put the families together differently.

Dollittle says that Joan may have been of the Clymer family, which sounds like speculation.

Joan outlived her husband, and left a will. She left one sheep each to her daughter Elizabeth, wife of John Ayborowe, and to sons John, Humphrey and Thomas. Humphrey's wife Mary was to distribute her wearing apparel and hte rest of her sheep at her own discretion. Her sister in law Anne, wife of Simon Chapman, got a bed adn hemp and hempen yarn and noggen yarn. John's wife Joan was to have two strikes of rye (64 gallons). Thomas was given "teh table-boarde that standeth on the bench in the hall also I give unto him the same bench adn the black chair". Everything else beyond some small bequests went to her son Humphrey.

It is evident that this family helpd supply the weavers in town with wool, and maybe with flax or hemp as well. Despite being divided like silver spoons, the sheep weren't pets, and there was a decent number of them for a small peasant farmer. The other main resource of the family appears to have been yarn.

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