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Charlotte & the Romany Line:
"Your great great grandmother was the daughter of a Gypsy girl!" This intriguing scrap of family history was the only piece of information I had to lead me through one of the most mysterious stories told by our family history. A meeting with a distant cousin yielded a couple more foggy clues, namely that this all but forgotten ancestor was a "true Romany Gypsy of the Bodie line." I was already confused from the research I had carried out, at a torturously slow pace, on my Hodgkins family who hailed from Uttoxeter. My great great grandmother was Charlotte Hodgkins - fondly remembered as Granny Betts after she had been widowed and married the local verger, George Henry Betts. But before that she was married to my great great grandfather, William Hodgkins, with whom she had a number of children. I soon found out she had two other names to go by besides Betts and Hodgkins; Sherriff was eventually discovered as her true family name, but some of the children's birth certificates gave her name as Charlotte Claydon. The Boswell Gypsy King Charlotte's father was Joseph Sherriff, a maker of cane seating, an umbrella maker, a grinder and a hawker. The remembered Gypsy girl in the equasion was one Eliza Hodgkinson - all I know of her is that she was born in Lichfield sometime near to 1827. Certainly judging by Joseph's occupations, it was not just Eliza who had Romany blood in her veins (if indeed she did), it was the Sherriffs who seemed to have the proud Gypsy pedigree - not of the 'Bodie' line, but of the Boswells. Joseph Sherriff's father was William Sherriff, a cutler and chair mender, and in 1832 he married Mary Ann Tracey Boswell (also known as Tresi). These Boswells quite likely go back to Francis Boswell, and his son Haniel, baptised in London in 1583 and titled 'King of the Gypsies'. The line comes down through such colourful characters as Black Jack Boswell, The Flaming Tinman and Hairy Tom. A name from nowhere But where did the Claydon name come into it? A family rumour told how Joseph Sherriff was originally called Joseph Claydon, but decided to change his name to Sherriff after his family disowned him for marrying a Gypsy girl. This seems to be incorrect with the discovery of Joseph's father, William Sherriff. Joseph had Sherriff brothers and sisters - Perrin who was a pedlar and grinder, Uriah who was a chair bottomer and cutler, Abraham who was a grinder, and Hope who reputedly fought in the Boer War (though probably didn't), to name some of them. But the Claydon name does crop up again in the family records. Perrin Sherriff married Maria Smith in 1863, but Maria registered the birth of her second daughter, Clementina, under the maiden name of Claydon. She was born in Norbury, but registered in Uttoxeter, and was born a few months after her cousin Charlotte. Uriah Sherriff married a Susannah Clayton - they also named their daughter, born in 1870, Charlotte. And their father, William, may have been the son of a William Sherriff and Elizabeth Clayton.
If the Sherriff family was giving up its secrets none too easily, then the Hodgkins were also holding out! Great great grandfather William Hodgkins died in 1910 at the age of 55, leaving little in the way of clues to his origins. He had worked as a hawker and so also seemed to have vague Gypsy connections. Later he worked as a brick labourer, a colliery labourer and a farm bailiff. No concrete evidence could be found concerning his birth in Uttoxeter around the year of 1855. His marriage certificate mentioned his father to be a James Hodgkins, but the truth of the matter was eventually found in a Uttoxeter census entry of 1861 in the returns for Smithfield Road. There lived a Josiah Hodgkinson, and along with his wife, Ann, was a 6 year old boy, 'adopted', William Nield, born in Uttoxeter about 1855. Further research brought more of the truth to light. William had been taken in by Josiah after his mother, Maria Hodgkins, had died just five weeks after his birth. His real father was one Thomas Nield - a 'higgler' and later a hawker of Uttoxeter. William seems to have kept the name Nield well into his 20s, until he married Charlotte in 1885 and from thence took his mother's name of Hodgkins. Another fact, revealed later, was that Maria was married to a John Grundy before she married Thomas Nield in 1839. More recent investigations have revealed that Maria, born in about 1818, was the daughter of William and Elizabeth Hodgkinson (Hodgkins and Hodgkinson seemed to be quite interchangeable in these early days). William appears in the Uttoxeter census returns from 1841 to 1871, mainly with the occupation of besom (or broom) maker. He died in 1876. Various other Hodgkinson children are also in existence. Thomas Nield can be traced back to Samuel Nield who came from Abbotts Bromely and left several offspring in Uttoxeter, some by Ann Harris, and some by his second wife, and Thomas' mother, Hannah Hall. Thomas had a brother, Job, who was transported to Tasmania in 1830 for stealing two asses. After fifteen years he moved to the mainland, but got into trouble again in 1859 when he was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder of two gold miners. He was released due to lack of evidence. The Great War and Gallipoli The Gypsy traditions appear to have all but died out with the union of William and Charlotte, although it seems as though Charlotte's parents hadn't travelled for a number of years anyway, they kept their Romany occupations until their deaths in the early 1900s. My great grandfather, Charles Hodgkins, was called up into the 4th North Staffordshires when the Great War blew across Europe. He served in Gallipoli in the later days of the disatrous Dardanelles campaign, and although he survived, he was dogged by ill-health forever after and died at just 34 years of age in 1925. Whilst recovering from bronchitis at the Lichfield Military Hospital at Whittington, he met my great grandmother, Minnie Lees, who went there regularly delivering fresh eggs from her home at Darnford Mill Farm for the soldiers. They married on Christmas Day in 1916, and lived at Bunker's Hill, Lichfield. Charles later worked as a baker's carter in the town.
Peace Day (1919) at Uttoxeter Names married in: Into my direct line: Boswell (Boss), Sherriff, Hodgkins, Hodgkinson, Nield (Neild, Neald Neeld), Lees, Higson, Collis
Links of interest: The Romany & Traveller Family History Society
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