HEBBORN FAMILY HISTORY & NEWS -  May 2003

LOOKING FOR THE ‘MISSING’ HEBBORNS OF COWLEY.

Despite the family claim that Hebborns had been in Cowley Oxfordshire for three or four hundred years, no baptisms of Hebborns appear in the parish registers of Cowley in the 57 years between 1768 and 1825.

I wondered if the Churchwarden’s accounts would hold any clues. The records from 1731 still exist and are held at the Oxfordshire Record Office [ORO]. I requested the volume covering 1731-1811. What a fascinating book it turned out to be.  It was obvious that it would take days to go through it all thoroughly, and as usual, I only had limited time.

I first looked to find any Hebborns listed as paying rates. The account for 1731 shows “Jno Pike for Hen_y Heyborn - £0.1s.10d. That is just under 10p in today’s currency! This levy remained virtually unchanged for the next sixty years. The entries suggest that John Pike was Henry’s landlord until 1734.  Then Walter Day’s name appears between 1734 and 1753, followed by Stephen Pike until 1759.  The rates seemed to have been collected in a rather haphazard manner. In April 1759 the following entry appears “A rate & a half made by Frans Wastie at two pence in the Pound for the use of the Church for two years past accounts.” From this year until his death in 1768 John Hebron [Hebborn] appears to have paid the rates himself and not through a landlord.

It was in 1768 that John’s posthumous son Henry was born. For the next 57 years no Hebborns were baptised at Cowley or Iffley. Had the family left Cowley? The Churchwarden’s Accounts proved otherwise.  The Hursts are recorded as paying rates for the “Hebborns” until 1811 when the volume ends, but no forenames are shown. When John died, his wife would have been left with sons Thomas aged five, John aged three, and a daughter Elizabeth aged two and an unborn child. Presumably, Mary stayed at the house, and maybe her son Thomas followed on as tenant. The second son John seems to have moved to the next village of Headington, where he married Elizabeth Snow. One of his sons Thomas Heborn [F004] married Mary Baker at Cowley on 13 Jun 1825. Their child William Hepburn [G002] was the first of the family to be baptised at Cowley for 57 years.

Another interesting find in the Churchwardens Accounts appears in the disbursements for 1781. It mentions Thomas Heborn [E001]
“Paid since the accounts were balanced
pd Thos. Heborn 3 Duz & Wm. Green 4 Duz of s[parrow]s1s. 2d.
pd Thos. Heborn 2 Duz & Thos. Green 1 Duz          6d.
pd Thos. Heborn 2 Duz & Thos. Green 1 Duz                  6d.
pd Wm. Green 2 Duz & Thos. Heborn 5 Duz1s. 2d. “

Catching sparrows for a bounty of 2d per dozen must have been a useful source of income for Thomas. I calculate he made 2s.0d. for his share of the work, which was more than the annual rate payable on the Hebborn home!  Perhaps, this was the Churchwardens way of providing poor relief in return for services to the parish. We can only assume that widow Mary was at home with her children aged 18, 16 and 14. All of working age.

My short visit to the ORO had proved that there was a Hebborn presence in Cowley between John’s death in 1768 and the birth of my great grandfather William [G002], but left a lot of questions unanswered. Some might be answered by a more thorough study of the Cowley Parish documents available at ORO.  Those on my most wanted list include:

E Overseers of the Poor’s Accounts and Papers 1695-1834 
b.11-14Overseers of the Poor’s Accounts containing details of receipts from rates      and disbursements.
b.11.    1695-1700. b.12. 1714-1726 & 1766-1781. b.13 1795-1811.              b.14. 1811-1823.
     C19 Poor Rate Assessment Book 1823-1834. 

I understand that one Cowley parson kept a diary with many references to parishioners. Most was written in English, but the naughty bits were in Latin and the very naughty bits in classical Greek. I wonder if any of our family are featured, and if so, in which language? I would love to know more of this volume if you have any information.

For me, finding the references to my ancestors at ORO may not be earth-moving history, but they give a small insight into their lives. Names on family trees can start to become real people. This is the difference between genealogy and family history. This is what puts the leaves on family trees.
 
John Hebborn.

The numbers in square brackets after names can be used to identify persons on Family Tree Charts and Databases. See Family Tree Charts B001 and E002.