Aaron Wales’ parents were Aaron Wales and Elizabeth Burgess. His baptism took place on 12th December 1794, the day after his birth, at Holt, in Norfolk (image from FindMyPast):
The entry reads: Dec 11th Aaron son of Aaron
Wales and Elizth his wife late Elizth
Burgess, privately baptised 12th. Babies were often baptised
‘privately’ by midwives at or shortly after birth, and the act recorded in the
parish register. The child might later – if it survived – be formally received
into the church, and this would also be noted in the register.
According to two other descendants of Aaron Wales (2nd
cousin once removed, and the husband of a third cousin once removed!) who
undertook research in the local archives many years ago, the young Aaron
Wales was apprenticed on the 15th April 1808 to Charles Hewitt,
Gentleman of Holt. He is described as the son of Elizabeth Wales, ‘father
absconded’. Two years later, he was apprenticed to Francis Mann of Holt.
Presumably both Hewitt and Mann were Smiths, as that is the trade Aaron
Wales followed, although his occupation was also at various times recorded
as joiner and grocer.
Margaret Sporne’s baptism record, with image, is available at Ancestry; she was born and baptised (privately) on the same
day – 21st May 1799 at Burnham Westgate, daughter of Thomas
Sporne and Mary his wife, late Beck (see second line below):
Aaron Wales and Margaret
Sporne had four children, including Aaron Wales b1827.
On 8 April 1840, their
first child Mary Ann Wales married William Rust Smith at Burnham Sutton.
Both were of full age. Oddly, Mary Ann gives her father’s occupation as Grocer.
One of the witnesses was James Gant, one of the Wales family’s cousins. In 1841,
she and ‘Willi Smith’ are living at Foundry Yard with her parents. She died,
aged 40, in 1858.
Their first son, Thomas
Wales, was born 1821 and died in infancy, aged 4, in 1825.
Daughter Susan Wales
was baptised on the same day as her brother Aaron Wales on 11 March
1827. She married Benjamin Henry Habberton in Burnham in the October quarter of
1847. Their son Benjamin was born and died at Fakenham, Norfolk, in 1848. By
the 1851 census, she and her husband are living with his parents, a
Saddler, in Market Place, Burnham Market. Benjamin is also a Saddler. She died
young, aged only 28, in January 1854.
Of their four children, only Aaron Wales b1827 appears to have had a relatively long life.
Aaron Wales and Margaret Sporne also lived
long lives (compared to most of their children, and to the general population
of the time). Aaron Wales died on 10th June 1876 at Burnham
Sutton. The cause of death was ‘decay of nature’ [old age]. He was 81 (although
the death certificate and burial record both say 83). The informant, present at
the death, was Louisa Waller (formerly Gant, daughter of Margaret Sporne's
sister Mary, who married horse breaker James Gant). So his niece by marriage.
It seems that, after the death of her husband, Margaret
Wales made the long journey from Norfolk to London to live with her only
surviving child Aaron Wales and daughter-in-law Catherine Alice
Stoney.
She outlived her husband by two years, dying on 25th April 1878 at Bermondsey New Road, her son’s address. Her death certificate records that she was aged 78, and the cause of death was ‘climacteric decay’ – another way of saying old age. She is described as the Widow of Aaron Wales, Blacksmith. Her daughter-in-law C.Wales (Catherine Alice Stoney) is the informant on registration of the death.
For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view
