My maternal grandfather said that we were connected to royalty. We all smiled and nodded, knowing that he was prone to exaggeration; besides, doesn't everyone have a story about a royal connection? He never expanded on his comment, perhaps sensing our polite scepticism, but more likely because the exact details had been forgotten before he was born.
I needed to prove that I had a grandparent born in the UK in order to obtain an ancestry visa to work here; I decided to order both my grandfather's and my grandmother's since I knew I would use them eventually in the family tree. I spoke to someone at the General Register Office and gave the relevant details over the phone. "My great-grandmother's maiden name was Nellie Walker," I said. "Nellie was probably a nickname. I'll look for Ellen or Helen," she replied. I had the certificate within a week (at no small expense!) and the name was indeed Nellie. I filed the information away: something to investigate later.
 |
| Nellie Beatrice Walker (1891-1956) around the time of her marriage in 1913. |
In a surprisingly short time, I received an e-mail from my mother's heretofore-unknown second cousin Don, grandson of Nellie's brother William. Like his father Charles, William, too, had the middle name of Heriatt. Don and I joined forces. We found an older sibling, Charles Edward Harriott Walker, that Nellie and William's grandfather was John Heriot Walker, and that among their aunts and uncles were Elizabeth Ann Heriot Walker, Stephen John Heriot Walker, John Harriott Walker: clearly we had identified a family name.
Meanwhile, one of Don's (and my) cousins got in touch to say that he had inherited this object which could have some family significance:
It was some kind of gold matrix for making a seal. No one was really certain of its origins, just that it had been in the family for a long time. Don made some seals with it and we all puzzled over it, then went back to the 19th century, where at least we knew how we connected.
Nellie's father and grandfather had come from Norfolk, so our searches turned from the East End to the fenland village of Terrington St John, near Wisbech, birthplace of John Heriot Walker. His baptismal record showed that his parents had been Stephen Walker, farmer, and Ann Heriot Walker. Now we were getting somewhere: Heriot was a name in the female line.
 |
| Baptism of John Heriot Walker, 1817, Terrington St John |
We quickly found their 1815 marriage in King's Lynn: her maiden name was Coe and within six months of the wedding Ann had written a will which mentioned her brother Francis.
 |
| 1815 Marriage of Stephen Walker & Ann Heriot Coe, South Lynn All Saints, Norfolk |
We'd already found a Coe in the family tree: Nellie and William's mother, Harriett Elizabeth (known as Elizabeth). She, too, had been born in Norfolk -- in fact, in King's Lynn, where Ann Heriot Coe had married. Elizabeth's marriage record said that her father was Edward Coe. We located him quickly and found that his father was Robert Rogers Coe, a carpenter and cabinet maker. We began looking for this branch as well and I posted what we knew onto a genealogy message board.
Once again a response came very quickly, from David Coe, also a descendant of Robert Rogers Coe from Robert's second marriage (we were descended from the first marriage). He had been researching the Coe family for some time and knew that Robert Rogers Coe was the son of Robert Jackson Coe of King's Lynn. Robert Rogers Coe had a brother named Charles Heriott Coe and another brother named William Hardyman Coe: a further Heriott connection, plus a Hardyman to boot!
The National Archives' Documents Online website had a will for a King's Lynn grocer named Francis Hardyman Coe of King's Lynn. The will itself confirmed that he was the brother Francis mentioned in Ann Heriot Coe's will -- and also that he was the brother of Robert Jackson Coe: Nellie and William's parents had been second cousins!
At this point I began searching for Heriotts in Norfolk (plus Heriot / Herriot / Heriott / Herriatt / Harriatt / Harryott...). It was not a traditional Norfolk surname and appeared to centre around the family of one Dr Charles Heriott of South Wootton, just outside of King's Lynn, a doctor of laws originally from London and, from the early 1700s, owner of the Manor of South Wootton. I spent many months looking at fascinating information about Charles, pouring over church records at the Guildhall in London and details of his education in the archives of Eton and of King's College, Cambridge. What I could not do, however, was connect Charles to the Coe family.
 |
| Manor of South Wootton in March 2004 |
The Norfolk Archives and cousin David each turned up one of the two missing pieces of the puzzle. From the Norfolk Archives I found that Charles' widow, Mary, wrote a will in 1741, mentioning her only surviving children, Mary Pettet (a widow) and Elizabeth Thompson, wife of John Thompson. The will also a bequest to Mary's only granddaughter, Mary Thompson. Cousin David, meanwhile, was pursuing the Coe family as far back as possible, and the researcher he had hired to scour the Norfolk parish registers had found the 1770 marriage of the parents of Robert Jackson and Ann Heriot Coe: Francis Coe, gentleman, widower of Castle Rising, and Mary Thompson, spinster of King's Lynn.
As these two last pieces of information had been received several months apart, it took a day or two before I could remember why the name Mary Thompson seemed familiar to me. All of a sudden we had it: Mary Thompson, granddaughter of Dr Charles Heriott, was the mother of Robert Jackson Coe and Ann Heriot Coe. Further evidence was supplied after we drove up to South Wootton to see Dr Heriott's tomb in the churchyard and found that it also bore an inscription to Francis Hardyman Coe: Mary Thompson's son and Dr Charles' great-grandson. (Although not mentioned in the inscription, unless it is in the part rendered illegible by time and weather, the parish register shows that, among others, Francis, Mary and Robert Jackson Coe are all buried in the tomb as well.)
 |
| The Heriott tomb at St Mary the Virgin, South Wootton, Norfolk |
 |
| Another view, showing the tomb entrance, plus soil erosion and damage. |
Does this connect us to royalty? I was hardly unaware that Heriot was a famous name. George Heriot of Edinburgh had been the jeweller to James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, and had established the famous Edinburgh hospital for orphaned children, and one of Edinburgh's universities bears his name. Dr Charles Heriott of London was the son of James Heriott, goldsmith and jeweller of Fleet Street, and a member of the Clothworkers' Company, one of the historic London guilds.
The Clothworkers' Company Archivist gave me James' apprenticeship and employment information, which said that his father had been Alexander Heriott, goldsmith and jeweller to King Charles I: our royal connection at last. The Goldsmiths' Company put me in touch with an Edinburgh researcher who confirmed that Alexander Heriott was the nephew of the famous George, son of George's half-brother David (also a goldsmith). So we were not royals, but connected to them through business.
What about the gold matrix? Don went to an Essex Records Office lecture about heraldry and exchanged information with a heraldry expert who was able to make the following analysis of the matrix:
 |
The Arms of Heriot, Baron and Femme (on a Lozenge) Argent, on a Fesse Azure, three Cinquefoils Argent, Impaling Nicholl Azure, on a Fesse between three Lion's Heads erased Argent, three Birds proper. |
In plain English, the right side shows Nicoll of Hendon Place, Middlesex: Dr Charles Heriott of St Bride's Fleet Street, London married Mistress Mary Nicoll of Hendon Place at St Mary, Hendon in 1700. The shape is a lozenge rather than a shield: these are the arms borne by a female, and would have been granted to her upon her widowhood (as before her marriage she would have used her father's arms, and during her marriage she would have used her husband's), so we know that the matrix would have been crafted after Dr Charles died in 1726 and before Mary died in 1753.
The left side of the lozenge shows the arms of Heriot of Trabroun, the ancient family from which George Heriot of Edinburgh and his siblings descended. Mary could not have carried these arms unless she was entitled to them through her marriage to a descendant of the Heriots of Trabroun, and these were the same Heriots who were the court jewellers and goldsmiths in London and Edinburgh. As generation succeeded generation, even Heriott as a middle name faded into history, all that was left was a trio of determined cousins who had met on the internet, a curious middle name and a matrix confirming the Heriott connection.
I imagine my grandfather would simply have nodded and said, "I told you so," then gone back to watching football.
No comments:
Post a Comment