The Chamberlains of Great Massingham

After an extended sojourn in the records of Upper Canada I've returned this week to looking at some ancestors closer to home, in particular the Brighton and Chamberlain families of Norfolk.  I've enough information about each to blog separately, so first off will be the Chamberlains.  I want to start with special thanks to Chamberlain researchers Robin Poole and Louise Rust who helped point me in the right direction nearly a decade ago.

John Hoys Chamberlain was baptised at St Mary, Great Massingham on 23 September 1793, son of John and Elizabeth.  Hoys or Hoyes is a Norfolk surname and probably a clue to earlier generations of this family, but as yet I’ve not been able to make any connection.  John Hoys was the third child of this couple to be born at Great Massingham: daughter Ann was born in 1789 and son Robert in 1791 (died 1793).

After the birth of John Hoys, John and Elizabeth removed to Wiggenhall.  There are four parishes by this name, all adjacent: St Peter, St Mary the Virgin, St Mary Magdalen and St Germans, and it’s not clear whether the Chamberlains moved around frequently within these small parishes or simply used whichever church was most convenient at any time.  Son William was baptised at Magdalen in 1796 and some of the other Chamberlain records in these parish registers might relate to this family: there’s also a Thomas Chamberlain of Magdalen who left a will in 1767.

John Chamberlain died aged only 45 at St Germans in 1813 and was buried back in Great Massingham on 16 March of that year.  I’m just waiting for details of his will (or administration of his estate if he died intestate) from the Norfolk Record Office, which might fill in some blanks on the family tree.  I’ve no further information about his widow, nor about his daughter Ann.  When John Hoys Chamberlain married for the second time in 1842, he said that his father had been an innkeeper, late of Great Massingham.

The Great Massingham parish registers show that there were Chamberlains living at Great Massingham for generations – innkeepers, too!  Charles Chamberlain, born there in 1796, was the innkeeper of The Black Swan public house for decades, after which his son-in-law and daughter took over.  Charles’ parents were Moses Chamberlain and Esther Skerritt, who had married at Great Massingham in 1776.  Moses died there in 1822 aged 69, but he wasn’t born and baptised in that village.

A Moses Chamberlain was baptised at All Saints, Old Buckenham on 6 February 1753, son of Moses and Sarah Chamberlain.  This fits with the age of the Moses who died at Great Massingham in 1822.  The Old Buckenham parish registers show that he was the eighth and youngest child born to Moses Sr (died 1771) and Sarah (died 1757).  The eldest child was John, baptised 11 June 1738, and who was buried at Great Massingham on 15 July 1812 – his burial record states his parents’ names as Moses & Sarah Chamberlain, late Sarah Barganey or Bargancy, a surname which is unfamiliar to me.  These details – Moses Jr’s age on his burial record, John’s parents’ names – connect the Great Massingham and Old Buckenham Chamberlains.  Does my John Chamberlain connect to these families?

Wait – there’s more: there was another Moses Chamberlain, whose parents’ names I do not yet know, who was born circa 1778 and who married Elisabeth Seagar at St Nicholas’ Chapel, King’s Lynn in 1798.  They had at least eight children, the eldest of whom, Maria, was baptised at St Margaret’s Church, King’s Lynn, in 1799.  When Moses died in 1847, he was buried at…Great Massingham.  His widow, Elisabeth, was buried in Great Massingham in 1851.  So was their son Allen in 1892.  So the King’s Lynn Chamberlains have some connection to Great Massingham.

So I have a John Chamberlain, born circa 1768 in an unknown place and died March 1813 in Wiggenhall St Germans, and was buried at Great Massingham.  Three of his children were born in Great Massingham in the 1790s.  Was he the son of John Chamberlain (son of Moses and Sarah of Old Buckenham) who was buried at Great Massingham in 1812, or of his brothers George (born 1740) or Thomas (born 1742)?  Was he the brother of Moses Chamberlain of King’s Lynn who was born circa 1778, and buried 1847 in Great Massingham, or were they cousins?

Maria Chamberlain, the daughter of Moses and Elisabeth Chamberlain of King’s Lynn, married John Brighton at Great Massingham in 1821.  The witnesses were her sister Mary Ann, and a Lydia Brighton.  Lydia Brighton was the sister of Elizabeth and Priscilla Brighton, both of whom married John Hoys Chamberlain, the same one who was born at Great Massingham in 1793.  This is one of my new projects: to sort out the Chamberlains of Great Massingham, Wiggenhall and Old Buckenham.

Incidentally, we visited the grave of John Hoys Chamberlain and his wives in Stow Bardolph, Norfolk last week.  I mentioned in an earlier post that he’d moved on quickly from the death of his first wife, Elizabeth, to eloping with her sister Priscilla – I now know that it was only twenty days between the burial of one and the marriage with the other.  In the Holy Trinity churchyard is a headstone to John Hoys and Elizabeth Chamberlain, with the latter described as the former’s “beloved wife”.  Leaning against the churchyard wall nearby is a broken stone, its original position unknown but it likely once stood in the empty space next to John Hoys and Elizabeth’s headstone, reading only “P.C. 1863” – the initials and year of Priscilla Chamberlain’s death.  I wonder who was in charge of sorting out the inscriptions: John Hoys himself didn’t die until 1867, but I wonder if it fell to his children with Elizabeth to arrange the monuments to their parents and to their aunt/stepmother.

Grave of John Hoys Chamberlain and his "beloved wife" Elizabeth, and...

...the grave of 'P.C.', his second and evidently not-so-beloved wife.