Roots of the Barker Family
3/5/13: According to recent research by David M. Barker, much of the below information is inaccurate. Please see his recent research in the William and Jane Barker document here.
Robert Barker, born 1672 in Dickleburg, Norfolk, England. Dickleburg is a small village about six miles northeast of Diss, which is a market town. He married Elizabeth Pittman in 1697. Nothing more is known about them except that they were the parents of
Robert Barker, born 1699 in Dickleburg. He married Alice Minter December 30, 1725. Nothing more is known about them except that they were the parents of
Stephen Barker, born May 16, 1736 in Dickleburg. He married Judith Wragg of Burston, a small village about two miles east of Shelfanger and about three miles northeast of Diss. Nothing more is known about them except that they were the parents of
[image of All Saints Church, Dickleburg, Norfolk, England missing, ebf 2010]
(All Saint's is a Norman/medieval church, it has just celebrated the Quinn - centenary of the nave as it still remains, what is left of the rood screen and three church bells, all of which date back to 1495/1496 when John Bulman was the first sole Rector of Dickleburgh. The church holds 300 people and accommodates both traditional and modern tastes in worship.)
William Barker, born in 1760 but just where is unknown. He married Jane Knowles. She was born in 1759. There is no record of either of them having been baptized or married in Shelfanger, where they lived most of their lives, raised their family and were buried. The chances are excellent that they came from the area where the preceding Barker ancestors came from – a cluster of tiny villages within a few miles of Diss, on the Waveney River in southern Norfolk County, England. William was born in late 1760 and christened January 18, 1761. His wife, Jane, was born in 1759 and died at age 66 on December 4, 1825. If William married when he was 22 and Jane was 21, then their marriage would have been in 1783, the year the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American revolutionary War.
If William was penniless when he was married (and he probably was) that would account for his inability to pay the fee or tax to have his marriage to Jane entered in the church records. In any event, Will and Jane were married and had a family of eight children. Two boys died in infancy, of the remainder, three were daughters and three were sons.
In 1830, Jane had been dead for five years. William was buried in the Shelfanger cemetery three months earlier. It is early March and times are tough in England. Before another farming season gets under way, the three remaining Barker sons decided to go to America because the government was going to finance the journey across the ocean. The three brothers and their wives and children set sail from London March 23, 1830 on board the New Brunswick.
Jane was buried in the Shelfanger Cemetery on December 4, 1825. William Barker was buried beside her on December 15, 1829.
[images of All Saints Church, Shelfanger missing, ebf 2010]
Norfolk, England
Origins of the Name
From the Old English north folc, meaning the land of the north people (of the East Angles). Referred to as Nordfolc in the 1086 Domesday Book.
History
Norfolk has been the scene of no major battles, and few events of national importance have occurred since Roman times.
The earliest sign of man in the area is the group of filled-in pits in the south-west known as Grimes' Graves. Despite the name, they were not a burial ground but a Neolithic mining area, where high quality flint was dug from considerable depths. Two ancient roads run nearby, which were probably used to export the flint to other areas. The Icknield Way runs south-west, following the line of chalk hills to Wiltshire and then on to Wales. The shorter Peddars Way runs northwards through the west-center of Norfolk itself.
Later the area was settled, like most of Britain, by Celtic tribes, in particular those known to the Romans as Iceni, whose queen, Boadicea led the great rebellion against Roman rule, including the burning of the major Roman cities of Colchester and London.
The name of the county, as described above, comes from the later settlement by Angles, who largely ignored the existing towns to create their own hamlets and villages, one of which became the city of Norwich. There followed a troubled period when East Anglia was conquered in succession by Danes and Normans. Then it was the seat of a major rebellion against the crown, before eventually settling down in the later part of the 11th century to several centuries of almost continuous prosperity, based initially on the export of wool to which was later added the manufacture of leather and weaving of the wool before its export as cloth.
This latter development was brought about mainly by the immigration of thousands of settlers from the Netherlands, who went on to use their skills in draining much of the fens and reforming many aspects of agriculture.
This prosperity reached its peak in the 18th century, when Norfolk was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated counties in Britain. It then contained over 700 rural parishes, more than 1,500 manors, one of the largest cities in England (Norwich) and two other substantial boroughs (Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn).
In the early 19th century, competition from the textile industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire, brought economic collapse in a county unable to compete with the cheap local energy sources (coal and fast streams) of its northern rivals. This period coincided with the agricultural slump affecting the whole country at this time, leading to a major depopulation of the countryside as people migrated to the growing slums of Norwich. In 1848 20% of the city's population were classed as paupers, and Norwich had one of the highest mortality rates in Britain.
The 20th century has seen some revival in Norfolk's fortunes as industries have diversified, but especially important has been the growth of tourism, which is now the county's main occupation.
[maps of Norfolk missing, ebf 2010]
Sources: http://homepages.solis.co.uk/~jimella/norfolk.htm
Barker, Don W. Odyssey of the Barkers and the Russells,. Gateway Press, Baltimore:1984
http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/shelfanger/shelfanger.htm
Compiled by Ruth H. Barker, uploaded 2010 by Emily Barker Farrer