Thomas 1806

Thomas MARGRATE

Ancestral line as currently established:-   Thomas 1806,                                                                                                                                                                             Thomas 1780,  ?.............Family Tree number 22

 Born:                       1806 in Newnham, Gloucestershire, England

           2nd of seven children of -

Father:                    Thomas Margrate

Mother                     Mary Prosser

Thomas Married:      29APR1838 in Awre with Blakeney, Gloucestershire, England

Spouse:                   Mary Mitchell

7 Children:               Elizabeth,       1844,

                                Mary,             1847

                                Edwin James  1849

                               Ada (unknown birth date but died 1861)

                               Sarah,            1854

                               Thomas (Richard possibly)  1857

                               Hannah,         1860

Death:     (Not yet traced)

In all the registers which are available to Family Historians, it is not uncommon to find 'varient'  spellings both of first and family names.  It must be perfectly normal for human errors to creep in at the ends of long days copying lines of other peoples' writing. And so, variant spellings are seen and can be easily identified as a married couple get their children baptised and the spelling of their names varies with each new birth recorded in church registers. Errors in spelling can also be by mishearing what has been said when registering the details.  Down in Gloucestershire, the local dialect compresses words with the speed of speech or the emphasis.  And so "Margrett" becomes "Margrate".  Sometimes the change gets carried along and becomes permanent and is called a 'deviant' spelling.

Thomas is a "Margrett" sometimes, but obviously spoke with the emphatic pronunciation of the River Severn people and mostly has his name written down as "Margrate". 

The earliest we can ever get a 'snapshot' of groups of people in public records is in the 1841 Census which proves little other than confirming they exist and their relationship to others.  So, in the 1841 census we see Thomas as a 'mariner' at Gatcombe near Awre in Gloucestershire.  He is living with his father, also called Thomas aged 61 and a river pilot, but the census gives no marital status and his father is very obviously a widower. The only other person in the house is a Mary Margrate who must be the wife of Thomas junior.

This is confirmed by the next census in 1851 at Tything, Awre when we see Thomas aged 43 and still a 'mariner' with Mary identified as his wife and now a daughter aged 6, another aged 4, and Edwin a son aged 1.  Ten years later in 1861 at Gatcombe the family has changed only by the addition of four more children but the 16 and 14 year-olds are missing probably living with their employers.  Thomas has followed his father's steps and become a river pilot.

Another decade on and Thomas is now 64 and has moved to Etloe, Awre and still a river pilot with his wife Mary aged 53.  There is one child remaining at home, Hannah aged 10. The family are described as 'lodgers' but unusually in the census, there is no Head of house to whom they would pay their lodgings.  Our final snapshot of them in 1881 is that they are still lodgers, living with a blacksmith of 73 years.  Thomas is 74 and working as a river waterman and Mary is just 63.

This glimpse, in bleak statistics, of what might have been a very hard and poor life, was in the Margrett Magazine No:20 in 2007 in the form of a succession of family trees, published and deposited with the British Library in that year under I.S.S.N 0269-0284.