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Roberts is generally believed to be of Welsh origin, although of course it is one of the more commonplace surnames in England as well. We know from wills and parish records that ‘our’ Roberts ancestors were in Cornwall in the early 1700s, if not before, and more specifically we know from the 1764 will of one Lazarus Steele of Falmouth (more on that below), that Abraham Roberts married Lazarus’s sister Johanna and that in 1764 both were deceased.
In trying to locate Abraham and Johanna’s roots, one London marriage sounds possible (as none can be found at Falmouth). On the penultimate day of the seventeenth century, an Abraham Roberts, ‘Gentleman’, married a Johanna Steele, at St Paul’s Cathedral, London. He was of ‘the parish of Stepny, Middlesex’ and they married by licence on 30 December 1699, just two years after Wren’s new cathedral was opened (although the building would not be completed for another two decades). That the marriage was by licence suggests either Johanna was heavily pregnant and the wedding needed to be arranged quickly, and/or she was a minor.
Where was Abraham born? Who were his parents? One possibility is the Abraham Roberts who married a Joanna Trelanny at Plymouth, Devon in 1677. He would be the right age to have been our Abraham’s father. No obvious offspring of this couple can be traced however.
A more likely candidate must be William Roberts of Stepney, Middlesex. He had a son, Abraham, who was baptised at the parish church of St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney on Christmas Day 1677. William Roberts is listed as a ‘taylor’ of Ratcliffe; his wife was called Mary.
Twenty-three years later, a William Roberts was baptised on 17 January 1700, also at the church of St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney. The parents are given as Abraham and Johanna of Wapping: surely the same couple that had married at St Paul’s the previous year. Was the baby named after its grandfather? A second son of this couple, also named Abraham, was baptised in 1702, at the same church, but died shortly after. For this baptism, the family’s address is given more specifically as Ratcliffe Highway, the notoriously grim thoroughfare running north of the Wapping waterfront. Their church, St Dunstan and All Saints, a couple of miles from the Tower of London, originally served the whole of Middlesex east of the City of London.
Given the location (Ratcliffe Highway) and the repetition of the given names, it seems quite possible that the Abraham who married at St Paul’s was the one baptised at St Dunstan in 1677. However, more work needs to be done to prove this and research is hindered not just by the intervening centuries but also by the presence of other men of the same name in and around Wapping in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (see here).
[There was an earlier baptism at St Dunstan and All Saints, in August 1672, of Abraham, the son of Samuell Roberts of Ratcliffe, mariner and his wife Mary, although this child apparently died the same year. Another man of this name, a London mariner, left a will dated 1695 in which he bequeaths his possessions to his wife Joanna (was this in fact the Abraham and Joanna already mentioned, who married at Plymouth in 1677?). And was this the very same Abraham Roberts who commanded the East India ships [Royal] James and Resolution in the 1680s and 90s (mentioned also in the 1688 will of Gualter Goddard, mariner: see page 42)? At present there is much conjecture in this line of research, but certainly there are strong maritime and naval connections in our Roberts family, so the link is tantalising.]
Assuming that we have the right man, though, our Abraham may well have come from a humble tailoring family, but at the baptisms of the first two children his occupation was given as that of surgeon. On the baptism of 1700 it was the more archaic ‘Chirurgeon’. After the Restoration, chirurgeons broke from their medieval role closer to that of a barber and began participating in important medical debates. Their advocacy of ‘practical’ medicine and experimentation distinguished them from their university-educated counterparts, the physicians, and helped elevate their role in the medical marketplace. Following the growth of the Tudor navy and the mercantile marine, Stepney became a popular place of residence for seamen and naval officers. So perhaps Abraham was a surgeon on board ship or for the East India Company?
But the question remains: is this Abraham, the surgeon of Stepney, and his wife Johanna, the same couple found later in the decade at Falmouth?
Johanna Steele and Falmouth
Johanna Steele was probably the daughter of Nathaniel Steele of Falmouth. According to this posting, a Nathaniel Steele was born in about 1656 in Falmouth, his occupation Ropemaster. It also says he married Elizabeth Jose in about 1679, at St Agnes, Cornwall. I cannot find the marriage in the original records (perhaps they were non-conformists?), but if this is the correct couple, it suggests that Johanna was born after 1679 and must therefore have been no more than twenty when she married Abraham. But where was she born? And why did she marry in London?
Ropemaking was an occupation that would figure prominently in future generations and may have brought Nathaniel and his family to London, with its burgeoning dockyards and mercantile centre. So perhaps this is where Abraham and Johanna met: he a humble Stepney tailor’s son, an apprentice surgeon; she the daughter of a Cornish rope merchant, living for now in the City of London.
By 1706, Abraham and Johanna (and William, if he survived) were living at Falmouth. Sir John Killigrew established the settlement of Falmouth shortly after 1613 and, thanks to its naturally large and deep harbour (the deepest in Europe), it soon became established as a centre for shipping, receiving its town charter in 1661. As it grew in size and importance during the late seventeenth century, Falmouth was the place to be. In 1688 it was made the Royal Mail Packet Station, replacing Plymouth as the port for mail destined for Spain and the Mediterranean fleet and thus transforming the town’s fortunes. By 1763, and until the 1850s, it would also become the fulcrum of Britain’s transatlantic communication. Was it this expanding business in shipping and mail carrying that drew the Roberts family to Falmouth?
We know they were in Falmouth by 1706 as a third son, taking the name of his deceased brother, Abraham, was baptised there on 19 June, the son of ‘Mr Abraham Roberts’. Other children of Mr Abraham Roberts listed are: Nathanael, baptised 24 March 1708 and Arthur, baptised 15 June 1712 (died 1715), also at Falmouth. Admittedly the mother’s name is not given, but I assume it was Johanna. Nor is the father’s occupation given, although the title ‘Mr’ may hint that he was indeed a surgeon. Unlike physicians, who had university education and were therefore doctors, surgeons were apprenticed and were essentially tradesmen and so in England, then as now, were always ‘Mr’.
It is possible that Abraham died shortly after this. The Calendar of Wills and Administrations lists an Abraham Roberts, apparently buried at Falmouth in 1715. No age is given but this could be him. He would have been approximately thirty-eight; his children all under sixteen.
Assuming then that her husband had died in 1715, Johanna was left to bring up the surviving children alone. We know Johanna had at least two brothers, Nathaniel, a rope merchant, and Lazarus, a Falmouth merchant and a mayor of the town in 1740. A Lazarus Steel[e] is mentioned in a Dutch newspaper of 1724, pointing to him being perhaps a merchant of Bristol at this time: ‘... arrived the ships of Cornelis Boot and Christopher Smith Kleyn of Amsterdam ... Martin Long and George Willis of London ... JohLIVES OF THE ENGLISH NAVIGATORSn Snouw and Lazarus Steel of Bristol ... and Andreas Clark, of Falmouth.’
Nathaniel died in 1764 and was buried at Falmouth on 3 May, having left a will the previous year which makes it clear that he was a ropemaker. Lazarus died in 1765 and was buried at Falmouth on 11 June. His will, written up two weeks after his brother’s burial and confirms him also as a rope merchant. With apparently no living children of his own, and his wife also deceased, Lazarus was an important benefactor to his sister Johanna’s family.
Lazarus writes: ‘I give and bequeath to my niece Mary Roberts, daughter of my deceased sister Johanna Roberts, all my deceased wife and daughter-in-law’s ... apparel ...’. So this tells us that Johanna had died by May 1764. A Johannah Roberts was buried at Constantine, near Falmouth, on 4 August 1760. This could be her. There is also the burial of a Nathaniel Roberts at Constantine in 1773, so perhaps she moved there with her children after the death of her husband and Nathaniel remained there.
This item also usefully tells us that Abraham and Johanna Roberts had a daughter, Mary, still alive, and unmarried presumably, in May 1764. A girl of this name was baptised at Falmouth on 11 June 1714, the daughter of ‘Mr Abraham Roberts’. Again, no mother is given in the record but I expect it was Johanna.
The next item in Lazarus Steele’s will reads: ‘I give and bequeath unto my cousin Abraham Roberts, nephew to my above niece Mary Roberts, all my ropemaking tools and utensils ... and also three hundred pounds in money.’ The term ‘cousin’ here is used loosely, as in fact Abraham was Lazarus’s great nephew (his late sister’s grandson).
The will thus connects the Steele family with Abraham and Johanna Roberts and explains the recurrence of the name Lazarus in later generations of both families.
It isn’t clear how old Lazarus Steele was when he died but he was elderly, as his wife and siblings (and his children) had all died before him. He requested that Nathaniel Steel the younger of Falmouth, grandson of his brother Nathaniel, clear all his debts.
In summary, the likely children of Abraham and Johanna are as follows:
William, baptised 1700, Stepney, Middlesex of Abraham and Jo[h]anna Roberts
Abraham, born/died 1702, Stepney, Middlesex of Abraham and Jo[h]anna Roberts
Abraham, born 1706, Falmouth, Cornwall of ‘Mr Abraham Roberts’. Died Falmouth 1759?
Nathanael [Nathaniel], baptised 1708, Falmouth, Cornwall of ‘Mr Abraham Roberts’. Possibly died at Constantine in 1773.
Arthur, baptised 1712, Falmouth, Cornwall of ‘Mr Abraham Roberts’. Died 1715.
Mary, baptised 1714, Falmouth, Cornwall of ‘Mr Abraham Roberts’. Still alive and unmarried in 1764.
There may have been others (a Johanna seems likely?), perhaps born in 1704 and 1710; but maybe they did not survive infancy.
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