Abraham junior’s wife, Ann Dunrich (or Downrich, or Dunridge – the name was inconsistently spelled until the nineteenth century) was baptised at Antony, Cornwall on 30 January 1769, the daughter of John Dunrich (1727–89) and his wife Mary (née Blake). 

She had a sister, Elizabeth (baptised at Antony, 11 December 1762), who married an Ebenezer Fisher, lieutenant in the Royal Navy, at St Pancras Exeter in 1795. This was presumably the Elizabeth who was a witness at Ann’s marriage to Abraham eight years earlier. 

Her eldest sister Mary (baptised at Antony, 16 April 1757), married Pascho Pollard, a freeholder of St Budeaux, part of Plymouth (see below).

There was also a brother, William (baptised  12 September 1760), of whom no more can be discovered. According to this he died aged one year, although a William Dunrich is listed as a tenant at Tregantle, Antony in the 1790s (and from about 1798 Mrs Dunrich).

John Dunrich

Ann’s father John was a ‘yeoman’ according to his will. He is listed (as John Dunridge) as a church warden or official at Antony in 1765 and in 1770 (the spelling now Dunrich) he billed the parish for 3 shillings (it is not clear what this was for). In Statutes at Large (1780) a John Dunrich is listed as living at Quarry Park, Torpoint (in the parish of Antony). This could well be him and so presumably was where Ann and her sisters grew up. 

The Dunriches apparently also had two dwellings in Prospect Row, Stoke Damerel (Plymouth Dock), under leases granted by Sir John St Aubyn. The manor of Stoke Damerel belonged to the St Aubyn family and most of the property in Plymouth Dock was held on leases for ninety-nine years or three lives. 

On his death in 1789, John Dunrich left the two Prospect Row houses to his unmarried daughters Ann and Elizabeth (his will was clearly written before Ann’s marriage to Abraham Roberts in 1787 and the death of his wife Mary in 1788):

And from and immediately after the day of the death of my said wife Mary Dunrich I give devise and bequeath to my two daughters Elizabeth Dunrich and Ann Dunrich all and singular my two dwelling houses above mentiond and recited situate in Prospect Row within the town of Plymouth dock aforesaid and I do will and appoint that after their mothers death they shall devide the said houses between them by drawing lots for the same. 

I do not know how Ann and Abraham met but when they married in 1787, they may well have lived initially at one of the houses in Prospect Row, keeping close ties with Antony, which might explain why, according to the census returns, their son (my 3xgreat grandfather) Lazarus was born at Antony (most likely Torpoint, perhaps even at Quarry Park?) but, as we know from parish records, was baptised at Stoke Damerel.

William Dunrich

Ann had an uncle William, the brother of her late father, who lived at Liscawn Farm just south of Sheviock, the neighbouring parish to Antony. On 3 February 1794 this William Dunrich, by now the elder of the family, died at the grand age of seventy-three leaving a will in which he says:  

I give and bequeath unto my niece Elizabeth Dunrich the sum of fifty pounds Also I give and bequeath unto my other niece Ann Roberts wife of Abraham Roberts Jun. the sum of fifty pounds.

Perhaps this modest amount helped Ann and Abraham to establish themselves in London as they probably moved to the capital in the early 1790s, when Lazarus was still an infant, settling in Rotherhithe/Bermondsey. Here Ann seems to have given birth to at least three more children.

However tragedy struck when Ann died at Bermondsey in 1801, possibly in childbirth, aged just thirty-two. She was buried on 30 May at St John Horsleydown. The church itself was in Fair Street, just at the end of Horsleydown Lane but in 1801 the St John burial ground was a few yards from the church, on the corner of Potters Fields and what is today Tooley Street (see the map on this page). Closed to burials by the middle of the nineteenth century, this square of green is now a small park. Perhaps she was interred here? Or perhaps in the churchyard itself? This was closed in 1853 and the church demolished after bombing during the Second World War. What few gravestones that have been left decaying against a wall are mostly illegible. Needless to say, no stone for Ann Roberts (if she ever had one) can be identified here. 

So, with their mother now dead and their father in debt, Lazarus and his siblings’ futures were surely thrown into doubt. The solution lay with Ann’s family, the Dunriches. 

William Dunrich, who had bequeathed £50 to Ann in 1794, and his wife Elizabeth (née Gaich or Geach, 1719–1802) had no children of their own. Instead they took a keen interest in the welfare of their great nieces and nephews. When the widowed Elizabeth died, on 26 February 1802, she left a will in which she says:

I give and bequeath to all the children of my Niece Ann Roberts Deceased the Sum of Five hundred Pounds of lawful money of Great Britain to be equally Divided amongst them share and share alike and I do hereby nominate and appoint Paschoe Pollard of the Parish of Saint Budeaux in the County of Devon Gentleman to be Guardian and Trustee over them and do will and desire that he will lay out such part thereof as he may think proper for the Education livelihood and Maintenance of them or either of them until they shall successively attain the age of twenty one years old and then to pay the residue and remainder of his or her part and portion of the said legacy into his or her own hands and if either of them shall happen to die before he or she shall attain to the age of twenty one years then the residue and remainder of such Child or Children’s Legacy so dying shall be equally Divided amongst the Survivors of them share and share alike.

This will was drawn up and signed on 18 July 1801, just two months after the death of Ann at Bermondsey in May.

‘All the children of my Niece Ann Roberts’: Elizabeth (fourteen/fifteen), Lazarus (twelve), Mary (four) and Ann (two) must have been transferred to Devon, their welfare presumably to be supervised by Pascho Pollard, as they can all be found in later Devon and Plymouth records. The fate of their sibling, Abraham, is unknown. He may not have survived infancy.

Lazarus Roberts

The nature of my 3xgreat grandfather’s relationship with his benefactor is lost to history. Other than the Dunrich will I have found no records connecting Pascho with the Roberts family, in particular Lazarus or his siblings. Pascho Pollard, Gentleman, left a will of his own, although I am told it makes no mention of any of the Roberts children (who by this time had either died or in any case were well over twenty-one). 

When Pascho died in 1833, Lazarus was married and living on the other side of the country, in Essex. If he was living with the Pollards at St Budeaux in 1804 though, he must have heard talk of the war. Local militia were formed and many young men, as well as boys still in their teens, volunteered for the navy. By June 1804, barely fourteen years old, Lazarus found himself at Cawsand Bay, Plymouth, on board the Ville de Paris, a first‑class volunteer in the Royal Navy. 

Lazarus’s aunt, his late mother’s sister Mary Pollard – died in 1807 and was buried at St Budeaux. Lazarus would not have attended the funeral, as he was away at sea, but I expect her death must have saddened him. Thirty years later, when he named his first daughter Mary after his wife, he may well also have been thinking of his sister Mary, who died in 1818 aged just twenty-two. But perhaps he thought of Mary Pollard too?

The Roberts children were surely grateful to the Dunrich and Pollard families. Indeed, Lazarus appeared to acknowledge this, when he named two of his sons William Pollard Roberts and Charles Dunrich Roberts. Among his many sons, none was given the name Abraham after his own father.

Lazarus’s story is continued here.