Mary Fooks
(1801-55)
Mary Fooks was my 3x great grandmother. She was born at Melcombe Regis, Dorset, the daughter of William Fooks. Her precise date of birth was probably between April and August 1801, as her age is given as forty-nine in the 1851 census (taken 31 March) and fifty-four at her death at the end of August 1855. She may well have been the Mary Fooks baptised at Melcombe Regis on 10 October 1804, the daughter of ‘Wm and Ann Fooks’. Also baptised on this day were Stephen John Aisles Fooks, Richard Wm Fooks, and Ann Fooks, children of the same couple.
Marriage to Lazarus Roberts
On 6 March 1823, at the age of twenty-one (although her age is not given in the parish record), Mary Fooks married thirty-two-year-old Lazarus Roberts, at the parish mother-church of St Mary’s, Radipole. The marriage was by licence and witnesses were:
James Fooks – presumably James Mackenzie Fooks, who I take to be her brother
Ann Fooks – her sister?
W.S. Fooks – presumably fourteen-year-old William Samuel Fooks, son of James Mackenzie Fooks
Jane Fooks – wife of James Mackenzie Fooks
M.A.B. Berjew – Mary Ann Barbara Berjew, sister to Jane Fooks, née Berjew
It was unusual to have so many witnesses to a marriage. An announcement appeared in the Bristol Mercury and The Monthly Magazine (May 1823).
The following year, Mary Roberts was witness for the will of a Jane Iles of Cerne Abbas. Among those mentioned in this will were other family members and friends, mostly the same people who were also witnesses at Mary’s wedding:
Mary Ann Barbara Berjew, spinster of Cerne Abbas, Dorset
Jane Fooks, widow of my late deceased worthy friend James Mackenzie Fooks
Catherine Fooks, daughter of James and Jane Fooks
Charles, William, James and Samuel Fooks – sons of James and Jane Fooks
Miss Ann Williams Fooks
Father’s Will
Another will, written in 1842 by William Fooks ‘of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, Yeoman’ (and proved on 28 April 1849), mentions ‘my daughter Mary Roberts the wife of Lieutenant Lazarus Roberts of the Royal Navy’. No other children are mentioned, although there must have been others as Mary was described as ‘the youngest daughter of Mr W. Fooks of Weymouth’ in the marriage announcement in the Bristol Mercury.
See the Lazarus Roberts section for details of her married life.
Mary died of cancer on 23 August 1855, at her home, Harrison’s Buildings, Great Yarmouth. The informant was Elizabeth Smith of Row 136. In the 1861 census Elis listed as a widowed school mistress and about the same age as Mary, so was presumably a close friend.
Mary’s funeral took place five days later at St Nicholas church, the ceremony performed by the curate, Rev. Garry. She was buried in the churchyard. As the burial record confirms, she was only fifty-four.
Where in the churchyard did the Roberts family gather, that sad summer’s day in 1855? The precise location of Mary’s grave at St Nicholas is unknown and most likely now unmarked. She is not listed in the churchyard survey taken in 2016, although there are many blank entries due to illegible or missing headstones and only thirteen are listed for 1855 (Mary Roberts L131 is not her).
And who was present at the funeral? Mary had been pregnant for much of her adult life and given birth to at least twelve children over thirty-two years. Of the ten who had survived infancy, the youngest ones – Mary (nineteen), Ellen (eighteen), Catherine (sixteen) and Edward (just twelve) – probably still lived at home, although I expect Edward would have been away at school during term time. Alfred (fifteen) had either just joined the merchant navy or was about to.
Of the older children – James (thirty-one) and Henry (twenty-seven) were living in London. William (twenty-nine) was possibly down in Devon, or in London. Arthur (twenty-two) had joined the Post Office at Hull in 1852, so may have been living there.
Charles, who turned twenty-six the day after the funeral, had joined the merchant navy and was possibly away at sea, or otherwise absent. By the time of Lazarus’s death eighteen years later, Charles had probably died, and Edward too. So Mary’s funeral must have been the last – possibly the only – opportunity for all ten Roberts siblings to be together.
