We know from his will – written on 4 June 1842 and proved on 28 April 1849, almost five years after his death in 1844 – that Mary Roberts’s father was William Fooks ‘of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, Yeoman’. He was thus my 4x great grandfather.

Crucially, the will mentions only one child: ‘my daughter Mary Roberts the wife of Lieutenant Lazarus Roberts of the Royal Navy’. When Mary married Lazarus in 1823 it was noted in announcements that she was the youngest daughter of William Fooks. It is possible that her elder sister Elizabeth Emma, by 1842 Elizabeth Emma Lipson and living in Australia, was his only other surviving daughter.

The five-year delay in proving the will may have something to do with contacting Elizabeth Lipson in Australia, or it may have been to do with the death of William’s son William junior in 1845, many miles north in County Durham. When William senior died in 1844, both Elizabeth and William junior would have had a claim on the will, although neither is mentioned in it.

So who was William Fooks?

The name Fooks, in its various spellings, is a commonplace name in Dorset and there are many with it in the parish records for the time. Disentangling the Fooks/Fookes/Fokes/Folkes/Foulkes family is something that has challenged several of their descendants.

A clue to William’s origins is in a 1758 ballot list of men residing at Melcombe Regis/Weymouth (the two place names were increasingly used interchangably so are here too). The men are aged between eighteen and fifty and were serving in the local militia. This was a forerunner to the Territorial Army. There was a garrison at Weymouth.

From 1757, with the fear of a French invasion looming, county militia regiments were established across England. Each parish was required to provide a number of able-bodied men, aged between eighteen and fifty (reduced to forty-five in 1762) for three years’ military training. They served in Britain or Ireland but not overseas. Included in the 1757 ballot of Melcombe are several named Fooks, notably a John Fooks, barber; Daniel Fooks, cooper; William Fooks, rope-maker; Richard Fooks, carpenter and Robert Fook, overseer of the poor. Was one of these William’s father?

William Fooks married Ann Williams Mackenzie (b. 1759?), at Wyke Regis, Dorset, on 27 May 1780. According to the marriage record they were both minors and the wedding was by banns, which were published for three consecutive Sundays prior to the day. The parish record for the banns spells William’s name as ‘Folkes’, of the ‘chapelry of Weymouth’ (a chapelry as it had no parish church of its own until the 1830s; All Saints, Wyke Regis, was the parish church). However the actual marriage record, which is hard to read, spells William’s name as ‘Fokes’, of Weymouth and the Devon (not Dorset) Militia.

To add to the confusion, Ann’s name is spelled on the same record as ‘Fookes late Mackenzie’. The witnesses were Betty Mackenzie – described as ‘Mother of the Woman’ – and a Sarah Kellaway.

When exactly William enrolled in the Devon militia or when he was discharged is unknown and after this it is not clear what his occupation was. However in 1806 he was paying land tax on a barn and stables at Melcombe Regis and in his will he is described as a yeoman: so maybe he was a farmer?

The 1800 land tax records list William Fooks occupying premises at Melcombe owned by Stephen Illes. In 1813 the proprietor is given as Stephen Ayles. It is not clear who this was but in 1793 William named one of his sons Stephen John Iles (or Eyles) Fooks and this name recurs in various spellings elsewhere, so there was clearly a family connection.

By 1832 William Fooks (now William Fooks senior) was an elderly man and an owner-occupier at Melcombe Regis. In the 1841 census, we have a more precise address: Crescent Street. He is listed as widowed (Ann had died in 1832) and of ‘independent means’, his age rounded down to eighty and an indication that he was not born in the county of Dorset: so maybe Devon?

William died at Weymouth and was buried at Wyke Regis, Dorset on 21 September 1844. His wife Ann and several of their children had already been buried here.

Apart from Mary, the main beneficiaries in his will are a James Bower, ‘Gentleman’ (1776–1852; a retired banker in 1851) and William El[l]iot (1794–1885; also a banker), both presumably of the old Weymouth bank Messrs Bower & Elliot and financiers he owed money to. James Mackenzie Fooks (1780–1824) also mentions Elliot in his will of 1824, so maybe he was the family banker.

William Fooks senior, yeoman, is included (along with James Mackenzie Fooks) in a newspaper report of 1812, comprising a list of men defending the banking business of William & James Bower. A William Fooks junior is also listed here with the occupation of mercer: presumably this is his son, the tailor William W. Fooks.

According to his death record, William was eighty-eight when he died and thus was born in 1755/6. However, this does not fit the facts as far as we know them. At their marriage on 27 May 1780, William and Ann were both listed as minors, i.e. under twenty-one and theoretically as young as fourteen – although if William was in the militia, this had a minimum age of eighteen. It seems likely though that William was about the same age as Ann (twenty) and therefore must have been born around 1759/60 and not 1755/6. It is not inconceivable that when he died in 1844 no one locally knew his precise age, and it was mistakenly given as eighty-eight – five or six years older than his actual age.