Individual Notes
Note for: Thomas Scholes, Abt 1690 - 16 APR 1753 Index
Individual Note: THE SCHOLES FAMILY OF BRODSWORTH AND HATFIELD
LOCAL HISTORY OF BRODSWORTH AND HATFIELD
Brodsworth
Brodsworth and its parish church of St Michael and All Angels are described briefly in Arthur Mee's The King's England - West Riding.
Pickburn or Pickbourne is one of the three ancient vills or townships with Brodsworth and Scawsby, all mentioned in Domesday, which formed part of the parish of Brodsworth. Until the early part of the 19th century Pickburn was known as Pigburn; it was united with Brodsworth to form a township with a population (in 1822) of 417.
Hatfield
Hatfield is a parish in the wapentake of Strafforth and Tickhill; the parish and church of St Lawrence are described briefly in Appendix 2. The manor of Hatfield belonged to the Ingram family; the old manor house was the birth place of William de Hatfield, the second son of Edward III.
The name Hatfield - or Hethfeld - means a tract of open land. According to the Doncaster Library Services leaflet, "Some Notes on Old Hatfield (1986)," the old core of Hatfield is a 'street village', with farmhouses along either side of the street. At the rear are usually farm buildings and outhouses, all the buildings, including the house standing on on a plot of land known as a 'toft'. Behind the tofts and parallel to the village street ran a back lane, and this still exists in part of the township.
During the 17th and 18th centuries the land around Hatfield was divided into five open fields. The fields were divided into strips, which were individually owned and tilled. In the early 19th century the Enclosure Commissioners divided these fields into smaller units and alloted them to the owners of the strips or to those that had grazing rights. The Commissioners also defined the public and private roads in the parish. Hedges and fences were erected to give largely the pattern that exists today. Brickbuilding became widespread in this area in the 17th century and effectively destroyed all substantial traces of the earlier timber-framed houses. the early brick houses in there turn were replaced in the great rebuilding that took place in the late 18th and early 19th century.
In the last hundred years or so Hatfield has altered considerably in both social structure and size of population. The colliery at near-by Stainforth began production in 1916. the main population explosion took place in the 1960s when many estate houses were built. Personalities of recent times who were born in Hatfield include John Wardle the Yorkshire County cricketer and Dame Janet Baker, the leading contralto.
At the time of Archbishop Herring's Visitation to Doncaster on 6 June 1743 (YAS Record Series), the Minister, William Drake, reported that:
There are about 350 families in Hatfield, without one Dissenter of any kind. ....We have publick service perform'd twice ev'ry Lords day. I chatechise the Children & Servants, who attend regularly twice a week....I have about 500 Communicants in my parish. About 300 of which communicated last Easter.
Archbishop Drummond's Visitation return of 1764 recorded 378 families with no dissenters and 9 persons of the Society of Methodists.
Hatfield Woodhouse is part of Hatfield and lies about 1 m south-east of the parish church. The village was a secondary development of farms which grew rapidly in the 16th and 17th centuries and had a population as large as Hatfield. June Conliffe in "Hatfield Woodhouse Memories and Myths (1987)" writes:
"Hatfield Woodhouse was a small part of Hatfield Chase, which three hundred years ago was a Royal forest consisting of lakes, woods and marshes, with few dwellings, the occupants of which were usually gamekeepers, some tended the eel fisheries which were commonplace in the area....In 1626, the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden, drained the fens, after which came the agriculture of the land, which promoted the people to a community of hard-working farm labourers".
The first official census of Hatfield was made in 1801: the township had a population of 1301. By 1876 the population had increased to 1813 with 431 houses and the parish as a whole to 2567 with a total of 633 houses (Wilson 1876). The township contains the hamlets of High and Low Levels, Gatewood, The Lings, Judworth, Parks, Dunscroft, Bearswoods Green, Slay Pits and Woodhouse or Hatfield Woodhouse. Stainforth also forms part of the parish but is classed as a separate township.
THOMAS SCHOLES OF BRODSWORTH (bc.1690)
Thomas married Gartrude Ophill at the Church of St Michael and all Angels at Brodsworth in 1712 and lived in Pickburn, part of Brodsworth. They would have been born in about 1690. But there is no record of the baptism of Thomas in the Brodsworth parish register nor are there any likely baptisms shown in the IGI for the near-by parishes. Ophill is an unusual surmame and Laura Raybould has suggested that it may have derived from a foreign name. Gartrude's baptism is not listed; there are no other entries in the IGI for Ophill, or any similar sounding names, for the whole of Yorkshire.
Thomas may have been descended from Thomas Scoles and Ursalay Chappell of Pickburn who were married in about 1623; this seems to be the most likely possibility but there is no trace of the missing generations. There was also a Scholes family in the neighbouring parish of Hooten Pagnell and a Scholay family in the near-by parish of Ackworth, but no evidence to link either of these families with Pickburn.
Thomas and Gartrude had four boys and three girls.
The eldest son, John (b.1714), married Sarah Cotten in 1738; there were five children, all baptised in Brodsworth.
Richard was baptised on 3 March 1734 three weeks after the burial of his mother, probably after death in childbirth. See below.
We have no information about the other two sons, Thomas (b.1723) and William (b.1725). Is it possible that Thomas moved to Kirk Sandall and was the father of Mary, William and Phebe? William Scholes (b.1754) (of Sandall) married Ann Booth at Barnby Dun in 1786 and began the Barnby Dun Scholes dynasty of nine children recorded by Mrs Pat Maddison.
The daughters were Jane (b.1717), Gertrude (b.1720) who died in 1742, and Anne (b.1728) who died in infancy.