The Harse Family Of Wrington, Somerset
Origins of the Harse Family
Brian Austin, Consultant Family Historian who has been researching the Harse family says that the Somerset Harses’ were difficult to research because of the variety of names used. Early references include ‘Hearse, Hurse and Hurst’. Some of them have also turned up as ‘Harris’. He says that the name “Harse” appears in and around the village of Badgworth in the late 17th Century and the family then spread into Bristol and surrounding area. The villages are Wrington, Uphill, Axbridge, Winscombe, Hutton, Weston Super Mare, Bleadon and Banwell in particular. All of Brian’s papers are willed to Somerset CR0.
It is believed that the “Harses” may be descended from some German, or possibly Austrian, miners imported into the Bristol area as specialist Calamine miners by Statute of Elizabeth I about 1560. Calamine (zinc carbonate) was at that time used in making brass. Pure zinc began to be used instead about 1779. Giles Pooley, Rector of Wrington between 1682 and 1709, wrote a long account of its mining in this area to the President of the Royal Society in 1684. It is reproduced in “The Mines of Mendip” by J.W. Gough and can be found in the Bristol Library.
Maureen Harse, daughter of Ernest Percy Harse, thought that the original German surname was “Hartz” and that the family originated from Bad Hartzburg in the Hartz mountain area of Germany. Meanwhile Walter Harse, son of Walter Colin Harse, believes that the family originated from Bonn in Germany.
THE HARSE FAMILIES IN WRINGTON
Most of the information concerning the family trees has come from Brian Austin. This has been supplemented by information from Michael Lawder, of Wrington. He has also provided information about where in the village the Harse families lived. Sources used, some of which are more reliable than others, are:
a) The 1738 Estate Map provides a list of those occupying properties and plots of ground owned by the Lord of the Manor.
b) The 1838 Map of the Parish determines productive land subject to the payment of ‘tithes’.
c) Lists of those that paid rates for the maintenance of the poor and the church between 1634 and 1862.
d) National Census held between 1851 and 1881.
e) Property title deeds.
The earliest Harse entry in the registers of Wrington Church is the burial of Elizabeth in October 1701. She was in all probability the wife of Thomas Harse, as the son of Thomas and Elizabeth, another Thomas, was buried here in September 1720. The younger Thomas must have born before his supposed mother died in 1701 though he was not baptised here.
It is intriguing that Thomas Harse only appears in the record of ratepayers for one year in 1722, but that was for Brook House (see plan) plus several fields amounting to some 20 acres in the vicinity.
It has not been possible to identify further descendants of Elizabeth and Thomas. It has not been possible to provide a link with Richard Harse born in 1707. Known information about the ‘Harse’ families identified as living in Wrington is as follows:
1. Richard Harse (1707-1767)
Richard married three times. First Sarah Warley followed by an unidentified woman and finally Hannah Rumley. It is not known where in Wrington Richard Harse lived.
Richard and Sarah Warley had a son Thomas Harse who was presumably unmarried and lived with them until his death aged 24. There was also a son Charles (1727-1728) and a daughter Elizabeth (born and died 1729). There was also a daughter Bette (1731-?) about whom nothing is known.
Richard and Hannah Rumley had nine children. Richard (see below), Hannah (1739-?), William (see below), Elizabeth (1747-1811), Sam (born and died 1745), Mary (1746-?), Nancy (1749-1754), Isaac (born and died 1751) and Sarah (born and died 1754)
2/1. Richard Harse (1737-1820). Son of Richard and Hannah Rumley
Richard married Hannah Andrews.
Richard and Hannah had two daughters Nancy (1764-?) and Hannah (1766-?) and two sons Thomas (1771-1802)) and John (see below).
It is not known where in Wrington Richard Harse lived.
2/2. William Harse (1743-1825) Son of Richard and Hannah Rumley
William, married Hester Ford in 1776, was a farmer.
After Hester died, childless, William married Elizabeth House. This relationship was also childless.
William commenced as a tenant farmer in 1775. He gradually tenanted more and more land dotted about the Parish. In the 1790’s the local agent of the absentee Lord of the Manor was proposing to re-arrange tenancies so that farms could comprise a more contiguous group of fields than hitherto. William was put down for some 761\2 acres. By the end of the 18th Century William’s house was in Ropers Lane, which he occupied in 1783. This house has since been demolished. However, some of the farm buildings closer to the road survived until the early 1980’s when two barns were converted into the two houses “Swallow Barn” beside the road and “Summer Barton” behind it. These three houses are to be found at site location 9.
The year before William died a little of his land, where the school now is, site locations 7 & 8, seems to have been passed to his nephews Samuel, John and William. The second William continued to pay the main bulk of the rates and he married Hester Knight of Stowey.
3/1. John Harse (1775-1832). Son of Richard Harse and Hannah Andrews
John married to Sarah Singleton.
They had 8 children. William (see below), Ann (1804-?), Hester (born and died in 1807), John (see below), Henry (see below), Sarah (?), Joseph (?) and Benjamin (see below)
The property in Wrington, site location 1, owned by John, has been known for a number of years as “Kitsilano”. The deeds of the house start with the sale by the then Rector in 1799. The cottages, between Kitsilano and the Rectory, had been part of the glebe, from which the Rector derived his income. In 1808 one of the properties and the adjoining pigeon house both were sold to John Harse for £165. In 1824 he seems to have been left some land by his Uncle William. John was described as a both a basket maker and a labourer, but by the time he made his will in 1832 shortly before his death he called himself a Yeoman, though he still could not sign his name.
John Harse left his property to his brother Richard and his brother-in-law John Drissell of Yatton (husband of Nancy Harse) as trustees to sell certain property in Churchill to pay debts and funeral expenses etc and to mortgage the Wrington property, where he lived in one part and let the other part. The mortgage, if necessary, was for the maintenance of John’s children. Sarah Singleton died in 1827 aged 48 so Richard was made Guardian. The property was to be sold when the youngest child became 21 and the proceeds divided up among those children still living. However, Richard chose not to do this but instead advanced money from his own pocket from time to time. When Benjamin, the youngest, became 21 on 3 March I843 the property was sold to the eldest child William, then a beer housekeeper in Wrington, for £80. Richard reimbursed himself for the £62.1 3s he was owed, which did not leave much to be shared out.
3/2. Richard Harse (1777-1850), Son of Richard Harse and Hannah Andrews
Married Mary.
They had five children. Ann (1797-1799), another Ann (born and died in 1801), yet another Ann (1802-?), William (see below) and John (1803-1805).
Richard, a farmer, lived in what is now Grinstead House in Redhill, near Wrington
(off the plan). It is on the left hand side of the road going downhill a little before one comes to the Darlington Arms, and the last of the first string of cottages there before there is its long thin garden and then a few more cottages more immediately opposite the pub.
Richard seems to have started there in 1806, though he did not have much land until later, and remained there until his death in 1850. His first wife, Mary, died in 1825 aged 49 and he then married a Priscilla Weekes under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Priscilla, a daughter of John and Betty Weekes, was baptised as Percela in Wrington on 2nd March 1788. He and his wife seem to have fancied exotic names; twice they baptised a son Battle or Battel and they had a daughter Inney. Priscilla’s mother died in 1857 aged 102, and for years as a widow she ran the limekiln on the triangle of waste ground where Church Road, Redhill branches off from the A3.
When in 1859 the Parish of St Philip and Jacob tried to get Wrington to accept Priscilla as a commitment, the Wrington Vestry (the forerunner of the Parish Council), at first decided to resist claiming that the marriage to Richard was not legal. However, a fortnight later the solicitor who was Clerk to the Vestry reported that “the marriage was at the time it was solemnised legal” and so the Vestry decided to give in.
William took over the farm on the death of Richard in 1850.
3/3. William Harse (1783-1834). Son of Richard Harse and Hannah Andrews
William married Hester Knight in 1806.
William and Hester had four children. John (1810-?), Maria (1810-?), Hester (1814-1826) and William (1817-?).
William was a tenant farmer having been left some land site locations 7 & 8, by his Uncle William. After William died in 1834 Hester continued the tenancy until her own death in 1844, aged 65. Her elder son John continued the tenancy for a year or two but he must then have left Wrington.
Hester left all her household effects and farming stock to Richard Harse (her brother-in-law) of Grinstead House in Redhill to be sold and the money to be divided between the two sons and the daughter Maria. John was also to get his father’s waistcoat, William his father’s watch and Maria her mother’s ring and the best of her clothes. Fanny, Hester’s niece, was to have Hester’s yellow striped gown; and Sarah Ann, Fanny’s sister, a gown that had belonged to Hester’s mother. Though the will said “niece”, “granddaughter” would have been more accurate. The total estate was under £300.
3/4. Samuel Harse (1784-1849). Son of Richard Harse and Hannah Andrews
Samuel married Elizabeth Cook.
Samuel and Elizabeth had four children. Victorina (1819-1822), another Victorina
(1822-1823), James Cook (1822-1857) and George (1825-1877).
You will find a sarcophagus tomb opposite the east end of Wrington Church recording the burial in 1849 and 1848 of the two Wesleyan Methodist parents and of their two little daughters, both named Victorina, that died in infancy in the 1820’s. The tomb also records that the son James was buried in Bristol in 1857, aged 35, and his brother George was buried in Newport, Mon in 1871, aged 52. The tomb seems to have been erected after 1871 by one or other of the two other sons. Samuel born in 1822 and Thomas in 1827 who left Wrington after the 1841 Census.
Samuel, and his wife Elizabeth (Weslyan Methodists), was a tenant farmer of some 231/2 acres. In 1826 he was left some land by his Uncle William. From 1817 to his death in 1849 they lived in a house where the school, site location 7, now is, definitely not Wrington Farmhouse that still stands beside the school. Samuel first appears as a ratepayer in 1813 but it is not clear where he was then, though it could have been the forerunner to the house, site location 8, alongside Kingscott’s garage.
James Cook, Samuel’s eldest son, paid the rates on the farm just once after his fathers death and then the property was divided between two other farmers while James moved to Bristol.
4/1. William (1800-?). Son of John Harse and Sarah Singleton
Married Ann. They were childless.
William and his wife Ann, lived from 1829 to 1855 at the “Viol and Flute” now called Thursday Cottage”, site location 2, as a beer housekeeper then shopkeeper before going off to Horfield as a market gardener. There were seventeen beer houses in the village at this time.
4/2. John Harse (1807-?)., Son of John Harse and Sarah Singleton
John married Martha Welsh.
John and Martha had eight children. Elizabeth (1831-1835), John (1833-?), Matilda (1834-1839), Richard (1838-?), another Matilda (1841-?), Henry (1843-?), Joseph (1847-?) and Thomas (1850-?).
John (baptised on the same day as brother Henry) was a basket maker, like his father, in Wrington in 1843. John started in 1829 in what is now a vetinerary surgery with a house behind it, site location 3, until 1837, when he moved to where Kingscott’s garage, site location 4, is now. In 1848 he was for a time in a cottage, site location 5, now demolished, along the “dring” opposite the lynchgate into the churchyard but the following year he moved to “part of the School of Industry”. This is unidentified but probably in the vicinity of site location 6.
John and his six surviving brothers and sisters were involved in the sale of a pair of cottages in Wrington left to them in the Will of their father who died in 1832. The cottages had to be sold to discharge the debts of their father and to repay their Uncle for what he had spent on their behalf while some of the children were still under 21.
John seems to have left Wrington in 1852 and by 1861 was at 77 Thomas Street, Redcliff
4/3. Henry Harse (1808-1843). Son of John Harse and Sarah Singleton
Henry married Emma, or Emily, from Panborough, a hamlet of 9 houses near Wookey.
They had a daughter Marian Caroline Harse (born and died in 1833). A son, Henry, was born in 1834.
By September 1843, shortly before his death, Henry was a labourer in Bristol
4/4. Benjamin Harse (1822-1890), Son of John Harse and Sarah Singleton
Benjamin married Ann Adams.
Benjamin and Ann had ten children. Benjamin (1848-?), Sarah Ann (1850-?),
Mary (1852-1868), Clara Sophia (1854-?), Walter John (1856-?), Catherine Matilda (1858-?). Winfred George (1860-?), Alfred Colin (1861-199), Morton Philip (1864-?) and
George William (1865-1944).
When Benjamin reached 21 in 1843 the family home had to be sold. By September 1843 Benjamin had left Wrington to live in Bristol where he worked as a journeyman shoemaker until moving to Oxford in 1860 or 1861. All of the Oxford Harses originate from this marriage. It is not known why Benjamin decided to move to Oxford.
5/1. William Harse (1802-1858). Son of Richard Harse and Mary
William married Mary Wilcox
William and Mary had nine children. Full details are not available. With their two daughters (the fourth and eldest had been accidentally burned to death aged 4 in 1838) they lived in a pair of cottages in 1841 about where Redhill parsonage was built in 1907 behind the church. He paid no rates there. No doubt his father met his liability as the plot of land containing the cottages and their gardens was included in his own assessment.
After his father’s death in 1856 William moved into Grinstead House and took over the farm. His stepmother Priscilla had been living their in 1851 and perhaps that is where she went back to from Bristol for the brief interval before she died about a fortnight before the 1861 census.
William died himself in 1858, leaving seven children (three others had died young) and his widow Mary. Mary continued to run the farm for some years, but by 1871 had become a laundress. Three of the sons, by then all in their early twenties, were still at home though one later married.
6/1. John Harse (1806-1877), Son of William Harse and Hester Knight
John married Elizabeth Pullin.
John and Elizabeth had five children. Fanny (1830-?), John (1832-?), Sarah Ann (1835-?), Henry (1838-?) and Elizabeth (1841-?).
John continued the tenancy for a year or two after her death in 1844 but he must then have left Wrington. John does not appear in any of the rate records or in the 1851 census.
John, his wife Elizabeth, and their five children (including Hester Knight’s two beneficiaries) were in 1841 living in one of the three cottages halfway up School Road now comprising a single house, site location 11, called “Mathlins”. In 1841 John was an agricultural labourer. In 1851 he was lodging in an unknown house while his wife and one of the daughters were lodging in a different house, one of the group bounded by the churchyard, the Triangle, and Station Road, site location 12. By 1861 John and Elizabeth were occupying a cottage where Kingscott’s garage is now, site location 4, where a different John Harse, and his wife Martha, had been in 1841. John, Elizabeth’s husband, was by then a watercress seller. His wife died in 1870 aged 68 and in 1871
John, by then a retired agricultural labourer, was lodging south of the village in one of the cottages comprising Leggs Farm on the way to Havyatt.
6/2. WiIliam Harse (1817-?). Son of WiIliam Harse and Hester Knight
The second son William married an Ann.
William and Ann were childless.
Between 1840 and 1849 they were living in a cottage, site location 10, near his parents’ farm. This disappeared long ago. They had left Wrington by 1851.
7/1. James Cook Harse (1822-1857). Son of Samuel Harse and Elizabeth Cook
James Cook married Mary Wakefield.
There were two children of the marriage. Details not available
There is doubt about the name of John’s wife because she was Mary when the first two children of her second marriage were baptised in the parish church, but she was Marina in both the 1871 and 1881 censuses.
8/1. John Harse (1832-?). Son of John Harse and Elizabeth
John, married a young widow, Mary, or Marina, London who had three sons all born at Congresburv.
John and Mary had three children. Details not available.
John was in 1871 a “shoemaker” and a “local preacher” and the parents, there own three children, plus the three stepchildren, were crammed into a cottage, one of a pair alongside the Plough Inn, site location 13. The site is now incorporated in the garden of the adjoining big house.
By 1881 one daughter was a living-in servant elsewhere in the village, another seems to have left home, and one of the stepchildren had also disappeared, but the parents and the remaining five children had moved to No 3 The Cottages, site location 14, the terrace in Station Road a little past the Church and built in 1874. By this time John had ceased claiming to be a local preacher.