Maria Wooldridge was born in Winton, an archaic name for Winchester in Hampshire in September 1806. Her baptism took place in St Peter Chesil that was then the Parish Church (it is now the Chesil Theatre). The record of that event shows her parents to have been Thomas and Hannah Dowdeswell but there were a number of Thomas Dowdeswells around Winchester at that time – some with long known pedigrees. None of the marriage records so far unearthed show a Thomas marrying a Hannah so we do not have a maiden name for her. In addition no other baptism records have been found in the area showing further children for Thomas and Hannah so at the moment we show Maria as an only child. Neither of her parents seem to have an entry in the 1841 census nor can we confirm a death record.
Mary Deadman, born 1757 probably in Rotherhithe, Southwark, also appears to have been the only child born to William Deadman and Mary (nee Kingsgott) who married there two years earlier in 1755. The name Thomas Budd (probably born around 1720) first appears in our story at his marriage to Mary Heathe at St Andrew Church in Farnham, Surrey in 1742. From then the Budd name is fairly common in the town and across Ash and Frimley, and it was in Farnham in 1757 that a son Thomas Budd was baptised by his father. His mother’s name does not appear in the record and once again, no siblings of son Thomas have yet been identified nor any death records for his parents.
Then it was in Farnham in 1782 that this young Thomas married Mary Deadman. Mary it seems was a strong woman – over the next 21 years she bore 13 children and we have DNA links through three of these so we feel relatively confident of the line back to this point. Most of the family seem to have been labourers.
The twelfth child, Jonathan Budd was baptised in Farnham in late 1802 and in 1827 he married Maria Wooldridge in St Peter’s Church in nearby Frimley. The Marriage Register states that Jonathan was from the Parish of Sandhurst, so by then he may have already joined the Army establishment as a Servant. He is missing from the 1841 Census although Maria and the family are living in nearby Ash where she is a National School Mistress with six of their eventual seven children who are aged between 3 months and 11 years, so he is around somewhere.
Ten years later in 1851, Maria was still the mistress of the National School in Ash and the five youngest children were still with her. Jonathan appears separately in the Census as a Servant within the Military Academy. The 1861 Census record shows that their first son Fred was a musician living with his in-laws in London, and ten years later appears as a Billiard-Marker at the Royal Military Academy. Fred died in 1882 aged 43. Of the others it was only their eldest daughter Harriett Budd who lived beyond 50. Their mother Maria died in 1863 and their father Jonathan in 1876, both at Sandhurst.
Harriett Budd was born in 1829 at the Military Academy and in 1854 she married another servant there, Joseph Hayes, recently moved down from a gardening family in Ambleside in Cumberland. Their first three sons, Fred, Alfred and Herbert were all born at the Academy in Sandhurst, but by 1865 Hariett and Joseph took the family to live in Hartlebury in Worcestershire for reasons yet to be established. Maybe they were following someone in the military for whom Joseph had been a Servant. Here Joseph Hayes returned to his roots by returning to his family trade of Gardening. In Hartlebury the next two sons, Albert and Frank arrived before they moved to Bromsgrove where in 1869 they had their sixth and final child, finally a daughter, who they named after her mother.
Harriett Hayes (nee Budd) died in Bromsgrove in 1885, while her husband Joseph lived on for another eighteen years.
But Came They All to Birmingham 