There was an Elizabeth Elsemore baptised in 1764 in Yoxall, Staffordshire, younger than her two elder brothers John (born 1759) and William (born 1761) who were the family of William Elsemore and Elizabeth (nee possibly Biddulph) who appear to have origins in Uttoxeter but who may have married in Colton outside Rugeley in 1760. Elsemore is not a common name in Staffordshire at the time and has generated a number of different spellings. Yoxall lies between Lichfield and Burton on the River Swarburn before it flows into the Trent. In 1758 Thomas Gisborne was born there, who became the owner of Yoxall Lodge and an Anglican priest and poet who with William Wilberforce fought for the abolition of the slave trade. The Leigh family were the Lords of the Manor until 1920 and Jane Austin used to visit her cousin Edward Cooper the Rector there.
In 1785 aged 21, Elizabeth Elsemore married Benjamin Derry in St Michael’s church in Lichfield. Derry is a much more common name around Lichfield at the time and Benjamin’s parents, John Derry and Elizabeth (nee Stockton, John’s second wife) probably hailed from nearby Burntwood but he had been living in Farewell with his first wife Margery with whom he had six children before her death in 1742. Benjamin was the first-born of another seven children John Derry had with Elizabeth. All these children were christened in St Bartholemew’s in Farewell, the rebuilding of which in brick – other than the stone chancel – was completed in 1745.
Farewell and Chorley parish lies three miles north of Lichfield. With the hamlet of Chorley nearby, the church lies maybe three miles to the northwest of Lichfield in Staffordshire. From 1550 Farewell formed part of the Estate of William Lord Paget, an English statesman and accountant who held prominent positions in the service of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Queen Mary. Farewell Hall (“a very neat house of brick”) was built in the 1600s for John Wightwick or for one of his children. Wightwick was a lawyer of the Inner Temple who worked closely with the Ferrers of Tamworth Castle. The village lies in an agricultural area with gravel, clay and sandy soil suitable for growing turnips, wheat and barley.
Elizabeth (nee Elsemore) and Benjamin Derry had three children that we are aware of, James in 1784, Benjamin in 1791and Sophia who was baptised in St Michael’s in Lichfield in 1788 and went on to marry James Barnes there in 1807.
James was also from Farewell where he was baptised in July 1780. His mother, Martha (nee Nixon) had also been born in Farewell back in 1740, but his father Thomas Barnes’s family came from Uttoxeter. They married in Farewell in 1765 and stayed there to raise their family. Thomas Barnes and Martha (nee Nixon) died in 1810 and 1806 respectively and share a grave in Farewell churchyard along with their son Joseph who died in 1811 at the age of 31. Their headstone is well preserved and contains some of the clearest and fanciest lettering I have ever seen at the grave this old. There are a number of Derry’s in the churchyard there and the census returns for Farewell and Burntwood show many different families.
James Barnes, born in 1780 was the second youngest child to five brothers and three sisters. We have a DNA connection through James’s elder brother Thomas born in 1772. James married Sophia Derry in St Michael’s Lichfield in February 1807. James was a Joiner. Their eight children, four boys and four girls, were all born and christened near to Lichfield and of these Samuel Barnes was the youngest son, christened in nearby Burntwood in 1821. On the death of his father James Barnes in 1835 when he was only 14, his mother and his three sisters took in washing and started dressmaking to keep bread on the table and Samuel was apprenticed into the Coachbuilding trade initially in Lichfield. In the 1840s once he was of age, he moved to Birmingham where he met Sarah Reighnolds Bray from a family recently moved into Birmingham from Abdon in Shropshire in the 1820s. They married at St Peter/St Paul in Aston in 1849 whilst living initially in Deritend and then in Fazeley Street near the centre of the city, probably working at the Metropolitan Coachworks in Saltley. His mother Sophia (nee Derry) died in Lichfield in 1868.
Sarah (nee Bray) and Samuel had seven children of their own, mostly born on the edges of Birmingham and Aston. Their fifth child Lizzie Barnes was born in 1860 at 10 Aston Rd in Birmingham. Subsequently they lived in Legge Street and finally in the back-to-backs in Cardigan Street. Lizzie’s elder brother worked as a railway clerk while her other two brothers went into the printing trade. Her nephew Bertram died in 1916 fighting for the Warwickshire Regiment in France. In 1880 at St Bartholomew’s Church Edgbaston Lizzie Barnes married Howard Cork, a corkscrew maker and over the next 14 years had 4 girls and three boys whilst living near the centre of Birmingham, in Irving Street, then Great Colmore Street, eventually giving up the Steel Toy Trade and opening a tripe shop in Great Lister Street in the early 1900s when Howard and Lizzie were in their 50s.
None of their children appear to have fought in the War, and Lizzie Cork (nee Barnes) died at home in 1925, predeceasing her husband William by two years.
But Came They All to Birmingham 