John Horner
 

Name - "official" name and what they were known as John Horner
Date and place of birth About 1752, place unknown
Names of parents Don't know
Date and place of baptism - if applicable Not found
Details of each of his or her marriages - if any
29 Sep 1778 St Mary's, Leyton, Essex, to Charlotte Sweatman
About 1789-1790 to Elizabeth Unknown
Occupation(s) - if any Farmer
Addresses where they lived (including county if in UK) - and please list which censuses you have or haven't found him/her on (if s/he lived in census times!). Leytonstone / Low Leyton, Essex
Date, place and cause of death May 1822 Leytonstone, Essex, not got cause
Date and place of burial. 16 May 1822 All Saints, West Ham, in the Horner family vault, age 69.
Details of will / administration of their estate - if applicable Will signed 16 Oct 1820, proved 30 May 1822 London, executors wife Elizabeth Horner and friend Richard James, farmer, also of Leytonstone.
Memorial inscription - if any Not found

Link to wife's thread: Elizabeth Unknown

Link to daughter's thread: Jane Horner

I'm just wondering whether it's possible to find out who else is buried in the Horner family vault as that might tell me who his relatives were. I mean his parents or siblings - I have info on his second wife's burial and some of his children etc who were buried there. But I suppose it could be that he was the one who first purchased the vault?

Hmm, this is weird. A while ago I found what I thought was John's second marriage transcribed on FamilySearch - John Horner married Elizabeth Day 17 Dec 1789 at Waltham Holy Cross, Essex. Unfortunately something funny had happened with FamilySearch's indexing of the Essex parish registers whereby a lot of the grooms were shown with marital status of "married", so I had to wait until SEAX launched their online parish register images to find out that the John Horner on that marriage was a bachelor, of this parish, and that the marriage was by banns, and therefore I could rule this marriage out.

(John's first wife Charlotte was buried 2 Aug 1789 and his first child by Elizabeth was baptised 3 Oct 1790, so there is a pretty small window for the marriage to Elizabeth, and the date of this would have fitted pretty well.)

But, now I have my John's signature from his son's wedding and does anyone else think it looks very similar to the signature from the Waltham Holy Cross wedding, or am I clutching at straws here? (I don't have his signature from his first marriage yet because I am still waiting for SEAX to put the Leyton PR's online, think they said before the end of this year.) FamilySearch doesn't seem to have any baptisms at Waltham Holy Cross for the children of this couple, but I will have a look through the SEAX images to see if I can find any in there.

I think they look very similar - the small h with no loop, the o not completely circular in John.

How many years apart are they?

About 13 years apart.

It's so annoying that there is no banns register available for the date of this marriage!

Don't ask why, but bachelor is sometimes used as "free to marry". You might ask why bother to give status at all in that case. But those signatures look remarkably similar.

Pretty definitely the same hand if you ask me, Kite.

Thanks, everyone. It's not just the bachelor status that seems wrong, but also "of this parish". I know that sometimes people stayed in another parish for a few weeks before marrying to avoid having to have the banns called in two parishes or having to pay for a licence, but that doesn't seem a likely explanation for my John Horner.

There is such a short window of opportunity between death of first wife and marriage to second.

Do you suppose that either he had abandoned first wife/been having an affair/knew the bishop?

People would go to extraordinary lengths not to let the neighbours get a whiff of a marriage.

I'm pretty sure he hadn't abandoned his first wife but I guess the other two are possible. I'm sure that he did marry his Elizabeth because his children and grandchildren seem to have spent a lot of time going to court to dispute various legacies, and I'm sure that if any of his children were illegitimate, this would have been brought up in one of the cases!

Very true!

Well, the missing parishes have been added to SEAX / Essex Ancestors at last, and I have had a look at the stuff I couldn't look at before, and am still confused!

John Horner made his mark when he married Charlotte Sweatman in 1778, but of course he could have learned to sign his name between then and 1790. If he isn't the John Horner who signed as a witness when his son John got married in 1802 in Chigwell, then there is another John Horner involved! My John apparently signed his will which was written in 1820, although of course I can only view the PCC copy so I can't see the actual signature. But there is nothing to say that he made a mark instead of signing.

The witnesses at John Horner and Charlotte Sweatman's marriage were Tho Clarke and Edwd Hasler, both serial witnesses.

Witnesses at the marriage of John's daughter Sarah Charlotte Horner to Arthur Noone in 1810 were Saml Carter and Julia Sophia Hepworth.

Julia Sophia Hepworth married a Henry Newton 14 Dec 1811 also at St Mary, Leyton, and the witnesses were Wm Collins and Catherine Horner (another of John Horner's children).

Julia Sophia Hepworth was baptised 10 Oct 1790 at St Mary, Leyton, parents William Hepworth and Alice Mary. William Hepworth married Alice Mary Dowsett 28 Oct 1779 at St Sepulchre, London, witnesses William Johnson and Mary Ann Johnson. I can't find a baptism for Alice Mary Dowsett, but she could possibly be the Alice Dowsett who was baptised 24 May 1763 at St Mary, Leyton, parents William and Mary Dowsett, who would probably be William Dowsett and Mary James who got married in 1759, witnesses Eliz Blair and Jno James.

There is a Richard James, farmer, of Leyton, who is one of the executors of John Horner's will, but referred to as his "friend". Richard James is a witness at quite a few of John Horner's children's marriages, but I have not managed to find out whether he was actually related to the Horner family and if so, how.

A few other things I have found in the records which don't add up to anything but I don't want to forget them!
Sarah, baseborn daughter of Ann Golding and John Horner, baptised 24 Jun 1778 at Waltham Holy Cross, buried 26 Jul 1778 at Waltham Holy Cross (mother's surname spelt Goulding on the burial.)

Children of Thomas and Elizabeth Horner baptised at Waltham Holy Cross:
Sarah 6 Feb 1745 - possible burial 7 Mar 1764
Mary 26 Jul 1747
Ann 18 Feb 1749
John 16 Sep 1753
Martha 19 Jun 1757, buried 12 Apr 1758.
Thomas Horner, of Waltham, Essex, husbandman, bachelor, farmer's son, married Elizabeth Mils of the same parish, spinster, in a clandestine marriage 3 Oct 1741.
Eliz Horner, wife of Thomas, buried 20 Sep 1767 Waltham Holy Cross.
Thos Horner buried there 30 Aug 1771, no age shown.

George Day of Waltham, widower, married Sarah Rowley of Stepney, widow, 26 Sep 1811 at Waltham Holy Cross / Waltham Abbey, one of the witnesses is John Horner and the other one a serial witness. It looks like the same John Horner whose marriage was witnessed by George and Ann Day. I'm not sure whether it's the same George Day.

Out of the few Waltham Holy Cross marriage entries I have looked at, two of them have "bachelor" crossed out and "widower" written in, so maybe they weren't very careful about the man's marital status, which could explain why John Horner is down as a bachelor.

George Day baptised 30 Mar 1788 at Epping, baseborn, born 2 Mar 1788, mother Elizabeth Day. Nothing about the father.

Some more Day info which may or may not be relevant:
Robert Day of Waltham Holy Cross made his will in 1753 and it was proved in 1756, mentions his son George Day of Lowton (i.e. Loughton) - baptised 1722 in Waltham, son of Robert and Alice. Also mentions Alice, wife of Arthur Read, and Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Tolson. Arthur Read's will written in 1786 and proved in 1790 mentions George Day the elder, prisoner in Chelmsford Gaol, his sons George and Robert, his sister Elizabeth Burgen (Elizabeth Tolson married Francis Burgin or Burgen in 1759), and "each of his daughters". George and Elizabeth Day had the following children baptised at Loughton: Mary 1746 died in infancy, George 1749, Robert 1752, Alice 1754. George must have had at least one more daughter for "each of his daughters" to make sense and maybe it was Elizabeth, but I can't find anything to prove it.

There is a George Day burial 6 May 1801 at St Mary the Virgin, Leyton - could be the George born 1788 at Epping, meaning that his mother Elizabeth was probably the one who married John Horner. But as far as I can make out from the tiny PR image on SEAX that you get if you don't pay, there is no other information on the burial record apart from the date and his name, so it could easily be some other George Day.