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Tuesday 20 October 2015

The Willoby Family ‘Pedigree’

From Julia Day:

In connection with the Greenses/Ravensdowne families project,  I have been researching the Willoby family, whose male line came to an end with the death of Edward Willoby in 1922.  He was a land agent, but his brother William Gray, father Edward, his grandfather William and great-grandfather Edward were all solicitors, and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather served the office of Town Clerk.

I have found many records to help build a fuller picture of the family, but some of the most interesting have been newspaper articles. 

On Edward’s death in 1922, an article was published in the Berwick Advertiser describing him and listing his interests.  It describes him as reserved and dignified, with ‘simple old-world manners’.  However, a keen horseman, it also paints a picture of him ‘in blue coat and white buckskin breeches’  riding up Hide Hill towards his stables at the top of Woolmarket on a ‘tired and mudstained’ horse. 

Edward never married, neither did his brother, William, or his sister, Mary Lee Willoby.  

His other sister, Jane Gray Willoby, married William Anderson and lived in Dunbar.  She died in 1927, her death notice in the Berwick Advertiser stating that she was ‘the only surviving member of the Willoby family resident in Berwick since the sixteenth century. 

In 1923, an article on the Willoby Family appeared in the Berwick Advertiser, drawing up a family tree going back to around 1603.  It relies in part on parish records, most of which I have checked, but also draws on a pedigree ‘in the possession of the late Mr Edward Willoby’. 

I wonder where it is now. 

Have you heard of this pedigree, and whether it still exists? 

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