d.16/06/1853
Yeoman farmer from Wing, Buckinghamshire
Relatives
Research:
George and Harriet Honour were both born in Buckinghamshire. George came from a well-established family of yeoman farmers in Wing. Their history goes back there at least to the 16th century. His father, also called George and his mother Elizabeth Sanders were married in Wing in 1775. George was their sixth child and first surviving son, he was born in May 1787.
Harriet was born in Barley End, a hamlet within the village of Pitstone but her family was much less settled than the Honour family. She was the ninth of ten children of William and Bridget Ashby whose families moved around between Ivinghoe, Stewkley, Pitsone and Aldbury during the second half of the 18th century. The family were also engaged in farming, some of them probably as tenant farmers but others with more substantial holdings. In the 1851 census Harriet’s cousin William Ashby, born at much the same time as her, is shown as farming 170 acres of land in Aldbury employing 6 men. William Ashby and Bridget Brand were married in Ivinghoe in 1768 and Harriet was born in 1790 when her mother was 40.
George Honour and Harriet Ashby were married in Pitstone on 18th October 1808. Their first daughter was baptised in Little Gaddesden and George, their first son in Hemel Hempstead. By 1818 they seem to have settled in Berkhamsted because their remaining six children were born in Berkhamsted. Their daughter Ann Honour, their seventh child, was baptised in Berkhamsted on 4th January 1829.
Shortly after Ann’s birth George’s mother Elizabeth died in Wing and his father re-married shortly afterwards to a widow called Ann Mead. George (senior) was still living in a freehold property in Wing and was clearly quite comfortably off because there is mention in the Bucks Herald of a court case involving one of the barns being burnt down on his land and the stealing of 11 sovereigns from his house.
In January 1841 George Honour’s father, George (senior) died in Wing. His will left a freehold cottage to his second wife Ann, on condition that she paid fire insurance! She was also to have all the possessions she had brought to the marriage plus a sum of 10/6d per week to be paid to her on a Saturday by George and his brother William, who were the executors of their father’s will. After other legacies to their siblings George and William inherited the residue of their father’s estate, including a number of cottages and buildings in Wing. So at this point George became a landowner.
By the time of the 1841 census in Berkhamsted four of George and Harriet’s eldest children had moved away from their parents who were living in Grubbs Lane (Chesham Road). George is described as an agricultural labourer. Their 23 year old daughter Sarah, who was unmarried, was living with them together with two of her own children. Sarah’s two younger sisters Harriet and Ann were also still living at home with their parents. Ann was just 12 years old.
1851 was a notable year for the family. When the census was taken at the end of March the family in Grubbs Lane had grown. George and Harriet’s second son Richard was now back living with them. Both he and his father were described as farm labourers. The three unmarried daughters Sarah, Harriet and Ann were all straw plaiters. Sarah, still unmarried, now had four children all living in the household. The two boys were farm labourers and the eight year old daughter was also described as a straw plaiter. Two year old George (junior) did not have a job! Straw plaiting was a common trade in Berkhamsted in the mid-nineteenth century. It was a cottage industry, carried out in the home and a good plaiter could earn £1 per week, more than double the agricultural wage of 6 to 8 shillings. The straw plaits would be sold at the weekend market. Children attended a plait school in Northchurch run by a Mrs Wimbush[i] where parents paid a penny or two a week and supplied the straw, grown locally in the Chilterns.
A couple of months after the census Ann Honour married an agricultural labourer Charles Daniels in Berkhamsted. At much the same time, on 25th May 1851 Harriet Honour died at home in Grubbs Lane. She was 63 years old and had been very unwell for three weeks. She and George had been married for 43 years.
Two years later George Honour died on 16th June 1853 at the age of 68. His cause of death was given as “natural decay”.
Sadly, Ann Daniels only lived to be 26. She died of tuberculosis on 3rd January 1855, less than four years after her marriage to Charles.
Most of George and Harriet’s other children left Berkhamsted in the late 19th century. George (junior) became a cabinet maker and Richard a shepherd. But Sarah and young Harriet did remain in Grubbs Lane where they became laundresses. Sarah died, still unmarried, in 1878.
George, Harriet and Ann share a gravestone in Rectory Lane cemetery.
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