Re: Comments on Alice (Aston) Massey // WELLES & ASTON

Question

Merry Christmas and contemporaneous holidays, G2Gers, 

Do we have any experts in the WELLES or ASTON families of Staffordshire, 1350-1500? Please see public comment(s) I left on [[Aston-73]] recently. 

These family groups are, I believe, "above" certain WEBSTER, BARRINGTON & HAYWARD families with colonial New England gateway-type ancestors of many living Americans and WikiTree members; and "below" various PLANTAGENETS. And so, very interesting to me. 

I'm concerned to un-tangle and/or validate (source!) seemingly problematic cousin marriages; and wary of over-optimistic claims of royal descent which have in later centuries been easily ginned up for the usual reasons.

Thoughts?

This ought to be well-mapped ground if I'm correct about where they sit in descent from Anglo-Norman nobility to colonial New England, for example this ancestor of mine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Webster_(governor)

And possibly, this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_de_Welles,_5th_Baron_Welles

Respectfully, 

Isaac in California

CC Robin Lee

On 22 Dec 2020 Isaac Taylor wrote on Aston-73:

Outside of WikiTree in my personal research I am tracking what may be a braiding intermarriage between Welles and Aston families in this era, with a couple of problematic (then and/or now) cousin-marriages. I'm noodling on the connections. If I can convince myself it's directly lineal, I'll go deep on it. Not sure yet. At first glance -- genealogical sketch quality -- it may go like this: #John WELLES (1352-1421), 5th Baron Welles, Champion of England etc m. Eleanor de MOWBRAY, dau. of John III by his wife Elizabeth de SEGRAVE (both 1/2 Plantagenet); they had: #Thomas WELLES (1380-1411) of Little Haywood, Staf., m. Cecily (Cecilia) ASTON, dau. of John Aston of Longdon; they had: #John WELLES (b. 1407) of Horecross (Hoar Cross), Staf., m. Alice (Alicia) ASTON, dau. of Richard Aston of Horecross; and his sister, Joan WELLES (b. Abt. 1410-15?) who m. William BARRINGTON (b.1410?). And these siblings had: #Thomas WELLES (1435 - Abt. 1503?) who married his first cousin Johanna BARRINGTON (1440 - Aft. 1466) Of which consanguinity there would have to be some record, right?

Comments

Here is a relation of the WELLES family group in question:

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/welles-humphrey-1502-65

I have read an assertion in some Visitation these Welles were once "LNAB'd" as YOXALL, or seized there etc; and the name drifted to Welles via ATHWELL in Yoxall, Staffordshire; and later to LNABs like Well, Weld etc. There are of course many Welds in New England to this day, including some dear friends of my family growing up in Cape Ann, Massachusetts; and others, more blue-blood of Boston, such as our recent Governor and sometime mackerel novelist, Bill Weld.

Answer 1

Not really an expert but I'll bite - so one major Aston problem is there's a bunch of families with this name and they seem to get mixed up with other families that spelled their name similarly (e.g. Ashton, see Gov. Webster's Mom).

The notable family of Aston of Aston Hall, Aston-by-Sutton in Cheshire as far as I can tell doesn't have connections to Staffordshire and that Tixall source doesn't specifically say Ralph de Aston of Haywood, Staffordshire is a relation to the Cheshire Astons.

Similarly, the Aston family of Tixall Hall (later Barons Aston of Forfar) don't seem to have a clear connection to Cheshire. The Landed families source picks up with Sir John Aston KB, IX in the Tixall source 

Ultimately, Aston-73 needs to have her parents removed until we can sort this out.

Comments

Three comments:

# Yes, we should disconnect her currently-attached parents if we can't source the placement. This source flatly contradicts what we publish today: https://archive.org/stream/visitacionofstaf00graz#page/145/mode/1up giving Alice dau. of Richard Aston of Hoar Cross, Staf.

# Yes to Ashton =/= Aston etc. Related, I wasted a year of my life on Gov. Webster's mom's wrong pedigree (the Ashton-Mainwaring not-ness). Taught me some valuable lessons. If you happen to know who his mom really is, I'm all ears. I have zero confidence in what WikiTree says today, that her fore-fathers teleported from Bucks. to Notts. to Leics. before she births the future Governor of Conn., sigh.  

# Is there any canonical study of Aston vs Ashton vs Assheton vs Ashedon/Ashendon etc, which I could see drifting apart over time naturally. I believe the latter is Bucks., via Esshesdon and even Essiheidon; and Assedune circa Domesday.

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Yeah, it just means forest land. So, it's going to be all over the place for Anglo-Saxon families normanizing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashendon

Aston could be a creeping simplification of "Ash Dun" meaning 'ash-treed fort/hill' in pre-Anglo-Saxon British?

Or, Aston could also be "East-Town" from the later (non-British Saxon) linguistic concept as 'Ēast-Seaxe' --> Essex, vs. Sussex, Wessex etc, as mouthed by Norman invaders etc. 

It's also possible this difference is precisely the difference between Ash-ton and As-ton; though of course that's hellaciously complicated by the quantum/silent h in some British voicings, nevermind latin scribing, or Franco-Dane conception of what locals are saying etc.

Dunno. Fascinating but super challenging & obviously we must rely on credible sources. 

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I keep meaning to point out that consistent name spelling is somewhat of a modern concept. In early modern England, you had both lower literacy and we have very little written by individuals themselves.

We also have clerks who just write what they heard and didn't really care to get names accurate because spelling wasn't important - they knew who the people were by the context not the spelling. And these handwritten documents have been digitized with varying degrees of accuracy.

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The hardest thing for me is literate people would just write their names differently at various points in their lives. A reason for this I have seen mentioned by historians is they were trying to distinguish themselves from a relative but sometimes it seems to be like the clerks - it wasn't a big deal to spell your name in different ways. You have to both verify the facts and the context to make sure you have the right person.

I think the hardest things for amateur genealogists is a significant percentage of people who couldn't read or write also never did anything during their life that generated a document (or those documents never survived to today) so we have no sources for these people. These dead ends are very frustrating and all the common first names lead to a lot of wrong guesses.

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Yes absolutely. This continued into colonial New England as well. Even among well educated Puritans etc. In fact this continued all the way into Revolutionary US era in my extendes family with seemingly willfully inconsistent spelling even of family names in the same town for centuries. Never a dull moment!

In fact, coincidentally, there's a Massey (one of this Alice's names) in Ipswich, Mass. who went by "Muzzey" on purpose. Though I forget if perhaps he was already from a Mussey family before emigrating. Somebody here will probably know who I'm talking about. Lived up on High Street in the "first period" row of 1600s houses with the Lords and the Kimballs etc, IIRC.

Happy New Year

Answer 2

First, Thomas Welles (or Attewell) of Little Haywood and Hoar Cross was not a son of John Welles, 5th Baron Welles and Eleanor Mowbray.  John Welles had no son Thomas.  No Thomas occurs in any record; their coats of arms are co,pletely different; Thomas would have been the oldest son and so the 6th Lord Welles; John Welles made several indentures with remainder interests to his heirs spelled out and if he had a son Thomas he would have been named.  So, the Welles family you are investigating is completely separate from the Lord Welles line.

Some clues to this family and the connection to the Aston family can be found in:

• See Collections for a History of Staffordshire, Volume 2 (Birmingham: Wm Salt Archaeological Society, 1881):  page 132 for clues as to ancestry. ''"History of the Parish of Blymhill:"'' by George Bridgeman.
• Shaw, Stebbing. ''The History and Antiquities of Staffordshire'', vol. 1. (1798): page 104.   Need to find free copy
• https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4461655
• The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A history of the County of Stafford. Tutbury and Needwood Forest, Volume 10  Snippet view page 309. 

"Henry was apparently succeeded by a daughter, Ermintrude, the wife of Adam Aston of Ashmorebrook (in Burntwood, near Lichfield), and in 1431 their son Richard surrendered Hoar Cross to his daughter Alice and her husband John Attewell (or Welles).⁹  The later descent is uncertain but Thomas Welles, presumably John's son or grandson, was the lord by the late 1480s¹⁰.  His heir in 1509 was his son John, a Staffordshire MP on various occasions, and John was succeeded in 1528 by his son Humphrey.¹¹ " (unfortunately I can't get the references given to come up in google snippet view so I don't know what references 9, 10, 11 are).

I think it likely that the marriage of Thomas Aston to Cicely Aston is an error - it is too unlikely that father and son both married an Aston.

Comments

Thanks, I will dig into your notes when time allows.