Seeking England Project help: Richard Bracewell

Question

The US Southern Colonies project is seeking help from our England Project friends. This profile represents the father or purported father of a number of Virginia settlers but he himself never emigrated. We seek your partnership in correcting his origins, wives and children. We have access to the 1999 Virginia Genealogist article that lays out this family and can help. Once all cleaned up, we'll need project protection on him and his family, with England taking on those profiles that remained in England, and US So. Col. managing those on the Virginia side of the pond.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Thanks for asking Jillaine, the England Project will start with the adoption process for Richard Bracewell.

Is there a text version of the 1999 article which you can make available to the England Project on a Free Space Page?

British History Online has the full text of Foster's Oxford Alumni and shows that Robert Bracewell, son of Richard Bracewell gent, of London, entered Hart Hall aged 15 on 22 February 1627/8 and gained a Bachelor of Arts degree, BA (not a BB as is on his profile) in 1631. That would be the appropriate degree for a prospective clergyman. There are no other Bracewell entries in Foster.

Comments

Unfortunately, the article is behind a subscription wall, and then after that it's pdf/graphic format, not text.

But let me google it and see if someone else has extracted it elsewhere.

---

While looking for it on Google, I found some important additional articles:

http://braswellgenealogy.blogspot.com/2007/10/rev-robert-bracewells-ancestry-by.html

That blog includes links to corrections to the 1999 article that are no longer online, but  I then found the page via the WayBack Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20131127074857/http://www.nonawilliams.com/names/Braswell/default.htm

---

That's interesting - it's freely available to me in England. The text reads:

Bracewell, Robert, s. Richard, of London, gent. Hart Hall, matric. 22 Feb., 1627-8, aged 15; B.A. 3 Nov., 1631.

Citation:

'Bludworth-Brakell', in Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714, ed. Joseph Foster (Oxford, 1891), pp. 142-170. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp142-170 [accessed 4 July 2020].

---

Robert Bracewell is not in the Clergy database https://theclergydatabase.org.uk/jsp/search/index.jsp

What is the source for him leaving Hart Hall Oxford and becoming a clergyman ? 

---

Robert's profile has him as a clergyman in Virginia. I couldn't see him in The Clergy database either Joe.

---

Clergymen were forbidden to join the Military, so "Rev Bracewell no doubt joined the company of Cavaliers and emigrated to Virginia. " 

is highly unlikely. 

---

I think this is the will of Richard Bracewell (or at least the will referenced on the profile)

Sorry, I haven't time to have a go at transcribing (dinner time and it isn't easy)

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/sharing/20734442?h=050e67

---

Robert's matriculation age of 15 in February 1628 is very likely correct so he can't have been baptised in 1611 as his profile states.

---

The only source for Robert Bracewell as a clergyman, appears to be the reference in The Statutes at large; : being a collection of all the laws of Virginia, vol. 1, p. 378 by W.W. Hening, which refers to him as "Mr. Robert Bracewell, Clarke"

He is also named in The colonial clergy of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, p. 7 by Frederick Lewis Weis, but I presume that is based on the same information as above?

I did find this article Anglican clergy in colonial America ordained by Bishops of London, by James B. Bell which doesn't name Robert Bracewell, but I notice on p. 105 that there are some years missing from the records including 1624-1674.

If Robert Bracewell wasn't ordained until just before he left for Virginia, which would presumably be in those missing years, then that might account for why he isn't in the Clergy database?

Answer 2

You can start with detaching Lettice Hartley as his wife. A Richard Bracewell did marry Lettyce Harsley in Barnoldswick (just a couple of miles from Bracewell itself) but it was in 1593 not 1603 as on the profile and therefore was not this RB.

"England Marriages, 1538–1973 ", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NVBN-V2N : 12 March 2020), Richard Bracewell, 1593

Comments

Thanks Matthew - I was just going to comment that I had found the same marriage  - unfortunately the images for this register aren't online to check whether the parties were "of this parish" or elsewhere. But as you say, it's too early to be the marriage of this Richard Bracewell.

---

Thank you, England!!!