William WEBB (c1785 - ?), tailor of Bermondsey

From the baptismal records of William's children, we know that his first marriage was to a Sarah. She was born Sarah McNeal, and it was a stroke of luck that brought this to light, as it was on the Australian marriage certificate of one of their sons. British marriage certificates do not require a mother's maiden name. McNeal can, apparently, be spelt in various ways.

William was a tailor for most of his working life, although in 1810 his occupation was given as a sailmaker, and according to his 1848 will, he was by then also a coffee shop owner. His address in 1816 was Queen Street, although the address on his daughter's baptismal record in 1825 was 'workhouse'. It is possible that his drunkenness put the family there, as various pieces of evidence through various branches of the family showed that he was passionately for "the good of Total Abstinance" and regretted his "former errors" in that connection. He begged his family "to avoid the maddening drink as they would the deadlyist poison". (The quotations are from his will.) He became the Registrar of the Bermondsey Total Abstinence Society.

By 1829 the family had moved to Stepney, a tailoring district where William again found work. The address of 2 Bedford Place, Rotherhithe was given on one of his son's marriage certificate in 1839, but this might have been where the son was setting up home, rather than where William and Sarah were living.

William and Sarah McNeal had the following children. (Most of the records are courtesy of Vera Bailey [born Vera Webb], a descendant of William, and therefore a distant cousin of Neil's, but thanks are also due to Heidi Webb for information from Australia.)

1. Mary Eliza Webb, baptised 25 Feb 1810 at St John Horsleydown.
2. Mary Ann Webb, born 6 Dec 1811 and baptised 5 Jan 1812 at St Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey, married John Story.
3. Elizabeth Webb, born 6 April 1813 and baptised 16 May 1813 at St John Horsleydown.
4. William Frederick Webb was born 20 October 1814 and baptised in St John Horsleydown on 27 November of the same year. He was a tailor. He married Elizabeth Chiswick born 1814 Bermondsey around 1835 but the marriage has not been found. He died in 1895 at Rotherhithe. The children were as follows:

• William Alfred Webb born Mar 04 1836, baptised May 01 at St John Horsleydown. He married Sarah Berkley from Cornwall in 1870.
• Susanna Elizabeth Webb born 21 Dec 1837, baptised 14 Jan 1838 at St John Horsleydown. She married Charles John Turner in 1857 and had 8 children.
• Frederick William Webb baptised Oct 06 1839 St John Horsleydown. He married Isabella Matilda Etches in 1862 and had 4 children.
• Jane Sarah Webb born 10 May 1842, baptised Jul 17 at St John Horsleydown. She died in 1854 aged 12.
• Rosetta Ann Webb born 02 Mar 1844, baptised Mar 24 at St John Horsleydown. She married George Henry Palmer 1868 and had 2 children.
• Edward Henry Webb born 23 Feb 1846, baptised May 03 at St John Horsleydown. He died in1847 aged 1 year.
• Edward Henry Webb born Jan 19 1848, baptised Feb 06 at St John Horsleydown. He married Elizabeth Keziah Edgington in 1873 and had 8 children. This family moved to the Limehouse area of Middlesex.
• Emma Eliza Webb born 29 Apr 1850, baptised Jun 09 at St John Horsleydown. She married William T GIRARD in 1869 and had two children.

When the above children were baptised the family were living in Abdy Street and Three Oak Lane. By 1861 the family were living in Woolf Street Bermondsey where two more children were shown to be part of the family:

• Mary Jane Webb born c. 1855 in Bermondsey and possibly married Henry Charles Edgington in in 1878 and had three children.
• Alfred George Webb born c 1857/8 in Bermondsey was a deal porter. He set up home with Emily Jane Stoyles, formerly Patterson, nee Saunter in Deptford and lived for the most part in 10 Sayes Street Deptford. Due to expansion of Surrey Commercial Docks the family moved to 212 Grove Street Deptford. That was their address when Alfred George died at Greenwich Hospital in 1917. He and Emily had the following eight children:

1. Elizabeth Jane Webb born 1881 Deptford. She married Albert Cooper and had 9 children.
2. Alfred George Webb (aka Joe) born 1883 Deptford. He never married but had two children with the surname Russell.
3. Charles Frederick Webb born 1888 Deptford. He married Alice and had five boys and one girl.
4. Emily Jane Webb born 1891 Deptford. She married Frederick Ransom in Hastings. There were no children of this union.
5. Mary Ann Webb (aka Polly) born 1894 Deptford. She married 1) Jack Cohen and 2) Charles Phillips. She had three girls and one boy by Charles.
6. Ann Eliza Webb (aka Nance) born 1896 Deptford. She married 1) Sydney Rolf and 2) Leonard Miller. She had three girls by Sydney and 1 boy by Leonard.
7. Albert Webb born in 1899 Deptford. He married Doris Kate Rentall in 1931 and had one girl, Vera born 1938.
8. Maud born in 1903 at Deptford. She married William Berry had one daughter Doris, born in 1927. Doris became Doris Cook on marriage. She died on 14 February 2006.

5. Alfred Webb (Neil's great great grandfather) - see his own page.
6. Samuel Webb, born 5 July 1822 and baptised 14 January 1827 at St John Horsleydown. He married Margaret Morgan on 11 May 1847 at St Olaves, Surrey and then emigrated from Australia, arriving in Adelaide on the 'Trafalgar' in 1849. Samuel and his younger brother George (see below) then walked to Bendigo (formerly Sandhurst) to try and find gold. They were unsuccessful, but both brothers later became successful tailors, like their father. Samuel died age 94 in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. Samuel and Margaret had the following children:

• Samuel Webb, born 21 July 1848, London, England, died 25 July 1948, London, England
• Margaret Webb, born 29 November, Adelaide, Australia, died 14 June, Kew, Australia
• Samuel Webb, born 15 July 1851, Adelaide, Australia, died 31 August 1919, Ferntree Gully, Victoria, Australia
• Letitia Webb, born 22 June 1853, Melbourne, Australia, died NSW Australia, married Thomas Cowan, 1882
• Evan Webb, born 21 Feb 1855, Prahran, Australia, died 17 April 1906, Camberwell, Australia
• Louisa Webb, born 1857, Prahran, Australia, died 12 Feb 1859. Prahran, Australia
• Alfred Webb, born 12 Oct 1858, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, died 1 Dec 1858, Bendigo, Australia
• Louisa Webb, born 10 Jan 1860, Sandhurst, Australia, died Dec 1914, Bendigo Victoria, Australia, married Alfred Francis Warne
• Eliza Webb, born 22 Sep 1863, Bendigo, Australia, died 1 June 1862, Bendigo, Australia
• Frederick Webb, born 22 Sep 1863, Bendigo, Australia, died 2 April 1865, Bendigo, Australia
• Malinda Evelyn Webb, born 28 May 1867, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, died 23 June 1954, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The photo, taken from The Bendigonan, April 20th 1915 shows four generations of his Webb line. The caption reads: Mr Samuel Webb of Quarry Hill, Bendigo, who will be 93 on 5th July next; Mr Samuel Webb junr (64); Mr Frederick William Webb (35); and Melton Webb (12 months).

7. Sarah Webb, born 29 March 1824 and baptised 14 January 1827 at St John Horsleydown. If the 1841 census entry (see below) is for the right family, Sarah died young, because a younger sister was given the same name. 
8. Jane Webb was born on 22 October 1825 in the workhouse and baptised 18 November 1825 at St John Horsleydown. She married William Bacon Seager, a pianoforte maker, in 1849, and the couple eventually settled in Milton next to Gravesend where Jane died in 1894. William died in Camberwell in 1903. There were the following nine children:

• William Bacon Seager bn.c1850. He died quite young and unmarried
• Alfred Seager born c1852. He married Caroline and lived in Camberwell. There were eight known children.
• Jane Seager born c1854.
• Margaret Seager born c1856 died unmarried in Gravesend.
• Walter Seager born c1858. He married Alice Seymour Day in 1889, and was at one time in Dartford Kent. There were four known children.
• Ernest Seager born c1860. He married Agnes Buttrick in 1889 and settled in Prittlewell Essex. There were three known children.
• Emma Seager born c1862.
• Mary Ann Seager born c1865.
• Martha Seager born in the last quarter of 1866.

A grandson of Jane Webb and William Seager emigrated to Australia in 1952. He was Lawrence Oscar Redgewell Seager, the son of Alfred Samuel and Carolin Crumpton. He was married to Gertrude Anna Hall and they had one son, Douglas Lawrence.

9. George Webb, probably born about 1827. In the 1841 census he was with his brother, Alfred, at Cotton Street, Poplar, probably apprenticed to him as a tailor. George married Emma Northover on 4 May 1850  at St Mary the Newington, and the couple emigrated to Australia, arriving in Adelaide on the 'Joseph Somes' in 1850. Like his brother, Samuel, George became a successful tailor after unsuccessfully searching for gold.
10. John Webb was born on 28 Aug 1829 and baptised on 27 Sep 1829 at St George’s in the East, Stepney. He, like George and Samuel emigrated to Australia, but he was not a tailor. He was a ‘drayman’ when he married and a ‘gardener’ when he died.

William was widowed sometime before 1841 and he want on to marry another Sarah, as indicated by the 1841 census for John Street, Bermondsey. It showed William, now age 51, a tailor, with wife, Sarah, age 26, a baby named yet another Sarah and his son John by his first wife, age 12. Thanks to Julia Brown, a descendant of William and his second wife, we know that this second wife Sarah was born Sarah Attrige or Hatridge. (Both spellings occur in the various documents.) The marriage took place on 24 September 1837 at St George, Camberwell (the same church as William's son William Frederick married two years earlier). This Sarah gave William two more children:

11. Sarah Webb, born about 1841. 
12. Albert Henry Webb was born on 26 April 1843. He married Elizabeth Maria Morgan in 1864. Julia Brown, whose research and memorabilia have added much to our early understanding of William, is descended from Albert Henry.

The family has not been found in the 1851 census. So the 1841 census is the only contemporary document which gives William's age. (No baptismal or marriage record has been found online and the records for St John Horsleydown and St Mary Magdalene have been worked through in detail.) At 51 in 1841, the census indicates a birth year of 1790. However this cannot be taken at face value. One reason is that it was common practice for people to embellish their ages for a census, with young adults adding a year or two and older people subtracting a year or two. This was often for employment reasons, but in William's case it could have been because he had married a woman so much younger than himself. The other reason for the unreliability of William's age as given by the census is that in 1841, the first census, ages of adults were supposed to be rounded down into five year groupings of 20, 25, 30, 35 etc, presumably to aid analysis. The enumerator for William's 1841 census return clearly did not understand this requirement and may just have taken off 5 years. If the 1790 date were accurate William would have baptised his first child at the age of 20, which would have meant that he probably married at 18 or 19. This is by no means impossible. However, an age of about 25 is more likely. Having weighed up all these factors, the best guess for William's birth year is about 1785. If only the family could be found in the 1851 census, much would become clearer.

We do not yet know when William or either Sarah died. William's 1848 will was kept in Julia Brown's family and was never proven. So there is no way of knowing whether or not William was near to death when he made it.

William seems to have spent much of his adult life in and around Bermondsey, and it may be noteworthy that there was a will for a William Webb, sailmaker of Bermondsey, proved in 1717. That William may have been an ancestor. The association with Bermondsey continued through Neil's Webb ancestry for five generations - see in particular the piece on Butlers Wharf by William Eric Webb. Also in Neil's line the name of William for the firstborn Webb son has continued through to this day.

For more genealogical data on the Webbs, see Martin Hagger's site on http://homepage.ntlworld.com/martin.hagger1