This page was last revised on 2009-02-02.
Elizabeth Rolfe was born around 1813 in Baughurst, Hants.1
In 1841 she was a servant in the household of George Buckeridge, grocer, of Bridge Street, Newbury, Berkshire.1A
She married [E3] Henry Baggs on the 16th March 1843, after banns, at the parish church, Dummere, Hants., where she lived at that time; she signed her name. Their children were: Henry (1844), Rachael (1846), John (1848), Elizabeth (1851), Jane (1851), [E2] Walter (1854), and William (c.1854); all were born in Kingsclere, and baptised in Hannington, Hants.2
In 1851 and 1861 she lived at Cottington's Hill, in the Kingsclere parish part of Hannington. By 1871 she and her family had apparently moved into the centre of Hannington village. By 1881 - following the death of her husband - she had moved in as a lodger in the household of one James Cleave, 48, a labourer with a wife and eight children, living in Hannington. She died in Hannington, Kingsclere, on the 7th December 1885, after ten months malignancy of the liver, and two months ascites. Her body was buried in Hannington churchyard on the 12th.3
Elizabeth Rolfe was a daughter of [F2] William and [F3] Jane Rolf(e)/Roff .4
*** For an exhaustive treatment of the lives of Henry and Elizabeth Baggs, you are welcome to download this .pdf file. Note that it is a large file - nearly 3 Mb. ***
1 1814 census return (PRO HO 107/33/7 f17 p28) suggests 1812–16, not Berkshire, 1851 & 1871 census returns suggest 1812–3, 1861 suggests 1813–4; s14 says 1813. Baptism not found in Baughurst, Hannington, Wolverton, Tadley, Wootton St Lawrence, or Ewhurst. [parish register]. An Elizabeth Rolfe was baptised in Kingsclere on the 30th July 1815, described as base-born, daughter of Mary Rolfe, spinster, of Marsh [parish register]; International Genealogical Index also has a Mary Rolfe, daughter of John & Sarah Rolfe, baptised at Kingsclere on the 14th April 1797. Also in Kingsclere is an Elizabeth Rolfe, baptised on the 2nd June 1816, daughter of William and Ann Rolfe. International Genealogical Index does not show any Elizabeth Rolfe baptisms in the adjacent Berkshire parishes of Brimpton, Wasing, Aldermaston or Padworth. For reasons there isn't space to go into here, I don't consider either of the Kingsclere baptisms to be the ancestral Elizabeth (see my Henry and Elizabeth Baggs, 1997).
1A HO 107/33/7 f17 p28. This entry is the only Eliz* Rolfe [soundex] resident in Hampshire or Berkshire who is apparently single. As her father died in Newbury only a year later, this seems more than coincidental.
2 marriage certificate; census returns; Ken Smallbone: Pedigree of Baggs; son's marriage certificate; children's birth certificates.
3 census returns; children's birth certificates; death certificate; Ken Smallbone: Pedigree of Baggs; source reference for burial misplaced - presumably parish register.
4 marriage certificate; Dummer & Baughurst parish registers; census returns; siblings' marriage certificates.
William Rolfe was born in the early 1780s, in Hampshire.1
A resident of Dummer, he married [F3] Jane Thomas on the 30th June 1806, in Dummer. Their children were: [F1] Elizabeth (1813), Rachel (1817), John (1820), and Robert (1820), all being born in Baughurst.2
From 1817 to 1822 he is described as a labourer, of Baughurst. He had probably left Baughurst by 1831, and was certainly not a head of household there at that date.3
In 1841 he was a male servant, living in Dummer with his son and daughter.4
He died of a liver complaint on the 11th June 1842 in Sandleford, just outside Newbury, Berks.5
In 1843 and 1866, at the weddings of his daughters, William Rolfe was described as a gardener.6
1 death certificate suggests 1780, 1841 census returns 1782-6. In the period 1778-90 no-one of this name was baptised in Dummer, Baughurst, Wotton St Lawrence, Tadley, Ewhurst, Wolverton, North Waltham, Deane, Church Oakley, Winslade, Farleigh Wallop, Nutley, Chilton Candover, Northington, Woodmancote or Popham. However there were two individuals named William Rolfe baptised in Kingsclere at this time. One was baptised on the 15th December 1780, son of John and Sarah Rolfe; the other on the 6th August 1786, son of William and Elizabeth Rolfe. It is not clear which of these is the ancestral William. [Kingsclere register is Hants. RO 90M72]
2 parish register; census returns
3 parish register; HRO 58M80/PO18.
4 census returns
5 death certificate.
6 daughters' marriage certificates.
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