The Ancestry of Leslie Douglas Gale
Researching a family tree is a difficult task. It is a bit like reading a book backwards: the ending is known but the beginning has to be deduced from the ending. When relating the story, however, it is much easier to follow the story from the earliest time through to the present and that is what we have chosen to do.
We will follow just the Gale name and ignore the many ‘side’ branches.
Almost all the Gale family originally lived in the Devon town of Bovey Tracey. The population in 2011 was 7,721 and it would have been far smaller a century or more ago. Travel in those times was far more difficult until the coming of the railways. Most of the ancestors we will discuss were born, lived, married and died within a few miles of this town.
It is an unfortunate fact that women were regarded as second-class citizens for most of the early records. Consequently, our story is somewhat male-dominated. The position is not helped by the fact that women took their husband’s surname on marriage which made them difficult to place in the family tree.
We will begin with the person who is thought to be the earliest Gale ancestor we have been able to find. His name was John Gale and we know nothing about him with the exception that he was married and had a son, Jonas Gale.
JONAS GALE (b.1650) [LDG’s great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather]
Aside: Placing Jonas in history
William Shakespeare dies
Jonas was born in Bovey Tracey.
We have his birth record [the third row from the bottom of the diagram below]:-
It is in Latin and is difficult to read.
Jonas filius Johys Geale …………. ‘Jonas son of Johis Gale was baptised..’
‘Johis, is probably an abbreviation of ,Ioannes’, the latin for ‘John’.
A little later on we find that Jonas married:
His bride was Jane Sentill and they married 24 April 1673.
By 1674 they had produced a child, John Gale.
JOHN GALE(b.1674) [LDG’s great, great, great, great, great, grandfather]
Again we know very little about John. We have a birth record from 1674:
Only the father is recorded. Jane doesn’t get a mention. In early times the first child usually appeared within a year of marriage so we may be fairly confident that John is the son of Jonas and Jane. In this case we can also find a sister, Mary Gale (b.1685). There may well have been other children.
John married a Jane Tuckerman in 1695 in Bovey Tracey:
Jane came from neighbouring Ashburton and we can follow her ancestors back even further than the Gales. She was the daughter of Robert Tuckerman (b.1646 in Ashburton) whose father was also Robert Tuckerman (b.1611) and whose grandfather was Richerd Tuckerman (b.1576) – we think! There is always a measure of uncertainty in tracing very early ancestors.
Returning to John and Jane Gale, they named their first-born Jonas after his grandfather which helps to identify the family line:
Again there is no mention of the mother. There are two more children that we know of: Mary (b.1700) and Robert (b.1698).
ROBERT GALE (b.1698) [LDG’s great, great, great, great, grandfather]
Aside: Placing Robert in history
In 1718, the Transportation Act introduced penal transportation. Between 1718 and 1776, over 50,000 convicts were transported to Virginia and Maryland in the modern United States.
This at least is easier to read even if it is not more informative.
Robert married a local girl, Mary Ann Daymond in 1722 in Bovey Tracey:
The Daymonds were a large family and we shall meet their name again in the Gale family tree. In a small town, intermarriage between large families was common.
They had four children, John (b.1725), Mary (b.1729), William (b.1733) Jane (b.1736)
JOHN GALE (b.1725) [LDG’s great, great, great, grandfather]
John is believed to have had some position at the local church because he was witness to many of the marriages held there during his lifetime. He married a Katherine Preast from Moretonhampstead in 1752:
They had six children:-
John (b.1755), Mary (b.1757), Joseph (b.1766), Elizabeth (b.1768), Samuel (b.1769) and Robert (b.1771).
ROBERT GALE (b.1771 in Bovey Tracey) [LDG’s great, great, grandfather]
As with all the previous ancestors, we are restricted to birth and marriage records. Robert’s birth record also fails to record his mother:
He married a Mary Paddon (b.1768) from Doddiscombsleigh (which is about 7 miles from Bovey Tracey) in 1794.
Note that Robert signed his own name – quite unusual for the time. Mary made a mark. She came from a line of three Paddons, all called Robert, who lived in Christow (about 7 miles from Bovey Tracey) born in 1728, 1692 & 1667.
Robert and Mary had five children:
Sarah (b.1795), Joseph (b.1796), John (b.1803), Robert (b.1806) and Ann (b.1810)
The beginnings of the 19th century is when at last we can find out more about people due to the advent of census returns.
We will consider two of these children in some detail:
Aside:
Consider first John Gale (b.1803). As usual we can find a baptism record:
However we can find a lot more about John. He married Mary Ann Scott in 1825 in Bovey Tracey:
The witnesses also need comment. Robert Gale was probably John’s brother but
could have been his father. Ann Scott (b.1801) was a sister of Mary Ann.
We can find information on this couple from the 1841, 1851 and 1861 census returns. That for 1851 is reproduced below:
The 1861 census tells us more:
Living with them is Johanna Scott, mother-in-law. This confirms the identification of John Gale’s wife as being Mary Ann Scott and also there is sister Ann Scott. All the girls are described as ‘Dressmaker’ . This was common and it is not because John and Mary Ann had a cottage industry making dresses!
John died in 1866 and Mary Ann in 1889. They are buried in Bovey Tracey churchyard:
ROBERT GALE (b. 1806) [LDG’s great grandfather]
John’s brother, Robert, is a direct ancestor. His baptism record not only states his father’s name but also gives his mother’s – feminism triumphant!
In 1828, he married Mary Bond (also from Bovey Tracey):
The Elizabeth Gale who was a witness could have been his aunt. John Pascoe was a next-door neighbour.
Like his brother we can find information from the census returns.
In 1851 :
Robert (b.1806) and his son, Robert(b.1834), like brother John, were potters.
An Aside:
Roberts elder sister, Mary Ann (b.1829) married Bromley Dale in 1850. Sometime around 1855 they moved to Stoke on Trent, another pottery centre. A younger sister, Elizabeth (b.1843) married George Tarr and they also moved to Stoke.
An Aside:
In 1843 a Capt. Thomas Wentworth Buller and John Divett acquired the Folly Pottery and
relaunched it as the Bovey Tracey Pottery Company for brick making. The local clay was more suitable for bricks than fine ceramics, and bricks had already been produced at the Folly Pottery. In addition there was a local source of lignite(brown coal) and this and the clay made the industry viable. Bovey bricks were being offered for sale at 16s 4d per 1000 at the Whitecross Brickyard on the Sidmouth Road outside Exeter in 1866. Some higher quality pottery was later produced using a better grade of clay. By 1850 there were four huge circular kilns and a workforce of nearly 100 men and more than 100 women, boys and girls. It was a major employer in Bovey Tracey.
ROBERT GALE (b. 1834) [LDG’s grandfather]
Robert married Mary Ann Daymond (b.1834) in 1852. We have met the Daymonds before.
Note that her father, Samuel Daymond (b.1810) was also a potter. On the marriage certificate, both are credited with the age of 21 although Robert’s baptism dates from 1834 (making him 18) and Mary Ann was the same age. Someone bent the rules.
In 1871 we find Robert and Mary Ann and their 7 children. Note in particular, son Joseph who we shall discuss below. Robert (b.1855) was to die at the age of 17. Child mortality throughout this period was very high.
Mary Ann died in 1903. The 1901 census has her described as “lunatic”. She was living in an asylum. She presumably suffered from senile dementia. In her will she left money to Joseph:
JOSEPH GALE (b.1861) [LDG’s father]
Joseph was described in the 1871 census above as a ‘scholar’ – he went to school. Perhaps in his case it meant something more because he was destined to break the mould and not become a potter. In 1885 he married Caroline Speare:
He is described as ‘schoolmaster’. Wife Caroline came from another huge Devon family which we can trace back to one John Speare (b. 1626) in Hatherleigh (see Appendix).
In 1901 Caroline is described as school mistress and by 1911 we see that the whole family seem to be involved in school in one way or another.
They had moved from Bovey Tracey to nearby Chudleigh Knighton where Joseph was eventually head master. Education was to become the family profession. Joseph employed his wife and daughter, Dorothy, as teachers at his school in Chudleigh. [This practice would never be allowed today]. Both his sons went to St Lukes Training College to become teachers. There is a strange note to add here. The entry for Caroline shows that she bore 4 living children. Only three are listed. The youngest, one Leslie Douglas Gale (b.1909), (and therefore age two at the time of the census) seems to have vanished.
In the 1921 census,we can see the family’s involvement with education and the young grandson has re-appeared:-
Joseph and Caroline with daughters, Loveday Frances (b.1889) [her name comes from that of one of her aunts] and Dorothy Caroline (b.1885)
Frances Loveday in her finery
The tea-cups pictured below were separately presented to Joseph and Caroline on their birthdays in 1879 (long before they married). Joseph’s was a gift from E. Gale (his sister, Emma). Caroline’s was from E. Turner (an unknown admirer). It would be nice to think that these were made in the Folly pottery but unfortunately there is no manufacturer’s mark to substantiate this.
Joseph initiated a ‘Spelling Bee’ at Chudleigh Knighton, an idea that had originated in the United Sate but became popular in the UK from about 1870.
Joseph died in 1932. His widow, who is described in 1911 census as “unable to walk through rheumatics”, died in 1938.
For Caroline and Joseph’s children:
Loveday married Charles Warren in 1912.
They had one son, Douglas Warren. She died in 1916 at the early age of 27. Douglas seems to have been brought up by his grandparents (see the 1921 census return for Joseph Gale above)
Dorothy married Ernest Carnell in 1931. They had two daughters, Beryl (b.1931) and Brenda(b.1935). Dorothy and Ernest are buried in Chudleigh Knighton churchyard.
Donald married Ivy Corin in 1908. They had one daughter, Jacqueline Loveday, in 1946.
LESLIE DOUGLAS GALE (b.1909 in Chudleigh Knighton)
Leslie was baptised in 1910:
He followed in the family tradition and became – not a potter- but a teacher. However, unlike his sisters but like his brother Donald, he went to train at St. Luke’s College, Exeter.
He was a keen sportsman, shown here as a member of Chudleigh Knighton Football Club. Joseph, his father, is also in the photograph.
In 1937 he married Jean Mary Ella Short in Norton St Philip, Somerset.
Eventually they moved to Dursley and had a house built. It is said that Leslie visited it every day during construction. Not a brick would be misplaced!
Fifty Years later, they celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary:
Leslie died 19 Oct 1993 in Berkeley hospital.
His obituary in the Dursley Gazette (Oct 1993) is reproduced here. It sums up Leslie’s immense achievements.
A portion of the family tree is reproduced below:
Appendix – The Speare family.
Caroline Speare’s family is worthy of a brief description.
She was the daughter of William Speare (b.1841 in Hatherleigh, Devon). [LDG’s grandfather]
William married Sarah Ann Prouse of Bovey Tracey in 1862 in Bovey Tracey. William was a carpenter. We can find him in the 1871 census:
Their eldest child was Caroline who was eight at the time. Sarah Ann died in 1871 at Bovey Tracey. William remarried -to Anna Maria Thomas from Ashburton. Some time shortly after the marriage, the family moved to London. In the 1911 census for Bethnal Green, William is described as ‘Shop-fitter – unemployed’. William eventually died in 1913.
His father, Samuel Speare (b.1811) [LDG’s great grandfather] married Christian Parker (b.1811) in 1834 in Bovey Tracey. He was a miller in Iddesleigh. He died in 1843. Christian re-married to Richard Locke and the infant, William, was brought up by this couple and followed in his step-father’s footsteps by becoming a carpenter. In the 1871 census above, we find that Christian Locke (mother) was living with her son William.
They had 12 children.
Samel (b.1811) and Christain are included in the 1841 census below:
Samuel (b.1811) was the son of Samuel Speare (b. 1781) [LDG’s great great grandfather] and Sarah Ann (b.1786) nee’ Ward. Samuel elder was a small farmer (40 acres) at Inwardleigh, Devon.
The infant William is listed there.
It is possible to follow the line back to John Speare (b.1626) [LDG’s great x 7 grandfather] but with the usual proviso that the evidence is limited to baptism and marriage certificates and is far from certain.
A portion of the family tree is given below:
Our family Trees 