VIII Woodstock Cottage

Page 27

Goymer

(F)

82

Jemima Goymer was a former dairymaid, the second wife and widow of George (1782-1859), a farm labourer. He was born in Lindsey, and Jemima in Bildeston in 1788. She was Jemima Johnson, the daughter of William and Mary (née Last). She was possibly the sister of John, and so the aunt of Martin of Swifts Garden.

We are not sure how George Goymer was related to John Goymer, the father of James, William and George, but they may well have been brothers, possibly the sons of John Goymer and Mary (Hull).

Jemima and George were married in 1812 and had three children. After his death, she lived on in the house until her own demise in 1873.

Page 29	Underwood	William	58
		Eliza	57
		Zachariah	5.3.50
		Walter	13.8.52
		Joseph	14.8.55
		Douglas Harry	10

William Underwood was born in Bures in 1814, but spent the whole of his adult life here. The whole of this branch of the Underwood family in fact seems to have been particularly mobile, as they also showed up in Acton and elsewhere. This may have been because they were mostly trained as craftsmen - wheelwrights, blacksmiths and carpenters.

William himself was a carpenter. His wheelwright father William, was one of a family of eleven born in Chelsworth, but he moved to Polstead and then to Bures. The second eldest of that earlier family, Ann Underwood, married Roger Warren, a carpenter, in 1769 and their son Zachariah Warren (they were much given to Biblical names, including Elijah, Berachiah and Elkanah) married a Jemima Underwood in 1805.

William senior’s father was Thomas Underwood, a blacksmith in Chelsworth, and his wife, by whom he had ten children, was Ann Hanson from St Osyth.

The will of Thomas Underwood dated 1800 confirms the wide spread of the family: he left everything to his widow for life, then equally to "Thomas of Woolpit, blacksmith, Edward of Chelsworth, carpenter, Zachariah, blacksmith, now in London, William, wheelwright, of Polstead, George, blacksmith, of Brent Eleigh, Ann wife of Roger Warren of Chelsworth, Elizabeth wife of William Scutcher of Polstead, innholder, and Isabella wife of Joseph Breckell of Hessett, innholder".

William Underwood married Eliza Game from Monks Eleigh in 1838. She died in 1888 aged 74, and William - on parish relief in the workhouse - in 1892 aged 77.

Living with them at this time was their grandson Douglas (or Harry) who was born in London. He may have been the son of Emma (1838) or Maryann (1842), who were no longer in Chelsworth.

Some years earlier, William’s cousin Edward William Underwood was a house servant at Barrards, where he met and married a fellow-servant Susan Lambert. They later moved to Cockfield and died there in the mid-1890s.

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