Ari’s 5x great-grandfather Andrew Mullens or Mullins was born in 1797 in West Hatch, Tisbury, Wiltshire. It is thought that there was an eighth-century abbey in Tisbury, which is west of Salisbury. “Settlement in the west part of the parish in the Middle Ages was at West Hatch and East Hatch, and in several hamlets or farmsteads. West Hatch manor possibly included c. 15 small farmsteads in the early 12th century” (see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol13/pp195-248). West Hatch is just north of Old Wardour Castle.
Andrew worked as an agricultural labourer. I haven’t found his parents yet. On 7 July 1820 he married Mary Hayward at the church in Tisbury, but the first record we have of him is in 1818, when he appeared at the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions in Tisbury and was convicted and sent to prison in Devizes. (His name is not given in the newspaper report of these Sessions, and I don’t know what his crime was.)
Andrew and Mary’s daughter Jane was born in 1827 in West Hatch. I haven’t been able to find the family in the 1841 census, but there is an Andrew Mullens living with Harriet and more children in 1851, so my theory at the moment is that Mary died and he remarried.
In 1848 Andrew was sentenced to three months at the County Sessions on 4 Jan, for “larceny by servant”, which means that he stole from his employer. He was not whipped though, unlike the next two people on the criminal register:
Luckily, this time there is a newspaper record (Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, 6 Jan 1848), so we can see his crime (they all make interesting reading!):
So it looks as though he was working on a farm near Wardour Castle.
In the 1851 census Andrew is shown as a widower, still working as an agricultural labourer at the age of 64, and living in Chilmark with his daughter Jane and her family.
He died in 1867.
This is Hannah’s first visit to Old Wardour Castle in April 1989!
Ari, this is how you are related to Andrew:
