James Cobley was one of Ari’s 3x great-grandfathers, born in 1846 in South Luffenham, Rutland. His father was William Cobley and his mother was Mary Davis.
Corbel on St Mary’s church, South Luffenham
I have just found his baptism at St Mary’s, listed as Calverley:
He appears in the 1851 census, age 5, when the family were living in Barrowden.
Inscribed stone at Appletree Cottage, Barrowden. Possibly an admonition to mourners passing in funeral processions.
By 1861, at age 15, James had left home and was working as a servant for a farmer, Mary Ann Cox.
In 1869 James married Elizabeth Stapleton in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and by 1871 they had moved to the village of Tixover in Rutland, where James worked as a labourer.
The route of the Rutland Round (a 65-mile walk around Rutland’s perimeter) between Tixover and Barrowden.
The couple had six children, including twins Edward Daniel and Thomas Davis (Ari’s great-great-grandfather). In 1881 they were living in the village of Tinwell, near Stamford, at 4 Empingham Road Cottages. James was 36 and working as an agricultural labourer.
The datestone on the forge at Tinwell
The 1891 census record proved elusive as the name had been transcribed as Colley, but he is there, at Village St Cottage in Glinton, Northamptonshire. In 1901 he was at Town St, Glinton. By now the only child still at home was the youngest daughter, Annie Elizabeth.
And in 1911 James and Elizabeth are still in Glinton, and James is a farm labourer, aged 65. He doesn’t give a postal address, but in the census he is immediately after the Blue Bell Inn.
James died in 1923.
Ari, this is how you are related to James:
