In a post from 2021, I write about some of the more unusual landowners in Kingswinford parish in the first half of the 19^th century. This was based on material in my ebook Kingswinford Manor and Parish. One of those I discussed was Jonathan Stokes, the son of Rebecca and Jonathan Stokes, “Gentleman of Worcester”. He was a member of the Lunar Society, who is remembered for his work on the use of digitalis in medicine. He practiced as a doctor in Stourbridge from 1882 to 1885. The Directory for the 1822 Fowler Map of Kingswinford parish shows that at that time he had extensive agricultural land holdings in the Wordsley area, which, by the time of the Tithe Apportionment in 1840 were held by his son John Allen Stokes.  At the time I did not know how these lands came into his possession.  My only clue was that in 1788, Rebecca Stokes, at that point a widow, was involved in the sale of a plot of land on which the Red House Glassworks in Wordsley was built, and may well have had other land in the area at the time. In the earlier post, I made the following conjecture as to how these lands came into the Stokes’ possession .

One possible route comes from a recorded marriage in 1781 between Nancy Freeman, one of the illegitimate children of John Keeling, the agent and steward of the Dudley estate who owned significant property in the area, and one William Stokes. Links with either Jonathan however cannot be demonstrated, so this must be conjectural. Keeling did however provide generously for his illegitimate offspring, and this might be another example of his provision.

The William Stokes in question however was a “Gentlemen of Wolverhampton” (yes, such did exist!) and no connection with Jonathan’s family could be found.

In this conjecture however, I was absolutely and completely wrong. I would like to say that I discovered the reality of the situation by painstaking archival study, but in fact it was by pure chance. I have recently been helping to set up the Black Country Society Shop web page, and was browsing through one of the books that is for sale – Artists in Cameo Glass by H. Jack Haden from 1993. There I read the following.

The site of the Red House Glassworks was bought on 21 June 1788 by the Wordsley glass manufacturer Richard Bradley from John Southwell, master at Stafford Grammar School, and his wife Ann, and Rebecca, widow of a Worcester glover Jonathan Stokes, Ann and Rebecca being the daughters of Rebecca Allen who was the daughter and heir of John Dancer of Wordsley. Jonathan and Rebecca Stokes were the parents of Jonathan Stokes, M.D., who practiced as a physician in Shrewsbury, Kidderminster Stourbridge and finally Chesterfield. He was also well known as a botanist and a member of the Lunar Society, so well-known to James Keir (1735-1820), the distinguished industrial chemist who resided at Holloway End House, Amblecote, in the mid-1770s and was a partner in the Holloway End Glassworks.

So the Wordsley lands came through the maternal line of Rebecca Allen, rather than the paternal line as I had assumed in my searches. A kick in the teeth for my patriarchal attitudes. Further I should have spotted the clue to the maternal line in the unusual spelling of Jonathan Stokes son’s middle name of Allen. All very humbling, but good for the soul no doubt.

Within a few minutes of reading “Artists in Cameo Glass” I received an email out of the blue that gave me details of another family that appears in Kingswinford Manor and Parish about whom I could find out very little – Thomas and Benjamin Brettell. The Brettells will be the subject of a future blog post.