Thomas Brock

Thomas Brock was baptised at Haxey, in the Isle of Axholme, on 14 January 1692 — a son of Francis Brock and his wife Margaret. On 1 May 1716 he married Susanna Ward at the parish church of St Nicholas; their eldest, Robert, was baptised just ten weeks later, on 15 July, so Susanna had come to the altar already carrying him.

They raised their sons — Robert and Thomas — at Haxey, and it is through Robert, the victualler who would later see the village through its great fire of 1744, that this line descends. Thomas himself did not live to see it: he was buried at Haxey on 25 March 1741, aged only forty-nine. Susanna outlived him by twelve years, and was laid in the same churchyard on 4 January 1753, the register naming her simply “Susanna Brock, widow.”