Robert Batty

Robert Batty is where this line's record begins — and, for now, where it stops. He steps into view on 18 January 1801 at the parish church of Sculcoates, 'Rob[er]t Batty Bat[chelo]r. of the Parish of Sutton', marrying Mary Longhorn, spinster of that parish, by licence — and signing his name in a firm hand, on a page where the banns couple married the same day both made their marks. The licence paperwork survives in the Borthwick Institute's series: the allegation gives his age as 28 — born about 1772, by his own statement — and Mum, who saw the licence record, notes he was styled yeoman. Where he came from before Sutton, the registers so far read do not say: no baptism for him has been found in either findmypast's or FamilySearch's Yorkshire collections, and his parents are unknown. That is the wall, stated plainly.

What follows the wedding is a steady Holderness life traced by Mum through the baptisms of six children: Jane at Aldbrough in 1801, Isabella in 1803 — the family then at Beswick — Jonathan in 1805, then Robert, William and Thomas at Preston-by-Hedon between 1807 and 1811, after which she places the family at Wyton in Swine parish. The 1841 census, read at the image, finds them still there: Robert, an agricultural labourer at about seventy, with Mary and their eldest daughter Jane, unmarried at thirty-nine and at home with her old parents, in a hamlet of farm cottages beside the toll bar on the Hull road.

The end came all at once. By 1847 the old couple were living at Skirlaugh, four miles on; the General Register Office indexes both their deaths in the same quarter — July to September 1847 — each aged 77, forty-six years married. Mary was buried back at Aldbrough on 11 August — 'Mary Batty — Skirlaugh … 77 yrs' — among the children's baptisms of half a century before; Mum's page has Robert following her on 26 September. His entry cannot be checked online for a reason this pass discovered in the register itself: the digitised Aldbrough burial book stops dead at Mary's entry and does not resume until 1898 — a fifty-one-year gap, with Mary Batty the last name before it. Jane, the daughter who had kept their house, was buried at Aldbrough a year later, in October 1848. Through Jonathan, the ploughman of Paull, the line runs on.