John Hole (1803 to 1871)

John Hole’s wife Jane was a daughter of George Parsons of Charlton Horethorne in Somerset who was a great, great Uncle of Sidney Parsons.

The area in which the Hole families lived is in the south-west of England a few miles west of the town of Wincanton which lies on the main road between London and Exeter. It is in the south-eastern part of the county of Somerset.

The large-scale map shows some of the places where members of the Hole family lived.

John was born in the village of Compton Pauncefoot where he was baptised on the 15^th of November 1803. His father, William, had been born in the nearby village of North Cadbury but moved to Compton Pauncefoot before he married John’s mother, Ann Thomas, in 1797. John’s grandfather, Thomas Hole, and his great-grandfather, William Hole, who was born at the end of the 17^th century during the reign of King William III, had both spent their lives as farmers in North Cadbury. There were members of the Hole family living in North Cadbury in the 16^th century during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Property deeds show that in the early 1600s successive members of the Hole family owned a newly built mansion house and barn in Galhampton within the parish of North Cadbury.

The villages of North and South Cadbury take their names from the nearby hill-fort, Cadbury Castle, which was founded during the iron age but re-fortified during the Anglo-Saxon invasions after the Romans left Britain. It was originally named Cado’s Burgh, after the King of the local British tribe. Cadbury Castle has sometimes been suggested as the possible site of King Arthur’s Camelot.

As a young man John Hole moved to Mudford, a village just north of Yeovil. It is just below the lower edge of the map a little way south of Marston Magna. He was living there in April 1829 when he witnessed his brother William’s marriage to Marina Dauncey in Charlton Mackrell. In 1834 John was recorded as the occupier of land at Sock Farm in Mudford.

John Hole married his wife Jane Parsons on the 30^th of April 1838 in the parish church of Charlton Horethorne. The village is just beyond the right-hand edge of the map, to the east of Corton Denham. Jane’s parents George Parsons and Jane (née Peters) lived in the manor house there.

John and Jane lived at Mudford Sock farm and their first two children, Henry and William, were born there. Some time in the early 1840s John and his family moved. Their new home was Whitcombe Farm in the parish of Corton Denham

Whitcombe Farm is in the northern part of the parish, north of Corton Denham village, and is noteworthy for its large mill wheel which can still be seen today. John initially farmed 400 acres there.

John and Jane had three more children, John, George and James, who were baptised in Corton Denham in 1843, 1845 and 1846. However their youngest, James, died in January 1847 and was buried in Charlton Horethorne, his mother’s home village.

They had no more children and two years later, in March 1849, John’s wife Jane died; she was buried in Charlton Horethorne near to her son James.

After his wife’s death John Hole continued to live at Whitcombe farm. His unmarried sister Eliza joined him to help look after the children, the youngest of whom was only just four years old, and to be the family’s housekeeper.

John stayed at Whitcombe for another twenty years but in 1867 his sister Eliza died. Her estate was administered by their brother William who lived just a few miles away in West Camel.

John Hole died in July 1871 at Whitcombe farm. The following simple report appeared in several newspapers:

“DEATH — July 17, at Whitcombe Farm, Corton Denham, Mr. John Hole, aged 67 years.”

Children of John and his wife Jane (née Parsons)

John and Jane’s children and their spouses are shown in the chart to the left.

Their first two children were born in Mudford and the three youngest at Whitcombe Farm near Corton Denham.

• Henry was John and Jane’s first child. He was baptised in Charlton Horethorne on the 21^st of April 1839. Henry’s mother died at about the time of his tenth birthday after which his father’s sister Eliza moved in to help. As a young man Henry went to Haselbury Plucknett to live with his uncle Henry Parsons and to be his assistant. Henry Parsons lived at Manor Farm and acted as an agent for Lord Portman.

In 1866 Henry Hole married Agnes Peddle and they lived together in Boyton in Wiltshire, between Warminster and Salisbury, where he farmed more than 1000 acres. Their children were all born there. In 1881 Henry’s uncle Henry Parsons briefly vacated the Manor Farm at Haselbury and Henry Hole and his family went to stay there. However they soon moved again, to Poyntington in North Dorset, two miles north of Sherborne. By 1911 they were living in Winterborne Whitechurch in central Dorset at Upper Whatcombe Farm. Henry died there in April 1912.

• William, Henry and Jane Hole’s second child, was baptised in Mudford on the 11^th of November 1840. In the 1861 census he seems to have been visiting his uncle William Parsons Peters in South Petherton although he is also recorded at his father’s address in Corton Denham. Like his elder brother Henry, William worked for his uncle Henry Parsons.

In 1870 William appeared in court accused by Sarah Hiscock of being the father of her child but the case was dismissed and the girl was tried for perjury.

William farmed in West Lambrook, but he was also an engineer and lived not far from the Parrett Iron Works which had been founded by his uncle George Parsons, and William might very well have assisted him there.

In 1874 he married a woman from Jersey called Letitia Longman Asplet. The wedding was in Jersey and was conducted by the Dean of Jersey. Letitia’s father was Philippe (or Philip) Asplet, a noted poet in Jersey’s Norman dialect who, with his brother Charles, became a good friend of the French author Victor Hugo who was exiled to the Channel Islands. William had met Letitia through her mother’s family - Sarah Watts had been born in nearby Queen Camel and Letitia’s grandparents had returned from Jersey to live in Marston Magna.

After their marriage William and Letitia settled in Somerset, at New Cross in the Parish of Kingsbury Episcopi. He described himself as a gentleman.

William died at New Cross on the 19^th of November 1885. Letitia continued to live in Somerset until she died in Queen Camel, the village in which her mother had been born, in June 1932.

• John was born in Corton Denham in 1843. He never married. He lived for a while with his elder brother William and his younger brother George before moving to Urgeshay Farm at West Camel where he died on the 16^th of October 1886.

• George was baptised in Corton Denham in May 1845 and was only just four years old when his mother died. He was about 26 years old when his father died and he then took over Whitcombe Farm, but with a reduced acreage. In April 1884 he married a girl from Sutton Montis called Winifred Harding. They lived together at Whitcombe Farm until George died in January 1893 after which Winifred lived in West Camel until her death in 1937.

• James, John and Jane Hole’s youngest child, was baptised in Corton Denham on Boxing Day in 1846 but sadly he lived for only a month or two.

Ancestors of John Hole

The following chart shows only three generations of John Hole’ ancestors but the records show that there were members of the Hole family living in North Cadbury 100 years earlier during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Parents
Father — William Hole, a farmer who was born in North Cadbury in 1771, the second son of his father’s second wife
Mother — Ann Thomas, who married William in November 1797 in Blackford near Wincanton in Somerset

Grandparents
Grandfather — Thomas Hole, born 1735 in North Cadbury, who married twice; he had a daughter, Joan, with his first wife Sarah Hilditch and two sons, Thomas and William, with his second wife
Grandmother — Ann Garland, Thomas Hole’s second wife whom he married in February 1767 in North Cadbury

Grandfather — Edward Thomas, a farmer from Blackford in Somerset who died when his daughter Ann was only five years old
Grandmother — Jane Davidge, who came from Maperton in Somerset; she married Samuel Gifford a year after her husband Thomas died

Great-grandparents
Great-grandfather — William Hole, who was born at the end of the 17^th century and lived in North Cadbury
Great-grandmother — Marie Higgins, who married William Hole in North Cadbury on the 25^th of February 1722

Great-grandfather — Levi Garland, who was born in Yarlington in Somerset but lived for most of his life in North Cadbury
Great-grandmother — Mary Bush, who came from Marston Magna in Somerset. She married Levi there in April 1743

Great-grandfather — unknown
Great-grandmother — unknown

Return to Sidney Parsons’ Ancestors

You are free to make use of the information in these web pages in any way that you wish but please be aware that the author, Mike Parsons, is unable to accept respsonsibility for any errors or omissions.

Mike can be contacted at parsonspublic@gmail.com

The information in these web pages comes from a number of sources including: Hampshire County Records Office, Somerset Heritage Centre; Dorset County Records Office; Southampton City Archives; the General Register Office; several on-line newspaper archives; several on-line transcriptions of Parish Register Entries; and several on-line indexes of births, marriages and deaths. The research has also been guided at times by the published work of others, both on-line and in the form of printed books, and by information from personal correspondence with other researchers, for all of which thanks are given. However, all of the information in these web pages has been independently verified by the author from original sources, facimile copies, or, in the case of a few parish register entries, transcriptions published by on-line genealogy sites. The author is aware that some other researchers have in some cases drawn different conclusions and have published information which is at variance from that shown in these web pages.