Heyes is the maiden name of:
As noted above, there are three Heyes lines in our family history, all connected to the Ramsdales. The Ramsdale and Heyes families were linked through three generations:
Thomas Ramsdale m. Mary Heyes
Their son Richard Ramsdale m. Ellen Heyes
Their son John Ramsdale m. Alice Heyes
Heyes is an English locational surname deriving from the Old English haye, meaning “enclosure”.1 There are also Irish and French derivations of the name, but our Heyes ancestors are all from the Leigh area in Lancashire.
Unfortunately there were a large number of Heyes families in the Leigh area in the 18th and 19th centuries and their personal names were selected from a limited palette. This means that it is often difficult to conclusively identify individuals, and there is always a margin of error in doing so. The area is just west of Manchester - see a map of the area in 1843.
These are the ancestors of Alice Heyes (1805-1856). Richard Heyes and Elizabeth Collier are also the ancestors of Mary Heyes (c.1748-1809) – see Heyes [iii] below.
Based on their year of marriage, Richard Heyes and Mary Speakman were probably both born between 1695 and 1702. Unfortunately there is no baptism record for either name in that period that can be confidently linked to them.
Richard and Mary married at St. Mary the Virgin Leigh on 11 November 1718. They had five children:
According to his daughter Esther’s baptism record, Richard’s occupation was tailor.
Mary died in December 1728 and was buried at St. Stephen Astley on 31 December. Richard probably died much later: there are numerous burial records for a Richard Heyes of Astley between 1755 and 1775:
Unfortunately all of these records just state “Richard Heyes of Astley” with no other information to make identification possible. Given that Mary was buried at St. Stephen, and given his birth year, I suspect that he may have been the individual who died in 1758.
Based on their year of marriage, Richard Heyes and Elizabeth Collier were both probably born between 1715 and 1725. Unfortunately, however, the identification of Richard and Elizabeth is complicated by both having two possible baptisms for each of them.
Richard was one of the following:
Elizabeth was one of the following:
Based on the fact that Richard and Elizabeth lived in Astley after their marriage,2 it is most likely that Richard was the son of Richard Heyes baptised in 1725 and Elizabeth was the daughter of William Collier baptised in 1724.3
Richard and Elizabeth married on 10 February 1741 at St. Mary the Virgin Leigh, both aged around 16. They had seven children:
Note that two of these children, George and Mary, were our ancestors. George’s granddaughter Alice Heyes married Mary’s grandson John Ramsdale.
It may be that Richard was the individual who was buried at St. Stephen Astley on 17 July 1774. No burial record has been found for Elizabeth Collier.
George Heyes was born in Astley, Lancashire in 1743, the son of Richard Heyes and Elizabeth Collier, and was baptised at St. Stephen Astley on 30 November of that year.
Katharine Hilton was born in Lancashire. There are two baptisms that could be the correct Katharine Hilton:
The daughter of George Hilton is probably the more likely given Katharine’s marriage year and the occurrence of the name George among her children.
George and Katharine (shown in the register as “Catherine”) married at Leigh on 15 October 1765 and had nine children:
Throughout the eighteenth century Astley was a quiet village relying on cottage industry weaving and farming. There were also coal pits nearby.
There are no records that can confirm the occupation of George Heyes, although his location suggests that he probably worked in weaving, farming or coal mining.
Katharine died at Astley aged 45 and was buried at St. Stephen Astley on 18 April 1793. George died at Astley aged 53 and was buried at St. Stephen Astley on 17 July 1796.
William Heyes was born in Leigh in 1773, the son of George Heyes and Katharine Hilton, and was baptised at St. Mary the Virgin, Leigh on 3 July 1773. He married Matty Parr (b.1770) at Leigh on 25 August 1793 and they had one child together, George (b.1795), before Matty died in 1798.
Hannah Morris was probably born at Bolton, Lancashire in July 1780, the daughter of John and Ann Morris. She was baptised at Bolton on 21 July 1780. Aged only 16 and already pregnant, she married 22 year-old John Crompton at the parish church of Deane in Bolton on 2 August 1796. They had three children: Alice (b.1796), Peggy (b.1797) and Mary Ann (b.1799). John Crompton died in Bolton around 1801.
William and Hannah, both widowed, married on 16 August 1803 at Leigh and had seven children:
There is no record of the occupation of William Heyes.
William died and was buried at Leigh on 3 November 1833. Hannah died and was buried at Leigh some time between July and September 1847.
These are the ancestors of Ellen Heyes (1775-1844).
John Heyes is known to have been the father of Ellen Heyes,4 but because he had a common name in that time and place it is difficult to conclusively identify him. There are numerous possible individuals if it is assumed that, like his daughter, he was baptised at St. Mary the Virgin, Leigh:
It is a similar picture with marriage, with seven marriages of a John Heyes at St Mary the Virgin between 1753 and 1771. Perhaps the name Ellen suggests that the marriage of John Heyes and Ellen Collier in 1765 would be a front-runner.
John Heyes died and was buried at Little Hulton, Lancashire on 16 May 1798.
These are the ancestors of Mary Heyes (c.1748-1809).
Mary was the daughter of Richard Heyes and Elizabeth Collier (see above). This means that John Ramsdale and Alice Heyes were second cousins (that is, they shared a set of great-grandparents).
1 http://www.houseofnames.com/heyes-family-crest
2 As indicated by the baptism records of their children.
3 This view is strengthened by the fact that there was a Richard Heyes of Tyldesley who had a child baptised at St. Mary the Virgin Leigh in 1756.
4 As per her baptism record.