Unteasing the Halstead Cardinalls: the mystery

One of the lingering mysteries about the Cardinalls is how or if the Halstead Cardinalls are related to the Tendring Hundred Cardinalls. One of the reasons for thinking they might be is the fact that Emma Cardinall, born in Halstead in 1852, married John Fisher Cardinall, born in Tendring in 1808. Were they related to each other, or was it just a coincidence that they shared the same surname? Or did they assume they were married, hence why they got married?

John Fisher Cardinall was a 63-year-old bachelor when they got married, and Emma was only 19. He owned a lot of property, and in his will, he left most of it to Emma’s brother, Durrant Edward Cardinall. I wonder if John did so in order to continue the property in the Cardinall line. He was his parents’ only son, and his sisters didn’t marry. I have wondered if Durrant approached John, claiming they were related. If it was John’s intention to leave his property to Durrant so that it would stay in the Cardinall line, sadly this wouldn’t come to pass. Durrant gave up his job and lived the life of a country squire, only, in the end, having to sell everything John left him.

Cardinall families in Halstead

Looking through Halstead’s parish register, there are plenty of Cardinalls, but there are also plenty of gaps; they were enthusiastic non-conformists, making it hard to trace the families and connect them. There’s also repeating names, which, while they can help you to get onto the right lines, unfortunately they can cause confusion.

Emma and Durrant Edward were two of nine children born in Halstead to James Cardinall his wife Lydia Wright. James was variously a solicitor’s clerk and an attorney, and Durrant became a solicitor. James and Lydia married in Hoxton, Middlesex on 15 January 1837; Lydia was the daughter of a “bridewell keeper”, presumably a prison officer.

James was the second of Thomas Cardinall and Hannah Durrant’s ten children. Eight of the children were all baptised together on the same day in October 1827 at Halstead Independent chapel. Tragically, four of the ten children and their father died within months of each other. Two of the daughters, Hannah and Caroline, died in the 1850s. This left Frederick (who married but didn’t have any children), George (who became an auctioneer in Sudbury, but didn’t marry or have children), James – who as we know, did marry, and their sister Harriet. She married Theophilus Hulm, a policeman, and they lived in Kingston-on-Thames. They had five children.

If we want to know if Emma and John were related, we need to know how Thomas, Emma’s grandfather, fits into the Cardinall family tree. The trouble is that there’s no specific records that can help us place him without any doubt. There’s no sign of a baptism recorded for him, and he doesn’t seem to appear in any wills which would state who he is. But there are lots of clues which can give us a pretty good idea of who his parents were. For instance, Independents could baptise their members’ children, and sometimes had their own burial grounds, which means they won’t appear in parish registers. The survival of non-conformist records isn’t great, so it causes problems. However, before 1837, non-conformists couldn’t perform marriages, so marriages had to take place at parish churches.^[1]The exception to this rule were Quakers and Jews. So by identifying the parties in Cardinall marriages at parish churches – not only the brides and grooms, but the witnesses too – we can get a feel for the rest of the family trees. And there are records such as wills and apprenticeship documents which can help us to.

Who Thomas Cardinall wasn’t

Emma and Durrant’s grandfather was 58 when he died, so he was born in about 1783. There are two baptisms which are possibles, but neither are really close enough. One is Thomas, the base born son of Mary Cardinal, who was baptised in Saffron Walden on 17 Feb 1790, and the other is for Thomas, the son of William and Mary Cardinall, who was baptised in Colne Engaine on 17 Nov 1816, but was born on 6 Oct 1791.

Thomas, born 1791, seems more possible than the one born in Saffron Walden, because Colne Engaine is is next door to Halstead. Also, there’s a marriage in Saffron Walden on 13 Feb 1810 for Thomas Cardinall to Rebecca Banks, and the groom is far more likely to be the one baptised in 1790.

However, if we turn to the censuses, we soon see that Thomas, born 1791, can’t be Emma and Durrant’s grandfather. He’s 55 on the 1851 census, giving birth year of about 1796, and he’s 69 on the 1861 census, giving 1791. When he died on 18 July 1864, his age was given as 72, which is exactly how old he would’ve been if he’d been born on 6 Oct 1791. He was a currier, a profession which you’ll see other Cardinalls in the area working in.

Piecing together his family: Thomas was the son of William Cardinall and Mary Tomlinson, who married in Coggeshall on 8 Apr 1783. They had nine children. Their eldest son, William Tomlinson Cardinall, moved to London. He married Ann Baylis at St Mary Aldermary on 5 Feb 1810, and became a leading turkey carpet merchant.

William Cardinall was born in Coggeshall on 15 June 1761,^[2]William Cardinall’s baptism record gives his date of birth. the son of John Cardinall and Mary Senior. They had run off to London for a clandestine wedding on 12 March 1754. They were both resident in Halstead at the time. Going back even further, it seems that John was born in Halstead in about 1736, the son of William Cardinall and Mary Chaplin. We will meet them again later. John’s brother Thomas was a surgeon and he married Anne Cardinall of Tolleshunt D’Arcy in 1784.

So this still leaves us with no baptism record for Emma and Durrant’s grandfather. But as we rule out options, we get closer to the truth. Stay tuned for more.

Written by: Helen Barrell
First published: 10 Oct 2024