John Kemball and Rebecca Gosling

To me, the most likely candidate for the John Kemball mentioned in Thomas Kemball’s 1716 will is the one who married Rebecca Gosling. The clue is that they had a daughter called Grace, which was the name of Thomas’s wife, and it’s an unusual enough name for me to think that John was naming his daughter after his mother. There are some other John Kemballs in Hitcham around the time, but carefully building out the lines makes me even more confident that this John is Thomas and Grace’s son.

“Johannes Kembol” and “Rebeccah Goslin” were married at Hitcham on 28 Dec 1711, and they had three children:

• Rebecca, baptised 15 May 1717
• Grace, baptised 2 Aug 1719
• John, baptised 27 Sep 1725

I’m not entirely sure what happened to John Kemball senior; there are two burials which could be him in Hitcham: 31 Aug 1727 and 17 Jul 1767. The later of the two seems most plausible. His wife’s death seems easier to pin down, with a burial in Hitcham on 29 March 1769 for Rebecca Kemball. As their daughter had married, this seems to be John’s wife.

I haven’t traced Rebecca Gosling back any further than her marriage. Some online family trees give her parents as Zachariah and Rebecca, born in Norton, and Ancestry even brings it up as a hint (but without the year – somewhat unhelpful), but this can’t be correct as their daughter was baptised in 1713, two years after “our” Rebecca Gosling got married!

So let’s trace their children.

Rebecca Kemball and John Bull

Rebecca Kemball married John Bull in Hitcham on 20 April 1742, when she was about 25. She wasn’t his first wife; the register doesn’t give their marital statuses, but a John Bull married Mary Scurrill^[1]There are two versions of the marriage – one gives Mary’s surname as Scurrill, which matches up with Scurrill/Squirrell that appears elsewhere in the register. But in the 1730s, the … Continue reading in Hitcham on 2 Nov 1738, then “the wife of John Bull” was buried in Hitcham on 28 June 1739. So it was a tragically short marriage and they didn’t have an children.

John Bull appears to have been the son of John Bull and Elizabeth his wife, who had seven children between 1709 and 1723 in Hitcham. One of them, Lettice, married Clement Buss in 1749, which is possibly significant as we’ll meet another member of the Buss family when we find out about Rebecca’s brother, John Kemball.

They had seven children, some of whom I’ve been able to trace beyond their baptisms.

• John, baptised 5 Nov 1742
• Mary, baptised 25 Nov 1744. Married Edward Green, a widower, in Hitcham on 15 Oct 1786 when she was about 42. Of the two witnesses who wasn’t the parish clerk, we have William Bull, who was probably her brother.
• William, baptised 15 Nov 1746. Married Martha Hall in Hitcham on 20 Sep 1767. One of the witnesses was John Bull, either his brother or his father. They had two sons, John and William.
• Rebecca, baptised 21 Sep 1749. She married Samuel Birman (or Burman), a bachelor from the neighbouring parish of Great Finborough at Hitcham on 6 June 1770. One of the witnesses was John Bull – her father or her brother?
• Sarah, baptised 4 March 1753. She married Thomas Brett at Hitcham on 3 June 1788 when she was about 34. They had at least one child, Thomas, born in Hitcham in 1788.
• Edward, baptised 18 April 1756. He married Mary Mowl [Mowle/Moule etc – she actually spelt it Mowl when she signed the register.] in Hitcham on 27 November 1786. They had a son called Edward who died as an infant in 1787. I assume Mary is from the same family as John Kemball’s wife, also Mary Mowle [Moul etc]. They married the year after Edward and Mary, so it’s different to pin down which bride matches up with which family. Edward and Mary had a raft of children, between 1787 and 1811.
• Elizabeth, died 1759. I haven’t found her baptism, but she was possibly born after Edward.

Rebecca died right at the end of the century: her burial was on 31 Dec 1799, and she was, by then, a widow.

John Kemball and Sarah Buss

On 12 Sep 1756, John Kemball married Sarah Buss in Hitcham. They were both single and one of the witnesses was John Bennett – the other, that prolific witness, Thomas Stewart.

Considering my Kemball brickwall where I have two children born to a John and Mary Kemball, the first in 1758, I have spent years wondering if there was a mistake and this marriage entry should really be for John Kemball and Sarah Buss. Or should the mother’s name on the baptisms be Sarah and not Mary? But getting the mother’s name once is believable, but twice is stretching it, rather.

Placing this marriage in the Kemball tree became possible when I traced their first witness, John Bennett. He had married Grace Kemball in 1746, so it looks like John Kemball’s brother-in-law was witnessing the marriage.

So let’s have a look at Sarah Buss.

She appears to be the daughter of Isaac Buss and Sarah Bennett, baptised in Hitcham on 25 Dec 1729 as “Sary Buss”. I couldn’t find a Mary Buss baptised around that time, which means I discounted my theory that it should say “Mary” in the marriage register. Nope – I think “my” John Kemball is another man completely and not John and Rebecca’s son.

Isaac was the son of William Buss, baptised in Hitcham on 3 Nov 1695. He was married twice. I haven’t found his first marriage yet, but he had two children by a woman called Catherine: Isaac in 1722, and Sarah (“Sary”) in 1727. Catherine died in 1727, and two years later, Isaac married Sarah Bennet, a single woman, in neighbouring Chelsworth. They were both Hitcham locals, though.

Isaac and Sarah had six children: Sarah, Margaret, Ralph, William, John, and Martha (Martha died an infant in 1744). Isaac left a will, which he wrote in 1759. He menions his sons Isaac, John, William, and Ralph, but not his daughters. I assume this is because he settled some money on them when they married. We have Sarah marrying in 1756, then Margaret marrying John Douce (or Dewes) in 1759.

Sarah Bennett was baptised in Hitcham on 23 April 1704, the daughter of Ralph Bennett and his wife Martha. They had a son John, as mentioned, and a daughter called Martha, who married John Hall.

To return to John Kemball and Sarah Buss: I think her burial is likely to be the one on 8 March 1807, Sarah Kemball, widow, as I can’t find another Sarah Kemball, widow, that would fit. This means John died before that date, but I don’t know with any certainty which burial is his.

It doesn’t appear that John and Sarah had any children.

Grace Kemball, John Bennett and James Clover

John and Rebecca Kemball’s middle child, Grace, was married twice. Her first husband was John Bennett, who she married in Hitcham on 27 Nov 1746. John had been baptised in the same parish on 18 July 1714, and was the son of Ralph and Martha, as mentioned above. Grace and John had two children: Grace, baptised on 10 Jan 1747/8, and John, baptised on 5 July 1752.

Grace junior had an illegitimate son, John, in Chelsworth in 1775, then she married Francis Waterman in the same parish on 23 Nov 1777. Her mother had died nearly a decade earlier, and her father had died when she was only a child, so perhaps Grace was working in service there. After their marriage, Grace and Francis moved to Bildeston, where their six children were baptised between 1778 and 1793: Elizabeth, Jane, Bridget, Grace, Francis, and Martha. Francis died in the Semer Union House in January 1814, and Grace died at the same place 13 years later.

John junior married Elizabeth Baker on 21 Nov 1777 at Kettlebaston and they had four children in Hitcham: John, Thomas, Benjamin and Elizabeth. I haven’t traced him any further at the moment.

John Bennett senior died in May 1759 and was buried in Hitcham. Only a few months later, on 29 Oct 1759, Grace married widower James Clover in Hitcham; she would be his third wife. They didn’t have any children, and Grace died in March 1766. James didn’t remarry, and died a decade after Grace.

The Clover millers

I plan to write quite a lot on the Clovers, but seeing as James has cropped up here, I’ll make a start. I’ve mentioned, while writing about my ancestor Thomas Kemball, that his third wife was descended from the Clovers (her grandmother was Judith Clover). Is it significant that we have Grace Kemball/Bennett marrying a Clover?

James was baptised in Hitcham on 25 April 1708, the son of Giles and Mary Clover.^[2]Or Aegidii Clover, because the register is in Latin for decades. He had two sisters, both called Mary (the first must’ve died before the last) and a brother called William, who didn’t survive childhood. I’ve noticed Clovers going back very far in Chelsworth, so I may well find Giles in the register as I work through it.

James’s first wife was Mary Hagger of Stonham Aspal, who he married by licence on 27 Feb 1728/9. They had three children: Mary, Martha, and James (their son died an infant). Mary died in 1750 – the register rather unhelpfully says “The wife of James Clover”, without giving her forename, and her forename doesn’t appear on the baptisms of their children either. But thankfully, we have the marriage entry in the parish register and the marriage licence, so we know who she was.

James now married wife #2, Mary Knock, on 14 Nov 1750. But she died in 1754. This time, the register tells us she was “Mary wife of James Clover”. It’s of course confusing, and this second marriage could be skipped over by someone assuming that his first wife must be the “Mary” buried in 1754. I should add here that I have a mystery ancestor, Elizabeth Knock, wife of my ancestor Thomas Kemball. She could be related to James’s second wife.

Wife #3 nearly wasn’t Grace – the banns were read in Hitcham on 8 Oct 1758 for James Clover of Hitcham and Ann How of Rattlesden. I’m not sure what happened, but the marriage was called off after the banns had only been read once. This left James free to marry Grace a year later.

Something to mention is that another James Clover married a Mary. Just in case we didn’t have enough James Clover/Mary marriages to start with! On 19 July 1751, James Clover, a miller, married Mary Kemball at Brenth Eleigh; they were both from Hitcham. I assume this other, and presumably younger, James Clover must be related to Grace’s husband, but I don’t yet know how.

Neither can I work out who his wife was – I am missing a Mary Kemball from my collection somewhere!

What I was able to work out about this other James Kemball is the following:

He was baptised in Hitcham in 1730, one of eight children of John Clover and Anne Salmon. They had a daughter called Eunice, which name crops up with my ancestor Thomas Kemball, when he names a daughter by his first wife “Eunice”. I expect that John Clover who married Anne Salmon is something to do with the Judith Clover mentioned above.

After James married Mary Kemball in 1751, they had three children: John, Mary, and James, all baptised in Hitcham. I haven’t found Mary’s burial yet, but James married for a second time in 1769: Hannah Welham of Wattisham.

By 1789, James was a farmer living in Creeting St Mary. He left a will which mentions several mills and different pieces of property in Hitcham, Combs, Creeting St Mary, Barking and Battisford in Suffolk, and even Great Bromley in Essex. The Clovers left several headstones behind them in Creeting St Mary, which fortunately for us have been transcribed. James’s tells us he died aged 59 and was “late of Hitcham”, and this was a key fact for working out which James Clover was who – his age at death matches him up as a son of John Clover and Anne Salmon.

There’s more to be said about the Clovers. I’ll return to them another time!

First published: 9 February 2026.