Thomas Kemball and Grace, Hitcham 1719

Parish registers are a fantastic resource, but it’s hard to reconstruct families from them alone, especially when you have a concentration of people with the same names. And especially in cases where the rector or curate doesn’t bother to name a baptised child’s mother, just their father – it becomes even hard to tell family units apart (and chuck in a lot of Latinised names as well, and it doesn’t get any easier). There are, fortunately, a wealth of Kemball wills for families in and around Hitcham, so by using those with parish registers, it’s possible to trace the families with more confidence and shed light on any knots.

I started off with Thomas Kemball’s 1719 will and then followed his family forwards from it to see where it would lead me.

Thomas Kemball’s will

A Hitcham man called Thomas Kemball wrote his will on 26 May 1716, and in it he named two sons, John and William, and two married daughters, Mary Howes and Grace Rowland. He named his wife, Grace, and a grandson, Thomas Kemball. He signed his surname “Kimball” on the will. He made his son John his executor, and John probated the will on 30 September 1719.

Turning to the parish register, we can, I think, sketch out his family, starting with some baptisms. I found three around the time period where Thomas is the father:

• Mary, baptised 24 May 1674
• Grace (“Gratia”), baptised 30 May 1686
• William, baptised 20 Jan 1693/4.

I couldn’t find a baptism for John, or another son who I think existed but isn’t named in the will or in the baptisms.

Mary, who is “Mary Howes” in the will, could be the Mary Kemball who married John Howe, husbandman of Willisham in Coddenham on 26 May 1703. Willisham is a few miles east of Hitcham, and Coddenham is a few miles east of Willisham (on the other side from Needham Market and, nowadays, from the A14). I haven’t taken this any further at the moment.

Grace Kemball’s marriage is more certain – she married Samuel Rowland in Hitcham in 1707 and had three children: Grace, Susan, and Mary. After Samuel died, she married her second husband, Robert Hicks.

I wondered who the parents were of the grandson, Thomas Kemball. On 3 August 1707, Thomas son of Thomas Kemball junior was baptised in Hitcham. What I worked out is that Thomas Kemball married Sarah Ranson on 25 Sep 1706 and had three children: Thomas in 1707, William in 1710, and Sarah in 1711. There’s a burial in Hitcham on 16 May 1716 for “Thomas Kemball”, then an administration dated 19 June 1716 for Thomas Kimball, a farmer, late of Hitcham.^[1]NCC, held at Norfolk Archives. Administration went to his widow Sarah and the bondsman was Thomas Ranson of Hitcham, farmer.

The timing is very interesting, because Thomas Kemball’s will was written on 26 May 1716, only 10 days after the burial of Thomas Kemball. What this all suggests to me is that the grandson called Thomas Kemball in the will is the son of Thomas’s son Thomas and his wife Sarah, and that Thomas-the-son’s death in May 1716 led to his father rewriting his will.

So what happened to the testator? He must’ve died between 1716 and 1719.

Hitcham’s parish register gives us the burial of Grace wife of Thomas Kemball on 22 May 1719, then the burial of Thomas Kemball on 11 August 1719. This seems to be the testator and his wife: Grace predeceased him, but Thomas didn’t have time to write another will before he passed away himself.

I haven’t yet worked out who Thomas’s parents were – that’s another job for another time. But I have traced his family forward through the decades. There’s several marriages, lots of children, a link to the Clovers again, and another will.

First published: 1st February 2026.