Thomas Kemball and his several wives

Let’s go to Hitcham and take a look at James Kemble‘s grandfather, my 5 x gt-grandfather.

Thomas Kemball was born on 24 August 1805, the son of another Thomas Kemball and his second wife, Elizabeth Knock.

His father was baptised in Hitcham on 18 March 1764, the son of John Kemball and Mary. The couple had another son, John, baptised in Hitcham six years earlier. And that’s all I know about his parents. I can’t find their marriage and I can’t be certain which baptism for a John Kemball is the right one – if it was even recorded and has survived three hundred years.

Joanna Barton, wife #1

Thomas married his first wife, Joanna Barton, in Hitcham on 19 Feb 1786. They both marked, whereas the witnesses – John Rand and Edward Cricke – both signed. Having transcribed Hitcham’s parish registers, I’m well aware that a serial witness, Thomas Stewart, appears in a huge number of marriage records at this time, but for some reason, didn’t witness Thomas and Joanna’s marriage.

Joanna was a little older than Thomas, having been baptised in Hitcham in 1760. She was the daughter of John Barton and Sarah Rust. It’s rather sad as her family fizzled out in only a few years: her parents married in 1756, their first daughter (also Joanna) was born and died in 1759, then Joanna’s father died in August 1760 before she was born later that year, being baptised in the November.

Presumably a young widow, Sarah married widower Thomas Powle (or Poul, or Powell, etc) in 1767. They had one child, Robert Rust Powell, who was born in 1772 and died an infant. I’m not sure yet what happened to Thomas or Sarah, however, there’s a strange connection here – Thomas had a brother called Robert, and his daughter, Elizabeth, would become Thomas Kemball’s third wife. So Thomas had married two step-first cousins (I think…!). I’ll bring up the Powells again later.

Thomas Kemball and Joanna Barton had two daughters: Sarah, born July 1786, five months after her parents’ marriage, and Eunice, born in 1788. I haven’t been able to trace Sarah, but Eunice married Charles Sparrow in Hitcham in 1817 and she passed away in 1854. They possibly had a daughter called Eliza Sparrow, but I can’t find anything out about her, other than finding her appearance on the 1841 census. She may not be Charles and Eunice’s daughter at all.

Elizabeth Knock, wife #2

Joanna died in 1791, leaving Thomas with one or two young children. Two years later, he married wife #2, Elizabeth Knock. One again, bride and groom both marked, and their witnesses – (T or J) Cooke and a man who clearly enjoyed a wedding, Thomas Stewart, both signed.

Thomas and Elizabeth had seven children together, starting with a son called Thomas born in 1793, but who passed away in 1801. They had two daughters – Ann, born 1795, and Amelia, born 1799. I haven’t been able to trace Amelia, which is odd, seeing as “Amelia Kemball” is a fairly unusual name. Her sister Ann, however, appears to be the Ann Kemball who died at Semer Union House in 1835 and was buried at Hitcham in August that year.

Thomas and Elizabeth had five sons, but only one of them – my ancestor – survived. After that first son called Thomas, there was William, born 1798, who died the following year. Then came Thomas in 1805, followed by another William who lived for only a few months in 1810. A third William was buried in 1808, but I haven’t found his baptism – I assume he was born between Thomas’s birth in 1805 and the last William’s in 1810.

Elizabeth, wife #2, died in January 1813, aged 42. This would mean she was born in about 1771, but I can’t find a definite baptism for her. There are four possible Elizabeth Knocks baptised in Hitcham – the base born daughter of Ann Knock in 1769, the daughter of Samuel and Anne in 1773, the daughter of Robert and Anne in 1775, and the daughter of William and Mary, also in 1775. The two born in 1775 seem to have married men other than Thomas Kemball – an Elizabeth Knock married James Gosling in Hitcham in 1793, and another married Henry Rosier in 1794. By tracing them forwards in time to their burials, they both have rough years of death of 1775/1776.

So it seems as if Elizabeth (if she was baptised in Hitcham was either Anne’s daughter and so was a couple of years older than the burial register suggests, or she was Samuel and Anne’s, and a couple of years younger. I’m not sure how to narrow it down further, unless a will pops up from somewhere! I’m already trying to put together all the Kemballs to find out where my John might fit, so it looks like I’d have to do the same with the Knocks as well… Anne, the solo mother, seems to have had two further illegitimate children, before marrying John Brett, a widower, in 1787. She would’ve been about 46 when she married and the couple didn’t have any children. She died in 1816, and was born in about 1741, which possibly makes her a daughter of Samuel Knock, who was baptised in Hitcham in 1740.

Elizabeth Powle, wife #3

Three years after Elizabeth’s death, Thomas married wife #3, another Elizabeth. They had one daughter, Mary Kemball, in 1818. She married John Rampling in Hitcham in 1839 and they had three children: William, Elizabeth and Walter. Elizabeth died in Hitcham in 1826, aged 50. Thomas, now widowed for a third time at the age of 62, doesn’t seem to have married again.

Powells and Clovers: a digression

About those Pouls/Poles/Powls/Powles/Powells: wife #3 was the daughter of Robert Powell and Martha Osborne. He was the son of Thomas Powell (died Hitcham, 1751) and Judith Clover, (1704-1781). They married by licence in 1728, with John Clover of Nedging as their bondsman. Judith was born in Brettenham, the daughter of John Clover and his wife Judith. Like Thomas Kemball, John Clover was married three times – he was living Edwardstone when he married Elizabeth Wright, wife #1, in 1689. They had two sons, John and James. Elizabeth died in 1694, and John married Mary Goold in Brettenham the same year. They had a son, William, in 1695, then Mary died in February the following year. I haven’t found the third marriage yet, but presumably it took place in late 1696 or early 1697. John and Judith would have 12 children together. They named four daughters “Judith”, the first three dying young, before Robert Powell’s mother was born. I’ve gone on about the Clovers a bit here, but we’ll be hearing about them when I talk about the other Hitcham Kemballs because there are some Kemball/Clover marriages. This might be significant, given that we have a Clover connection with one of Thomas’s wives – or, of couse, it could just be coincidence because they’re all local families!

Childcare

I’ve wondered who was helping Thomas care for his children each time he lost a wife. Some men, who were widowed with young children, would marry mere months after losing a wife, and yet there’s two years between marriages 1 and 2, and three between marriages 2 and 3. Of course, after the death of his second wife, the daughters from Thomas’s first marriage would’ve been 40 and 38. Eunice was 29 when she got married in 1817, so she could’ve been at home bringing up her younger half-siblings, before her marriage. She actually witnessed her father’s third marriage. But what about the gap between the first and second marriages? Who was looking after Sarah and Eunice, seeing as their mother had no siblings? It could be, of course, that Joanna’s mother was helping, but as mentioned, I don’t know what happened to her beyond the early years of her second marriage.

As I have no idea what became of Thomas’s parents, it’s possible his mother was around and was caring for Thomas’s children. There’s no baptisms for any sisters who could’ve helped. Thomas’s sister-in-law, Mary, could’ve been helping, too. Without any censuses at this time, we don’t know what Thomas’s household looked like – it could be that he and his brother lived in the same cottage.

John Kemball

Thomas’s brother John was born in about 1758. He married Mary Mowle (or Moul, or Mole, or Moull, etc.) in 1787, the year after Thomas’s first marriage. They had four children: John in 1789, Thomas in 1792, William in 1796 (who died in infancy), and Elizabeth in 1799. I haven’t been able to confidently trace John or Elizabeth – although there’s a John Kemball who was a prisoner of war during the Napoleonic War who could be him. His place of birth, however, is Ipswich, but his age gives an estimated birth date close to John’s, with no matching baptism in Ipswich. So it could be him… you never know. Their son Thomas died in Hitcham in 1828, and doesn’t appear to have got married.

John senior died in 1832, leaving Mary a widow. She died in Hitcham in 1849, aged 84. I haven’t been able to find her on the 1841… or perhaps I have. On the 1871 census, Thomas Kemball, aged 77, “ag lab”, is living with Ann Kemball, 77 and Sarah Smith, 65. “Ann’s” age matches Mary’s. In the next entry, we have Thomas and Ann Hurrell, and I do wonder if the enumerator made a mistake and muddled Mary’s name up with the woman who lived next door. I can’t find any other records for that “Ann” – at first, I wondered if Thomas had taken on a wife #4, but there’s no marriages that fit. It would make sense for Thomas and Mary to share a house, as they were both getting old by then, and Thomas’s daughter Eunice was living next door as well.

In case you’re wondering about Sarah Smith, because I did, and wondered if she could’ve been Thomas or Mary’s sister, it turns out she wasn’t; she was probably their lodger. She was born Sarah Beaumont, and she married Thomas Smith in Hitcham in 1799. One of the witnesses was Garnham Beaumont, who marked, and was probably Gurney Beaumont who appears in other Hitcham records. Maybe there’s a connection further back, but I don’t know at the moment. By the 1851 census, Sarah was at the Cosford Union House in Semer, and died there in 1855.

Mary was likely the daughter of Peter Mowle and Mary his wife. They had four children, and she was their only daughter. She was only 10 when her mother passed away.

Clues

Even though I don’t have anything solid to take Thomas and John’s parents back further, I do have some potential clues.

• Thomas and Joanna named their second daughter Eunice:^[1]It’s spelt Unice at her baptism, but Eunice in other records. this is a very unusual name. Before Eunice Kemball’s baptism, in Hitcham the name pops up in Clover baptisms. In 1726, John and Ann Clover had a daughter whose name is spelt “Eunicy” in the register; it appears that she married Charles Cooper in 1751. Only a couple of months before Eunice Kemball was baptised, Thomas Jackson and his wife Mary (maiden name Clover) baptised their daughter “Unice”. Did Thomas and Joanna hear the name and chose it for their daughter not long afterwards, or was Eunice Clover/Cooper godparent to these girls? After Eunice Kemball’s baptism, Charles Gooch and his wife Mary (maiden name Rosier) had a daughter called Eunice in 1795. There’s a handful of others, including a Unice Knock, who got married in Hitcham in 1834.
• Thomas, John, William: you may have noticed from the children’s names mentioned above that Thomas named his sons Thomas and William, and John named his sons John, Thomas, and William. Thomas was so set on these names that he kept reusing the names after children passed away. Naming a child Thomas after himself seems reasonable, but why was he so insistent on naming son William? Was his paternal grandfather a William Kemball? Or was his maternal grandmother a William? Of course, we have to be careful here and not assume too much, seeing as we haven’t identified Elizabeth Knock’s parents – could her father have been a William? (we know of an Elizabeth Knock born to a William in about 1775 – but she seems to have been one of the Elizabeth Knocks who married someone other than Thomas Kemball). Or, if she was Ann Knock’s illegitimate daughter, was William Knock an uncle or grandfather who helped to bring her up? We just don’t know, but that insistence on the name does suggest that we might find a William upriver from Thomas and Elizabeth.

Where to next?

As I can’t find the marriage of Thomas and John’s parents, the next step is to look at the other Kemball families in the area. And as there’s a lot of them, this will take a while!

First published: 1st February 2026.