Unteasing the Halstead Cardinalls: Christopher Cardinall (1742-c1807), Anne Challis, and their children

Christopher Cardinall was baptised in Halstead on 18 Oct 1742, the son of William Cardinall and his wife Mary Chaplin; he was the youngest of their children and was only 11 when his mother died in 1753.

On the 5 March 1767, a Christopher Cardinall appears in the list of brethren “taken in” as members of Halstead Independent chapel. This is presumably the same Christopher – he would’ve been about 25 at the time. A Mary Cardinall, who joined in 1775, may well be his sister. Only these two Cardinalls appear in the list.

On 18 Dec 1770, Christopher married Anne Challis. She appears to have been brought up as an Independent; there’s no sign of a baptism for her in the Church of England. A man called James Challis joined Halstead Independent church on 4 Sep 1740, and a memorial for him and his wife Esther was recorded there: he died on 29 Sep 1773 aged 62, and Esther died on 15 July 1776, aged 66. James and Esther were likely to be Anne’s parents.

Being Independents immediately presents us with a problem. While they had to marry at the local parish church, they performed their own baptisms and eventually burials, once they had their own cemetery. These events have been recorded in a very patchy manner, and it means that there are no baptisms recorded for any children of Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis, but we know that they did have children. There are few wills directly connected with them either; Christopher and Anne didn’t leave any, and only two of their children did. But some of them are mentioned in wills from the wider family, and in wills of their friends.

I’ll start by throwing the facts your way, then I’ll tidy things up with bulletpoints at the end, where it’ll hopefully make sense.

Halstead St Andrew’s burial register features the burials of three children of Christopher and Ann Cardinall, but no corresponding baptisms: John on 4 May 1780, Sarah on 8 Sep 1783, and Hannah on 11 Jan 1789. We don’t know how old the children were, but it does at least tell us that Christopher and Ann did have children – that’s the first four, and the easiest to find.

James Cardinall

Another document names another child, and tells us what Christopher’s profession was. On 1 Nov 1792, James Cardinall, son of Christopher Cardinall of Halstead, cordwainer, was apprenticed to Robert Wyatt, a member of the Currier’s Company in the City of London. Boys were usually about 14 when they were apprenticed, so James was likely born about 1778. It may well be that James was named after his possible maternal grandfather, James Challis.

James married Anne Sandford in Halstead in 1807. The Cardinalls and Sandfords are tied quite closely. On 3 Feb 1778, Esther Challis married Sheppard Sandford in Halstead. Although we don’t know for sure, it’s likely that Esther was the sister of Anne Challis, who had married Christopher Cardinall. The Sandfords were Independents as well, and the baptisms, patchy though they are, actually capture some baptisms for children of Sheppard and Esther, including Anne, baptised in November 1787. This would make James Cardinall and his wife first cousins.

Anne Sandford/Cardinall’s parents Sheppard and Esther both lived long lives: Esther died in 1834, aged 74, and Sheppard in 1842, aged 80.^[1]Memorial inscriptions from Halstead United Reformed Church. On the 1841 census, the Sandfords were living at Symnalls Farm in Halstead, along with 20-year-old Esther Cardinall and 28-year-old Anne Cardinall. These two girls can be identified as daughters of James and Anne, because they would’ve been born after the death of Christopher Cardinall junior (more on him below).

I haven’t found a burial record for James yet, but we know when he died. In 1827, he was made the executor of John Gunn, a Halstead victualler. Although James probated the will in 1829, with John’s widow Ann, but because they didn’t administer the will in their lifetimes, a grant of administration was made in 1855. This grant gives James and Anne’s dates of death – and this tells us that James died on 17 May 1837. I was surprised – and pleased – to discover James’ date of death in such an unexpected place. Someone else’s probate documents!^[2]James was a popular executor – he was also the executor for Mary Kirkham, who died in 1821. She named him as her cousin; her maiden name was Cardinall.

Anne Cardinall

By identifying James as a child of Christopher and Anne Cardinall, we can add a daughter as well. On 28 May 1807, Jeremiah French of Cressing, a victualler, wrote his will, and named his brother-in-law James Cardinall, a currier from Halstead, as one of his executors.^[3]Will of Jeremiah French of Cressing, victualler, probate 8 Jan 1808, Essex Record Office: reference D/ACW 38/4/1 Jeremiah had married Anne Cardinall in Stoke-by-Clare, Suffolk, on 10 April 1800. They married by licence: Jeremiah was 28 and Anne was 27, so she was born in about 1773. Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis married in 1770, so she would’ve been born in the early years of her parents’ marriage.

Another piece of evidence which tells us this stacks up and we’re talking about the right Cardinall family is that one of the witnesses at Anne and Jeremiah’s marriage was John Chaplin Cornell. He was in Anne’s extended family – he was the son of Bridge Cornell and Sarah Chaplin, and Sarah was a first cousin of Mary Chaplin, who had married William Cardinall. In other words, Anne Cardinall and John Chaplin Cornell were second cousins, sharing a pair of great-grandparents, Thomas Chaplin and Mary Edwins.

After Jeremiah’s death in 1807, Anne was left a widow with four small children. Eight years later, she married John Nobile, a bachelor from Braintree. The two witnesses were James and Thomas Cardinal. James is presumably her brother, while Thomas is… well, more on him in a bit.

Anne Cardinall and Jeremiah French had four children: Ann (1802-1820), Jeremiah (1804-1820), Sarah (1805-1824), and Mary (1807-1861), the only one to survive to adulthood. In 1824, Mary married Henry Digby, a miller from Halstead, and they eventually moved to Colchester. Henry’s brother, William Freeborn Digby (1782-1842) married Elizabeth Cardinall, so we can see the family ties were strong. This is where things get a bit complicated. Elizabeth Cardinall/Digby appears to be the daughter of Christopher Cardinall and Elizabeth Abel – and this particular Christopher Cardinall is another son of Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis.

Christopher Cardinall and Elizabeth Abel

Christopher Cardinall was a shopkeeper in Halstead. He married Elizabeth Abel at St Mary Magdalene’s in Bermondsey, Surrey, on 18 Oct 1797. Elizabeth’s father Christopher Abel was an Independent minister.^[4]See the history of Bugby Chapel, Prospect Place, Epsom: https://eehe.org.uk/29583/bugbychapel/ When he wrote his will on 5 Aug 1800,^[5]PCC will of Christopher Abel of Dorking, yeoman, probate 28 July 1802 Christopher Abel named his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Christopher Cardinal of Halstead. He left her £100 plus a portion of his household goods after the death of her stepmother. But then, in a codicil written two years later, less than a month before his death, Christopher Abel revoked Elizabeth’s legacy of £100, and doesn’t explain why. 

In 1806, Christopher Cardinall ran into trouble. An advert appears in the Ipswich Journal:^[6]Ipswich Journal, 15 March 1806.

An ELIGIBLE SITUATION to be DISPOSED OF

An old-established and well-accustomed SHOP, with the stock in Trade of a General Shopkeeper, situated in the center of the pleasant and healthy market town of Halsted, in Essex, late in the occupation of Mr. CHRISTOPHER CARDINALL junior, who has assigned his estate and effects to Messrs. Isaac Sewell, of that place, wine-merchant, and Jonah Reeve, of Bocking, in Essex, grocer, for the benefit of his creditors.

All persons having any legal claims upon the said Mr. Cardinall, are requested forthwith to send their respective accounts thereof. And all persons indebted to him, are required immediately to pay their respective debts, or they will be sued for the same, to the abovenamed assignees; or to Mr Usher, attorney at law, at Halsted above-mentioned; of all of whom further particulars may be had upon enquiry.

So Christopher had run into money problems and passed his business over to others, so that it could sold to pay off his debts. Could his money troubles explain why his father-in-law disinherited his wife, because Mr. Abel didn’t want his money vanishing into his son-in-law’s debts? Or perhaps Mr. Abel simply realised that he didn’t have enough money to give his daughter such a sum.

Whatever was going on, one fact that leaps out from this advert is the fact that Christopher Cardinall, shopkeeper, was described as “junior”. This means an older Christopher Cardinall was still living in or near Halstead in 1806, and that would most likely be Christopher, who was born in about 1742. This also suggests to me that they were very likely to have been father and son.

Christopher’s financial situation improved enough that he was able to make a will on 8 June 1808.^[7]Will of Christopher Cardinall of Halstead, shopkeeper, probate 4 April 1809, Essex Record Office: reference D/ABW 118/1/10. He says that he wants his funeral to “be quite plain, without any Pall, and with as little Expence as possibly can be, and in a similar Manner as my late Father’s Funeral.” If he was the son of Christopher, born about 1742, then Christopher senior died sometime between March 1806, when Christopher Cardinall, shopkeeper, was referred to as “Christopher Cardinall junior”, and 8 June 1808, when Christopher Cardinall, shopkeeper, wrote his will.

Christopher left £10 to his housekeeper, Mary Brookes, “for her very great care of me and my children.” As he doesn’t mention a wife in his will, Elizabeth must have predeceased him, and his housekeeper, as well as running his household, had ended up as a nanny. His executors were John Fairbank of Halstead, a gardener, and Sheppard Sandford the younger, farmer of Halstead, who Christopher tells us is his cousin. This is yet another clue to tell us that he was the son of Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis.

Sheppard Sandford, mentioned above, would have been related to Christopher a couple of times over. He was his uncle, as Sheppard had married Christopher’s maternal aunt, but he was also an in-law, because one of Sheppard’s daughters had married Christopher’s brother James. And when James had married Anne Sandford, one of the witnesses was Christopher Cardinall. Sheppard’s will helps us to identify children who weren’t captured by the baptisms, including a son called Sheppard William Sandford. And in 1800, “Christopher Cardinall junior” witnessed the marriage of Mary Sandford – one of Sheppard and Esther’s daughters – to Robert Thomas Hughes.

So what we can put together from this is the following: Christopher Cardinall’s cousin, one of his executors, was Sheppard William Sandford – he’d left his middle name out. Or it was his uncle, and Christopher was losing the term “cousin” loosely? But this is unusual by the early 1800s. If Sheppard William Sandford and Christopher Cardinall, shopkeeper, were cousins, then it means that Christopher was a son of Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis.

So along with James and Anne, we’ve now identified a third child – Christopher – as well as the three children who died young. But I think there is another we can tie in.

Thomas Cardinall and Hannah Durrant

As mentioned, Thomas Cardinall who married Hannah Durrant is a mystery. We know about the tragic series of deaths in his family in 1841, which took Thomas’ life along with those of four of his children, but without a baptism or a will, we don’t know who his parents were.

But as you can see, we’re able to sleuth through multiple records and piece together the fact that Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis had several children: James, Anne, and Christopher, who lived to adulthood and had children, and then three more children who died in the 1780s. There may be more – and I think one of them is Thomas.

When Thomas died in July 1841, his age was given as 58, which means he was born in about 1783. Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis were married in 1770, and had Anne in about 1773 and James in about 1778. As their son Christopher married in 1797, he was likely to have been born in the 1770s as well – perhaps between the births of Anne and James. Then we have the three children who died in the 1780s, the last in 1789. So a child born in about 1783 fits.

The fact that we can’t find Thomas’ baptism is, ironically, evidence of a kind that he was Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis’ son – because we don’t have baptisms for the other children we’ve identified as being theirs, either.

When Anne French (born Cardinall) married her second husband, John Nobile, in 1815, the witnesses were James Cardinal and Thomas Cardinal. The first witness is very likely to be her brother James – we know they were close, as James was her first husband’s executor. While there are a lot of Thomas Cardinalls/Cardinals floating about, comparing the signature to the other Thomas Cardinalls shows a close match with the signature Thomas Cardinal penned when he married Hannah Durrant. Wouldn’t it be apt for Anne to marry her second husband with her two surviving brothers serving as witnesses to her happy event?

Signature of Thomas Cardinal on marrying Hannah Durrant:

Signature of Thomas Cardinal as witness to marriage of Anne Cardinall/French to John Nobile:

The tidier version

Christopher Cardinall and Anne Challis married in Halstead in 1770. Their children were:

• Anne, b about 1773, d by 1828
• Christopher, b about 1775 (or 1771/1772), died 3 Jan 1809
• James, b about 1778, died 17 May 1837
• John, died 1780 (perhaps died an infant, so was born around 1780)
• Sarah, died 1783 (again, perhaps born about 1783. Thomas’ twin? Or born before him?)
• Thomas, born about 1783, died 1841
• Hannah, died 1789 (perhaps born about 1789, if she died an infant)

Written by Helen Barrell
First published: 9 Dec 2024