GRAYSON
Introduction
Graysons of Nottinghamshire
William Grayson Sr. (Nocton, Lincs)
William Grayson Jr. (Nocton and Timberland)
Thomas Porter Grayson Sr. (Martin, Lincs & Westerham, Kent)
Thomas Porter Grayson Jr. (Donnington Lincs & London)
OYLER
PRICE
MADDOCK
BERNARD
GAYER
ABOUT ME
George Grayson died in Austerfield, (Yorks.) in 1783 aged 41 when William would have been 18 years old. His mother Mary died in Austerfield in 1804 aged 69. It is not known if she re-married after George’s death. There is no further record of William Grayson (born 1765) in either Nottinghamshire or Yorkshire. There are no marriage or death records. I therefore have made the assumption that William Grayson, born to George and Mary Grayson of Everton and Austerfield left home either before or after his father’s death and journeyed to Lincolnshire where there is a record of a marriage of a William Grayson to Ann Lewis (of Kirkstead) on the 08-Jun-1790 in Kirkstead. He would have been 25 years old at the time of his marriage.
According to William Grayson's death certificate he died 26th November 1839. Present at the death was Robert Lewis, his brother-in-law.
I
developed two theories on why William would have moved from Austerfield
to Lincolnshire as a young man: John Dyson (an engineer) based in
Bawtry (2 miles from Austerfield) carried out drainage projects in
Lincolnshire in the l700s and may have hired William Grayson. A second
theory is that William’s father George was a tenant farmer on lands
owned by the Milne family of Bawtry Hall and Austerfield Manor. The
Milne family also owned lands in Timberland, Lincolnshire. It is
possible that, if William was farming with his father, he may have been
transferred to the Milne’s Lincolnshire holdings. Timberland is less
than 5 miles from Kirkstead where William met his future wife.
Name Repetitions
The
forenames of Graysons in Nottinghamshire preceding
William were:
- Charles,
John, Ann and Mary
- Charles,
Elizabeth, George and Sarah
- William,
Elizabeth, Ann, George and Mary
Children of William Grayson (Nocton, Lincolnshire) were:
Charles, Mary, Elizabeth, John, Sarah, Ann, Maria, William, Rebecca, George, James and David. This repetition of names is not found in other Grayson families in Lincolnshire.
A cousin's memory
Another
clue which contributed to my assumption that William Grayson of
Austerfield and William Grayson of Kirkstead was the same person is a
memory from a distant
cousin,
David Grayson who, on being told that the Graysons may have originated
in
Nottinghamshire, said.
“.. when I was
still a child, whenever we were driving along the A631 westwards into
Notts., as
we were passing Grimley-on-the-Hill, my father would mention that that
was
where the family hailed from. It always confused me a little as I knew
the
family structure according to the family bible and Nott’s just didn’t
feature”
Grimley-on-the-Hill is close to the communities of Blyth, Ranskill and Austerfield.
DNA matches
In 2015 I submitted
samples of my DNA to FTDNA and Ancestry.co.uk. for autosomal testing. Autosomal
DNA is inherited from
both parents which allows descendants to match their DNA to both maternal and
paternal lines.
A
DNA match provided irrefutable, scientific
proof that William Grayson, my great, great, great grandfather was
from the Nottinghamshire Graysons. My DNA matched with a
descendant of Ann (Grayson) Ackroyd, William's youngest sister, both
children of George and Mary Grayson of Blyth and Austerfield. I have
also found a match with a descendant of Charles Grayson of Blyth,
brother of George Grayson my 4th great grandfather who moved to
Austerfield.