Daniel Hockley, youngest child of William Hockley and Mary Bentley, was baptised on May 18, 1725 in Great Sampford, Essex. Daniel married Sarah Reynolds on Nov. 20, 1753 in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. Daniel and Mary baptised two sons in Thaxted, Essex: William in 1754 and Daniel in 1755. William died as an infant. Daniel and Mary relocated to Wicken Bonhunt, Essex before 1769, as Daniel held the licence for the 3 Horse Shoes pub in Wicken Bonhunt from 1769 through 1775. In 1775, Daniel also held the licence for the Green Man pub in nearby Arkesden and the family moved to Arkesden. Daniel died in Arkesden the following year, on Dec. 18, 1776.
Daniel Hockley, son of Daniel and Sarah, was baptised in Thaxted, Essex on Aug. 2, 1755. In 1776, at age 20, Daniel was apprenticed to an Arkesden cordwainer. He may not have completed his apprenticeship, however, as his father died at the end of 1776 and his mother held the Green Man licence in 1777. After that, Daniel held the pub’s licence until his own death many years later. Daniel married Mary Smith in Heydon, Essex on Apr. 27, 1779. Daniel and Mary had five children before Mary died in 1791. Daniel married Dorinda Smith in Wendens Ambo, Essex on Nov. 10, 1791. Their son William Hockley was baptised in 1792 and they had three further children. Daniel died in Arkesden on Mar. 20, 1822.
William Hockley, son of Daniel and Dorinda, was baptised in Arkesden, Essex on Sept. 9, 1792. William married Mary Orger in Clavering, Essex on Sept. 26, 1815. William may have been a butcher, like Mary’s father. William and Mary had two sons and a daughter before Mary’s death in 1821. William married Elizabeth Glasscock in Clavering on Feb. 18, 1823. William and Elizabeth had a daughter and then five sons, including Thomas Hockley. The family moved to nearby Duddenhoe End, where Elizabeth died in 1834. William married a third time, on Oct. 5, 1835, to Mary Ann Kemp in Wenden Lofts. They had two daughters and a son before deciding to immigrate to Canada in 1844. William and Mary Ann bought a farm in Uxbridge, Canada West. A son born after they arrived in Canada died shortly after birth. Mary Ann also died in Ontario and William married again to Mary McNeil in 1850. Mary gave birth to William’s 14th child in 1851. William remained on his Uxbridge farm until his death on Feb. 7, 1873. The farm has remained in the family, through his son Daniel’s descendants.
Thomas Hockley, son of William and Elizabeth, was born Mar. 27, 1830 in Clavering, Essex and baptised the following January in the Independent Church. Thomas left home in his teens, likely to learn the miller’s trade. He married Hannah Forster on Apr. 2, 1850 in Albion Township, Peel Co, Canada West. Thomas and Hannah had four children. Hannah died after the birth of their youngest daughter in 1857. Thomas built a grist mill in Centreville, Albion the same year and later that year, married Catherine (Spence) Crawford, a young widow with a small daughter. Thomas and Catherine had two sons in Centreville and in 1862 sold their Albion property and moved to a property with grist and timber mills in a village in Adjala Township. The village adopted the name Hockley Ville. Thomas and Catherine’s daughter Emma was born in Hockley in 1863. The same year, Thomas heard about an oil boom in Pennsylvania, and put his mills and property up for sale. The family headed off to Pennsylvania where Thomas drilled a few wells. Catherine and the children returned – apparently destitute – to Ontario by 1870, where Thomas and Catherine’s son Thomas was born in 1870. Thomas abandoned the family, reportedly returning to the States, and the family never heard from him again.
Catherine and her four children all moved west between 1882 and 1890. Son Stewart lived in the Assiniboia region of Saskatchewan; son Robert lived in Edmonton, Alberta; daughter Emma lived in Virden, Manitoba and son Tommy lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Catherine died in Virden in 1900.
© Published by Kathy Lowe [email protected]
Hockley Family HistoryPosted: June 29, 2015
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HOCKLEY
ONE-NAME STUDY
Around 1970 I became interested in my family history and asked my grandparents for information. They told me about my grandmother’s grandparents George Carefoot and Catherine “Emma” Hockley, but didn’t know much more about them. My great grandmother, George and Emma’s oldest child, Eulalia May (Carefoot) Stephenson, was deceased by then, so I wrote to her sister Lina (Carefoot) Keedwell. Aunt Lina, then in her 90s, sent me a chart of her siblings and their offspring and identified George and Emma’s siblings and Emma’s mother, Catherine.
A few years later, my parents happened upon the village of Hockley, Ontario and stopped into the studio of Jack Brooksbank, who was in the process of preparing a book about the history of the village and its namesake, Thomas Hockley. My mother noticed her grandmother’s name, Eulalia, in the book and ordered a copy. The Eulalia mentioned in the book was not her grandmother, but an earlier Eulalia Hockley, who had been Thomas Hockley’s sister and therefore the great aunt of my mother’s grandmother.
In his book, in addition to his own research, Mr Brooksbank had used the Hockley information gathered by Ruby Heard as she worked to sort out the Uxbridge family of Thomas’s father, William Hockley. I’ve come across Ruby’s seminal information time and again in my search for clues about the Uxbridge Hockley family and their Essex roots.
I’d seen the Arkesden, Essex records for the Daniel Hockley family on the Hockley Family History site and made a visit with that in mind to Arkesden and Clavering. At the time, I was thinking that our William was connected to Clavering and Thaxted, not to Arkesden, and I thought that Daniel may have been our William’s uncle or a more distant relation. Further research into the family and many clues found on this site and in the Essex records finally lead me to realize that Daniel Hockley of Arkesden was indeed the father of the William Hockley who moved his family from Clavering to Uxbridge, Ontario in 1844.
I am going to relate this Hockley story in the order that it came to me – starting with my gggrandmother,
Catherine “Emma” Hockley b 1863, Hockley, Ontario d 1954, Kelowna, BC
her father, Thomas Hockley b 1830, Clavering, Essex d 1876?, Ontario?
his father, William Hockley b 1792, Arkesden, Essex d 1873, Uxbridge, Ontario
his father, Daniel Hockley b 1755, Thaxted, Essex d 1822, Arkesden, Essex
his father, Daniel Hockley b 1725, Great Sampford, Essex d 1776, Arkesden, Essex