Person:Ann Bracey (1)

Ann Bracey was baptised on 27th January 1723 at the small village of Letchworth in Hertfordshire, daughter of Isaac and Jane Bracey. She appears to have been the third of six children (five girls and a boy).

On 31st March 1746, aged 23, she was married at nearby Great Wymondley to a labourer named Godfrey Cannon. After their marriage, they moved to the nearby market town of Hitchin, where their first son, Charles, was born just under nine months after their marriage. He was followed by a daughter named Ann in 1749, but she died aged only sixteen months in 1750. Later that year they had another daughter, Mary.

The couple's next child, Sarah, was not baptised at Hitchin but at Caldecote, a tiny parish a few miles north-east of Hitchin. Ann's younger sister Mary Bracey had married a Michael Surrey from Caldecote in 1750 and settled there; maybe Ann had gone to stay with her sister. After Sarah's baptism at Caldecote in 1754 the family returned to Hitchin, where their next child, another Ann, was baptised in 1757. She was followed by Joseph in 1760, William in 1765 and Elizabeth in 1768, all baptised at Hitchin. In 1769, young William died aged three. Later in 1769 Ann's first known grandchild (her daughter Mary's eldest son) was baptised.

Ann and Godfrey therefore had eight children in total, but lost two as children.

Ann's parents Isaac and Jane Bracey both lived to good ages, both living about sixty years after their first known child's baptism, suggesting they were probably in their eighties. They seem to have continued to live in Letchworth. Isaac was buried there in February 1778 and Jane in September 1779.

Ann only outlived her mother by just over two years. She was buried at Hitchin on 21st November 1781, aged 58. She had lived to see at least eight grandchildren born in her lifetime. Godfrey outlived her by nearly twelve years.

1. ↑ Church of England. Parish Church of Letchworth. Parish registers, 1696-1937. (Hertford: Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies).

   1722/3
   Anne the daughter of Isaac Bracey & Jane his wife, was Baptiz[e]d on Jan[ua]ry the 27th

   Whilst no named connection has been found, the link between the Ann Bracey baptised at Letchworth in 1723 and the Ann Bracey who married at Great Wymondley in 1746 has been made on the basis that it is at a plausible time for when Ann was having children, appears to be the only Ann Bracey baptism locally to Great Wymondley around that time, and there is no evidence suggesting that the Ann baptised in 1723 died young or married anyone else. Moreover, the adult Ann briefly lived in the tiny parish of Caldecote in the early 1750s, which is where one of the sisters (Mary) of the Ann baptised in 1723 had gone to live after her marriage in 1750.

2. ↑ Church of England. Parish Registers of St Mary's Church, Hitchin. (Hertford: Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies).

   Buried: 1781
   Nov[embe]r 21 Ann Wife of Godfrey Cannon Labourer