Person:Ann North (7)

Ann North's origins have yet to be established. Her burial record suggests she was born in about 1774. Her first confirmed sighting is on 10th April 1804 when she was married at Winsham in Somerset to an agricultural labourer named William Hutchings. Between 1805 and 1812 they had four children baptised a short way east of Winsham at Crewkerne: daughters named Elizabeth and Mary then sons named Edmund Wilkins and James Hoare. The boys' middle names may be clues to earlier members of the family. In Crewkerne parish the family did not live in the town itself but in the hamlet of Woolminstone.

Ann's elder son Edmund was married in January 1833. Ann and William's first granddaughter, Edmund's daughter Mary, was baptised in the April. On the same day Mary was baptised Ann's elder daughter Elizabeth was married in the same church.

Ann died aged 62 and was buried on 12th July 1836 at Crewkerne. She had lived to see four granddaughters. William outlived her by thirteen years.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Burials register, in Church of England. Parish Church of Crewkerne. Crewkerne Parish Registers, 1558-1901. (Taunton: Somerset Heritage Service).

   BURIALS in the Parish of Crewkerne in the County of Somerset in the Year 1836
   No.	Name	Abode	When buried	Age	By whom the Ceremony was performed
   428	Anne Hutchings	Woolminston	July 12th	62 years [1773/4]	Rd. Lowe, P.C.

   This burial has been linked to the Ann Hutchings wife of William on the basis that she was not living with William at the time of the 1841 census, this is the only plausible burial of an Ann Hutchings at Crewkerne between 1812 (when Ann and William's youngest was baptised) and 1841 - the only other Ann Hutchings burial in this period was a child - and the Ann who died in 1836 lived in the hamlet of Woolminstone, where the family is known to have lived. This Ann being 62 at her death in 1836 suggests that she was about 30 when she married and 38 when her youngest was baptised, which is plausible.