Person:Lydia Chapman (9)

Lydia Chapman was baptised on 29th June 1717 at Benington in Hertfordshire, daughter of Dorcas Chapman formerly Meagre and her husband John Chapman, a yeoman. Lydia was the eldest of their three daughters; her parents had married the year before she was born. When Lydia was about nine years old her mother Dorcas died. Lydia's father remarried shortly afterwards to a woman named Ann, who became Lydia's stepmother. However, in 1727 Lydia's father died too, leaving her and her two sisters Dorcas and Mary orphans. Lydia was ten years old when her father died.

The month after Lydia's father's death, Lydia's stepmother Ann renounced her right to administer the estate, apparently including the guardianship of the three young girls. Instead the girls were looked after by a butcher named Thomas Smith from the neighbouring parish of Aston. He apparently looked after the children "beyond what their fortunes will allow" in the view of one of their neighbours at Aston. The arrangement was formalised with a bond of guardianship in 1733.^[2]

Some time between 1733 and 1744 Lydia married a carpenter named John Heylock. By 1744 they were living at Sawston in Cambridgeshire, when Lydia was referred to in a deed relating to land at Cudden End that she and her sisters apparently owned.^[3]

Lydia has yet to be traced after 1744.

1. ↑ Church of England. Parish Registers of Benington. (Hertford: Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies).

   1717: Lydia filia Johan et Dorcae Chapman bap[tizata] Jun[e] 29
   1717: Lydia daughter of John & Dorcas Chapman was baptised June 29

2. ↑ See administration documents transcribed on Mary's father John's page.
3. ↑ See note on the family page for Lydia and John Heylock.