Person:Margaret Knowles (7)

Margaret Knowles’ origins have yet to be established. The age given when she died suggests that she was born around 1750. Her first confirmed sighting is on 27th September 1787, when she married William Reynolds at Eccleshall in Staffordshire. At the time of their marriage he was said to be a minor, indicating that he was not yet 21 years old.

The following year Margaret and William had a son, Thomas Knowles Reynolds, baptised at Eccleshall. The family was living at Rue Barn, a farming hamlet a couple of miles south-west of the town. Thomas’s baptism appears to be the last sighting of the family in Eccleshall. As an adult Thomas gave his birthplace as Birmingham, suggesting they may have moved there when he was very small.

It is not clear what happened to William after the family left Eccleshall. There was an Esther daughter of William and Margaret Reynolds baptised at Barford near Warwick in 1796, who may have been the same couple. That Esther and Margaret’s son Thomas both settled in the town of Warwick as adults and at different times lived on the street in Warwick called Coten End.

In 1808 Margaret witnessed her son Thomas’s marriage.

One possibility is that William was the “William D. Reynolds” who lived on Bowling Green Street in Warwick and died in 1835, being buried on 18th January 1835 at St Mary’s church in Warwick.

Margaret died a few months later, having been living on Coten End immediately before her death. She was buried on 25th June 1835 at St Mary’s church in Warwick, when she was said to be 84 years old.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Burials register, in Church of England. Parish registers of St Mary, Warwick, 1538-1928. (Warwick: Warwickshire County Record Office).

   BURIALS in the Parish of St Mary Warwick in the County of Warwick in the Year 1835
   No.	Name	Abode	When buried	Age	By whom the Ceremony was performed
   121	Margaret Reynolds	Cotton End	June 25	84 [1750/1]	J. Boudier

   This burial has been identified on the basis that when Margaret's son Thomas married in 1808 in Warwick she was one of the witnesses, and in the 1820s Thomas was living at Coten End in Warwick, which is where this Margaret died.