Richard White (1751-1840) & Rebekah Ruse (1792-1860)
Richard White was a yeoman farmer born in born in 1751, the son of William White and Mary Riddington, and was baptised at Radwinter, Essex on 1 December 1751.
Richard White of Radwinter married Susanna Bowtell (1759-1816) at Ashdon, Essex on 3 October 1798. The Bowtell family were farmers who appeared in the Ashdon parish records from when they started in the C16th.
The marriage to Susannah was childless. Susannah died in 1816 and was buried at Radwinter, where her grave recorded “In memory of Susannah, the wife of Richard White of Ashdon, who departed this life 2 October 1816 aged 57 years”.
Richard was about 65 when he married his second wife, Rebekah Ruse at Ashdon, Essex on 19 November 1817.
Rebekah Ruse was the daughter of Joshua Ruse and Mary Wiseman of Ashdon. Although her baptism was not listed in the parish records, she was born around 1792.
According to notes later made by their grandson Richard Wentworth White in the late 19th century, who gathered information about his grandparents’ families, and also heard from Josiah Green (when the latter was aged 75) who had been the blacksmith at Ashdon and had been present at Richard White’s death: “Radwinter End Farm – 100 acres…returned about £200 a year and was bought by Richard White our Grandfather who bought it out of his savings. After he married his second wife he retired and let the farm to his brother James. He then bought the old house at Ashdon where Clare Cottage now stands, the present garden being identical with the old. On the death of Mrs White No 2 our grandmother, this was sold to Mr Mascall a butcher”. The “old house…was a small thatched one”.
Richard and Rebekah had three children: Richard (born 9 March 1819), Henry (born 6 January 1823), and Philip Edwin (born 12 January 1825). Richard (described as a farmer) and Rebekah were living in Ashdon when Richard was baptised but when the younger two sons were baptised they were living in the Hamlet of Bartlow Hamlet (which, although in Cambridgeshire, was part of the parish of Ashdon) and Richard was described as yeoman.
The White family notes said that “Mr Richd White’s boys went to Mr Walker’s a meeting parson’s school”. Richard Wentworth White wrote that “The Ruse family were either Baptists, Methodists or Plymouth Brethren. I know he [R W White’s father, Richard White II] was never confirmed…Your uncle Percy never was [baptised] and the rest of us passed through the ceremony of those of mature years not infant baptism.”
It was likely, therefore, that the Ruse family were part of the community of non-conformists in Ashdon in the late C18th and who attended a meeting house in Saffron Walden. The minister there, Matthew Walker, moved to Ashdon in 1809 and founded the Ashdon Baptist church with ten other (male) members (including a yeoman, a blacksmith and a miller from Ashdon, a yeoman from Radwinter and a yeoman from Castle Camps). Around this time, the Rector of Ashdon wrote “There are many persons living in this parish who frequently resort to meeting houses of which there are several in contiguous parishes…Their number seems increasing…Several Teachers occasionally visit here” (quoted in Angela Green’s ‘Ashdon’).
Richard died in 1840. He was buried at Radwinter (on 4 June 1840) – the Radwinter parish register described his abode as “Linton Bartlow Hamlet” – so there was a residual connection with Radwinter although he lived in the neighbouring parish. In his will he was described as a yeoman and he left his house and property in Bartlow to Rebekah for the remainder of her life, if she remained unmarried, and then to his second son Henry; and, in the event of his death, to his youngest son Philip Edwin. The remainder of his property was left to his eldest son on the condition that an annuity of £40 was paid to Rebekah.
It is probable that by the time of his father’s death Richard (junior) had already left Essex to study dentistry in London as he was practising in Norfolk in the early 1840s.
Rebekah remained at Ashdon, living there with her son Henry at the time of the 1841 census (in which she was described of independent means), and Philip Edwin was apprenticed to a draper and grocer in Saffron Walden. Henry joined the infantry in 1846. According to the family notes written by Richard Wentworth White (Rebekah’s eldest grandson), after Richard’s death Rebekah “left Ashdon and lived at Saffron Walden till about 1847”. The Tithe Award for Ashdon in 1848 listed “Rebecca White” as the owner of a house, garden and yard, unoccupied, and a parcel of land called Mill Field Croft occupied by a Henry Archer.
She moved to Norwich where her son Richard had a successful and profitable dentistry practice and a large family.
Rebekah was living in Heigham (with a servant) by 1851. She died on 15 January 1860 at 1 Grove Place of paralysis exhaustion. The Norfolk News listed in its death notices: “White – On Sunday last, at Grove Place, Heigham, in this city, aged 67, Rebekah, relict of the late Mr Richard White, of Ashdon, Essex’.
Rebekah was buried at Radwinter on 20 January 1860. Richard Wentworth White later noted: “Rebekah: I have had to write her name many times and when I saw her coffin was surprised to find her plate engraved wrong. My father when I told him of the mistake was very angry. He was ill in bed but got up to go to the funeral. He saw his brother Philip Edwin there for the last time.”
Philip Edwin White was a travelling salesman of cutlery (variously listed in census and his daughters’ baptismal records as a licenced hawker of cutlery, hawker of cutlery, cutler) who had settled in Derbyshire. He married Mary Ann Meakins, and they had three daughters (Rebecca born in 1855, Maria Louisa in 1857, and Amelia Annie in 1859) and a son Philip Edwin who died in 1868 aged 5. In the 1871 census the daughters were all listed working as a “silk factory hand”. Philip Edwin died in 1872.
Richard and Rebekah’s second son, Henry, had married Emma Sorrell at Hempstead, Essex and they had a son, Henry Richard, born in 1846. (Henry is described as a soldier in his son’s baptism record.) His wife and son both died in 1850 and were buried at Hempstead on 26 November and 24 December. In 1851, Henry was living with his parents-in-law, John (an agricultural labourer) and Susan Sorrill at Hempstead, and described as in HM service. In 1851, Sergeant Henry White (of Ashdon, near Saffron Walden, Essex, having joined at the age of 23 on 21 January 1846) was discharged from the Queen’s Royal Regiment of Infantry as being unfit for further service, having served for 5 years and 148 days, with the note that his conduct had been good. The White family papers noted that he “farmed at Hempstead; a wild young fellow and died at the Crown Inn there aged 35…married badly, no family”.
Richard and Rebekah’s eldest son, Richard, maintained a connection with Essex. In 1857, he advertised for let, with immediate possession, “a farm, consisting of sixty acres of good arable and pastureland, with a farmhouse, nearly new, and convenient premises, situated four miles from the market town of Saffron Walden”. Presumably this is the family farm in Essex.
In the 1880s Richard White (their son) arranged for the erection of a marble memorial to Richard and Rebekah in Radwinter churchyard. He wrote in a letter to his son Henry: “I went to Radwinter in Essex where my father and mother are buried. I lunched with the Rector, when he informed me that…he was now collecting subscriptions to restore a very interesting old porch by which my ancestors had entered the church for nearly two hundred years”. Richard made a donation, and asked his children also to donate, to this restoration of the church porch at Radwinter so that “the whole family would be represented on the list of subscribers shortly to be published”.
The restoration of the church is described in “A Deuce of an Uproar” (1988) based on WE Nesfield’s letters to the Rector of Radwinter.