My Leedham Antecedents

The Parents of John Leedham – Thomas & Ann

His Father – Thomas Leedham

A SUMMARY

THIS MAY NOT BE CORRECT – There is a Thomas born in 1737 that also married an ANN

Thomas Leedham’s life, based on records found to date, some of which I need to validate:

• 1745 – Around the year 1745 Thomas Leedham was born in the Leicestershire village of Dadlington
• 1775 – At the age of 30 years Thomas Leedham is recorded as a legible voter in the 1775 Poll Book. This means he owned property (below are the voting qualifications in place at that time).

The record below show Thomas owning his own ‘Meffuage and Land’. In property law Meffuage (Messuage) ‘a dwelling house together with its outbuildings, curtilage, and the adjacent land appropriated to its use’.

The record also includes an as yet, unidentified George Leedham.

Poll Books and Electoral Register 1775 – West Goscote. Netherseal parish

Voting rights in the 1700’s

• • In the 1700s only an incredibly small number of people, obviously all men, were able to elect these representatives, they were referred to as the “Knights of the Shire”. 
  •  The Knights of the Shire Act in 1432 was the first parliamentary legislation to establish who was enfranchised to vote for the members.
  • The act gave the right to vote to “Forty Shilling Freeholders”, meaning that only owners of real property who paid taxes to the Crown of at least 40 shillings per year (roughly £2,500 in today’s money).
  • This remained the status quo for over 400 years, even after the passage of the Bill of Rights 1869 that provided for regular parliamentary elections.
  • A survey from 1780 revealed that the number of enfranchised voters amounted to only 3% of the United Kingdom’s population.

• 1776 – At the age of around 31 year Thomas is married on 25th September 1776 to ANN EATHERLY, at the age of around 27 years, in Saint Mary Church, Hinckley, Leicestershire. Hinckley is around 60 minutes walk from Dadlington. Ann Eatherly was also born in Dadlington around the year of 1749

Dadlington was a small village, The 1851 census contains the details of 50 households in the village and 26 people recorded their occupation as framework knitters.  The map below is from 1888, around one hundred years after Thomas Leedham and Ann Eatherly lived in the village. (Information and map from the website of Dadlington Village History).

• 1777 – A son, JOHN LEEDHAM, was born on 11th February 1777 in the Leicestershire village of Dadlington.
• 1778 – A second son, Edward Leedham was born in 1778
• 1779 – His wife Ann Leedham (née Eatherly) dies as a young mother at the age of 30 years.
•  1829 – Thomas Leedham died around the year 1829 having lived a long life of 84 years. He was buried in the churchyard of St Peter’s Church, Netherseal, a village in the English county of Derbyshire, less than 2 miles from the neighbouring county of Leicestershire.

Did he marry Ann King?

Insert burial records