Whatmore Family History

Tuxford is a village in Nottinghamshire, about 10 miles south of the town of Retford. It is important in the annals of the Watmough family since as early as the 1560s there was a Watmough family living there. In fact the family may have been there much earlier, but the parish registers do not go back earlier than 1624, and the Bishops’ Transcripts only begin in 1598, so the little we know about the family has been pieced together by Geoffrey Whatmore from wills made by family members. Like many other stories on this  blog, that of the Tuxford family is derived from ‘Wat’s Brother-in-Law’ by Geoffrey Whatmore which is available as a CD ROM at www.genfair.com

St Nicholas’s Church  Tuxford  Copyright: Richard Croft      Photograph from the Geograph website and reproduced under the terms of the site licence which can be read at this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The earliest known member of the Tuxford family is Charles Watmore who was a farmer and a landlord who died in 1568, presumably at a relatively young age as his wife was pregnant at the time he passed away. In fact Charles had in all twelve known children from two wives.

We know a little about his children. His son Richard made his will in about 1578, leaving property to his wife Agnes. His son William, a farmer at Normanton, made his will in 1582, leaving one third of his  lands and farm house to William his eldest son;  the rest of his lands and another house to Agnes his wife and his son James; land at Scratey and Ratteley to his daughter Margery who had married Richard Cowp;  and to Lettice, his youngest daughter a calf, a bushel of barley and a platter.

The family continued at Tuxford and elsewhere in Nottinghamshire though it is not possible to make direct connections with the family of Charles. The line of his son Thomas, however, seems to lead eventually into Lincolnshire and this be the subject of a future post.

Although the members of the Tuxford family were always named as Watmore or Watmough in their wills, the historians of the aristocratic Whitmore family have claimed these folk at Tuxford as part of their lineage, as there was a branch of the Whitmore family at nearby Caunton. I have seen no evidence for this apart from the proximity of two villages.  There seems to be no record anywhere in England of a branch (or an individual member) of the Whitmore family ever changing the spelling of their name to Watmough or Watmore. They were only too well aware of their status as Whitmores. Conversely, the Watmoughs, Watmores and Whatmores never aspired to be thought of as Whitmores, except in one case when members of the Watmore family of Belbroughton in Worcestershire termed themselves Whitmore from the 19th century onwards. (See earlier post).

The historians of the Whitmore family have also claimed that it was Charles Watmore of Tuxford and his children who  founded the Whitmore family of Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Charles himself certainly never left Tuxford and there is no evidence that any of his children went to Hitchin - so the origin of the Hitchin family remains an open question. If anyone knows anything about the Hitchin family, please do contact me at rhyswhatmore@btinternet.com.