The Butsons of St Just in Roseland, Cornwall
Research note by Wesley Johnston, begun 27 Nov 2014, last updated 19 Aug 2020
https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/12001386/person/26000752050/media/84f45daa-7ff0-4059-93e1-720805d08f8c
Major Revision - August 2020
I have located the 25 Sep 1767 will of John BUTSON at St. Michael Penkevil, probated 19 Feb 1768/9. Thus, he died sometime in the 17 months between those dates. He names his wife as Alice, who is almost certainly Alice RICHARDS who he married 9 Sep 1745 at St. Enoder. Thus, his first wife Mary MORRISH had died before 9 Sep 1745, which refutes the conclusion I arrived at, with confidence level 6 out of 10, that the Mary BUTSON buried 1 Jan 1762 at St. Just in Roseland was his wife.
Rather than modifying my original 2014 text, I am leaving that as it was (with the exception of adding a "Revised Below" for the burial of Mary MORRISH) and adding a new August 2020 addendum section at the end, where I will update my conclusions to reflect the evidence of the will.
Introduction
The surname Butson makes a relatively brief appearance in the parish registers of St Just in Roseland, from 1747 to 1814. Three Butsons married there: Ursula (18 May 1747 Joseph Jenking), John (14 Jun 1761 Elizabeth Jago) and Thomas (14 Jan 1768). These may be three of the Padstow-born children of John Butson and Mary Morrish. In fact, it may be that the first Butson burial at St Just 1 Jan 1762 is Mary and that the first Butson baptism at St Just 11 Jul 1762 was named for her grandmother who had just died.
If this hypothesis is correct, then Ursula, John and Thomas were my 2nd cousins, 8 generations removed.
There are a lot of maybes, a lot of questions, about all this. And there will probably remain far more questions and uncertainty than there will be answers and certainty. But this research note presents the evidence and the reasoning and conclusions that underlie how I represent these families in my Butson family tree.
After Posting Marriages and Batpisms
The fact that the two Butson brothers married the two Jago sisters and that the 1761 marriage shows John Butson as "of this parish" probably means that these three members of the Butson family -- and possibly their mother Mary and maybe their father John -- had been in St Just together for some time before 1761. In fact, it is possible that the family had moved there before Ursula's marriage in 1747. Or it may have been Ursula's marriage that brought the rest of the family to St Just.
One thought is that perhaps Mary (Morrish) Butson moved there with those of her children who were still living at home after John had died. I have not found -- and may never find -- a definitive burial record for John Butson. The burial records of that period for adults are simply the name and date of burial. So when there is a burial for a John or Mary or Elizabeth, it is very difficult to establish which one it was who had died, since there were so many with the same name. So this thought is a conjecture that may never be verified or refuted.
Similarly, I am still stumped as to where the families of John and Thomas Butson went. Perhaps I can see more from the burials just which Butsons were still in St Just in 1814. But there were no more Butson marriages nor baptisms after 1777.
The St Just Butson Burials
There were 11 Butson burials (not counting Ursula Jenking burials) at St. Just, from 1762 to 1814.
The St Just Butson Burials with Ages Specified: Thomas (1811) and Alice (1814)
The last two burials, Thomas (1811) and Alice (1814) recorded their ages at death, as reported by their family. And these are the husband and wife, Thomas Butson and Alice (Jago) Butson. Thomas' age was given as 76, which is exactly in line with the Padstow Thomas's 1734 birth, so that it is further evidence that the Butsons of St Just in Roseland were indeed three of the Padstow children of John Butson and Mary Morrish.
The 1769 Burials
Four of the burials were in 1769:
Thomas was the first child of Thomas Butson and Alice Jago, which is known because his brother of the same name was baptized the following year, 11 Mar 1770.
However, the three burials in October 1769 were most likely all a cluster of burials in the family of John Butson and Elizabeth Jago. In 1769, the family consisted of the parents John and Elizabeth and children Mary, Elizabeth, John and the recently born Richard Jago Butson. Thus the John and Elizabeth could have been either a parent or a child. These are, in fact, the most difficult names to reconcile with the burials of all of the burials.
Thomas Butson and Alice Jago at this time had no surviving children. So the only other possible candidates to match those buried in October 1769 are the mother and father of Ursula, John and Thomas: John Butson (1692) and Mary Morrish (1693), who would by then have been 77 and 76.
But the fact that all three burials took place in the space of 19 days most likely indicates an illness shared within the same home. There is also the possibility that the mother, Elizabeth (Jago) Butson, who had just given birth to Richard Jago Butson a few months earlier may have been weakened in childbirth and succumbed to that cause rather than to the illness that took the other two.
The biggest problem is that there were three Elizabeth Butsons but only two among the burials. The second 7 Nov 1780. By then Thomas and Alice (Jago) Butson had a daughter Elizabeth, baptized 20 Apr 1777. So it seems likely that one of the two Elizabeth burials was Elizabeth (Jago) Butson. But the other one could either have been her daughter or the daughter of Thomas and Alice. So one of the children named Elizabeth apparently survived and probably married, so that she no longer had the surname Butson. The 1764-baptized Elizabeth would have married about 1784-1794, and the 1777 Elizabeth about 1797-1807. There was a marriage in 1795 at St Agnes with Richard Hooper, but this was probably the St Agnes-born daughter of Samson Butson. So there are no candidate marriages that fit either of the St Just Elizabeth Butson children.
The bottom line is that I am going to have to carry the burials in some way, which I will spell out in the conclusions below. But there is going to be uncertainty in whatever I finally decide. There is more on these October 1769 burials in the consideration of the 1774 John Butson burial below.
The 1774-1775 Burials
Here are the two burials in this cluster:
Certainly the 1775 burial is the son of John and Elizabeth (Jago) Butson. But the other could be the (1) John who was father of Richard Jago Butson or (2) his son John or (3) the 1772 son of Thomas or (4) John who was the husband of Mary Morrish and father of Ursula, John and Thomas.
The eldest John (#4) was baptized 1692 and would have been 82 in 1774. As noted below in the discussion of the 1762 and 1769 Mary Butson burials, I believe his wife Mary Morrish was buried 1762, twelve years earlier. While it is possible for a man to live to 82, I suspect but have been unable to verify that the 1602 John Butson died while the family was still at Padstow. While I cannot rule this 1774 burial out as his, I have low confidence that it is his burial.
I find it impossible to decide which of the other three John Butsons is the 1774-buried John and which is the 1760-buried John (who was definitely not the son of Thomas, since Thomas' John was not born until 1772). But I have to represent them somehow in my tree. And I find the probability of infant death at that time as a significant reality. So I am going to carry the 1769-buried John as the 1766-baptized son of John and Elizabeth (Jago) Butson. And I am going to carry the 1774-buried John as the 1772-baptized son of Thomas and Alice (Jago) Butson.
Related to this, I am going to carry the 1769 burial of Elizabeth Butson as the daughter of John and Elizabeth (Jago) Butson. There is a strong possibility that it was actually Elizabeth (Jago) Butson, since she had no more children after 1769. And I will continue to seek more records, in order to support or refute my conclusion on this.
The November 1780 Burials
There were two burials in November 1780:
These were most likely in the same home. They were probably the two youngest children of Thomas and Alice (Jago) Butson. As will be noted below, in the discussion of the 1762 and 1769 Mary Butson burials, I believe that by 1780, the only Mary Butson left alive in St Just was Thomas and Alice's daughter.
The 1762 and 1769 Mary Butson Burials
There are still two burials left to consider, but since they are both for Mary Butson (1762 and 1780), they must also be considered with the third Mary Butson burial. Here are all three Mary Butson burials:
As noted above, the 17 Oct 1769 burial is part of the three burials in 19 days, so that the 1769-buried Mary was most likely the daughter of John and Elizabeth (Jago) Butson. That 1769-buried Mary was baptized 11 Jul 1762 at St Just. While there is no indication in the 1762 burial as to the identitiy of the Mary Butson being buried, no children named Mary Butson were known to be in St Just 1 Jan 1762. Thus I belive it is most likely that this 1762-buried Mary was Mary (Morrish) Butson, the mother of Ursula, John and Thomas, and that John named his first daughter after his late mother just a few months after his mother's death.
Conclusions for the Butson Burials
I am carrying the Butson burials in my tree as follows. Confidence is measured on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is definitive proof that my conclusion is correct. These conclusions are open to revision if solid evidence is found to so indicate.
If the above conclusions are all correct, then John and Elizabeth (Jago) Butson survived after losing all four of their children, three in 1769 and one in 1775. John's brother Thomas Butson and Elizabeth's sister Alice (Jago) Butson fared slightly better, losing all of their children except the 1770-baptized son Thomas -- who was thus the only child of either couple to survive.
Ursula Jenking Burials
Ursula Butson married Joseph Jenking in 1747 and presumably was buried as Ursula Jenking. They had a daughter Ursula Jenking who was baptized 4 Sep 1757. These are the only two known Ursula Jenkings in St Just.
But there were three Urusla Jenking burials in the period:
There was also one much later burial of an Ursula Jenking at St Just: 7 Nov 1816, abode Falmouth, age 37 - thus born about 1779 and definitely not either of the two of our immediate interest.
Ursula (Butson) Jenking bore her last known child in 1765, so that she could not have been the 1754 or 1762 burial. So I am concluding that Urusla (Butson) Jenking was buried 19 May 1768.
Thus I am also concluding that the 4 Sep 1757 baptized Ursula Jenking was buried 11 Feb 1762.
I have no explanation for who the Ursula Jenking was who was buried 20 Apr 1754. There is no suitable baptism, and the closest marriage in time and place was the 27 Aug 1726 marriage at Budock of Thomas Jenkyn and Ursula Malzard.
August 2020 Addendum: John BUTSON Will Forces Revision of Conclusions
I have located the 25 Sep 1767 will of John BUTSON at St. Michael Penkevil, probated 19 Feb 1768/9. (See https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-XSM9-2GP?i=2220&cat=329778 and following images.)
John BUTSON and Mary MORRISH Death Dates and Places
Thus, John BUTSON died at St. Michael Penkevil sometime in the 17 months between those dates. He names his wife as Alice, who is almost certainly Alice RICHARDS who he married 9 Sep 1745 at St. Enoder. Thus, his first wife Mary MORRISH had died before 9 Sep 1745, which refutes the conclusion I arrived at, with confidence level 6 out of 10, that the Mary BUTSON buried 1 Jan 176/32 at St. Just in Roseland was his wife.
This leads to two questions and a third that the first question's research revealed:
When and where did Mary MORRISH die?
The Cornwall Online Parish Clerks database and the Cornwall Family History Society database show these burials for Mary BUTSON before 1745.
The baptisms of Mary MORRISH's children are all at Padstow and continue to the baptism of Thomas BUTSON 18 Mar 1733/4.
Revised Conclusion: The 20 Mar 1735/6 burial of Mary BUTSON at Padstow was almost certainly Mary MORRISH, first wife of John BUTSON. Confidence: 9
NOTE that his now adds a third question to this section: Who was the Mary BUTSON buried 24 Dec 1732 at St. Merryn?
Who was the Mary BUTSON buried 24 Dec 1732 at St. Merryn?
We do not know whether this Mary BUTSON was buried with her maiden name or her married name.
The only Mary BUTSON baptism prior to 1732 was in Padstow 5 Jun 1719, the daughter of John BUTSON (son of John BUTSON and Prudence TONKIN) and Mary MORRISH.
The only Mary who married a BUTSON prior to 1732 was Mary IVEY who married John BUTSON (parents not yet known) 12 Feb 170-/10 at St. Merryn.
Conclusion: The 24 Dec 1732 burial of Mary BUTSON at St. Merryn was probably Mary IVEY, (possibly second) wife of John BUTSON. Confidence: 6
Who was the Mary BUTSON who was buried 1 Jan 1762/3 at St. Just in Roseland?
The image of this burial record is at familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-XWB9-1JL?cc=1769414&wc=3CBW-3TT
What jumps out from the record is that within the space of 1 Jan to 11 Feb, three family members were buried:
1762/3 Jan 1 - Mary BUTSON
1762/3 Jan 20 - Catherine JENKING
1762/3 Feb 11 - Ursula JENKING
The two JENKING girls were daughters of Ursula BUTSON and Joseph JENKING, both of whom are named in the 1767 will of John BUTSON, father of Ursula BUTSON. In the will, John BUTSON leaves money to Ursula's daughter Ann JENKIN and to her unnamed son and youngest daughter. He does not mention his own oldest daughter Mary BUTSON nor any of her children in his will, which most likely means that she had pre-deceased him and had no children of her own, thus probably buried as Mary BUTSON.
I suspect that this sad winter of 1762-1763 took not only Ursula BUTSON's daughters but also her spinster sister Mary BUTSON.
Conclusion: The 1 Jan 1763/2 burial of Mary BUTSON at St. Just in Roseland was probably Mary BUTSON, daughter of John BUTSON and Mary MORRISH. Confidence: 6