Research Note by Wesley Johnston (last updated 30 Aug 2012 - corrected birth year in title; added Burke section)

This is a research note created in June 2012 for one of my trees on Ancestry. For those with an Ancestry account, the note is at trees.ancestry.com/tree/12001386/person/914105320/media/1 with accompanying links to all the relevant people in my tree. But that is icing on the cake, as the research note has all of the relevant information.

The key issue is whether Samuel Hicks of Cornwall was the descendant of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in Devon. Many trees on web sites and in Ancestry portray Samuel as the son of Thomas Hicks and Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Humphrey’s great-granddaughter. I conclude that Samuel Hicks was not a descendant of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. I also found an apparent error in Burke’s Landed Gentry as to the place of the Hicks-Gilbert marriage.

This is a research note and not a finalized research report. It is important enough that it is worth reporting, even though the original records must ultimately be examined before declaring it fully proven. One research center where I worked referred to these as beige papers, as opposed to white papers.

Samuel Hicks is my 8th Great Grandfather, through his son Walter’s daughter Elizabeth’s daughter Elizabeth Rickard’s son Solomon Butson, who emigrated from St. Blazey, Cornwall to Columbus, Ontario about 1839.

Samuel's Marriage

I have documented Samuel Hicks through the baptisms of his children and his own burial 3 Jan 1736 at St Stephen in Brannel, Cornwall (no age given). His apparent oldest child, daughter Jullian Hicks, was baptized 7 Dec 1695 at St Stephen in Brannel – one of the earliest baptisms there. So he and his wife probably married in 1694.

However, the earliest surviving marriage record in the St Stephen in Brannel registers was 6 Nov 1694. The Bodmin Bishops Transcripts of St Stephen in Brannel marriages do go back to 1681 anfd are transcribed on the Cornwall Online Parish Clerks web site (freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~boneplace/mar/marbodmin.html), but there is no marriage for Samuel Hicks, probably because none of the marriages for 1693 through 1700 were included in the Bishop's transcript. Nor does OPC have a marriage for Samuel and Isabel in any parish from 1670 to 1700 (using HI% for his surname). Nor does the Cornwall Family History Society's research database have the marriage (using HI* for his surname).

So Samuel's marriage was most likely at St Stephen in Brannel but is lost because the parish registers did not survive and the Bishop either did not transcribe the 1693-1700 marriages or those transcripts are also lost. So we do not have his wife's name - not even her given name - neither from the baptisms of the children nor from the lost marriage record. There are many trees that show her name as Isabel, and there was indeed an Isabel Hicks who died and whose death record I am showing. But I have no documentation that really confirms that her name was Isabel.

Samuel's Parents - Father was Roger and not Thomas

Several trees on Ancestry and on various web sites show Samuel Hicks as the son of Thomas Hicks and Elizabeth Gilbert (great-granddaughter of Sir Humphrey Gilbert). None of them provide any documentation to support this connection of Samuel to Elizabth.

The web site "Gilberts of Compton, Devon" (members.optushome.com.au/elyard/gen_gilbert_dev.htm) is the only site that I have found that provides specific references to records of the descendants of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Elizabeth’s father was Ager whose father was Raleigh whose father was Sir Humphrey. The web site however is in error about the location of the marriage of Thomas Hicks and Elizabeth Gilbert, which is given as 28 Mar 1658 at Plymtree, Devon. The Plymtree register is online, and there is no such marriage: www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/england/Devon/towns/p/Plymtree/p064.htm

In fact, the Cornwall Family History Society research database shows that the marriage took place at St. Ewe in Apr 1658, as a Commonwealth marriage. So the Mar 1658 record at Plymtree was probably actually the reading of banns before the marriage. The baptisms of Elizabeth's brothers Humphrey and John are in the Plymtree register (www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/england/Devon/towns/p/Plymtree/p022.html for Humphrey 17 Dec 1639 and John 27 Dec 1640 and a second John 6 Nov 1642 whose father is not given www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/england/Devon/towns/p/Plymtree/p023.html). I suspect that Elizabeth Gilbert may have been older than her brothers and born at Marldon, but I have no way to check those records.

I have attempted to find the children of this couple, Thomas Hicks and Elizabeth Gilbert. Five children of Thomas and Elizabeth Hicks were baptized at St. Ewe, Cornwall, none of whom was named Samuel but all of whom would have been older than expected for a Samuel who married in 1694. The eldest, John, became mayor of St. Ives, and the father Thomas is identified on some of the baptisms as a Gentleman. So this does appear to be the same Thomas Hicks and Elizabeth Gilbert, great granddaughter of Sir Humphrey Gilbert – but with no record of a son Samuel.

I raised this problem on the Devon genealogy e-mail list, and Joy Langdon found the answer. While the pre-1695 St Stephen in Brannel baptisms, like the marriages, do not survive, there are two sets of Bishop's transcripts - Bodmin and Exeter - of the baptisms. Bodmin goes back to 1681 (freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~boneplace/bap/1.html) and Exeter to 1608 (freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~boneplace/bap/1a.html). And the Exeter transcript shows Samuel baptized at St Stephen in Brannel 14 Oct 1667, the son of Roger Hicks. This or another Roger had another son, Edward, baptized 4 Apr 1689.

So it is now clear that Samuel's father was Roger Hicks and not Thomas Hicks. Thus Samuel's first son Roger was named for Samuel's father. Unfortunately, there is no record of what Samuel's mother's name was.

CONCLUSION: Samuel Hicks was the son of Roger and not Thomas Hicks and was thus NOT a child of Elizabeth Gilbert nor a descendant of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

 Were Roger Hicks and Thomas Hicks related?

It seems highly likely that Roger Hicks and Thomas Hicks were related, since St Ewe and St Stephen in Brannel were close and it was not uncommon for families of each parish to show up in the records of the other parish. However, I have not tried to explore this question, primarily because there are no earlier Hicks records at St Stephen and I have not yet sought Roger Hicks – who would have been born about 1645 – elsewhere.

Apparent Conflict with Burke's Landed Gentry

A web page (wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=sandberg&id=I20378) cites Burke's Landed Gentry 1965 edition (pp. 69 & 72) that Elizabeth was born 1637 and that she married Thomas Hicks 28 Mar 1658, which is probably the source for the “Gilberts of Compton, Devon” web page noted above.

I do not have access to this 1965 edition, but it clearly conflicts with the Apr 1658 St Ewe date given in the Cornwall Family History Society database. Since my interest is in Samuel Hicks of St Stephen in Brannel, and we have now seen that he was almost certainly the son of Roger and not of Thomas, I am setting this aside, except for an eventual search to see if Roger Hicks and Thomas Hicks were related, for which I find little hope of finding documentation in church records. But someone more interested in Elizabeth Gilbert being fully documented may want to take up the matter of Burke's giving a different date than the Cornwall Family History Society research database. Frankly, I have found that the transcriptions in the CFHS DB tend to be very good, particularly in comparison to those of the same records transcribed on FamilySearch. So I really think it is most likely that Burke's has the banns date and not the marriage date. But that is a torch for someone else to carry now.