James Hardy
James Hardy was an agricultural labourer at Puddletown in Dorset. Piddletown is the old spelling of the village, and the clerks used both. He was born about 1795 by his ages in the censuses. In 1851 he gave his birthplace as "Woolcombe, Somerset", and in 1861 as Piddletown. Woolcombe is a hamlet of Melbury Bubb, in Dorset. The bishop's transcripts of Melbury Bubb have a James Hardy baptised on 5 March 1797, with no parents named, and he may be the same man.
On 6 September 1819 he married Mary Legg at Puddletown. The parish clerk wrote "James HARDY ; Puddletown & Mary LEGG ; ; Puddletown". Mary was born at Puddletown about 1798.
Their first son, Robert, was baptised on 19 November 1819, when they were living at Troytown. Louisa followed in 1822 and was baptised privately, at home. Then came Elisabeth in 1825, Mary in 1827, Eliza in 1832 and Anne in 1835. Frederick was baptised on 11 June 1837, and the entry gives James's trade as labourer. Leah, the last, was born about 1840.
In 1841 the family lived at Narrow Brook in Puddletown. The house held James and Mary and five children: Mary, fourteen, Eliza, nine, Ann, six, Frederik, three, and Leah, one. In 1851 James was fifty-six and still an agricultural labourer. His son Frederic, thirteen, was working on the land beside him, and Leah, eleven, and Ann were at home.
Frederick left the land for the Royal Marines. On 20 February 1860 he married Eliza Congdon at the parish church of East Stonehouse in Plymouth. The register gives the groom's father as "James Hardy, Labourer".
At the census of April 1861 James and Mary were living at North Brook in Puddletown. Both were entered as invalids, he sixty-six and she sixty-three. That same spring their son was a married Marine aboard HMS Conqueror at Devonport. Neither James nor Mary is in the Puddletown census of 1871. A James Hardy died in the Dorchester district at the end of 1861, which may be him, but no record proves it.
His son carried the names on. Frederick's first son, born at Plymouth in 1863, was Frederick James, and his first daughter was Louisa Ann. In 1864 Frederick went out to the Falkland Islands with the Royal Marines. He raised twelve children at Stanley and died at Punta Arenas, in Chile, in 1916.
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Cite: Heirology, "James Hardy (b. 1795)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-hardy-1795-0c7d5d.