Ancestors

Jennet Ryding

Jennet Ryding married Thomas Norris, a husbandman, at St Michael and All Angels, Croston, on 16 January 1770. The register enters "Thomas Norris, (X), Husbandman, This Parish. Jenet Ryding, Spinster, This Parish." He signed with a mark. The banns had been read on 24 and 31 December 1769 and on 7 January 1770. The witnesses were Elizabeth Jackson and Peter Rutter, and the curate married them.

She was probably the Jenet Ryding baptised at Croston on 3 February 1750/1, the daughter of Henry Ryding, a yeoman of Bretherton, and his wife Margaret. A yeoman was a farmer of some standing, often owning his land. She is the only Jennet Ryding baptised in Croston parish, and Bretherton is where her own first children were baptised. If so, she married a few days short of nineteen, and her mother was Margaret Harrison, who married Henry Ryding in 1745. Her third daughter was named Margaret.

She bore five children to Thomas Norris between 1771 and 1782, and they were baptised as the household moved north. Catharine was baptised in 1771 and George in 1773, both at Croston with the abode Bretherton. Margaret followed in 1777 the same way, Betty at Hoole in 1779 with the abode Great Hoole, and Alice at St Andrew's in Leyland on 20 February 1782.

Thomas died that summer and was buried at Croston on 16 September 1782. She was about thirty-one, with five children, the eldest eleven.

Seven years later, on 31 May 1789, "Jennet Norris, (X), Widow, This Parish" married Thomas Mawdsley, a weaver, at St Andrew's, Leyland. Both made their marks. She is very probably that widow. She had been widowed in 1782 and was living in Leyland, and the other Thomas Norris household there had lost its wife, Alice, the year before. Thomas and Jennet Mawdsley baptised two daughters at Leyland, Ellen on 14 October 1791 and Mary on 17 May 1793. Under her second married name she is no longer a Norris, which is why no burial under that name fits her.

Her daughter Catherine married Hugh Mawdsley, a weaver, at the same church on 30 May 1791. In February 1795 Catherine bore twin daughters and christened them Jennett and Ellen. Ellen is Hugh's mother. Jennett is nobody on the Mawdsley side at all, and it is not a common Leyland name.

If Jennet Ryding is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Jennet Ryding (b. 1751)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jennet-ryding-1751-ab2277.