Wills of Samuel Veness 1844 and Edward Veness 1803

These are the only two wills I’ve found in my family history, but Samuel’s will especially is a real treasure-trove.

Samuel Veness was a wheelwright, living 1775–1851 in Ashburnham and Burwash, Surrey.

He was the younger brother of Mary Veness, who had my great-great-great-grandfather John Golding Veness out of wedlock in 1800. (The will is easier to make sense of if you look at the Veness family tree).

The full text of the will is extremely difficult to read, so I’ve made an edited version. If you’re a sucker for punishment, you can compare the full version, in which I’ve tried to reflect the original punctuation and layout.

Some aspects of the will are worthy of highlighting:

• Samuel’s nephew William Heathfield is not only a beneficiary but also the attorney responsible for executing the will. Perhaps having an attorney as a relative explains the inflated legalistic style of the will? – I don’t know how common this might have been at the time. From the full version, one gets the feeling either that attorneys must have been paid by the word or that William was trying to impress his uncle. (Samuel’s brother-in-law Henry Heathfield had purchased the wheelwrights (formerly a smithy) at the beginning of the 19th century; Samuel later joined him in business).
• Before any other business, Samuel bequeaths £50 to the upkeep of the new Calvinistic chapel in Burwash - see below.
• £150 each goes to his siblings Ann, Mary, Thomas, Elizabeth, Frances, and Sarah (and/or their families) – except;
• £20 of Mary’s inheritance goes directly to her grandson John,
• Mary’s 3rd son Samuel gets excluded entirely!,
• and Elizabeth’s share goes into trust, to be paid annually “into her proper hands for her own sole and separate use exclusive of her said husband, to whose debts she is not to be liable”!
• Finally, Mary’s grandson John – my great-great-grandfather – must have been particularly special to Samuel, as he receives not only the specified £20 out of Mary’s share, but also the only non-financial bequeath – Samuel’s clock, still a very valuable possession in the mid 19th century.

I wonder why Mary’s grandson was so dear to Samuel’s heart to have such a special place in the will? Could Samuel have taken some role in bringing up his father, John snr – Samuel’s nephew – born illegitimately to Mary when Samuel was 25? On the other hand, John snr died about the same time as the birth of John jnr, so could a fatherless John jnr have been brought up by Samuel? (by then in his fifties and presumeably himself childless).

John snr is something of an enigma – he was already a widower when he married Hannah Roberts aged 25, but no traces remain of his first wife. Perhaps he was brought up in the Calvinistic church by Samuel, and no nonconformist records remain?

Births out of wedlock were not so rare as we tend to think. It certainly brought financial problems, but was not widely shameful before the Victorian era – and sex was no less attractive then than now! I’ve found no clues to Mary’s story, except that she named her son ‘John Golding Veness’. Golding was a common name locally, so whatever the story, it probably wasn’t some glamorous soldier passing through on his way to the Napoleanic wars! One day, I will investigate to see if a parish bastardy order was made. [I did research more about Mary Veness, but haven’t found many answers yet.]

On the Calvinistic chapel, some information is available in John Barkshire’s Burwash - Domesday to Millennium: “In Burwash the Calvinist splinter group was led by William Buss who, after his expulsion from the Independent chapel, had built the new chapel in 1829 at Chant Meadow”. (William Buss was an agricultural labourer who taught himself to read and write and became Minister at the chapel from 1843 until his death in 1872). In the decline of church attendance in the 20th century, “the first of the three Non-conformist chapels to go was the breakaway Calvinist chapel which closed in the 1920s and was later converted to a private residence, with all traces of the chapel disappearing”.

It is not easy to translate the real value of the will into modern terms. Looking at cost inflation, £1 in the mid 19th century would be worth around £60 in 2000. However, wages have increased much more, though they are more complex to compare. However, considering an agricultural labourer might earn around 10s per week, and skilled trades might earn around £1 to £1 10s per week, salaries have increased by more like 300 or 400 times – we’re all much richer now! This would suggest Samuel was giving something in the order of £50,000 to each of his siblings in today’s money – the full estate worth somewhere between £¼m and £½m.

Edward’s will, 1803

Edward’s will provides a real contrast to Samuel’s – brief, written in un-legalistic style, with very creative spelling!

Edward was Samuel’s uncle, and had rather less to bequeath – £240 plus watches, silver buckles, tea kettles, spoons and cups (compared with Samuel’s total of around £1,000 plus the clock).

This was still quite a fortune; at that time agricultural labourers and domestic servants might earn between £2 and £8 a year, depending on status (though more skilled or responsible positions would have earned much more); and for the adventurous, ratings in the Navy at that time earned between £14 and £24 a year.

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