Edmund Clifton

Edmund Clifton was baptised on 24 Mar 1776 in St Giles, Rowley Regis. His father was Job Clifton and his mother Alice Darby. The parish register of Rowley Regis records that when his parents died in 1815 and 1819 respectively they lived in Park House in Rowley. This then was probably the house that Edmund and his brothers Job and Samuel were brought up in. The Cliftons were essentially farmers of a middling status, but this economic activity was undergoing substantial change spurred by the rapid urbanisation of the area.

His younger brother Samuel married into the Willets family and became a butcher.

Edmund married Susannah Horton on 25 Mar 1805. The marriage form shows that Edmund was illiterate. The Hortons were one of a group of families who frequented the Old Church in Smethwick, which as a distant Chapel of Ease to St Peter’s, Harborne, was self evidently low Anglican and had some interchange with neighbouring Non Conformist churches. It was, for example, not permitted for most of this time to perform marriages. A witness at Edmund and Susannah’s wedding held at St Philip’s Birmingham was Thomas Collins (1764-1829), a licensed victualler married to Susannah Horton’s older sister Ann (bap 21 Aug 1774).

Edmund and Susannah had elevan children, nine of whom were daughters. The intermarrying between the Collins family and a number of other families associated with Smethwick Old Church was significant.

Susannah had a brother called Joseph Horton who died in Edgbaston in 1837 leaving a will that confirms a lot of the close knit relationships with the Collins family.

His daughter Elizabeth (bap 18 Oct 1807) married her first cousin Joseph Collins a maltster and miller, son of Edmund’s brother in law Thomas Collins.

His daughter Alice (bap 23 Apr 1820) married her first cousin once removed John Collins (b 1816), son of John Collins (b 1794) the eldest son of the same Thomas Collins.

Significantly for the descendant lines recorded on this website his daughter Emma (bap 28 Nov 1824) married William Downing, maltster, a family who had earlier moved from Smethwick Old Church to the Presbyterian Church in Oldbury. Emma died of consumption aged 26 leaving three small children including William Edmund Downing.

Edmund’s wife Susannah herself died and was buried in Smethwick Old Church on 5 Jun 1841. Edmund subsequently remarried Elizabeth Wilkes (nee Hendley) on 20 Feb 1844 at the age of 68. This marriage gave him one further daughter Ellen Prudence Clifton.

Edmund died at the age of 85 on 14 Feb 1861 in Booth Street, Handsworth and was buried in Smethwick Old Church. His widow was also buried alongside him much later on 10 Dec 1879. But his youngest daughter Ellen Prudence Salis is recorded as dying in the very same house as her father in Booth Street on 9 Apr 1921 some sixty years later.

Edmund’s estate in 1861 was valued at £450. His will ignores his children from his first marriage, the majority of whom already had died, and concentrates on his much younger daughter Ellen and stepdaughter Emma Jane Wilkes.

Sources

• Parish Registers of St Giles, Rowley Regis (SPRS transcription)
• Parish Registers of Smethwick Old Church (Freereg)
• Will of Edmund Clifton. Probate 9 Apr 1861 (NPC)
• Will of Joseph Horton Farmer of Edgbaston, PCC Probate 3 Oct 1837 (Brother-in-law)
• Will of Samuel Clifton Farmer of Alvechurch, PCC Probate 29 Dec 1852 – written 1837 (Brother)
• Monument Inscription in Smethwick Old Church shows John Wilkes, died 18 Dec 1839, aged 36 and his daughter Emma Jane Wilkes, died 18 Jul 1872, aged 36.
• The marriage certificate dated 20 Feb 1844 of Edmund Clifton and Elizabeth Wilks (sic) gives the respective parents of the groom (widower) and bride (widow) as Job Clifton (Farmer) and William Hendley (Glass Blower)

Family of Edmund CLIFTON and Susannah HORTON