Samuel Duce died intestate in 1726 but left admon documents and an Inventory held at Lichfield Record Office dated 7 Nov 1726. They show he was a flax-dresser from Bilston and the two appraisers of his inventory were Benjamin Linton and Thomas Smith.The bondsmen were William Persehouse and John Derrington.
When we locate Samuel in the 1695 Inhabitants of Bilston compiled by the local vicar Rev Ames we can see his family and a number of other connections. The entries for his family and that of William Duce are transcribed as follows
Samuel Duce
Elizabeth, his wife
Priscilla (married Joseph Ward, 1705)
Judith (married Peter Osborne)
Elizabeth
Joan
Mary
Daniel Timmings
John Parker
Eleanor YatesWilliam Duce (died a prisoner in ye Fleet at London, 1706)
Susanna, his wife (marr to Thomas Smith, 1707)
Their children:
John
Thomas
Elizabeth
It seems highly likely that the Thomas Smith who marries William Duce’s widow in 1707, Susanna, is one and the same man who takes the inventory nineteen years later. We can conclude by that token William and Samuel are probably brothers.
The family of Samuel Duce also falls in to place by examining the 1695 ‘census’. His wife would be Eliizabeth Taylor (mar 20 Jun 1674) and we can see that Elizabeth Duce is buried in St Peter’s on 18 Jan 1699/1700. Samuel Duce remarries Eleanor Yates on 3 Jul 1700, but we can see she was already a member of his household whilst his wife was alive. It seems likely therefore that the three adults Daniel Timmings, John Parker and Eleanor Yates are all workers, apprentices or servants in Samuel’s flax-dressing business.
Of Samuel’s children it is to be noted that Peter Osborne was a Quaker who emigrated to new England with Judith his wife. By his second marriage he had a daughter Ann (bap 26 Nov 1711) the eventual wife of Joseph Linton (jun) married in 1734. This ties in with the inventory taker being Benjamin Linton, the baker, who is the likely uncle to this Joseph. These Lintons are all descendants of Thomas Linton.
The family of William Duce takes us to some very dark places. The fact that William dies in the Fleet prison is bad enough, but he may just have been misfortunate and failed in business as Fleet was the notorious debtors prison in London. However, the Elizabeth listed in the ‘census’ (bap 1693) and the son William Duce (bap 1697) were notorious criminals. Elizabeth married Humphrey Angier in London in 1720. Both Humphrey and his brother in law William Duce were publicly hanged as highwaymen in 1723, September and August respectively. The association with and betrayal by Jonathan Wild, a fellow Wolverhamptonian, is all recorded in Old Bailey proceedings. This is very much the age of John Gay’s ‘The Beggars Opera’ and eventually Dick Turpin.
Samuel’s side of the family seemed to have avoided the debt-spiral that William and his son fell into and evidently coped with the economic challenges of business in Wolverhampton a lot better. But as we look at the descendants of Joseph Linton and Ann Duce the spectre of the demise of Ann’s cousins, publicly hanged, must have been haunting. The answer for many.was non-conformist beliefs. The daughter Eleanor Linton, who married Edward Cheshire had most of her children baptized in the Presbyterian church in Oldbury. She herself was buried a Quaker.
Samuel Duce was buried on 26 Jul 1726 in St Peter’s, with an estimated age of 73.. His wife Eleanor may have remarried as no burial can be found for her.
Sources and Notes
- Inventory and admon of Samuel Duce 7 Nov 1726, Lichfield Record Office
- List of Inhabitants of Bilston in 1695, published Joseph Price 1835 (Genuki)
- A flax dresser is a textile worker who prepares raw flax plants into clean straight fibres ready to make linen.
- The job involved several intensive steps to separate the useful inner bast fibres from the woody stalk and outer bark:
- Soaking or rotting the harvested flax stems in water or dew to loosen the plant’s sticky resins.
- Beating and scraping the dried stalks (using tools like flails, swingles, or scutching knives) to break up and remove the brittle woody core.
- Combing the remaining long fibres through a bed of sharp, tapered steel pins (a heckle) to clean out any remaining straw fragments and align the fibres into smooth, parallel tresses
- The job involved several intensive steps to separate the useful inner bast fibres from the woody stalk and outer bark:
- It looks as if William Duce, supposed brother to Samuel was in a similar line of trade – or at least his son Thomas is described as ‘Tow dresser’ (bap 1728 of a son to this Thomas), but his son William Duce, the highwayman was a buckle-maker by trade/apprenticeship.
- Old Bailey Proceedings see https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/record/t17230710-38 and others
- Arthur Hayward: Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, New York 1927 (ebook)
- Chester (PA) Quaker Monthly Meeting records show Peter died shortly after his arrival in New England in 1712 and Judith remarried a William Harvey
- Both Samuel and William Duce married a Taylor – Elizabeth and Susannah respectively. There is no indication that the two Taylor wives were related or even who their respective parents are.