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A few years ago I began to suspect that most, if not all, the Olby birth, marriage and death registrations in England and Wales might be of descendants of Robert Olby and Francis Overed who married at St Andrew and St Peter, Blofield, NFK on 8th March 1790. This proved to be the case; more than 90% of the 480 Olby entries found in the GRO Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes between 1837 and 1999 are attributable to descendants of this couple and many of the 50 or so unassigned entries are also thought to be those of their descendents.The study, now registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies, will initially concentrate on the Olby families of England and Wales. It will in due course be extended to cover the remainder of the British Isles and the rest of the World.
On-Line DataMuch of the raw data is now on-line in summary form; references to living people and some of the recently deceased are excluded:
Civil Registration in England and Wales: Summary of Olby BMDs by decade
Decade Births Marriages Deaths -1839 4 1 3 1840-49 11 1 11 1850-59 7 2 6 1860-69 7 3 3 1870-79 14 5 11 1880-89 20 5 9 1890-99 23 3 12 1900-09 16 14 6 1910-19 9 11 8 1920-29 12 10 6 1930-39 21 12 8 1940-49 7 4 11 1950-59 12 12 12 1960-69 18 11 10 1970-79 12 18 6 1980-89 5 10 8 1990-99 13 7 8 Totals 211 129 138
Early References to the Olby Surname in EnglandBefore 1790 occasional references to the name are found in a wide variety of documents, so far none of these have fitted into a coherent pattern or offered support for a 'family legend' that the Olbys were originally of Huguenot descent.
The earliest occurence of the surname unearthed so far is found in the Bernau Index, which has the following entries:
Olby, William, Early Chan Pro Vol 1, page 247
Olby, William, Early Chan Pro Vol 1, page 317
Olby, John, Early Chan Pro Vol 1, page 317These refer to the Early Chancery Index Volume 1 held in the Map Room at the National Archives, Kew. They are writs issued by Thomas Bert [or Britte] and Alice his wife, daughter of John Stace, smith, of Newington, about land in Newenton [Newington] in Kent held in feoff by William Olby and his son John, and date to the turbulent period 1457-1466 during the reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV.
The first definite sighting of Robert Olby was his marriage to Francis Overed at Blofield on 8th March 1790, thereafter the couple disappeared until 1800 when records of the baptism of their children began to appear in the records of St. Peter, Brandon, SFK. Robert was a flintmaker; he died in 1820, after which his widow Frances was served with a removal order because:
... Frances Olby Widow and William her son aged sixteen years and Anne her daughter aged twelve years did lately come to inhabit the said Parish of Brandon in the said County of Suffolk not having gained legal Settlement there ... and we do likewise adjudge, that the lawful Settlement of them the said Frances Olby and the said William and Anne her children is in the township of Mile End Old Town within the said parish of Stepney otherwise Stebenheath in the said County of Middlesex ...This strongly suggests that the late Robert had been born in, or otherwise established settlement rights in, Mile End Old Town but no trace of him has yet been found there or elsewhere in Stepney. Frances had been born in Blofield, Norfolk, but would have lost her right of settlement there when she married Robert in 1790. The removal order was not enforced and Frances continued to live in Brandon for the next 20 years, receiving a small weekly payment paid by the parish of Brandon, reimbursed to them by the parish of Mile End Old Town.An earlier removal order issued in 1817 concerns Robert and Frances' elder son, another Robert, who:
... Robert Olby, his wife Diana with their two children Mary of the age of three years and Robert of the age of two years have come to inhabit the said Parish of Brandon not having gained a legal settlement there nor produced any certificate owning them to be settled elsewhere, and that the said Robert Olby, Diana his wife and their said two children, Mary and Robert are actually become chargeable to the said Parish of Brandon ...Robert junior was also a flint knapper; he was presumably unemployed because of the depression in the flintmaking industry following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Like his mother, Robert junior remained in Brandon, where he apparently prospered because by 1829 he was able to purchase under a mortgage 28 perches of land in Brandon on which he built a Primitive Methodist Chapel.His brother William, referred to in the 1820 removal order, became a shareholder in the Brandon Gunflint Company, formed in December 1837 to consolidate the industry, resist monopolist pressures and place it on a go-ahead footing. The Company aimed at a working capital of £5,000, an immense sum in those days. 138 shares were issued at £25 each and 14 Brandon gunflint makers bought shares. Trade prospered and dividends of 10% were paid for three years, after which several years of decline ended with bankruptcy in 1849.
From Flints to Fireplaces, recently published by Wild Oat Books, traces the history of some of the descendants of Robert Olby and Frances Overed from humble beginnings as gunflint makers in Brandon to their eventual success as builder's merchants in Ramsgate, Penge, Bognor Regis and Lewisham.
Contact me by Email for further information about the Olby One-Name Study.