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BRATT family (Ettingshall Lane, Bilston)
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Some records also occasionally spell the surname Brett.
left: Jane Bratt, born 1821, married Samuel Fenn in 1840, and died in 1874.
My Bratt family forebears came from Ettingshall Lane, an area south-west of Bilston once known as 'the Lanes' and rebuilt as Ettingshall New Village in the late 1840s.
My earliest traceable forebear was Thomas Bratt, who married Sarah Law at St Peter’s Wolverhampton on 19 February 1759. Their children, all baptised at St Leonard’s Bilston, included Sarah (13 Oct 1759, died 1760); William (1 May 1762); Benjamin (19 Jan 1765); Thomas (20 Apr 1767); Margaret (21 Apr 1770); James Law (28 Mar 1773); Joseph (20 Jan 1776, died 1777); Joanna (18 Apr 1778); George Law (12 Nov 1780, died 1781); Martha (Sept 1781); and George (2 Aug 1784).
Sarah Law Bratt possibly died aged 92, being buried at St Leonard’s on 16 May 1827.
Her son Thomas, a buckle-chape maker, was my direct forebear. He died of ‘decay of nature’ at Ettingshall Lane on 4 June 1839, aged 72, leaving a widow, Jane, whom he had married about 1790. (A chape was the prong part of a shoe buckle, and the making of such chapes was a trade almost exclusive to Bilston and its immediate area.)
On the 1841 Staffordshire census my branch of the Bratt family were all living close together at Ettingshall Lane, Bilston:
Anne Bratt, 80, a huckster (widow of Thomas's brother William)
William, 50, boatman (her son)
*Anne Bratt died of ‘decay of nature’ on 12 June 1850, aged 89, and was buried at St George’s four days later. The register gives her abode as New Village (Bilston), and the death certificate describes her as widow of William Bratt, boatman. William 'of Ettingshall Lanes', had been buried on 10 June 1821, aged 59.
Next door were:
Richard Bratt, 40, boatman (her son)
Mary, 40 (his wife)
Richard, 4 (their son)
A few doors away were:
Jane Bratt, 65, independent (widow of Thomas Bratt, buckle-chape maker, and sister-in-law of Anne Bratt)
Thomas, 30, coal miner (her son)
William, 25, chape maker (her son).
Next to them were the orphaned children of Jane’s daughter, Ann Fereday:
Samuel Fereday, 15, stone miner
Thomas Fereday, 15, stone miner
John Fereday, 14, stone miner
Jane Fereday, 12
And next to them were my direct forebears:
Samuel Fenn, 20, stone miner (Jane’s son-in-law)
Jane Fenn, 20 (Jane’s daughter)
Samuel Fenn, 6 weeks (their son)
- see FENN family.
Jane Bratt was buried at Merridale Cemetery, Wolverhampton, on 31 December 1857. Her age was recorded as 87, her abode as Ettingshall, Bilston, and cause of death as ‘cancer in the face’. On the 1851 census – where she was recorded as aged 80, born Wolverhampton - she had been living with her unmarried sons Thomas, 41, a coal miner, and William, 35, a colliery clerk, and her Fereday grandchildren Samuel, 28, Thomas, 26, John, 24 (all miners) and Jane, 22, a house servant.
Her daughter Jane (photographed above) had married Samuel Fenn on 27 January 1840. The youngest daughter of the family, Jane had been baptised at St Peter’s, Wolverhampton, on 8 July 1821. The register entry for her baptism gives her father’s occupation as chape-maker, and abode as Ettingshall Lane.
Jane's sister Ann, baptised on 13 July 1795, married Robert Fereday at St Peter’s on 18 June 1821. Their witnesses were Samuel and Elizabeth Mann, née Bratt, who had married at St Peter’s on 22 February 1819 (Ann was their witness). Ann Fereday was buried at St Peter’s on 2 June 1831, aged 38, and her husband Robert, a miner, was buried at St John’s on 25 March 1839, aged 46.
Other children of Thomas & Jane Bratt, baptised at St Peter’s, were:
Elizabeth – 11 Nov 1792 (died in infancy?)
Sarah – 5 Mar 1798
Elizabeth - 27 July 1800 (married Samuel Mann at St Peter’s,
22 Feb 1819)
Mary Ann – 12 Sept 1802 (married Charles Mann at Tipton,
12 Apr 1826)
James – 15 Apr 1805
Thomas – 6 Jan 1808; buried 30 November 1808
Thomas – 5 Nov 1809
Joseph – 21 Feb 1813; buried 4 Jan 1815
William – 19 July 1815
(For a time Thomas Bratt appears to have changed his occupation from chape maker: the baptismal register entries for Joseph and William describe their father as a gunlock filer of Ettingshall Lane.)
Children of Ann (Bratt) & Robert Fereday:
Samuel – 28 Apr 1822
Thomas – 3 Oct 1824
John – 26 Nov 1826 (at Pool Hayes, Willenhall, on 1881 census)
Jane – 4 Jan 1829
William – 15 May 1831
Victims of the Bilston cholera outbreak, 1832, included James Bratt, aged 11, of Gozzard Street, New Town, who died on 24 August; Richard Bratt, aged 60, a locksmith of Ettingshall Lane, who died on 25 August; Ann Bratt, aged 24, of Wooley’s Buildings, High Street, who died on 28 August; and Mary Bratt, aged 36, of Ettingshall Lane, who died on 29 August.
A list of persons receiving bread and milk from the 'provision shop' at Bilston in September 1832 included Widow Bratt, William Bratt, and David Bratt, all living at Ettingshall Lane.
Thomas Bratt of Bilston was included on the Wolverhampton Hearth Tax return of 1666.
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