Author Topic: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)  (Read 6541 times)

Offline Lornad

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Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« on: Tuesday 29 September 15 18:03 BST (UK) »
Hi
Am researching Belcher Dicks (Born Wiltshire around 1802 although he said once it was Bristol) and transported to Australia in 1824 along with a ?cousin Levi Burton (son of Joanne Bosswell). Belcher's father was Thomas Dicks (Born 1779)from Calne and his mother was Tryphena Bosswell. How can I find out who their other  children were as I understand there were several? Any info tying him back to his grandfather Robert Boswell who died in 1806 and is buried in Loders  - Dorset and his great grandfather Henry Boswell (King of the Gypsies) buried 1780 at Ickleford would be really useful as well.
Lornad




Offline hanes teulu

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #1 on: Tuesday 29 September 15 20:55 BST (UK) »
FindMyPast transcribed baptism
Thomas Dicks, 18 Jun 1814, at Hilperton, Wiltshire, parents Thomas, traveller and Tryphenia, abode uncertain

Offline hanes teulu

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday 29 September 15 20:59 BST (UK) »
FindMyPast transcribed baptism
Tryphena Dicks, 15 Nov 1801, residence Calne, Wilts, Thomas Dicks, reputed father, mother Tryphena Boswell

Offline middlesbrough

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #3 on: Tuesday 29 September 15 21:07 BST (UK) »
Sarah 3.8.1806 Seend? Wiltshire
Ann 26.12.1808 Colne, Wiltshire


Offline hanes teulu

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #4 on: Tuesday 29 September 15 21:12 BST (UK) »
FindMyPast transcribed
Ann Dix (sic), 26 Dec 1808, Calne Wilts, Thomas and Tryphena Dix

Offline richarde1979

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #5 on: Wednesday 30 September 15 12:35 BST (UK) »
Hello Lornad

Joanne Boswell partnered John Burton, son of Ambrose Burton. The couple’s only child Levi Harry Burton was baptised at St John’s, Yeovil in 1799. Tryphena Boswell  partnered Thomas Dicks aka Dix, a non- Gypsy born to farm labourers in the village of Calne, Wiltshire in 1779. It is likely the Boswell family made regular visits to this village throughout Dicks’ childhood to visit the grave of Joanne and Tryphena's probable uncle, Inverto Boswell, interned there in magnificent style in February 1774 after his death from small pox aged 36.

Thomas and Tryphena's first child was baptised at Calne, as Tryphena, daughter of Tryphena Boswell, ‘Reputed Father’ Thomas Dicks in November 1801. Belcher was born to them there circa 1804, doubtless like several Romany children that decade named in honour of James ‘Jem’ Belcher (1781-1811), the premier prize fighter in England. Belcher was followed by Sarah Dicks baptised at Seend, Wiltshire in 1806 as illegitimate daughter of Tryphena Dicks ‘One of those people called Gipsies’. On Boxing Day 1808 the couple were back at Calne where a further daughter Ann was baptised to them.  Two years later, they were belatedly joined together in legal matrimony at Calne parish church, on 15th October 1810.

Six weeks after his marriage Thomas Dicks was arrested, in company with a James Dicks, presumably his brother, and Isaac Rose, and committed to Fisherton Anger Gaol charged with stealing a chilver lamb and some wearing apparel from Evereligh, Wiltshire. All three men were convicted and sentenced to death at the next January Assizes, but in May the sentences were commuted to a ‘very merciful’ two years for Thomas, and a year each for James and Isaac as his accomplices. After his release from gaol, in January 1813, he had at least one further child with Tryphena, a son Thomas Dicks, junior, baptised eighteen months later at Hilperton, Wiltshire in June 1814. Thomas was arrested again in Wiltshire in March 1828, with another Gypsy man, Nipton [i.e Neptune] Smith, and was described then as an ‘old offender’.

His son Belcher and nephew Levi as you know were transported for horse theft three years earlier, in 1825. They stole a bay mare and a black pony from adjacent farms at Cadbury, Somerset, on the evening of 1st July 1825, coincidentally, just two days after Levi's father John was discharged from Dorchester prison, Dorset, after he too had been arrested by warrant on suspicion of horse stealing on 27th June 1825. Within days the horses Levi and Belcher stole were traced to Everliegh, Wiltshire, where they had been hastily abandoned by the two cousins who were arrested close by hiding  on Salisbury Plain near to Stonehenge. The prison records show Levi had already been publicly whipped and served three month imprisonment for a petty theft in Hampshire in September 1823. Belcher was described in the same records as a ‘Gypsy pedlar, twenty years old, born at Calne, Wiltshire, five  feet five, with black eyes and black hair’.

Three weeks after arrest they were convicted and sentenced to death. According to the ‘Dorset County Chronicle’ as Levi was taken down the court steps to prison he wished aloud that the ‘judge’s head was chopped off’ and the same reports adds that both men ‘Belong to the desperate gang of Gipsies that bare their names’. The sentences were later commuted to life transportation, and together they were shipped from England on the ‘Sesostris’ in November 1825.

Levi's uncle Henry/Harry Burton was described as 'King of the Gypsies' in newspaper reports, both at the time of his burial and before, as was Harry's wife Dove Hearn. She had been arrested as a teenager in the 1770's travelling Dorset with her parents, sister, and Robert Boswell, the  father of Joanne and Tryphena. Robert was buried at Loders, Dorset in 1806. He is simply described as a 'Gipsey' in the register, though newspaper reports from later in the century show a plaque had been placed to him there as 'King of the Gypsies', which had faded to nothing by the 1870's. Robert and his family's link to Calne 1780-1815,  suggests he was close related to Inverto Boswell,  and was probably also a son to Inverto's father, Henry Boswell, who was buried at Ickleford, Hertfordshire in 1780, similarly described  in the register simply as a 'Gypsy', but remembered as a 'King of the Gypsies' in local legend.









Bellenger, Sebire, Soubien, Mallandain, Molle, Baudoin - Normandy/London
Deverdun, Bachelier, Hannoteau, Martin, Ledoux, Dumoutier, Lespine, Montenont, Picard, Desmarets - Paris & Picardy/Amsterdam/London
Mourgue, Chambon, Chabot - Languedoc/London

Holohan, Donnelly, McGowan/McGoan - Leitrim, Ireland/Dundee, Scotland/London.

Gordon, Troup, Grant, Watt, McInnes - Aberdeenshire, Scotland/London

Offline richarde1979

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #6 on: Wednesday 30 September 15 13:19 BST (UK) »
In regards Henry Boswell here are the actual register entries of the burial of him and his close relatives at Ickleford:

Henry Boswell 'Gypsy' February 11th 1780
Elizabeth Boswell 'Gypsy' 18th March 1782
Elizabeth, daughter of William and Hannah Boswell 'Gipsies' 15th October 1796
Lettice, wife of Henry Boswell 'Gipsey' 9th December 1796



Twenty three years after the last burial the following description of the graves appears in 'The New British Traveller' [1819]:

Ickleford - 'This is a little village, two miles north from Hitchin, supposed to derive its name from its situation on the Icknield Way, near a ford of the Ivel. In the church interred under a white marble slab, is Henry Boswell, King of the Gypsies, who died in 1780, aged ninety, his wife and grandaughter were also buried there.'

Rather fanciful later accounts appear of Henry having boasted of living through the reigns of three George's and travelled every county in the land, but these are probably inventions of local lore. The age of 90 given in the 1819 account is also suspect. It certainly didn't come from the record of the original burial. Possibly it was inscribed on the marble stone, but these ages are notoriously unreliable. On another thread here into Dan Boswell you'll see he also has a stone which records his age as 90, but was actually fourteen years younger when buried. This is not isolated example either, many ages were inflated by up to one or two decades at death in the community. I am fairly sure Henry was younger,  his wife was almost certainly born around 1710 and I think its likely he was too, and similarly around seventy at the time he died.
Bellenger, Sebire, Soubien, Mallandain, Molle, Baudoin - Normandy/London
Deverdun, Bachelier, Hannoteau, Martin, Ledoux, Dumoutier, Lespine, Montenont, Picard, Desmarets - Paris & Picardy/Amsterdam/London
Mourgue, Chambon, Chabot - Languedoc/London

Holohan, Donnelly, McGowan/McGoan - Leitrim, Ireland/Dundee, Scotland/London.

Gordon, Troup, Grant, Watt, McInnes - Aberdeenshire, Scotland/London

Offline Lornad

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #7 on: Monday 10 April 17 13:09 BST (UK) »
It seems Tryphena was the daughter of Colliberry Smith married to (Siterus) Bartholomew Boswell. Colliberry's parents were Elizabeth Smith married to Timothy (Barrington) Buckland. This would mean that Robert is not Tryphena's father. Tryphena's siblings/half siblings  include Fairnetty,, Purify, Fallowfield, Lewis, Patheny, Mercey and Decetus. An article on Belcher Dicks in March 2017 Romany Routes.

Offline Darnity

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Re: Belcher Dicks - son of Tryphena Boswell (b1780)
« Reply #8 on: Thursday 21 November 19 11:46 GMT (UK) »
Joanne Boswell partnered John Burton, son of Ambrose Burton. The couple’s only child Levi Harry Burton was baptised at St John’s, Yeovil in 1799.

You might be interested to know that Norman Burton has put information he's collected about his Burton family into a book that has just been published "The Family Tree of Henry and Dove Burton from c1760 to the early 1900s from primarily Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset and Wiltshire" and mentions both Ambrose and Levi.
Gypsy DRAPERs, children of Billy and Mary - Ellen,Darnity,Spencer,Billy Jnr,Kisby,Ellick
Descendants of Fred and Esther (Garrett) WHITLOCK - Wavendon, Woburn Sands area
Descendants of George and Barbara (Willis) SUTTON - Earls Barton and Nether Heyford
BISSELL - Hanslope, New Bradwell, Bucks and Aston, Birmingham area
Lavinia DRAPER died 1840 Cranfield
Gypsies in the Bow Brickhill and Beds/Bucks border areas