Orgill LEMAN of Brampton Hall

[smudwhisk]

Hi Ossie

No worries, I had enough problems trying to get my head around who was who last year when I was looking at the Naunton-Leman-Orgill line.  The PCC Wills available, of which there are quite a few, added to the confusion since a number didn't spell out the exact family relationship.   It took me a while to work out the exact relationships for William Leman and Sarah Leman and then to their daughter Susanne.  I always thought that a number of the published sources relating to Susanne's father had to be wrong because I had followed forwards the line from the marriage of John Leman and Theophila Naunton and knew there wasn't a Thomas involved.  Got their eventually.  Sadly I've come across quite a few inaccurate published sources over the years so just shows that you have to check everything whether published by an authority or not.

If you go back a couple of generations to William Leman and Sarah Leman's family, there are definately descendents coming forward to recent decades.  Descending from their daughter Theophila who married Thomas Rede from Beccles, such as the Astley Coopers and also the descendants of Leman Thomas Rede.

Nicola

[osmposm]

The portraits are by George Sayer (1809-1887), a C19th artist of whom very little is known (and most of that wrong!).....Like many other very competent Victorian portraitists, however, he faded into obscurity as the new technology of photography took off. Although he still described himself as a portrait painter in 1871, he had stopped exhibiting by 1850, and all his known works seem to date from the 1830s-early 50s.

The above was until 10 minutes ago mainly conjecture, but it seems I was right - just discovered he was imprisoned for debt in 1860, poor man.

[BramptonHall]

I noticed the most charming photos of your oil paintings of Naunton Thomas Orgill-Leman and his wife
Henrietta Jane Orgill-Leman and wondered if you would be kind enough to please confirm the size, details of the frames if original and if possible send a higher resolution image – my email is (*).

The reason for my interest is although I have no blood connection with the Orgill-Leman I have just bought Brampton Hall and would ideally like to have both of these oil paintings professionally reproduced to hang together in one of the principal rooms at Brampton Hall as these two really should not be forgotten and ideally remain an integral part of the property.  It may be of interest to you Brampton Hall was described by the selling agents (Savills)  as [sic] ‘the quint-essentially Georgian country house overlooking its own magnificent parkland in a wonderfully totally unspoilt part of Suffolk', Grade II-listed Brampton Hall at Brampton, seven miles south of Beccles on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, hasn't been on the market for over 40 years. The particularly imposing and beautifully proportioned Georgian Gentleman’s country house, built in 1796 of fine red brick under a glazed black pantile roof for the Rev Naunton Thomas Orgill-Leman, whose family had long been associated with the area.

Dr. Michael A. Stevens

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[osmposm]

I'm so sorry, Dr Stevens, I've only just seen your very interesting post. As you probably realise, the email address you provided has had to be removed, so I am about to send you a PM with mine. We have things to discuss.

I am extremely happy that Brampton Hall has a new owner with such an interest in its history - not the fate, alas, of many fine old houses, and Brampton is a fine one indeed. Congratulations on the purchase: the house is lucky to have found you.

[osmposm]

A slightly annoying postscript to the story of my 1834 portraits of the Rev Naunton T O Leman & his wife Henrietta, and the new owner of their house, Brampton Hall.

I eventually managed to get hold of Dr Stevens through the estate agents - Rootschat rules had not allowed him to leave his email address on here, nor to contact me by PM; and by the time I tried to PM him he was presumably no longer paying attention! Unfortunately he turned out to be a man who likes to move things on quickly...within a month or two - and before I reached him - he'd already had his copies painted from the images I'd posted on here.

As a result, although interested to see them, he has no interest in acquiring the originals - which is rather a nuisance as I'd love to have sold them to him!

Let that be a lesson to everyone - do NOT post high-resolution images online if you want them to remain within your control...in fact they are now also to be seen as stock images on various Chinese websites offering hand-painted reproductions of paintings!

[diplodicus]

May I lower the tone of this thread for one moment?

There lived in Fressingfield one Elisha Seaman/Seman who can be found on the 1841 and '5 censuses (or censi if you're a purist). On Ancestry, his 1851 cross reference has been given an alternative of Leman by a subscriber.

I was wondering if this could be one of the remote twiglets of this illustrious tree?

[osmposm]

Diplodicus, 'Leman' (or Leaman in the 1841, where the difference between the enumerator's 'L' & 'S' is clearer) is certainly the correct reading - he's clearly the Elijah [sic] Leman, son of Thomas Leman & Phebe Hunter, baptised with his brother William at Fressingfield on 25 Sep 1808. You'll already have found all this, I'm sure, but Thomas married Phoebe Hunton at Metfield on 13 Aug 1805 - his age in the '51 Census suggests a birth year of c1769, that in the '41 as c1771-76, but ages of the elderly were of course very shaky in those days (and the '51 didn't know his birthplace, so I'd take the age of 81 with a pinch of salt). It's interesting that in 1841 father Thomas is spelt 'Lemon', while son Elisha is 'Leaman' - presumably they pronounced it differently, and the enumerator wrote what he heard.

The '41 says he was born in the county, so despite the distance (30+ miles) I would have said he could be the Thomas Leman, son of John & Mary, baptised at Semer on 4 June 1775. However that Thomas married someone else (Sarah Hill) in 1795, and although the last of their children was baptised before Thomas & Phoebe married, another source suggests his wife Sarah did not die until 1810, which must rule him out. And besides, although Thomas of Semer's forbears are traceable back several generations, they came from Lavenham...which is really in the wrong direction if we're trying to find a link with the Beccles family!

So to get (finally) to your question, there seem to be plenty of Lemans/Lemons in many parts of Suffolk. Sir John's family were in the Beccles area in the early C16th, and probably long before. Beccles is only 12 or 15 miles from Metfield/Fressingfield; and although I fear you'll never prove it, I would frankly be be surprised if your Lemans were NOT distant cousins of the posh lot! But you may never know whether they branched off before the other family clawed their way up in the world, or are descended from a junior branch that gradually slipped back down. Downward social mobility must be quite as common as the upward variety, but of course it is seldom recorded - one occasionally gets reminded of this mathematical necessity when an Australian bus driver unexpectedly inherits an earldom from a distant relation...and a former Garter King of Arms, Sir Anthony Wagner, convincingly calculated that in the early 1960s there had to be around 2 million living descendants of Edward III!!

[diplodicus]

Thank you osmposm. I had just started on this particular twiglet so your knowledge is most gratefully received.

Malcolm