Probable Ancestors in Northamptonshire
                                                Home Page      Nichols Family Start    28 March 2007

 i.  Ancestral Nichols’ 

Certainly Thomas Nichols was living in Geddington in 1777, because his name was included in that town’s Northamptonshire Militia List (The county militia - equivalent to the territorial army - are selected using the militia list which includes the names of all adult males). Presumably Thomas married Mary White on the 11 December 1778 and the couple had Richard in 1779. Mary White’s Christening has not been identified.

ii.       Ancestral Fever’s Living in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centurys

The surname Fevers is believed to be a simplification of the French name ‘Le Fevre’. Huguenots (French protestants) migrated from France in large numbers as a result of religious persecution. A brief historical reference to this was found in the parish records at Little Oakley:

£1.4.5 given to persecuted protestants of France AD1621

King Henry, Louis XIV’s grandfather, created the Edict of Nantes which considerably improved the Huguenots position in France. But, by the end of the 17th Century the number of Huguenots had grown to about 2 million and, under Catholic pressure, Louis XIV revoked the Edict and signed an order stating that:

all the Hugenots in my dominions shall give up their errors, under pain of banishment or captivity. (Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Refugees’)

As a direct consequence huge numbers of Huguenots fled the country; 100,000 settled in Holland, 25,000 in Switzerland, 75,000 in Germany and 50,000 in England. In England, the Hugenots established themselves as silk workers in Spitalfields, cotton spinners at Bideford, tapestry weavers at Exeter, wool carders at Taunton etc. Three Huguenot regiments were created. (Appendix of Conan Doyles’ book The Refugees [an exciting yarn, well worth reading, with sword play, Iroquis Indians, romance etc.])

Our earliest known Fevers ancestors, Thomas and Ann, lived in Geddington and had eight children. Ann died when her youngest son John (born 1753) was only ten. Six years later, Thomas married Ann Sharman. Thomas must have been in his mid to late sixties when he died.

John Fevers married Mary Smith at Geddington in 1775 and lived in the adjoining parish of Stanion. The parish christening record describes Mary as Mary Murby (Mary Murby Smith?). Elizabeth, christened in 1777, was the couple’s only girl amongst their five children.

Elizabeth and Richard Nichols used a License to marry at Kettering in 1801. The reason for a license, rather than Banns was presumably linked to Elizabeth’s pregnancy and the need to marry quickly. For information on their lives see next page.

The Kirby’s have only been traced back a single generation, but their roots lie deep in Northamptonshire.  In AD 1600 a George Kerby was Church Warden at Great Oakley.