Mary Dance's Family.htm

The map above, which is scaled at 2 squares = 1.25 miles, shows the villages where our family originated. Ocle Pychard, eight miles north-east of Hereford, was the home of Thomas Dance when he was was baptised in 1775 and its where he and Catherine Evans were married in 1795.

If we have the correct lineage, his father was James Dance who came from Eggleton, Stretton Grandison, and had married Elizabeth Morgan at nearby Ledbury in October 1761. James was baptised in February 1730 at Stretton Grandison, and his parents were John & Anne Dance.

The marriage entry for his son in the Ocle Pychard register reads “Thomas Dance of the parish of Canon Frome and Catherine Evans of this parish were married in this church by banns this 31^st day of December 1795 by Wm Davey. This marriage was solemnized between us Tho. Dance , Catherine Evans. Witness: Joseph Garston and Sarah Garston.”


	St Wulstan's farm at Welsh Newton today.		Catherine Dance 1774-1864
	Although Thomas died in 1840, Catherine was still farming at St Wulstan's Farm, Welsh Newton, with the aid of her sons George and William, and probably James who lived nearby, until her death in 1864. She is buried with her husband at Ganarew churchyard.

	Another view of St Wulstan's Farm showing the old barn
			An old house at Welsh Newton Common
	On the right is a view from nearby Welsh Newton Common the area where Thomas & Catherine's son farm worker James Dance* (1806-1881) spent most of his life.*
			James Dance (1806- 1881), who lived in this village with his wife Druscilla, was listed as a farmer of 5 acres at Common Gate in 1851.

"In memory of Thomas Dance of St, Wolstan's, Farmer, who died January 4th 1840 aged 82 years. Also John son of the above and Catherine his wife who died June 25th 1837 aged 25 years. Also the said Catherine Dance who died May 7th 1864 aged 91 years."

"In loving memory of George Dance who died May 6th 1891 aged 77 years. Also Susanah wife of the above who died April 27th 1903 aged 86."

George Dance (1814) and his wife Susanah were farmers. He had helped his mother Catherine run St Wulstans Farm at Welsh Newton together with his brother William and was there in 1851 and probably till Catherine's death in 1864.

By 1871 he was running Reddings Farm at Tintern near Chepstow in partnership with his unmarried brother William. George married later in life (1866), after the death of his mother and had no children.

When he retired around 1890 they moved to Kyrle Cottage, Whitchurch. George and Susanah were both buried at nearby Ganarew.

His brother William (1816) also married late in life. His marriage was to Sarah from nearby Trellech around 1873. She was 31 years younger and they had two children, William Charles Dance (1874) and Catherine (1880). After retiring from Reddings Farm he settled at Woolaston, St Briavels in the Forest of Dean.

Another brother, John Dance (1812) only lived to the age of 25 and is buried with his parents at Ganarew.

Their sister Ann Dance (1811-1886) did not marry. She appears to have stayed with her mother at St. Wulstan's Farm and moved to Upper Redbrook after Catherine's death. She is listed there in 1881 living on an annuity.

When she died at the Scowles in 1886 the beneficiaries listed in her will were her deceased brother Edward and his son, stone mason John Dance.

George's older sister Elizabeth Dance (1796) who was born at Ocle Pychard, married John Saunders (1793) at his home church of Llangarron in 1820. They settled at Llangarron and had eight children.

Their son James Saunders who was born on 5 November, 1826 at Old Pound Farm migrated to Wellington, New Zealand in !856 where he married Scottish born Janet McHardie in 1865. She was eleven years younger than her husband and they went on to add seven children to New Zealand's early pioneers.

Another son William Saunders (1821) married Elizabeth from Radnorshire when he worked as a servant at Camberwell in Surrey. Their first child Elizabeth (1851) was born at Camberwell. For the following 4 years they lived at nearby Clapham where William (1852), Mary Ann (1854), Joseph Tom (1856) were born. The census returns from 1861 shows the family now living at Hove in Sussex where Emily Jane was born in 1858.

William's occupation was now recorded as "fly proprietor", the equivalent of a taxi driver today.

Thomas Saunders who was born at Llangarron in 1833 married Elizabeth Cook (1841) at Welsh Newton in 1860. They had at least six children and spent most of their lives at Welsh Newton. One of their sons, George (1880-1948) married Welsh girl Mary Edwards (1884-1979) at Pontypool in 1907 and was employed as a miner at nearby Hafodyrynys Colliery.

Dear Ancestor,
Your tombstone stands among the rest; neglected and alone.
The name and date was chiseled out on now eroding stone.
It reached out then to all who cared.
It is too late to mourn.
You did not know that I exist

You died and I was born.
Yet in each of us are cells of you in flesh, in blood, in bone.

Our blood contracts and beats a pulse entirely not our own.

Dear Ancestor, the place you filled one hundred years ago
Spreads out among the ones you left who would have loved you so.
I wonder how you lived and loved.
I wonder if you knew
That someday I would find that spot and come to visit you.
Author Unknown


	Catherine Dance (nee Evans) was born at Burghill, just north-west of Hereford and baptised there on 16th May 1773, youngest child of John Evans and Margaret Poole. In the 1851 census she gives her birthplace as Tarrington, but on the 1861 census she seems to have changed her mind and gives her place of birth as Canon Frome.She and Thomas moved to the Ganarew-Whitchurch area in the early 1800s. Their second son James was born there around 1806. Elizabeth (1796) their first child, who was to marry John Saunders (1793) at Llangarron near Monmouth in 1820, was born at Tarrington near Hereford and baptised at Ocle Pychard (see bottom of page). Her brother Thomas Dance (1799) was also baptised at Ocle Pychard, a village six miles from Hereford, in 1799, and his younger siblings at Ganarew and around nearby Whitchurch, on the south-western side of Herefordshire, close to the Welsh border town of Monmouth. The earliest baptismal records indicate that Thomas and Catherine first lived and worked at Lewstone, in the parish of Ganarew near Whitchurch. He was a farm labourer in the early part of the 19th century. By the time of the 1841 census the family were listed as farmers at St Wulstans in nearby Welsh Newton. GANAREW is a small parish and village delightfully situated at the base of Doward hill, on the borders of Monmouthshire. The parish contains several handsome residences, and the main road between Ross and Monmouth runs through it. It is distant 3 miles N.E. of Monmouth, 8 S.W. of Ross, and 18 S. of Hereford; in Wormelow hundred, Monmouth union and county court district, Whitchurch polling district, and Harewood End petty sessional division. The population in 1861 was 116; in 1871, 181; inhabited houses, 36; families or separate occupiers, 36; area of parish, 835 acres; annual rateable value, £1,082. Mrs. Marriott, who is lady of the manor, James Murray Bannerman, Esq., William Brown, Esq., and Miss Griffin (of Newton court), are the principal landowners. The soil is loamy; subsoil, chiefly rock; produce, wheat, barley, roots, &c. Ganarew is in the diocese and archdeaconry of Hereford and rural deanery of Archenfield; living, a rectory; value, £102, with 15 acres of glebe; patroness, Mrs. Marriott; rector, Rev. Thomas Laugley, B.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was instituted in 1853. The church, dedicated to St. Swithin, is a small but handsome structure, with tower containing two bells. It was rebuilt in 1850 at the sole expense of Mrs. Marriott, and has nave, chancel, porch, font, organ, and about 120 sittings, 40 of which are free. The earliest register is dated 1589. There is a parochial school for boys and girls supported by subscription; it has about 25 scholars. Sellarsbrooke is the seat of Mrs. Marriott. Wyastone Leys, the seat of James Murray Bannerman, Esq., stands in a deer park, and commands a splendid view of the river Wye. There is a private chapel in the grounds. Near the mansion is a school supported by Miss Bannerman. Littlebury's Directory and Gazetteer of Herefordshire, 1876-7 WHITCHURCH is a picturesque village and parish, delightfully situated on the west bank of the river Wye, and on the main road leading from Ross to Monmouth. It is distant 4 miles N.E. of Monmouth, 7 S.W. of Ross, and 16 S. of Hereford; is in Wormelow hundred, Monmouth union and county court district, Harewood End petty sessional division, and is a polling place for county elections. The population in 1861 was 857; in 1871, 802; inhabited houses, 201; families or separate occupiers, 207; area of parish, 1,956 acres; annual rateable value, £3,437. Mrs. Marriott, of Sellarsbrooke, who is lady of the manor, Captain J. K. Simcoe, R.N., William Brown, Esq., of Lewson, and George Woodhall Lloyd, Esq., of White house, Sellack, are the principal landowners. The soil is sandy and loamy; subsoil, chiefly rock and limestone; products, wheat, barley, roots, &c. The geology of this district is very interesting. In this parish is the Great Deward hill; on its N.W. side are the celebrated King Arthur's and other caves, in which the fossil remains of hyena, elephant, stag, &c., of the antediluvian period have been recently discovered. At a short distance to the West is the Little Doward hill, and on the summit of this are vestiges of an old Roman encampment. The village of Whitchurch is surrounded by scenery of the most romantic and picturesque description, and the neighbourhood is exceedingly pleasant, abounding with numerous gentlemen's seats and villas. The rivers Wye and Garron afford excellent fishing for salmon, trout, grayling, sewen, flounders, &c.; and the otter hounds meet at Marstow bridge in the season. Amongst the chief objects of interest in the vicinity is "Symonds' Yat", or Rock, the summit of which is a romantic green floor, walled in, without any formality, by copsewood, and commands a fine panorama of the Wye and adjacent country. At Symonds' Yat is a station on the Ross and Monmouth branch of the Great Western railway. Whitchurch is in the diocese and archdeaconry of Hereford and rural deanery of Archenfield; living, a rectory; value, £290, with residence and 6 acres of glebe; patron and rector, the Rev. William Dry, M.A., of Brasenose College, Oxford, who was instituted in 1862. Littlebury's Directory and Gazetteer of Herefordshire, 1876-7
			Records available at present show Thomas (1765) and Catherine (1774) had seven sons in all. They were Thomas (1799), James (1806), Edward (1807), John (1809), Joseph (1812), George (1814), and William (1817) and three daughters, Elizabeth (1796), Caroline (1798) and Ann (1811). Some of these dates of birth may not be historically accurate. I am aware of a few of their baptismal records but unfortunately a number of the children were not christened as infants and I have had to make possibly unreliable estimates from census and burial records when the recorded years differed.
	Lewstone Farm
	Lewstone, the first area the family settled locally in the early 1800s, is situated in a secluded rural location along a little-used country lane approximately 1 mile from the village of Whitchurch and midway between the market towns of Ross on Wye and Monmouth. Thomas was first employed there as a farm labourer, ('of Lewson' is mentioned in a couple of early records). Lewson (Lewstone) is given as their residence in 1818 when youngest son William was baptised at Whitchurch. They went on to farm at St Wulstan's, Welsh Newton and were well established there when Thomas died in 1840. This area is part of our family history again in 1862 when their grandchild, Joseph's daughter Eliza Dance (1840) a servant at New Court, Whitchurch, married her upper-crust employer Paul Creed Gwyllim Simcoe (1836) whose family owned large chunks of Herefordshire including around 70 plots in the Whitchurch area. (see Joseph)

	Their eldest son Thomas Dance (1799-1892) who was born at Ocle Pychard, married Sarah Turner (1799-1839) at Whitchurch in 1824. They had six children, Thomas (1826), Ann (1830), James (1833), Elizabeth (1835) and William (1838) all born at Little Doward, Ganarew, (see birds-eye view above) before Sarah died in 1839. In 1841 he married Elizabeth Jones who was 20 years younger. Thomas, the only one from our Dance family who is listed as a Herefordshire land-owner, was a farm labourer who appears to have spent most of his life in the Ganarew area. In 1891 the 93 year old's address was Yew Tree Cottage, Little Doward. He moved to Yewtree Cottage in the 1870s . When Thomas died in May 1892 his effects inherited by his wife Elizabeth were totaled at £27. His youngest son William Dance (1838) married Goodrich born Elizabeth Austins (1842) in 1864 and settled in Newport, Monmouthshire around 1872. They had eight children, Louisa (1864), William (1866), Catherine (1869), Elizabeth (1871), John (1874), Blanche (1878), Mary Ann (1884), and James (1885).

	It was well-hidden and took a while to find. The 1890s map above shows Yewtree Cottage with its patch of land on the right. The aerial map reveals the tree covered location today and I certainly got the impression that the forest is trying to take it back. Now inhabited by the two Hancocks brothers, it was built in 1836. The owner in 1844, and probably its builder in 1836, was 55 year old farm-worker Richard Williams who lived there with his wife Christiana. Thomas Dance is listed as a land-owner at Little Doward in 1842 - He had a house, garden and a 'patch'.


	A rear view of Yewtree Cottage.		From the front


	Outside Lewstone Farm- Cider apple pulper in foreground		Lewstone Mill

STEVE	Ocle Pychard Church © Peter Whatley