Pending further evidence of his identity, I associate Thomas the estate servant with the son of Thomas and Elizabeth (née Toms) who died around his thirtieth birthday. This Thomas's baptism was recorded in the Parish Register of Mollington on 15 April 1733, and in that of nearby Cropredy, a burial entry for a Thomas Elkington appears dated 18 February 1763, with the note, "from Farnborough". Unlike siblings, Thomas was not mentioned in his father's will, which ties in with the belief that he pre-deceased him and left no widow or children to be supported. We will probably never know whether he fell off his horse, choked on a fish bone, or simply died of an ague, caught in the winter snows.
Elkington information on the above chart is mostly from extensive files detailing genealogy of the Oxfordshire and Warwickshire branches. This work was compiled by Mr A.E.H. (Arthur Edward Hardwicke) Elkington, who died in 1974, and his cousin Christine. Typescript copies, deposited in 1969, include those at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies at Oxford Central Library; Warwickshire County Record Office; and the library of the Society of Genealogists in London.
Support for the supposition that the above Thomas was indeed the owner of the pocket book would appear to be lent by the fact that his sister Elizabeth married into the Griffin family. The book might have passed into her hands after her brother Thomas's death in 1763, or come to her household via her widowed mother, who could well have lived with her following the death of Thomas senior just two years later.
Elizabeth was the wife of my four-times great-grandfather Thomas Griffin, yeoman farmer of Avon Dassett and Farnborough, neighbouring (Warwickshire) parishes of Mollington and Cropredy in Oxfordshire.The book remained in the hands of Griffin farming families for over two hundred years, first at Dassett and then, still in Warwickshire, at Stockton, nearly ten miles north. Finally, it was given to me in about 1980 by my aunt Elizabeth Lucy Shaw (née Griffin), and is now held by the Warwickshire County Records Office.
Simon Bartlett
