The Holyland who wasn't

Years ago, when I was fairly new to genealogy, I was approached by someone who knew of my interest in the Holyland surname. They’d received a marriage certificate for their ancestor, Ann Holyland, which gave Ann’s father’s name as Peter. Did I know anything about this branch of the family?

I had never come across a Peter Holyland and my correspondent and I agreed that Ann was probably illegitimate and had “invented” Peter Holyland to assuage Victorian propriety.

More recently, someone else got in touch with the same query and this time, with more experience and resources to call on, I decided to look at this more carefully.

Ann Holyland married Thomas Lant in a civil ceremony in Leicester on 5 September 1863. Ann was 19, and gave her father’s details as Peter Holyland (deceased), a maltster. 

There are two girls called Ann Holyland of roughly the right age in the records; I discounted one who was the daughter of Thomas and Harriet Holyland. The other was born illegitimately in Thurlaston in 1845. Could this have been the Ann who married Thomas Lant? To add to the confusion, of Thomas and Ann Lant's subsequent children, two were registered with mmn Holyland, and two with Holland.

My correspondent knew that Ann had died on 1 March 1877. Luckily the Lant family appeared on the 1871 census, which confirmed Ann’s place of birth as Leicester, and age, 27.

The 1851 census showed a family in Leicester which looked promising; Peter Holland, age 40, with his wife Amy, five Holland children including Emily age 16, Ann age 6, and 10 month old Mary; and stepchildren Sarah, Emma and John Martin. Peter had been born in Earl Shilton, and was a maltster, as Ann’s marriage certificate had stated. The 1861 census showed Peter and Amy with a 9 year old child called Joseph Holland; Emma and John Martin were still with them, but Ann had gone.

Was this the right Ann? 

Using Free BMD and the GRO site, I discovered that Peter Holland had died in Leicester in the second quarter of 1863, aged 53. It was time to go grave-digging (!)

Leicester and Rutland Family History Society produces a CD listing burials in Welford Rd cemetery, the main municipal cemetery in Victorian Leicester ; this has proved an invaluable resource on many occasions (1).  I confirmed Peter’s burial on 9 May 1863; there were no other family members sharing his grave. 

What about Ann? Ann Lant was buried on 7 March 1877;  the same plot contained these burials:

Emily Holland buried 1857, age 23

Mary Elizabeth Holland buried 1858, age 8

William Joseph Holland buried 1875, age 6 months

Joseph Holland buried 1876, age 3 weeks

Ann Lant  buried 1877, age 33

Thomas H Martin buried 1902, age 5

General view, Welford Rd Cemetery

Comparing with the 1851 census, this gives a match with Ann’s sisters Emily and Mary, as well as a link with the Martin surname. A bit more sleuthing showed that the baby Joseph Holland would almost certainly have been Ann's nephew. The place of abode for all the Hollands listed also matched those on the censuses.

I have to say that my correspondent was still not convinced but I am happy that this was indeed the family of Ann Holyland/Holland/Lant. 

But was the family really Holyland or Holland? Holland is a much commoner name than Holyland. Had their name mutated over the years? I needed to look further back to test this hypothesis.

There are NO Peter Holylands in the records of this era, so I looked for the Holland surname.  According to the marriage certificate for Peter and Amy, they were both widowed when they married in 1849, with Peter’s father also called Peter, a gardener.

The only baptism I could find was of Peter Holland, son of Peter and Jane, in April 1813 in Stony Stanton, only 3 miles from Peter’s stated place of birth of Earl Shilton.  Going back another generation, Peter Holland had married Jane Burrows in Earl Shilton in 1801. Their first child was baptised in Earl Shilton, then there is a gap of 10 years before Peter was baptised in Stony Stanton, where subsequent children were also baptised. So perhaps he was indeed born in Earl Shilton but not baptised until after the family moved.

Peter’s father was buried in 1840 with a year of birth of 1763. This was probably slightly inaccurate as the only suitable baptism was for Peter Holland in Earl Shilton in 1767, the son of (yet another) Peter Holland and his wife Elizabeth. Still Holland, no Holyland yet ----

Prior to this, in January 1758, Peter Holland had married Elizabeth Slingsby in Desford. Previous research has shown Desford to be the place of origin of the Leicestershire Holylands  so now I needed to see if there was any evidence of Holland appearing in the village registers as a variant, or deviant, of Holyland.

And here I hit the answer. Peter must have been newly widowed when he married Elizabeth, as the very first mention of the surname Holland in the Desford registers was with the marriage of Peter Holland to Mary Heathe, ten months earlier in March 1757. Their daughter Ann was baptised four weeks later, and Mary was buried 3 weeks after that.  And on the marriage licence it clearly says, “Peter Holland of the parish of Sleaford in the county of Lincoln“

Holland is a relatively common surname in Lincoln; there are no instances of the Holyland name in the county. So Peter was an incomer to Desford, named differently from the well-established Holylands of the village. Why his great-granddaughter Ann’s name was given as the less common Holyland on her marriage certificate and on the birth registration of some of her children, I have no idea. Perhaps, like me, she liked the name!

The above is enough to satisfy me that whilst Ann earns her place in the Holyland one name study by dint of using the Holyland name, her ancestors' real name was actually Holland.

What do you think?

(All places mentioned are in Leicestershire).

1. http://www.lrfhs.org.uk/