SAMUEL ODKENBAKER OR ?
HIS NAME ― VARIOUS SPECULATIONS
©2009 Gwyneth Daniel
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My family tree includes a remote ancestor, convict Samuel Odkenbaker, who was transported to Norfolk Island, then freed and finally moved to Tasmania in 1813.
Ever since Samuel 'Odkenbaker' (as he is most commonly referred to today) fell into the hands of the authorities in Bedfordshire in 1788, his name has been a matter for debate and speculation. This article is no exception, but seeks to rule out some of the possibilities that have been put forward. The argument is advanced that his true name was almost certainly Samuel Hodkin Baker.
There are a number of facts and certainties that give strength to this argument. As Rhonda Cole points out in her published paper here, people plainly had trouble with his name. These were the versions in the paperwork of the time, one of which had been scratched out and written over: Oakenbaker, Odkenbaker, Odkinbaker, O'Baker, Baker (names he was variously given, once out of the criminal justice system).
Looking at the available information of the time in the UK, we immediately hit a problem. Using the online IGI (www.familysearch.org) and searching on the first four of the above, we come up with nothing that remotely resembles these versions of his name. Looking elsewhere, such as on freeBMD, the index for the official registration of births, marriages and deaths in Britain, Odkenbaker does not exist as a name. Nor is there anything like it on www.ancestry.com or Rootsweb other than a reference to the passenger list for his transportation. The name is carefully written as 'Odkenbaker' on the list.
Searching for O'Baker on the IGI produces a plethora of 'Obaker' names in the USA and various forms of 'Baker' surname in Scandinavia. But none in England.
However, Baker put it right. He was known as Samuel Baker once he arrived in Launceston. So we should take it as read that he really was Samuel Baker, never mind the fancy appendage, the middle name. We may safely assume that the name as written in the convict registers is wrong.
So why do people insist on sticking with this ridiculous nonsense-name tag? Right down to having a memorial block laid on the Campbell Town Convict Trail. This alone is an insult to the man. He was FREE when he came to Tasmania, no longer a convict. I'd like to see that block taken up out of deference to the man who gave so many life. If he did. We know he was fertile as he fathered a child to a convict woman on Norfolk Island. But we can't be sure he fathered those three girls who were registered to him and Mary (Anne?) Brennan at St John's in Launceston. Baker ran a sly grog shop. These boozy dens were, after all, a pretext for a free-for-all over the women (who were in short supply in the colony) when the men came down from the fields and the bush in the evenings. There's many a question in the family about the dark colouring of some of us down Elizabeth Brennan Baker's line, so I don't claim the man as my ancestor. He might have been, but how certain can any of us be about the paternity of our ancestors?
Considering where Samuel might have been born isn't much help either. He was supposed to have come from Rickmansworth, although this was not a claim to be his place of birth. Rickmansworth falls in the Watford (Hertfordshire) registration district. If Samuel had been born there, we might expect to find the forename 'Samuel' thick on the ground in the period of his own life, say up to the end of 1839. Not so. There were only 9 and none of them looked like Odkenbaker or variants.
Going back to the online IGI, the Batch Number for Rickmansworth is C072791. Searching for 'Samuel' in the forty-year band around Samuel's supposed birth year produces only 19. Not a single one looks remotely like our man.
So where else might he have come from? In one document of the time, in the bundle from the Bedford Assizes in 1788, there is a reference to Samuel and his accomplice both being 'late' of Chalgrave. This means Samuel was somewhere else in between. Probably Rickmansworth, which is where the court records said he was from. It's important to acknowledge that this only means place of residence in court records. When I was caught speeding on the Ridgely run, I told the policeman I was from Wynyard. Yet I was born in Birmingham in the UK, but the police records don't need to know that.
So does searching the IGI for Chalgrave bring any illumination? Indeed it does. The IGI shows the following baptisms to Baker parents in Chalgrave:
Mary Baker, 9 March 1783, parents Richard Baker and Mary
Mary Baker, 18 May 1805, parents Richard and Mary, perhaps this Richard being the son of the one above.
Mary Baker, 18 May 1805, parents William Baker and Elizabeth.
John Baker, 22 April 1589, father Thomas Baker, mother unknown.
John Baker, 25 November 1797 (six years after Samuel went to Norfolk Island), parents Richard and Mary.
Ann Baker, 20 March 1785, parents Richard and Mary.
Thomas Baker, 20 October 1807, parents William and Mary, Mary perhaps being his second wife.
Joseph Baker, 6 January 1811, father not named, mother Rebecca.
James Baker, 4 May 1800, parents William and Mary.
So was the name 'Samuel Baker' common in Bedfordshire, and if so from when on? Searching on the IGI shows that the earliest Samuel Baker baptised in Bedfordshire, for which records have survived ― and have so far been transcribed (the IGI is incomplete) ― probably came from Cardington. We know this, the record suggests, because this Samuel Baker married a lady known as Ann Whitbread on 23 June 1636. Presumably the record gave Cardington as his place of birth. Cardington is on the south-east edge of Bedford and about 20 miles north of Chalgrave.
The next Samuel Baker, child of Joseph Baker and Mary, baptised on 7 November 1708, was dunked in the font at Old Warden, south east of Bedford, 27 miles from Chalgrave.
A member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints has put a marriage in 1749 in Woburn, Bedfordshire, on the IGI (Film Number: 183514, Page Number: 478, Reference number: 17424). This Samuel apparently had a father named Samuel too. Woburn is only about 8 miles from Chalgrave. This date ― 1749 ― is about right for the marriage of parents of our Samuel.
One last search within the date range 1770-1810 reveals a marriage of 'Sam Baker' to Mary Alliston, on 28 June 1787. This was at Sundon. The parish Church was at Upper Sundon, a village less than six miles from Chalgrave! If this was our Samuel, just before he got into trouble, and there was a child involved before Samuel left for Eastney Common to work on Fort Cumberland, the child would have been born before 1790.
Before getting back to this, are there any clues in the name Alliston? This surname was mainly an Essex surname from the Halstead area. More interesting though, Alliston was also a Northampton name as shown in early census material (1841) and in parish records. Northampton is only 30 miles from Chalgrave. Further, the name Samuel Hodgskin(s) appears four times on the IGI for Ashton, a village on the Chalgrave side of Northampton.
Regarding the possibility of a child from the Alliston-Baker union, no child with that surname was baptised in Sundon, nor within the right time in Chalgrave. The trouble is, it would be possible to spend several hours searching the records for Bedfordshire for children born to a Samuel Baker. A quick look at neighbouring villages shows that Bakers were baptised in Toddington, then in the late 1800s in Harlington, around Samuel's time in Hockliffe as well as in the late 1800s, in Tilsworth and Chalgrave.
A couple named William Baker and Mary were having children in Hockliffe between 1787 and 1791. Was William a brother to Samuel? Maybe, since William was the name Samuel chose for his son born to convict Lewis. Did Samuel know about the goodies in the shop in Hockliffe because he knew the village? Or was he speaking the truth when he said he was helping George Davis transport something heavy?
The Baker children born in Hockliffe were Thomas (1787), Ann (1789), Rebecca (1791), Hannah (1796) and Betty (1798).
The Bakers baptised in Tilsworth, 3.5 miles away from Chalgrave included a Tilsworth child staying in Chalgrave in the 1851 census. The names are familiar: Elizabeth, William, Sarah (as well as Richard, John, Robert and Henry). It seems likely from this that all the local Baker families were connected.
So where does this leave us? Were there Bakers around in the right time frame actually in Chalgrave according to any other source of evidence than the IGI? Yes, indeed. The 1841 census for Chalgrave shows several male Bakers who could have been relatives (names: Daniel, David, Henry, James, John, William) in this small village. Bearing in mind that ages were rounded down to the nearest 5 years in this census, there are several interesting entries. William, 1761. Then two younger men: William, 1796. John, 1796. Brother and nephews? Maybe.
The elder William, an agricultural labourer (Samuel was a labourer, according to one Bedford Assizes document) could indeed have been Samuel's brother ― William's year of birth would have been anywhere between 1757 and 1761. We have been led to believe that our Samuel was born c. 1759, so that would fit.
The two younger men could just be Samuel's sons, if not William's. So maybe it went like this. Samuel and William Snr were brothers. William and John were their sons.
Following this line of inquiry, in the 1851 census for Chalgrave parish, William Jnr's age is given as 58 and his place of birth as Chalgrave. He was a Cow Dealer. His daughter was named Ann. Interestingly, the Chalgrave register shows no William baptised at that Church. This doesn't mean to say he wasn't born there, of course. But it does tell us that the baptism records are not to be relied upon. Let's not forget how incomplete the transcriptions are. Even in my own childhood, parish registers were left in the churches where anyone could tear out a sheet here or there. And did.
As for other Bakers in 'Wingfield in Chalgrave', the 1851 census shows Thomas Baker, age 63 and deaf, born in Hockcliffe. He and his widowed sister, Ann, were both paupers, while her children were working. Ann and Thomas Baker are referred to above. They were children of the Hockliffe couple, William and Mary Baker. This shows just how mobile the Bakers were between villages in this cluster: Wingfield, Hockliffe and Chalgrave.
So where does Samuel Baker fit in? Do we get any clues from George Davis? It seems not. Although there were George Davis baptisms in Woburn (according to the IGI), Woburn being a few miles from Chalgrave, there seems no good fit for his age. Perhaps Davis was actually born in Bristol, whence he came, according to the Court Records. However, in the same paper that identified Samuel as a Chalgrave man, Davis was also said to come from Chalgrave ('late of Chalgrave'). Most of the Bedford Davis families of the time seemed to live in Shillington, a village about 10 miles north east of Chalgrave. It's not surprising that the men knew each other, as the court records show.
My suspicion is that Samuel Baker was indeed very local to the area around Chalgrave rather than Rickmansworth. I looked earlier for 'Samuel' as a favoured name in Rickmansworth. What about Baker? There were two few Baker baptisms around the time of his birth, and no marriages. This suggests Baker was not a Rickmansworth name, so the Chalgrave link is the stronger. This is where I feel comfortable that the man came from.
So was Odken a middle name? Was it Hodken with the 'h' missing? Almost certainly. The 'h' was (and is) commonly dropped in Britain wherever the Queen's English isn't spoken.
Hodken or Hodkin? Both names exist, especially Hodkin. FreeBMD shows a couple of dozen Samuel Hodkin events but no Samuel Hodken entries at all. The 1851 census shows 4 Samuel Hodkin individuals in Derbyshire and 1 in Yorkshire, while the 1841 census shows 5 ― in Derbyshire, Worcester and Sheffield, but none in Bedfordshire. There were two Samuel Hodkins, one from Ireland and one in Warwickshire.
It looks, though, as if there was quite a lot of latitude about how the name was spelled. The IGI, which shows variants for all surnames, gives a number of possibilities: Hodken, Hodkin, Hodgkin, Hodskins, Hodgskins, etc. Why so much variation? Hardly anyone could write until the 19th Century, certainly not out in the villages. People knew their surnames, so it was up to those who had to write other people's names down to make the best of it. These would have been mainly the local clerk to the Vicar, or lawyers, or later, census enumerators. This is, in my view, probably what happened when Samuel was arrested and prosecuted. It's not hard to imagine the scene. He was caught, locked up, then the authorities and their clerks got busy recording what had happened and taking witness evidence.
"Name?"
"Samuel 'odken Baker."
"Say that again."
"Odken Baker, Samuel, sir."
Spelling of surnames for ordinary people was only standardised when schooling became universal. Teachers would see a flock of children through a school from local related families and decide on how to teach them to write down their own names. Schooling for poor children wasn't universal until after 1840 and later in England. Parish records show children in the same family with their surnames spelled differently! Cheeseman, Cheesman, Chessman. In my own case: Daniel, Daniels, Daniell. Another: Wheatly, Wheatley, Weatley, etc.
FreeBMD shows a number of 'Hodgkin' individuals in Bedfordshire, within the Bedford registration district. We don't need to go far to find likely names that are a match for our Samuel's supposed middle name, Odken, or Hodkin. Returning to parish records, the IGI shows the baptism of a child named Samuel Hodskins on 27 August 1758 in Lidlington, which is only 12 miles from Chalgrave. The parents were John Hodskins and Martha Webb. They baptised seven children in that parish, the first in 1748 and the last in 1762. Beyond this, though, there is no history of the name in that parish in the online record.
This doesn't mean this isn't our man, or the child of a man who fathered our own Samuel, but at least it's in the right geographical area. The Bedfordshire apprentice records show that Robert Hodgkin son of Robert Hodgkin 'late of Houghton Regis in the County of Bedford yeoman decd' was apprenticed to Thomas Baker for seven years on the 9th March, either 1659 or 1660. This may be 100 years before our Samuel was born, but it shows that people with the right name were in the right area. Houghton Regis is less than two miles away from Chalgrave. Even though the Hodgkins might in later years have been thicker on the ground further north, they were certainly around through the period we're looking at. John Hodgkins became Bishop Suffragan of the See of Bedfordin 1537! There were plenty in Bedford at the time.
Who knows but this is our Samuel's family, and that he was raised in Chalgrave by a Baker! Who knows but Samuel was lying about his name anyway. People did and do.
One point of interest is that the Bedford index shows a number of Hodgkin events with names that sound familiar: Samuel, William, Mary, Sarah, Betsy, Ann. Our Samuel called his children William, Mary, Elizabeth (Betsy) and Sarah.
Examination of the IGI for the name shows that the Hodkins only arrived quite late in Bedford, mainly in the parish of St Paul. So where were they before in the County of Bedfordshire? There was one family in the earliest records (late 16th Century) at Flitton by Selsoe, just north of the area covered in the map below, as well as in the early 1800s (written as Hodgkins), so probably in between as well. There were Hodkin families in Maulden, south of Bedford city. There were none between 1610-1690. After this, the name began to surface in villages on the eastern fringes of the county, then in Dunstable and in Bedford itself.
The particular combination of Samuel + Hodkin or Hodgkin (or variants) appeared first in Derbyshire, dozens of miles north of Chalgrave. The interesting point about this is that the route south from there would have gone through Nottingham, Leicester, Wellingborough and Bedford then south to London. Like the spokes of wheels, with London as the hub, all the old roads converged more closely as they approached London. The villages south of Bedford, the stomping grounds of the Bakers ― Houghton Conquest, Flitwick, Toddington, Chalgrave, Hockliff, Duntable, Sundon ― were between the two 'spokes' of the A5 and A6. The A5 is the old Roman road, Watling Street. The A6, an ancient road probably dating back to the Dark Ages and used in stretches by the Romans, was a main thoroughfare from London to Bedford, then on to Nottingham.
The map above, courtesy multimap.com (Crown Copyright), shows the A5 and Hockliffe (where the burglary took place, centre left), with Wingfield, Chalgrave, Toddington and the twin villages of Upper and Lower Sundon. These six villages were Baker villages with Hodkins living in them too, although most of the latter were in Dunstable, about 5 miles south of Chalgrave. The seven villages are all in easy walking distance of each other.
The coincidence of these locations ― Toddington, Sundon, Chalgrave, Dunstable ― all being within a few thousand yards of each other suggests one strong possibility.
It is more than likely that the inns on the A5 and A6 recruited their workers from these 'Baker' villages, two of which also had Hodskins around the time of the birth of our Samuel. Many a man would have stopped for the night at an inn on the A5 or A6 and found a local wench for comfort. The IGI shows regular baptisms for girls in the area where there is no named father. However, as there were both Bakers and Hodskins in the area, we don't need to speculate too much about where Mr Hodkin/Hodkins/Hodgkin(s) came from since the combination of the two names Samuel and Hodkin isn't local to this triangle of villages.
Regarding the birth of any child of a fleeting union, Mr Hodkin would have had no say in the matter. Miss Baker would have taken her baby boy to be baptised and named him after his father. Now, that the child might have been given the middle name of Hodkin suggests Miss Baker knew the father, both his fore and surnames. That we can't find a local baptism in a likely time frame for a Samuel Hodkin Baker, or even a Samuel Baker, doesn't mean the child wasn't baptised. Only about one third of parish registers have been transcribed for the IGI. Many have been lost.
It's easy to go round in circles, so we might as well do just that. Earlier, I pointed to the presence of 'Baker' families in Toddington, as shown in the Parish Records. Lo and behold, in the 1841 census, there was a 'John Hodkins' in Toddington, but none in the 1851 census. Looking again at the parish records on the IGI for Toddington, as we found for Dunstable, alongside the Bakers in the register were Hodgkins and variants of that name across the generations, right back to the beginning of records. Even more interesting, there were plenty of 'Samuel' babies baptised in the village of Toddington ― 39 up to 1812.
So it looks increasingly as if Samuel was an illegitimate child, mother Miss Baker and father Samuel Hodkin. It was perfectly normal in such situations for the child to be given the father's name with the mother's surname tacked on. Or vice versa. We have seen this in our own family. The three Baker girls, being illegitimate, are often referred to as the Misses 'Brennan Baker'. An illegitimate child in my family, father's surname Swithun, was given that surname as a middle name. His mother's surname (her maiden name) was given to him as his surname.
Following this train of thought ― that our Samuel was an illegitimate child ― he could thus be Samuel Hodkin Baker. The chances of Samuel being able to write his name are zero. Education for labourers was not in place until the mid-1800s. Few could write their own name in the 1700s, and if they did, this was because they had been taught by someone to do so for special occasions only― such as marriage. So, when Samuel spoke out his name, he would quite naturally have dropped the initial 'h' of Hodkin. The clerk's job was to slavishly write down, in full detail, what was said to him.
The name would thus have sounded like Samuel 'odkin Baker. What would be more natural than to run this nonsense duo of 'Odkin' and 'Baker' together as Odkinbaker or Odkenbaker? Or for someone to make an error in transcribing it, turning into Oakenbaker?
Can we guess Miss Baker's Christian name? There used to be quite strict conventions about naming. What clues do we have? Samuel had the first of Mary Anne Brennan's girls (he was given as father) named Mary. The first-born girl would usually be named after the maternal grandmother. The second girl would be named after the father's mother.
So was Samuel's mother Elizabeth Baker? A girl of this name was baptised at Flitton with Silsoe (now Flitton by Silsoe, St John the Baptist) on 13 July 1746. This is only 7 miles from Chalgrave, and just off the map to the top right. We have already seen that there were Hodgkin(s) families in this village.
Elizabeth, were she his mother, would have been over 14 (the legal age of marriage) when Samuel was born in about 1760. It's just possible for her to have been his mother, especially if she wasn't baptised too promptly. Her own parents were Joshua and Mary. Her siblings were John, Ruth, Jonathan, William and Mary. Searching for Mary and Sarah Baker, the other family names, produces nothing of interest, however.
If this last is the right trail, what happened to Elizabeth Baker after Samuel was born? Did she marry? This is impossible to answer from the available evidence on the IGI. There were several Elizabeth Baker marriages after Samuel left the area.
In conclusion, on the balance of probabilities, it seems that Samuel Odkenbaker was almost certainly Samuel Hodkin (or Hodgkin) Baker, from a cluster of villages between the A5 and A6 in Bedfordshire, with a hot candidate being Toddington for the origin of father and maybe even mother (always supposing that the Toddington Hodskins originally came from Derbyshire, bringing the name Samuel with them as part of their own family history in Derbyshire and points north). The other hot candidate for his ancestry is Flitton or Silsoe, which shared a church.
So, it seems likely that our Samuel's mother was Elizabeth Baker and that his father was Samuel Hodkin, and that our man was SAMUEL HODKIN BAKER.