Hamlet Bayley and Esther Ashcroft

Hamlet Ambrose Bayley & Esther Ashcroft

The Mount House
Wordsley, Staffordshire, England

Hamlet and Esther Ashcroft Bayley and their children lived at The Mount House in Wordsley, Stafforshire, England. It was a beautiful place with a large home on the grounds and a school house on the property. Like his father and grandfather before him, Hamlet Bayley was a school teacher; he owned and ran a school for boys at the Mount House. Wordsley is southwest of Wolverhampton and west of Birmingham.

Hamlet Ambrose Bayley, born 7 April 1836 in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, was the oldest child of John H.R. Bayley and his wife, Margaret.¹

In 1859 Hamlet married Esther Ashcroft, daughter of William and Hannah Ashcroft, in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire.² Esther was born in Nottingham, 16 July 1837, the youngest of seven children.³ According to Esther's baptismal certificate, her father worked for the offices of excise (taxes).

Hamlet and Esther had three children: Annie Marie, born in 1860, Howard, born in 1862, and Neville, born in 1863, all born in Wordsley, Staffordshire. They lived at The Mount House in Wordsley which was a beautiful place with a large home on the grounds and a school house on the property.⁴

Hamlet, like his father and grandfather, was a school teacher and he ran a school there at the Mount House. Wordsley is southwest of Wolverhampton and west of Birmingham.

Esther Ashcroft Bayley

Esther died in 1879 at the age of 42, just a few months after her father. She was buried in the Merridale Cemetery in Wolverhampton where her parents and one of her sisters were also buried.⁵ Her youngest child, Neville, later went to Wolverhampton and had a tombstone erected for her.

Hamlet apparently remarried after Esther died because he had a wife named Ellen in the 1881 census.⁶ He emigrated to the United States about 1894,⁷ and it is unknown if Ellen emigrated with him or if she died before he left. In the 1900 census in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he is unmarried and living as a boarder in someone’s home. His daughter Annie Bayley Miller and family were living in Pittsburgh from about 1890 until about 1898 when they returned to England. His son Howard, on a passport application in 1900,⁸ stated that his residence was in Pittsburgh from 1881 to 1900.

Hamlet died from heart disease on 1 February 1904 and was buried in Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh.⁹

The "Mount House" picture was scanned from an old copy made by Hope Healy Koontz, great-granddaughter of Hamlet and Esther Bayley.

Photograph of Esther Ashcroft Bayley provided by Hope Healy Koontz.

Record of Baptism for Hamlet Bayley, July 7, 1836, Parish Register, Parish of St. Martin in Birmingham, County of Warwick. According to Neville Bayley, their son, both of his parents were born in Wolverhampton in nearby Stafforshire. It is more likely that he was born near where he was baptized, in Birmingham. He is listed as Hamlet A. Bayley in various documents, but on a census his name was given as Ambrose and Ambrose's age matched that of Hamlet.
Marriage Record for Hamlet Bayley and Esther Ashcroft, 1859,(Free BMD. England and Wales, Civil Registration Index: 1837-1983 [online database based on data from the GRO, London, England]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2004. Accessed via Ancestry.com), Marriage was recorded by the GRO in September 1859 so the marriage probably took place within the previous 4 months.
Record of Birth for Esther Ashcroft, 16 July 1837, Parish Register, St. Peter's Church, Nottingham, England, No. 432, FHC Microfilm 095041. According to Neville Bayley, she was born in Wolverhampton, but this seems unlikely since her baptism took place in Nottingham.
1861 Census, England, Staffordshire, Wordsley, p.13, #68; Parish of Kingswinford, Ecclesiastical Parish of Wordsley, "The Mount," on High St. FHC Microfilm 542912.
Year of Esther's death would have been 1879. On the back of an old family picture, her date of death was noted as 23 June 1879.

Correspondence from Merridale Cemetery Office, Wolverhampton, Lancashire, England, 1979, notes the interment on 23 June 1879 in the Merridale Cemetery in Wolverhampton, of Esther Ashcroft, Burbury St., Wolverhampton, who died in Birmingham, wife of Hamlet Bailey, Accountant. Plot was purchased by her father, William Ashcroft. Esther died about seven months after her father, but when he wrote his will it was thought she might die before he did.
1881 Census, Aston, Warwickshire, England, RG11/3041 folio 26 p.44, No. of schedule: 187, Hamlet A. Bayley, 40, married, accountant, born Birmingham, Warwickshire. His age should have been 45. Also listed with Hamlet was Ellen Bayley, wife, 26, born Birmingham, Warwickshire. No one in the family ever mentioned a second wife named Ellen.
1900 U.S. Census. Pennsylvania, Allegheny County, City of Pittsburg, E.D. 219, sheet 12B, line 29, 12 June 1900. Year of immigration was given as 1894.
Passport Application for Howard Bayley, 1900, Accessed through Ancestry.com. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2007. Original data., Passport issued 29 June 1900, Blair County, PA.
Death record: Hamlet A. Bayley, 1904, Registry of Deaths in the City of Pittsburgh, PA, Bureau of Health, Dept. of Public Safety. Image of record and indexed data from FamilySearch.org, extracted from FHL MF 505877: Registration of Deaths in the City of Pittsburg, vol. 118-120, 1903-1904. Record is in vol. 119, p.478. According to the death record and his obituary, Hamlet was married when he died. The name of his wife is not known. In the 1900 census he was a widower.

17 Oct 2008

[home|bayley|jhr bayley]