The tiny village of Studley, a tithing in the Parish of Bremhill,
just to the west of Calne in Wiltshire, was the birthplace of our
great grandmother Martha Wiltshire, and her sister Anne, daughters of
Henry Wiltshire, the village butcher.
There were very many
Wiltshires in the Calne area, particularly in Studley, and in
neighbouring Bremhill and Derry Hill. All were related. For
several generations the Wiltshires seemed to be very prolific, and the
proportion of male children produced was very high. For example,
butcher Henry Wiltshire was one of eleven children of William Wiltshire & Martha Marshmann;
but before this, William had produced six other children with his first
wife, making a total of twelve sons and five daughters! There was
clearly little risk of the name dying out!
The Wiltshire family
in the Studley area can be traced back with certainty to the birth of
Isaac Wiltshire in 1683; he was our 6 x great grandfather. But research
by Martin Wiltshire
of Swindon indicates that Wiltshires who were almost certainly our
ancestors, were present in the area even earlier - in the records in
the parish of Calne St.Mary in 1538 and in Bremhill St.Martin in 1591.
Martin has also established that in the Domesday Book there is a reference to the widow of a sherrif of Wiltshire
and her sons being allowed to live, with a bursary, on an estate in
Calstone Wellington, near Calne. He postulates that if the sherrif had
been killed at the Battle of Hastings or subsequently, the estates he
owned would have been seized, and that it is conceivable that his
family kept the name Wiltshire in memory of their father and as a
matter of pride while their country was being occupied. It seems
likely that this Wiltshire family of Calstone Wellington were our
ancestors. Now see more detail on the Wiltshire Family History.
Wiltshire Resources & Research Aids
In addition to the GenUKI website and the Wiltshire Family History Society Website,
both of which have been great sources of information on the county, I
have been helped by Margaret Sanders, who has performed research for me
at the Wiltshire Record Office, and I am in contact with two members of
the Wiltshire family who are also performing Family History Research
and have provided me with a good deal of the detailed information on
the Wiltshires in the database. They have both produced genealogy
websites:
