William Bray was a “Labourer on Railway” when his son was baptised at Hardington on 9 May 1858. In this record and the censuses of 1861 and 1871, he used the name Lyster or Lester, but his real surname was Bray.

Birth

William, the son of John and Sarah Bray, was born at Aylestone, Leicestershire, on 15 December 1825. Growing up, he was close to places where railways were being built, which may have led him becoming a navvy.

Dorset

When William was about thirty, he moved to Dorset to help build the branch line between Maiden Newton and Bridport. Here, he met his future wife, Sarah Ann Rendell Honeyburn (Honibond or Honeybun), who lived at Bradpole. Baptised at Loders on 1 June 1834, she was the illegitimate daughter of Elizabeth Honeyburn. However, her mother married her father soon after her birth. Sarah had an illegitimate daughter herself in about 1855, born at Symondsbury.

By June 1857, work on the Bridport branch line was substantially complete, except for the section at Witherstone, and William would have been planning to move to a new railway project.[1] Sarah may have been worried that William would disappear overnight like the navvy on the Bridport line who, in April, on the morning fixed for his marriage to a local girl, was found to have decamped from the neighbourhood.[2] Any such worries were unfounded. William and Sarah had their banns called at Bradpole church on three successive Sundays in July and were married there on Monday, 3 August 1857. The marriage register records William’s occupation as an “Excavator”. William married using his real name, “Bray.” He was 31 and Sarah was about eight years younger. He and Sarah both signed with a cross.

Name use

William mainly used the name “Lester” from 1858 to 1872. At Castle Cary, he used “Lester” for the baptism of one child and “Bray” for another.

The name “Lester” may have been a nickname based on “Leicester,” which he then adopted as a surname for reasons now lost to view.

Hardington

William’s next project may have been working on the main line from London to Exeter, as by 9 May 1858, he and his wife were resident at Hardington, where their first child was baptised. Here, they used the name Lyster.

They had left Hardington by March 1860.

A nomadic way of life

The birth of their second child was registered at Wimborne in the first quarter of 1860. The following decade or more shows a pattern of short stays in widely separated locations as William migrated to well-paid railway construction projects.

In April 1861, William was a railway labourer living in Ansford Lane, Castle Cary.

Other locations can be identified from the birthplaces of his children:

Circa 1864         Callington, Cornwall

1866                   Aylestone, Leicestershire

1869                   New Brompton Kent

1870                   Enfield, Kent

1871                    Ingleton Fells, Yorkshire (9 Batty Wife Hole)

1872                   Bristol

Aylestone

As William entered his fifties, he embraced a more settled way of life. By April 1881, he lived in Lorne Road, in his home parish of Aylestone, where he worked as a general labourer.

Sarah’s death

In 1883, Sarah died, aged 49.

William’s later life

William has not been found on the 1891 census. However, from March 1901 or earlier, he lived with his daughter, Alice, and her husband, initially at 67 Richmond Road, Aylestone and then at 313, Aylestone Road, Leicester.

Death

William died on 16 March 1908, aged about 78, leaving effects valued at £141-10s.[3]

Children

William and Sarah, as a couple, had five sons and three daughters.

References

[1] Bridport News, 20 June 1857, p. 4.

[2] Dorset County Chronicle, 30 April 1857, p. 8.

[3] National Probate Calendar.