French household | members

After leaving New York in October 1814, William settled in France for the rest of his life. In 1821 he bought the château at Draveil from Daniel Parker, and he also maintained a residence in Paris at the Place Vendôme.

In his English will of 1831 (section 4) and the final codicil of 1835 William named several members of his French household. The witnesses of the first codicil in 1831 included two more (together with a visiting relation of William) and, as well as another visiting relation, several other names are mentioned in other texts of the time. For a list of relevant entries in the registers of the British Embassy in Paris, see William’s French household: records.

Although the members of William’s household dispersed after his death in 1835, the Smith and Woods families as well as Richard Pethybridge were residents of Kenton parish in Devon at the time of the 1841 census.

  1. John Ballander, ‘jardinier de lord Courtenay, propriétaire du château de Draveil’, mentioned in the 1828 Annales de l’Institut horticole de Fromont. This very unusual surname may be an error for the respected botanist John Bellenden Ker – the life partner of William’s sister Anne and a likely visitor to Draveil. His Statics of Statû-quo Permanency, or The Maximum of Taxability was published in Paris in 1831.
  2. William Charles Clack, Rector of Moretonhampstead in Devon. Born in 1782, a cousin of William who presented him for the living at Moretonhampstead in 1808, granted him the living at Wolborough in 1813, and may also have made him one of his domestic chaplains. He performed the baptisms in France of Henry George Pethybridge and Mary Smith in August 1828, and of Elizabeth Emma Pethybridge in August 1830. (Perhaps William had set aside part of the château at Draveil as a Church of England chapel.)
  3. Henry Corbyn, tenant. Henry Corbyn had been employed on the Powderham estate as the hind, responsible for the livestock on the farms. At Draveil he was probably tenant of la ferme seigneuriale, the ‘home farm’ of the château: in 1821 William had purchased from Daniel Parker the château, ‘son parc, la ferme et ses depéndances, les bois et les prés‘ but the rest of the estate was sold to Denis Delaunay. That year Henry Corbyn discharged a couple of apprentices from the Kenton overseers of the poor ‘as he is going to settle in France’. Henry was born at Ashprington (Devon) in 1781 and married Elizabeth Haydon at Kenton in 1804. The couple had four daughters and one son, all born in Devon; their youngest child, Anne, became a teacher of French at Exeter.
  4. John Linter, ‘tutor to the young children of Mr George Woods’. Probably related to the John Linter who was park-keeper at Powderham in 1804, and likely to be the same John Linter who played a prank on the prophetess Joanna Southcott from Kenton and Powderham in 1809. Named as a legatee in the final codicil to William’s English will.
  5. Charles Courtenay Locke, nephew. Born in 1804, the elder son of lord Courtenay’s sister Matilda and their cousin John Locke. William promised to grant him a Church of Ireland living at Newcastle or Mahoonagh in succession to his uncle, John Locke’s older brother Thomas.
  6. John Victor Perot, ‘my servant’. Named as a legatee in the final codicil to William’s English will. He was probably a native of Draveil where his sister Geneviève Rose was born in 1802.
  7. Richard Pethybridge, butler. Born in 1799 at Moretonhampstead where in 1824 he married Hannah Martin who was born in Teignmouth in 1793. They had three children born in France: William Richard, Henry George and Elizabeth Emma. Richard had a brother Jonathan and two married sisters, Grace Weakley and Mary Alford, all three resident at Exeter; Jonathan Pethybridge’s will is available online at Genuki.
  8. George Smith, ‘my coachman’. George Smith was probably born in 1794 or 1795 at Kingston-upon-Thames (Surrey, England); he may be the George Smith who was born on 11 November 1794 and baptised on 7 December at All Saints church, Kingston-upon-Thames, the son of Hannah and Isaac Smith. George was William’s coachman in France from 1819 at the latest. He married Jane Woods in Paris in 1818. Several of their children were born in France: Jane (born 1819 but died as an infant), George (born 1821), Mary (born 1822 but died as an infant), Esther (born 1826, baptised 1827), Mary (born 1828), Henry (born 1831) and Eliza (born 1833, baptised with Henry in 1834). Named as a legatee in the final codicil to William’s English will.
  9. George Smith, ‘the son of my Coachman George Smith who has been brought up in my Family with his Cousins’. Born in France in January 1821, he was baptised on the same day as his cousin George Henry Woods who had been born a few days earlier in December 1820. Named as a legatee in the final codicil to William’s English will.
  10. George Woods, ‘my faithful servant; his wife Hester and their four children: Hester, Jane Frances, William George, and George Henry’. George Woods was born at Winkfield, Berkshire (England) where he was baptised on 13 February 1784; his wife Esther/Hester was probably born in 1790 or 1791. By 1810 George was already a servant of William in London. He and Esther had married some time before 24 September 1810 when their daughter Caroline was baptised at Powderham; they may be the George Woods and Esther Clarke who married at St. Marylebone, Middlesex (England), on 5 February 1810. Their daughter Esther was born in Bloomingdale, New York on 6 August 1812 and their son William George was also born in North America (December 1813, baptised February 1814), but their younger son George Henry was born in Paris in December 1820 and baptised on the same day as his cousin George Smith (#9) in January 1821. Their youngest daughter Jane Frances was born in France too, in January 1816. Caroline Woods died at Draveil in September 1828 and was buried at Paris. Her sister Esther also died at Draveil, in June 1833, but her remains were buried at Powderham. George, Hester and their four younger children were named as legatees in William’s English will as well as being the residuary legatees in his French will.
  11. ‘a ci-devant butler of Lord Courtney’ who, according to The European Magazine, and London Review of May 1823, ran a brewery in the Champs Elysées producing English ale. This is probably William Furse from Exeter or William Frost of Kenton, both described as brewers in registers of the British Embassy in Paris. In 1822 William Furse married Elizabeth Woods in Paris; Elizabeth signed the register and William made his mark. Their child Esther Ann Furze was given a half-baptism in February 1823. In 1824 William Frost of Kenton married Elizabeth Ponsford from ‘Dunsford Dunnery in the county of Devon’; both partners made their mark. Two of their sons were baptised together in Paris in 1828: William, born in August 1824 and George, born in September 1827.
  12. Another married couple with the same names were living in the area around the same time: Elizabeth and William Frost of Powderham, a mechanic, whose marriage does not seem to be recorded in the embassy registers. They lived at Petit-Mont-Rouge, described in 1828 as ‘deux longues rangées de maisons qui, au sortir de Paris, bordent la grande route d’Orléans, et s’étendent depuis la barrière d’Enfer jusqu’auprès du bourg de Mont-Rouge.’ Their son, another George Frost, was baptised in December 1827, a few days before his mother was buried. William Frost of Powderham remained a widower until 1830 when he married a widow from Soissons (Picardie): Elise Antoinette Michelle (veuve Moubière) who was buried in 1832 at the age of 34.
  13. John Wilkinson, William’s lawyer in England, referred to two people who acted as witness to William’s signature on a deed in December 1823: ‘it is necessary you should sign it in the presence of Woods and Kennard‘. Kennard was probably another high-ranking servant in William’s French household.

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THE HOUSEHOLD AFTER WILLIAM’S DEATH

After William died in May 1835, the Woods family settled the business of his French will and sold the property that he had bequeathed to them (The Kerry Evening Post of 26 September 1835 reported that ‘The produce of the sale of the late Earl of Devon’s plate, bijouterie, furniture, stud, &c., on the Place Vendome, at Paris, is expected to realise the enormous sum of £120,000.’). These affairs took two years to complete: ‘Le 3 juin 1837, un jugement de l’audience des criées adjugea aux sieur et dame Dalloz partie de la terre de Dreveil et le château de ce nom. Plus tard, les sieur et dame Dalloz se rendirent acquéreurs du surplus de l’immeuble.’ In the summer of 1839 a spectacular fire raged at the home farm: 300 sheep were killed and ‘a vast quantity of valuable produce’ destroyed (Western Times, 13 July 1839).

As executor of William’s English will, the lawyer John Wilkinson made payments on 8 June 1836 of ‘one Years Wages in addition to what may be due to them in respect of such Wages‘ to each of William’s ‘Servants who shall have lived in my service in France or in England one Year before my death‘. There were thirteen names on Wilkinson’s list, including John Victor Perot, Richard Pethybridge, George Smith and George Woods. Ann Bush and William Howe had been employed at Powderham but at least six of the others were probably with William in France.

  1. John Bellenden Ker survived his partner, William’s sister Anne who had died in Hampshire (England) in January 1835. He published An Essay on the Archaeology of Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes (1837 & 1840) before his own death in Hampshire in 1842.
  2. William Charles Clack remained rector of Moretonhampstead until his death in 1865 when his son William Courtenay Clack succeeded him.
  3. Henry Corbyn may have remained as tenant of the home farm at Draveil until the sale was completed but had left before the fire of 1839.  Around 1837 he moved to Normandy, working on land in the forêt de Gavray for the Lefaucheux brothers. Both Henry Corbyn and his son remained at Gavray until 1843 or later. In 1851 Henry was back in Devon, visiting his married daughter Mary Moysey at Ashprington; he died at Ashprington on 1 May 1855.
  4. John Linter was still resident at Draveil when he died in 1836 and was buried at Paris.
  5. Charles Courtenay Locke became rector of Newcastle in county Limerick from 1846; he died at Paris in 1848 and was buried there. His widowed mother, lord Courtenay’s sister Matilda Locke, died at St Germain-en-Laye later that year but her burial is not recorded in the Paris embassy registers.
  6. John Victor Perot’s bequest was to be paid in francs which suggests that he was expected to remain in France. He married Anne Clémentine Harmant on 18 August 1835 at Draveil; their son Henry Etienne Perot, born at Draveil in 1837, died of typhoid in 1856 at the French military hospital in Oran (Algeria).
  7. Richard and Hannah Pethybridge returned to Devon where Hannah became a shopkeeper at Exeter until 1846. She lived in the city with their three children and her mother-in-law Elizabeth while Richard became butler for lady and sir John Duntze who had a house at Staplake in Starcross (Kenton) and another at Malmesbury in Wiltshire. Richard died at Exeter in 1866 and Hannah in Lancashire in 1875. All three of their children married and had children of their own. William Richard died at Exeter in 1870 while both Henry George and his sister Elizabeth Emma Featherstone died in 1900, he in Lancashire and she at Exeter.
  8. Jane and George Smith also came to Devon with their family. At first they took up farming at Southbrook in Starcross where two more sons were born (William and Walter) but then in 1850 they sailed to Adelaide in the Pestonjee Bomanjee. Their children Mary, Eliza and Walter emigrated with them, as did Ann Smith (probably born in 1820 or 1821, Ann may have been a younger sister or sister-in-law of George). The family settled at Gumeracha in South Australia where Mary and Eliza may have married nephews of their sister-in-law Martha (#9): Thomas George Randell and his younger brother Elliott Charles Randell. George drove the local mailcoach until a serious accident forced his retirement in 1861. Jane had died in 1859 at the age of 59, followed by Eliza in 1868 and Mary in 1870 before George himself died in 1871. Walter Smith’s first wife Margaret died in 1867 and was buried near her mother-in-law at Salem Baptist Church Cemetery in Gumeracha. In 1868 Walter married Elizabeth Lowe and lived on at Gumeracha until his death in 1912 at the age of 73. (Esther, Henry and Walter are not listed at Southbrook in the 1841 census returns; Esther, Henry and William are not listed among the passengers from the Pestonjee Bomanjee who arrived at Port Adelaide.)
  9. George Smith junior stayed in Devon. In 1847 he had married Martha Maria Elliott Bear, a younger sister of Mary Ann Elliott Bear who had married William Beavis Randell and emigrated from Kenton to South Australia in 1837. George and Martha took on the tenancy of Bridge Farm in Kenton before becoming millers and moving to Dawlish. They had six children, all daughters, none of whom married: Esther Jane (died 1918), Edith (died 1934), Emily Mary (died 1934), Martha (died 1882), Mary Ann Randell (died 1919) and Julia Anna (died 1907). By 1909 the four surviving sisters, known as ‘the Misses Smith’, were running a boarding-house: Kinellan, ‘splendidly situated’ in Babbacombe Road, Torquay.
  10. William George Woods was born on 13 December 1813 (baptised Bloomingdale, 6 February 1814), died on 9 June 1836 (probably childless and unmarried) and was buried in Paris. His sister Jane Frances (‘Jenny’) Woods married Auguste Bernard de Viguerie, a doctor of medicine, at Draveil on 14 June 1837 when she was 21 (according to René Fontaine, Jane Frances was baptised at the church of Saint Remi, the parish church of Draveil, on 31 October 1838). There were five children from this marriage before Jenny’s husband died in 1842 at Villariès near Toulouse; Jenny herself died as a widow in 1845, also at Villariès. By 6 June 1841 (census date) the other members of the family – George, his wife Esther and their son George Henry Woods – were living at Holwill near Powderham in the parish of Kenton as tenants of the Courtenay estate. They had probably been in residence since 1835 when, as William mentions in the third codicil of his will, their tenancy of North Holwill began. (Auguste de Viguerie was perhaps on his way to visit them when he arrived at Southampton with a French passport on 20 October 1836, having crossed la Manche from Le Havre in Camille.) All three died in Devon: Esther was buried at Kenton in August 1845, and George in April 1848; George Henry died on 7 March 1881, at the age of 60 and probably unmarried, with his personal estate valued at under £3,000. After Esther’s death George Woods married Mary Beal at Kenton in October 1846; Mary was the widow of William Beal, a miller at Kenton who had died in 1843; Mary Woods was buried at Kenton in February 1871. (For more on the Woods family, see below.)
  11. Elizabeth and William Furse may have returned to Berkshire or Devon after February 1823 when their child Esther Ann was given a half-baptism in Paris. William Frost of Kenton’s wife Elizabeth died in 1836 at the age of 30 and was buried in Paris, as was their son William who died in July 1843 at the age of 18; he may be the William Frost who was buried at Montmartre in 1844 at the age of 44.
  12. After the death of his wife Elise, William Frost of Powderham remained in Paris, where in 1836 he married another widow, Amélie Eléanore Joseph(ine) Bever from Antwerp. He may be the William Frost who was buried at Montmartre in 1844 at the age of 44. Amélie Frost died in Paris in 1885.

WOODS FAMILY

  • In the Paris embassy records Elizabeth, Henry and Jane Woods are all recorded as coming from Wingfield/Winkfield in Berkshire (England). Winkfield lies between Bracknell and Windsor; the parish used to cover a much larger area than it does now, including Ascot with its racecourse.
  • Elizabeth, Henry and Jane were younger siblings of George Woods who was baptised on 13 February 1784. Their mother Sarah Boult had married Luke Woods on 9 October 1783 at Winkfield; the couple had at least two other children (Sarah baptised in 1790 and Ann in 1793) before Sarah died in 1808. Four years later Luke married Maria Bachelor; he died in 1833, and Maria in 1854.
  • Elizabeth Woods was baptised on 30 May 1788 at Winkfield. As a spinster, she married William Furse from the Exeter parish of St Edmund’s in Paris on 22 April 1822 (see #11 above and below).
  • Henry Woods was baptised on 16 October 1791 at Winkfield. He may be the Henry Woods who is listed in the British Army muster for Paris 25 March to 24 June 1815 (44th Regiment of Foot, 2nd Battalion). Henry married Mary Winn (an Englishwoman baptised on 29 June 1788 at Heckfield, Hampshire) in Paris on 13 December 1820 when his brother-in-law George Smith and his sister Elizabeth Woods were witnesses. Henry ran a Parisian eating-place that was popular with English visitors to the city; after the death of his wife Mary Woods in 1836, he took on a business partner, William Byron who continued to run the tavern after Henry died in 1839. In his will of June 1837 Henry Woods, ‘a British subject now residing at No. 2 Rue Favart in the City of Paris‘, left a bequest to his sister Jane’s son Henry Smith who was baptised in Paris in 1834: ‘my nephew Henry Smith now living at Star Cross in England’.
  • Jane Woods was baptised at Winkfield on 30 November 1800, the youngest child of Sarah and Luke Woods. When she married coachman George Smith in Paris in June 1818, Jane was a spinster under the age of 21 and so needed the consent of parents. The marriage was witnessed by George Wood [sic], the eldest of her siblings. In the final codicil to his will William stated that Jane’s son George Smith ‘has been brought up in my Family with his Cousins [the children of Jane’s brother George Woods]’. 
  • The wills of George Woods and Henry Woods are transcribed on another page of this website: Wills of other people.

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Page history

  • 2019 August 23: first published online.
  • 2020 April 3 & 10: information about birth and baptism of William George Woods added to #10.
  • 2023 November 19: information about burials of Esther and George Woods, and George’s marriage to Mary Beal, added to #10.
  • 2024 June 17: information about Caroline Woods updated, #10.
  • 2024 September 5: ‘George and Jane’ corrected to ‘George and Martha’ at Bridge Farm in Kenton, #9.
  • 2025 April 6: information about 6 daughters of George and Martha Smith added, #9.
  • 2025 April 8: information about Henry Corbyn added, #3.
  • 2025 April 10: information about Jenny Woods revised, #10.
  • 2025 April 15: minor changes, Woods family revised and Kennard added, #13.

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