Three generations of Batchelors – the rise and fall of a straw plaiting family
by Deborah Conway Read
Follow the journey of the Batchelors through the Chilterns, the straw plait industry, vaccination programmes and controversies of the 1870s and much more in this fascinating piece of research.
Luke Batchelor was born in 1790, in Cholesbury, and his wife-to-be, Mary Pratt, in Chartridge five years later. Their entire childhood, adolescence and early adulthood was spent in a country at war with France; a war that continued after their marriage in 1814 in Cholesbury and the birth of their son Thomas the same year.
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