This is a short history of the family gleaned from 20 years of research. I have only included facts that I have been able to prove and I have only detailed information that is relevant to direct line from Jonathan Battie to the three brothers John, Ralph and Edward who died in this century.

The story starts in Barnsley, Yorkshire in 1690 with the birth of Edward Battie to Jonathan Battie who was a corviser or shoe and boot maker. Edward was baptised in 1696. A second son Joseph was baptised in 1701. No doubt due to poverty, Edward and Joseph were apprenticed to cutlers (knife makers) in Sheffield. By the time they came out of their apprenticeships their father had been buried at Barnsley as a pauper in 1714. Edward, for some reason, did not linger in Yorkshire. Nor did he continue in the trade of cutler. He moved south to London and became an innkeeper in Hackney. Joseph married Lydia Heald soon after coming out of his apprenticeship and had at least three children.

His eldest child Edward Batty moved to Hackney after an apprenticeship as a cooper (barrel maker) and seems to have helped at his uncle's inn. At this time inns brewed their own beer and would have needed barrels. When his uncle died in 1746 we find young Edward as a publican. Edward married Ann Ivory from Hertfordshire and had seven children. This Edward died in 1780 and his wife in 1784. They were both buried in the same grave as the uncle at St Johns, Hackney.

The third child and first son of Edward and Ann was another Edward who inherited his father's business and property in Puckeridge in Hertfordshire. He married Sarah Pegrom and had seven children. His business was the White Lion public house at Hoddesdon, which was a coaching inn on the route from London to Cambridge. Edward also acted as the local postmaster. It is now called the Salisbury Arms. Edward and Sarah's youngest child was George Batty who later developed a very successful business in Finsbury, London as an Italian Oil Importer. By 1861 George was living in a large house in Hackney with servants and carriages. He was the manufacturer of Batty's Nabob Pickles amongst other delicacies. When Edward's wife Sarah died in 1800 he married Mary White, a widow and had four more children. Edward died in 1830 and his wife Mary died in 1832. The public house is reported to have brewed fine beer and to have served it in silver tankards.

Edward's eldest child from his marriage to Mary was John Batty, who was christened at Broxbourne, near Hoddesdon in 1809. John moved to Finsbury in London and was a brewer when he married Louisa Coulson in 1830. They had four children. The eldest was Edward Batty who was born in 1830 or 1831.

Edward married Mary Ann Bibby, the daughter of a farm bailiff, in 1855 at St Leonard’s, Shoreditch. Edward was a Cabinet Maker. In the next thirty-five years he moved all over North East London, no doubt due to the nature of his work. In 1856 their first child, John Batty was born at 3 Charlotte St, Islington. Second to be born was Ralph Batty in 1860 at 26 Wellington Row, Bethnal Green. Their third and last child, Edward Batty was born in 1865 at 9 Twisters Alley, Bunhill Row. Little is known of Edward and Mary until he appears in West Ham in 1890. He died there in 1899.

John Batty married Elizabeth Whymark Payne in 1878. She was the daughter of a publican who died when she was young. Her mother subsequently married Edward Wilson. Ralph Batty married a Miss Clamtree in 1885 and Edward married Elizabeth Hardwick in 1889.

Details of John Batty's life are well documented and are printed separately. He traded at various times as a carpenter, cabinetmaker, picture frame maker and photographer. He moved from London to Clacton-on-Sea, Essex in 1894 and then to Hitchin in Hertfordshire where he died in 1933.

I know nothing at present about Ralph Batty apart from his birth and marriage.

Edward Batty specialised as a cabinetmaker and died at Leyton in 1948.

This has only scratched the surface of the intriguing facts that have formed the history of this very English family with it's ups and downs.

One interesting aspect of the family is the continual use of the names of male parents and grandparents when naming children. Edwards and Johns crop up with great regularity. Anyone wondering where Ralph comes from needs to go back to when John Batty married Louisa Coulson in 1830. One of the witnesses was Ralph Coulson. This was surely her father, uncle, cousin or brother.

Malcolm Ralph Batty

Back to the start of Malcolm's Family History.