The Besford family in Norfolk and Suffolk goes back to Leonard Besford, a farmer at Hoveton St John on the Norfolk Broads, who was born about 1798 in the nearby parish of Ashmanhaugh. We do not know who his parents were. Could his family have come south from the Besfords of Northumberland?
There were already a good many Besfords in Norfolk by the time Leonard was born. Between 1790 and 1804, Besford children were baptised at Happisburgh, on the north-east coast, where James Besford and Anne Williams raised a family of six, and at Cawston, Ranworth and Surlingham. In the early nineteenth century John Besford, an officer in the Inland Revenue, was at Great Yarmouth, where his son Samuel Besford was born in about 1822. This looks like a family long settled in the county, not one man who had moved south.
The likeliest father for Leonard is Richard Besfer, who baptised a daughter, Mary, at Ashmanhaugh in 1802. His wife Ann’s maiden name appears to have been Neale. There is no Richard anywhere in the Northumberland tree, and no Leonard either.
If Leonard’s father did come from Northumberland, he would have been born between about 1765 and 1780. Three men of that age appear in the Northumberland records only at their baptisms, all at St. Giles Parish Church, Birtley, Northumberland:
- Thomas Besford, baptised on 4th May 1777, son of George Besford (1743–1820) and Mary Dodd
- John Besford, baptised on 29th November 1772, son of John Besford (1749–1816) and Margaret Forster of Pithouses
- Robert Besford, baptised on 25th July 1779, John’s younger brother
We know nothing more of any of them. A marriage or a burial in Northumberland would rule each one out, and Richard Besfer’s own baptism or marriage would show where he came from.
If the two families do share an ancestor, the link is more likely to lie further back, before James Besford married Margaret Robson at Rothbury in 1679. We do not know where James was born.
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