Notes |
- Mary Ann was the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Lanham of Westbury, Wiltshire. The Roll of the 1820 Settlers lists the family as follows:
Lanham, Thomas, 27. Tiler. Wife Elizabeth 27. Child Mary. Party James. Ship Weymouth.
The Wiltshire party of 60 led by Samuel James were located after their arrival on an arm of the Lynedoch River, the location being known early as Bethany.
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A personal note from John Fuller
Amazingly, a book once owned by Thomas Lanham and by his father William before him came into my possession when my grandfather Ryno Neville Fuller died in 1987, and I soon realized that not only had it been passed down through seven generations to reach me, but that it had probably also made the journey to the Cape on the Weymouth with the Settlers in 1820.
My connection to Thomas Lanham is through his daughter Mary Ann, who married Charles Fuller and became my great-great-grandmother.
The book is a 1766 edition of The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, printed for W. Johnston in Ludgate Street, London. This is a classic Christian text, the wandering allegorical tale of the journey of Christian, his wife Christiana and their sons through the trials of the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair and the Valley of the Shadow of Death to reach salvation from their sinfulness at the Heavenly Gate.
The inscriptions you can see on this page were written in the book by Thomas in 1816, while he was still in Westbury, Wiltshire, and by his father in 1787, also in Westbury.
To add to the intrigue of this great heirloom, it came to me accompanied by another volume, a copy of a journal called The Youth's Instructor and Guardian for 1836, Vol. 20, published by J. Mason at 14 City Road, London and sold at 60 Paternoster Street. The articles in it are very straight-laced but nevertheless quite broad in scope and obviously aimed at the religious, historical, cultural, natural and scientific education of young Britons.
Paging through it, I soon discovered what I think is the reason that this book, too, had been handed down through the family. It has in it an article on the famous 17th-century English clergyman and author Thomas Fuller (1608-1661). Now I must say immediately that I am not aware of any connection between Thomas Fuller and the South Africa Fullers descended from Henry and Susannah Fuller (William Fuller of West Ham c. 1763-1840 being the earliest ancestor I have traced), but it is intriguing that the South African Fullers were passing down this book.
Adding to the appeal of this mystery is the fact that Thomas Fuller had a connection to Wiltshire, holding a prebend at the cathedral in Salisbury. It was, in fact, on a visit to Salisbury after the English civil war that he contracted the fever that ultimately killed him.
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Sources for Mary Ann Lanham
Death: Death notice MOOC 6/9/387 Ref. 1060.
Trip to the Cape: Roll of the British Settlers in South Africa: Part 1 up to 1826 by E. Morse Jones. Published under the auspices of the 1820 Settlers Monument Committee (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1969).
(John Fuller - FULLER Family Tree)
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