The Haylock family

Haylock family of Ely

The most recent Haylock in my family tree was my 6x Great Grandmother, Mary Haylock of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England.

She was one of the five children of John Haylock and his wife Elizabeth Parson.

John is noted as a Husbandman - an antiquated term for farmer - in 1770 and 1773, and would have worked the fertile agricultural land surrounding Ely.

At the time of the baptism of his daughter Mary in 1773, John is noted as Little John Haylock, which suggests that he might have been a small man, or more likely, that he was the younger of two John Haylocks in the area - perhaps a father/son or uncle/nephew relationship.

In 1794, Mary married Francis Newell, and in doing so, became the final Haylock ancestor in my bloodline. Mary and Francis had five children until Mary's death in 1826 at 53 years. Francis ended his days 21 years later in The Union Workhouse in Ely.

Defining generations above John Haylock is difficult, as it is unclear when John was born, and there's no clues to his parentage so far. The only hint, is that he named a son Flanders Haylock, which is a name that appears a few times through the earlier Ely parish records. Perhaps they were related in some way.

Other Haylock connections

The Ely-based Haylock family has appeared in other branches of my tree as spouses of distant relatives, or as later spouses of ancestors, including within the Newman, Yarrow, and the Dunham families, so the discovery of my own Haylock ancestry was somewhat unsurprising.

The family spread beyond Ely - with name-bearers in surrounding villages including Littleport (as discussed in this forum) to the North, and at the time of the 1891 census, Cambridgeshire is noted as being home to 23% of all Haylock name-bearers in the UK.

Haylock surname variations

There are a wealth of Haylocks in the parish registers of St Mary's church, Ely, with many interchanging variants, and these include:

  • Hailock
  • Harlock
  • Healock
  • Helock
  • Hellock
  • Heylock

Haylock family connections

The Haylock family are known to be linked to a couple of my ancestral families including: