Ridgers Families of  Hampshire UK				THE RIDGERS FAMILY OF WINDLESHAM
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	The Ridgers family of Windlesham, Surrey  lived in the parish from at least 1802 when wheelwright Thomas Ridgers  (1773-1853)  married local girl Sarah Taylor (1786-1848), at Windlesham. The family name appears on many records in the Yateley, Sandhurst, Crondall and Farnborough area going back to the 16th century.  Our  tree has linked the Windlesham Ridgers, through those at Yateley to the early Crondall, Hampshire Rydyar family. Lawrence Rydyar who was born at Crondall in 1610 is shown as the great-grandfather of Robert Ridgers baptised at Yateley in 1706,  the grandfather of Windlesham's Thomas (1773). Our  earliest Windlesham ancestor, Thomas Ridgers 1773-1854, named his birthplace as Farnborough on the 1851 census. We know he had at least ten surviving  children. Sarah born at Windlesham in 1803, Thomas 1804, Ann 1807, Elizabeth 1809, Charlotte 1811, Harriett 1812, Hannah 1816, Martha 1818, Deborah 1819, George 1827, and Rebecca 1829.  Thomas was apparently a wheelwright all his working life and was followed into the trade by his sons, Thomas and George.

 

	First son Thomas married Sarah Waters, who was from Twickenham, in 1835. They had nine children - Thomas (1838), Abigail (1840), Frederick (1843), Rebecca  (1846), Sarah (1847), Emily (1850), John (1854), George (1857) and Stephen (1860). The family were living at Chobham Road in 1851. Frederick Ridgers (1843) was trained as a wheelwright. In 1870 he married Selina Hattley (1843) at Windlesham. After moving to Henley-on-Thames they had a child Selina in 1871 who unfortunately died a few months later. They migrated to York, Ontario, Canada but in 1878 he also lost his  wife.  He remarried in 1882 to English-born Elizabeth Shairback (1850). His brother John Ridgers (1854)  married Sarah Wilkes (1851) in 1878 at her home village in the Windsor area. In 1891 he was a coachman living at Cleveland Gardens, Barnes with six children, Alice (1876), George (1878), Thomas (1879), Frederick (1880), Beatrice (1882), and Walter (1887). Alice was born to Sarah before her marriage and retained her surname of Wilkes on the 1901 census. When checking that census it appears that something had happened to John and Sarah. Their children, with the exception of Thomas, are now living with the Seaman family in Putney.

 

	Thomas Ridgers & Sarah Taylor's  first daughter Sarah Ridgers (1803) married Richard Attfield (1798) at Windlesham in 1823. They had seven children, James Attfield (1823), Charlotte (1827), Harriett (1829, Henry (1835), George (1835), Eliza (1839), and Rosina (1846). See   Attfield Family web-page.

 

	Our ancestor, wheelwright George Ridgers, born 1827, married Ann Varndell (1830),  a local girl, at Windlesham in 1850. In 1851 their address was 15 High Street, Bagshot. They had five daughters, Mary (1851),  Ellen (1854), Emily (1860), Deborah (1862) and  Alice (1863) and two sons George (1856) and William (1857). They were unfortunate to lose 8 year old George and 2 year old Alice in 1865. Mary Ridgers (1851) married Gloucestershire born gardener George Wyatt (1845) at Bagshot in 1871. They settled in Bagshot until 1878 before moving to Teddington, Middlesex where their family finally totaled 12 children.   George's surviving son, bricklayer William Ridgers, married Mary Ann Lee (born 1854) at Windlesham in 1882. They had seven children, Ernest (1883), Alfred (1886), Ethel (1887), Thomas (1890), William (1891), Walter (1894), and Elizabeth Annie (1895).   Alfred Ridgers (1886) married Sussex girl Rhoda Barden at Windlesham in 1914 and moved to West Sussex. Rhoda was the daughter of Samuel & Frances Barden who lived at St Leonards in Sussex.  Alfred's daughter Joan (1916) a registered nurse,  married Jesse Marchant in 1938. In World War 2 Jessie was a Petty Officer Stoker on Motor Torpedo Boats and was tragically killed during action off  Northern France in 1941 after only three years of marriage.  Joan married again in 1942 to Cyril Horrocks at Portsmouth. Her son, Anthony Marchant was born in 1940. His family have settled in Western Australia.   Thomas George Ridgers (1890) joined the army in 1914. He served in France with the Expeditionary Force in the Royal Field Artillery, was wounded and sent home in 1916. After recovering he returned to the battlefield and was demobbed as a Bombardier (corporal) in 1919. He married Agnes Mary Andrews from Crowthorne, near Bracknell in May 1915 and was living at The Rise, Sunningdale in 1921.

	William Ridgers in 1927 with wife Alice and baby Donald, in front are Phyllis and step-brother Jack Barden. Centre - a later picture of William as a Petty Officer with Phyllis and step-son Jack Barden. On the right is Phyllis in August 1984 with her grand-daughter, Sheila Robinson's daughter  Laura.
	Alfred's brother William Ridgers (1891-1935) joined the Royal Navy. The 1911 census records him as an able seaman at Portsmouth.  William who was based at Portsmouth married his sister-in-law Rhoda Barden's younger sister Caroline Alice Barden (1892) at South Bersted church in 1920. They settled at Portsmouth. Two of the children, Phyllis (1921) and Donald (1927) were born there. His third child Harold (1931), who contacted me recently and now lives at Petersfield in Hampshire, was only four when his father died in 1935. He recalls that William served 22 years in the Senior Service, leaving in 1933. The Barden sisters were the daughters of Hastings railwayman Samuel Barden (1860-1936) who was born at Goudhurst in Kent and in later years moved to Bognor. He had worked as a labourer at the St Leonards Bo-Peep railway depot when a young man and after his marriage to Frances Southwell in 1883 moved into cottages at St Leonards owned by the Railway company.  They were to have nine children. His daughter Rhoda Barden was a domestic servant before her marriage and met Alfred Ridgers when working as a cook at a house called the Cedars in High Street, Bagshot.
	In January 1946 Phyllis Ridgers (1921), who was only fourteen when her father died, gave birth to a daughter, Susan Ridgers and in July 1948 her twin girls, Sheila and Mary Ridgers were born at the Zachery Merton Home in Rustington, Sussex. Phyllis married Joseph Roberts in 1950 and apparently had no other children. The twins when only two weeks old were placed with different adoptive parents and, by a unique coincidence, Mary was renamed Sheila Mary by her new parents Clem and Anne Oakley. They had already adopted Maureen, the daughter of an Oakley relative, in March 1946. Sheila Mary was 33 years old when she eventually traced her widowed natural mother and was astonished to discover while checking the records at St Catherine's House that she had a twin sister also named Sheila. Phyllis was unable to remember who had adopted her and in desperation the tabloid newspapers were contacted. On the fourth of August 1981 an article headlined 'Find My Twin' appeared in 'the Sun'.  One of the replies the same day was from an anonymous contact who related that the twin lived at  Borden in Hampshire only 50 miles from Sheila's home.  The newspaper organised a reunion and its frontpage headline for the Wednesday the fifth of August was 'We find the long lost twin'.    Their natural mother, 73 year old Phyllis, died of as the result of a heart attack in 1995. Sheila Carpenter and her family moved to America in 1987. She has two sons, Deacon and Vernon, and one granddaughter, Victoria. Her husband Mac died in 1991. Sheila became a US citizen in 2005 and now lives in Plantation, Florida.    My original contact was Sheila Robinson who first told me about the adoption and later put me in touch with her twin sister in the USA.  Much of the above information was obtained from Maureen and Sheila's fascinating book ‘A Tale within a Tale’. It was published in 2010 and not only relates their family history but is a nostalgic journey through the 20th century. 'The story within is their story, and how their lives, and the lives of all of us, intertwine with the personal and public events that happen around us.'

 

			William's brother Ernest Ridgers (1883) was  a bricklayer. He married Forest of Dean girl Mary Dance (1886) at Bishopswood near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire in 1908. His son Ernest (1911) related that Mary's father worked at the local tin-plate works in the Wye valley and could remember visiting their home near Lydbrook. Ernest and Mary settled at the old family home in Windlesham and had eight children. Four boys and four girls. Ernest (1911), Allan (1913), Stanley (1915), Dorothy, Vera, Norah, Harold and  Muriel (1921).   See Ernie's Memories
	Mary Dance's Wye-side home at  Bishopswood near Lydbrook

 

A group of mainly  Ridgers menfolk from the late 1920s or early 1930s at a Windlesham family wedding . We have no information about the individuals shown but at least a couple would have been born in the 1840s.

If you have any Ridgers family memories or photos to share please contact me.      tom.bint@tiscali.co.uk

YATELEY RIDGERS FAMILY HISTORY   http://www.ridgers.org.uk/index.htm