Henry Lewis silk weaver

In 1835 Henry Lewis married Mary Ann Yelverton at St Leonard's, Shoreditch (one of the witnesses was Edward Buckingham, a policeman) and, registering the birth of their son William Henry Lewis in 1838, Henry is shown as a silk weaver, living at Union Buildings, Kingsland Rd, Shoreditch.

As to Henry's birth, perhaps 1808, Shoreditch, parents William and Elizabeth. From where before then I don't know. There was a thought in the more recent family of Welsh heritage, but I can't find that and perhaps it was simply the name 'Lewis' suggested it. I was told in my hazy past of a man who had 'walked from Wales to London' - so maybe.

Mary Ann Yelverton had been born 1815 in London, her parents Edward and Martha Yelverton, Edward's father having been William, a goldsmith in Great Portand St, married to Lydia - who is a mystery. And the previous Yelvertons may have been those in Northamptonshire or in Norfolfk or maybe Ireland, I don't know.

Silk weaving was falling on hard times and Henry Lewis, his son William following on, became a tin plate worker. William married Sarah Clark and their daughter, Mary Ann Lewis, tailoress, married Henry Charles Restell, labourer (his father Henry a wheelwright) in 1888 at Trinity Church, Stepney, and lived in Alma Rd. Their daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Restell, was my grandmother, married to Alfred Chappell Hart, in Mile End.

The Restells had moved east perhaps from Holborn, and before then perhaps from where there were many Restells, in Gloucestershire & the Welsh border. Perhaps here was the gift of Welsh.