♂Robert Dolbere

Robert Dolbere (buried 25 January 1614/5) was a parishioner of Colyton in Devon, England, who lived at the hamlet of Cadhayne for more than half a century and had ten children by two wives. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Rawkey Dolbiar (1571–1641).

Life at Cadhayne

He was already living at Cadhayne in March 1560, when his daughter Johane was buried at Colyton; she was the child of a first wife whose name is not known. On 26 April 1563 Robert Dolbere of Cadhayne married Agnes Sampson at Colyton. The register enters her as “Agnes, d. of one Samson, of Hawke-churche”, a parish then in Dorset, and she was probably a daughter of Nicholas Sampson of Hawkchurch.

Robert and Agnes had nine children, all baptized at Colyton between April 1564 and December 1581: Alice, Edith, William, James, Rawkey, John, Mary, Nicholas and a second John. Four of them died young: William lived less than three months and the first John less than four; Mary was buried in April 1579 at the age of two, and the second John in August 1582, before his first birthday.

He is said to have been a yeoman and one of the churchwardens of Colyton in 1579. Two of the daughters married at Colyton: Alice to John Knyght of Totnes in September 1586, and Edith to William Cobley, son of John Cobley of Witheridge, in January 1596/7. In October 1602 Rawkey married Mary Michell, daughter of John Michell of Barretshayes, and raised his own family at Cadhayne.

Death

Agnes was buried at Colyton on 30 October 1613, entered in the register as “Agnes, w. of Robert Dolbiar”. Robert was buried there on 25 January 1614/5, still described as “of Cadhaine”.

Notes

Sources

The family is known from the parish register of Colyton, which A. J. P. Skinner transcribed and the Devon & Cornwall Record Society printed in 1928. John Insley Coddington printed every Dolbere entry from it, with a short pedigree built on them, in his article on Jonathan Gillett and Mary Dolbiar in The American Genealogist (April 1939); the dates here are the ones he printed, and an index of the Devon parish registers carries the marriage of 1563 and Robert’s burial as well. The description of Robert as a yeoman, and his year as churchwarden, come from Coddington’s pedigree rather than from the register entries he printed. Colyton lay in the peculiar jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, so the wills of its people are not in the printed calendar of Devon wills.

The first marriage

The burial of 18 March 1559/60 is entered as “Johane, d. of Robt Dolbore of Cadayne”. Because it falls three years before the marriage to Agnes Sampson, Coddington made Johane a daughter of an earlier wife, and he called the marriage of 1563 Robert’s second. The register entries he printed give no name for the first wife. The baptisms of the nine later children name only their father; Coddington counted all of them as Agnes’s.

Agnes’s family

Coddington thought Agnes “almost certainly” a daughter of Nicholas Sampson of Hawkchurch: Gregory and Edde, children of Nicholas, married at Colyton in 1570 and 1574, and Robert and Agnes named a son Nicholas. The registers of Hawkchurch only begin in 1663, so the link is unproven. Hawkchurch was a Dorset parish until 1886, when it was moved into Devon.

His name

The register spells the surname Dolbere, Dolbore, Dolbeere, Dolber and, at the end of his life, Dolbiar, and the hamlet Caddayne, Cadden, Caden, Cadayne, Caddhayn, Cadhayne and Cadhaine. His parents are not known. The earliest of the name in the register is “Ser John Dolbere, preeste”, buried on 1 March 1552/3; nothing in the entries ties him to Robert.