This is the biography – as far as I am able to tell it with the limited documentation I have been able to find so far – of my 11x great-grandmother Eleanor Jones, née Cam.

Eleanor Cam, who would later become Eleanor Jones, was born in Shrewsbury probably in the summer of 1587, the second (and possibly the eldest surviving) daughter of Richard Cam and his wife, the former Katherine Fisher. The couple had been married two years earlier in St Alkmund’s Church, Shrewsbury. Eleanor was baptised on 19 August 1587 according to the rites of the recently established Church of England, which was at the time still very much in its infancy. In fact, it is somewhat bewildering to think that it is quite plausible that Eleanor’s parents or more likely her grandparents had been born into the old Roman Catholic faith, prior to Henry VIII’s break from Rome in 1534.

Eleanor had an elder sister called Dorothy, who had been born less than a year after their parents’ wedding. No further records mention her – for instance, unlike her younger sisters, Dorothy is not named in her mother’s will in 1627 – leading me to believe that she probably died young. Eleanor’s own birth would be followed by the arrival of another sister, Mary (who later married the Yorkshire clergyman and preacher Thomas Kay, who carried out many improvements to the famed Reader’s House in Ludlow) and a brother called Thomas, who perpetuated the surname Cam to the next generation. All four siblings were baptised in the church of Saint Julian’s, Shrewsbury, though the family seems to have relocated within a few years to the town of Ludlow, in the south of Shropshire.

On St George’s Day (23 April) 1604, not quite yet having reached her 17th birthday, Eleanor Cam was married to William Jones, son and heir of Thomas Jones, gentleman and owner of Chilton farm, in nearby Atcham. The Jones were an old gentry family which not only produced several clergymen and aldermen, but also a mayor of Shrewsbury and, several generations later, married into the Bingham family, being the forefathers of the Earls of Lucan. However the match came about, the marriage between Eleanor Cam and William Jones was almost certainly advantageous from the bride’s point of view, as her husband owned several pieces of property which would have assured her an easy and comfortable existence.

William and Eleanor Jones are known to have had at least five children, all of whom were born between 1606 and 1624 – although the nineteen-year period and the lack of sources during a crucial thirteen-year gap could well mean that other children were born to the couple, and that they either died young or are otherwise unrecorded. The eldest-known child was called John – he is referred to as the eldest in his maternal grandmother’s will – and he was baptised in Shrewsbury in 1606. The second son was called Isaac, and although his birth year is not known, he must have been born well before 1621, which was the year when he entered Shrewsbury School. His next surviving brother was christened Samuel, although his year of birth is unknown; he would be followed by another brother, Thomas (1621), and a sister, Katherine (1624), who was given her maternal grandmother’s Christian name.

The name of William and Eleanor’s middle son, Samuel, could well indicate a possible kinship with Samuel Fisher, a 17th-century English Puritan clergyman. We must remember that Fisher had been the maiden name of Eleanor’s mother (who, having been married in 1585 and who died in 1627, was probably born in the 1550s or 1560s). If Samuel Fisher was indeed related to Eleanor, then he was not the only clergyman in her immediate family: Eleanor’s own sister Mary would eventually marry the Yorkshire clergyman and preacher Thomas Kay, while Thomas and Mary’s daughter Abigail eventually married Richard Fletcher, rector of Ludlow. Several of Eleanor’s descendants through her granddaughter Eleanor Hammond also followed a career in the church. In short: with so many clergymen populating Eleanor’s family tree, it certainly seems plausible that Samuel Fisher was some sort of relation.

Samuel Fisher himself was the son of John Fisher, who made his will in Shrewsbury in 1650. The Fishers hailed from Northampton (John Fisher left money to the poor of one of the parishes in that town), but settled in Shrewsbury at some point in the early 1600s, if not earlier. Besides Samuel, John Fisher had three children named John, Mary and Katherine (names which are found profusely in Eleanor’s family tree, as we have seen), and Samuel was also the name of John’s uncle. Was Eleanor naming her son in the 1610s in honour of one of her older relatives? It is definitely a tantalising possibility…

The latter half of Eleanor’s life is still a mystery. Her husband died in 1664, though whether she predeceased or survived him is not yet clear. The name Eleanor would be given to a great number of her descendants (variants such as Elinor, Ellen or Nell can be traced down her line right up until the 20th century), and her blood still flows today in the veins of her descendants through her second son Isaac, my 10x great-grandfather and the eventual heir of Chilton farm.