Thrale history

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out-houses' there. In his place his nephew Ralph Thrale, an engraver. of Croydon was admitted and for the consideration of £340 in open court John Greaves of Pré Mills on the Redbourn Road at St. Albans. a miller, was in turn admitted.³⁰ Information concerning the Croydon family is amplified by George Thrale's will,³¹ in that his brother Thomas had three children, Ralph the engraver, Sarah wife of William Hand. Whitesmith of the City of London, and Elizabeth, wife of William Elliott of Clerkenwell, drawing instrument maker. His nephew Ralph Thrale of No Mans Land also shared in the estate.

The fourth of the five children of Ralph Thrale and Sarah Halsey was William, a brewer of Chiswick and a bachelor, leaving his estate to two of his brothers.³² In the possession of the Mardall family of Harpenden who later married into the No Mans Land family, is a picture of William who died 'in the fifty-fifth year of his age'.

The last member of the five was Ralph Thrale who like his forefathers continued to hold No Mans Land. He is a key member of the family for it it was he who married Ann the widow of his kinsman Thomas Thrale of Fairfolds in 1774. By doing so he brought two collateral branches together after seven generations resulting in the unusual situation in the next generation of there being two (half) brothers by the name of Ralph Thrale living together in adjacent parishes. Ann Parsons had married firstly Thomas Thrale of Fairfolds in 1761. She bore him five children and shortly after his death in 1774 married Ralph Thrale of No Mans Land, from which union one son was born, Ralph in 1778. The Parsons were a firmly established family in Sandridge, other members being intermarried with the Thrale family. In 1736 Jonothan Parsons was made parish clerk of Sandridge. He was followed in turn by his son, two grandsons and a great grandson, and between the five of them they held the post of parish clerk until it lapsed in 1881, a total of 145 years. The family owned the malthouse behind the Rose and Crown, the original Jonathan keeping the Queen's Head, the Rose and Crown, and he also ran a malting business. There are no fewer than sixty-eight Parsons mentioned in the parish register. A later direct descendent of Jonathan Parsons, Charles Parsons, was to marry Elizabeth Thrale in 1813, and occupy Fairfolds Farm on the death of his wife's brother, Thomas Thrale, that year, the last of the Thrales to hold Fairfolds. The six children of Charles and Elizabeth were brought up at Fairfolds.

Ralph Thrale of No Mans Land thus had one son Ralph by his wife Ann. He died in 1786 when his son was only eight years old. Father

Footnotes

30. Wheathampstead Court Rolls Church Commissioners, Millbank.↩︎
31. P.C.C. 262 Crickett.↩︎
32. P.C.C. Admon Book 1793.↩︎