William WEAVER was born on the 18th November 1806. He was described as being a tailor and yeoman.
He was apprenticed for seven years from 17th April 1823 to William MASON of Yardley in Worcestershire to be instructed in the business of a tailor for a period of seven years. In 1823 Yardley was part of the Pershore Hundred and shown on a map of the time to be part of Worcestershire. In a newspaper article dated 14th November 1936, William Edward WEAVER, then Bailiff of the Bromsgrove Court Leet, stated that his grandfather had been apprenticed to a tailor in Feckenham, so perhaps William MASON relocated or the apprenticeship was transferred.
William married Dinah FURBOROUGH in Kennington, London on 27 April 1836, the day after a license had been granted by the Vicar-General of the Archibishop of Canterbury.
At the christening of John, their first child, in 1838, William is described as a farmer, and later he was known to keep a dairy herd.
In 1841 he is living with Dinah, John and William on the High St, Bromsgrove and is listed as a tailor. The Weaver Family Bible records that Dinah died shortly after having her fourth child, Susannah.
Confusingly for family historians, William WEAVER was a common name in Bromsgrove at that time. A draper named William WEAVER lived a few doors down the High St and a nailor called William WEAVER, also married to a Dinah, also lived in Bromsgrove.
In 1851 William is still a tailor, but in 1866, at the marriage of his son William, he profession is listed as milk seller. Later, in 1871, he is living with his son William in the Strand and is described as a 'cowkeeper'. Apparently he "kept his cows in premises at the rear of the family cottage in the Strand." "In the 1860s he was remembered as an old gentleman of the old fashioned, farmer type. He wore a long, white, clean, elaborately smocked gown and carried the milk using a shoulder yoke. He took the milk to his customer's houses and measured it out at their doorsteps. William had his cowsheds in the court known as Bedlam, at which was Court 4. The court was behind the Nags Head, with its entrance further up the Strand. The number of dwellings in the court changed over the years, sometimes more and sometimes less, but it must have been one of the more colourful and noisy courts, with nailers hammering, children shouting, dogs barking and cows coming and going to William's cowsheds. No wonder it was called Bedlam!"
In the "Returns of Owners of Land in 1873" a William WEAVER of Bromsgrove owns 5 acres 14 parcels at an estimated gross rental of £54 10s. It is not clear which William WEAVER this is.
William died on 10 May 1876 and is buried in Bromsgrove cemetery.
