Hilgrove family history

Hilgrove Family History

Weekly gatherings of farmworkers gave Hilgrove Street its popular name, French Lane

This article by Marie-Louise Backhurst was first published in the journal of the Channel Island Family History Society. Much of the information contained in the article, for which other sources are quoted, was earlier published in various Annual Bulletins of La Société Jersiaise, of which the author is a past-president

Three reasons for research

Why research the Hilgrove family?

There were three reasons which prompted me to start. The first was because I once had a bookshop called Hilgrove Books in Hilgrove Street in St Helier and had often wondered about the origin of the name. Second, after giving a talk on Payne's Armorial of Jersey families, the name Hilgrove came to me attention. Several members of the family had married into the Bandinel, Le Vavasseur dit Durell and Lempriere families, yet there was no tree of the Hilgrove family. My third reason was because I thought it could be a useful exercise in genealogy to see how successfully one could draw up a family tree using a myriad of sources, both in Jersey and elsewhere.

My first objective was reached quite quickly. Hilgrove Street had previously been called Hilgrove Lane, and was named after the Hilgrove family, whose house had stood on the corner of the lane and Halkett Street, on the banks of a stream, Le Grand Douet.

This house may well have been the one which Thomas, the first Hilgrove to live in Jersey, had inherited from his uncle, Thomas Romeril, in 1639. Later the family bought a farm, usually known as La Ferme, on the corner of Bath Street and Hilgrove Lane. Its land included what is now Minden Place, upper Don Street, Duhamel Place and Vauxhall Street.

The meadow which extended to the east of the farm, where Peter Street, Providence Street, Belmont Street and Ann Street are now sited, was known as La Piece a La Dame, and was believed to be haunted.

The Hilgrove family house was described by Jean de Ste Croix, in his book Ville de St Helier, as 'almost manorial'. It had a vivier where the pond in the present market is situated. The house was demolished in 1845, after the family became extinct in the male line.

Thomas Hilgrove was a soldier, and later a cooper, and became a licensed taverner in 1645, so it likely that the house was also used as a tavern.

French Lane

Hilgrove Street was also known as Rue es Francais (French Lane) because of the large numbers of French farmworkers who gathered there when they came to market on Saturdays. Several shops in the street used to cater specially for them; until quite recently there was a shop selling French newspapers and magazines, but this has now moved to Market Street.

In order to find out more about the family I consulted the published sources for any references. The first was a book by Philip Ahier, The Historical Hotels and Inns of Jersey, in which Charles Hilgrove was described as a brewer and Constable of St Helier from 1697 to 1703. A small family tree was also shown.

Then I looked at Sir Hilgrove Turner by Arthur Loveday, one of his descendants. General Sir Hilgrove Turner was Lieut-Governor of Jersey from 1814 to 1816, but is probably better known as the man who rediscovered the Rosetta Stone after the French hid it in Cairo. Hilgrove Turner's mother was Madeleine, daughter of Charles Hilgrove, Constable of St Helier 1723-26 and Jurat of the Royal Court 1746-70.

Mr Loveday gave details of the family tree showing the General's descent from the de Carteret family through his great-grandmother Elizabeth de Carteret, and 'not from the undistinguished origin of the Hilgrove family'.

He also explained why there was a Hilgrove School in Gorey. In 1815 Hilgrove Turner bought Gouray Lodge, a large house at the top of the village. Madeleine Turner, one of his daughters, set up the school to provide an education for the children of the oyster fishermen of Gorey.

Having exhausted the printed sources, I then turned to the unpublished notes in the library of the Societe Jersiaise. This is the local history library with a very extensive collection of books and archive material. There I was fortunate to find some notes written by one of the librarians of the Societe, Edmund Toulmin Nicolle, who died in 1930.

He was also Viscount of the island and left many notebooks on historical subjects. His notes gave me fuller information on the Hilgroves. The family was not of Huguenot origin, but came from Whiteparish, Wiltshire (near Salisbury).

Garrison soldier

William Hilgrove (or Helgrove) was a soldier stationed in Jersey with the English garrison. He married Alice Romeril, sister of Nicolas Romeril, who had settled in London, and co-heirs of their brother Thomas, who died in 1638.

Their son Thomas Hilgrove, by trade a cooper and also a soldier in the garrison in Jersey, settled in St Helier in 1639 and in 1645 was a licensed taverner in St Helier. Thomas married Anne Renouf, daughter of Jean and Marie, nee Syvret. They had several children, among them:

• William, who left an only daughter, Anne, born in 1669, married in 1684 Charles Poingdestre, of Grainville, St Saviour (Jurat 1702-1727)
• Charles, Constable of St Helier, 1697-1703, who married Elizabeth Lempriere, daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth, nee Le Breton. She died in 1718. His eldest son Charles, Constable of St Helier 1723-1726 and Jurat (1746-1770) married twice. One of his daughters, Madeleine, married Richard Turner and their son Lieut-General Sir Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, was Lieut-Governor of Jersey in 1814-1816.

Having now an outline of a tree, I began to extract all the references to Hilgrove from the twelve Jersey parish registers. This task was not too difficult as many of them have now been indexed. The male line of the Hilgroves died out in the early 19th Century, so I did not have to use the civil registers or the censuses.

One of the first problems was the spelling of Hilgrove. The majority of Jerseymen at this time spoke Jerriais, with only the more educated writing or speaking French, and a minority speaking English. Hilgrove would have been quite a difficult name to spell. Some of the variants found were Helgrove, Helgrowe, Hilgro, Helgros, Helegrove, Elgros and Helgroe.

When I started the research I concentrated on two parishes, St Helier and the adjacent St Saviour. As my interest grew, friends gave me extracts from other parishes whenever they came across the name.

My family tree is not complete. There are still some tantalising gaps, Correctly identifying people, especially from burials, is quite difficult and some children appear to have been buried without baptism, or a record of it.

Jerripedia's Hilgrove family tree has been in Jerripedia since 2011, when it was added by Mike Bisson. He expanded it in 2019 and then Guy Dixon added extensive footnotes and links in 2021