Document Request: William Richardson of Gainford's Durham Papers
Document Description: A Collection of Papers in the Durham Records Office relating to the several purchases of properties by William Richardson of Gainford in order to expand his house 1796-1799, Indenture to pass ownership to his daughter Charlotte 1801, Indenture/Will to pass ownership from Charlotte to husband Lowis Walton 1840.
Transcription URL: https://richardson.surnametree.com/library/vdocs/D_113#113
Document Transcription:THE DURHAM PAPERS
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These papers all relate to the purchase and inheritance of properties purchased by William Richardson of Gainford between 1797 and his decease in 1799.
Summary
The correspondence indicates that by 1797 William Richardson had already purchased tenements from John Kipling for his main house and was purchasing two cottages (known as Germany) on the east flank which later became his servants’ quarters. There are two phases, in 1797 transactions to build one house on the site where formally stood five smaller messuages, and in 1798 another transaction to purhase property owned by William Bell and Jane Sewell. a messuage tenant or dwellinghouse with the garth garden orchard or yard behind the same and there to belonging situate and being in Gainford aforesaid late in the occupation of John Miller and now of William Gibson.
In 1799 William Richardson was in his last year and his daughter Charlotte, then aged 19, became betrothed to Lowis Walton, the son of Gainford gentry. William wrote a Codicil to his Will bequeathing the property to Charlotte. The date of their marriage is not recorded but was before the Indenture of March 1800.
William’s unexpected death left several legal arrangements related to the property purchases unfinished, so Christopher Richardson, William’s younger brother, appears to have taken up temporary residence in Gainford in 1800 while sorting out the paperwork. A further set of documents of 1804 relate to the Codicil.
The last set of documents relates to the legal transfer of the property from Charlotte to her husband Lowis upon her death in 1840, by which time both the appointed executors has died and new executors from the London Richardsons were appointed.
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