James and Elizabeth Coles lived at Hemington a village in Northamptonshire, 2km from the Huntingdonshire border. It is also 4km from Great Gidding in Huntingdonshire, which is important in our family story. James was typically a farm labourer working in that district. His father was Thomas Coles b1776 and he had two brothers, William and John. All of the brothers married and continued to live in Hemington. Thomas had at least two sons and they were James and Thomas and they may have been twins.
Son James b1811 married a lass called Elizabeth around 1839 at Hemington, but we cannot identify her family name. Elizabeth was born in 1819 in Pilton, a near by Northamptonshire village, 7kms East. In 1841 James and Elizabeth and two of their children and his brother Thomas and his wife Catherine and their two children were all living with father Thomas Snr. in Hemington village. All were working as farm labourers.
James and Elizabeth had four children by 1851 and they were Hannah b1839, Eliza b1841, Sarah b1844 and Emma b1847. In 1859, eldest daughter Hannah, aged 20, married at Oundle, Northamptonshire, John Woods, a widower, from Great Gidding Huntingdonshire. Hannah will continue her story as Hannah Woods.
James and Elizabeth continued to live in the village of Hemington and interestingly, for our story, John and Hannah’s daughter Sarah Ann Woods was living with her grandparents on census night in 1861, aged 4, and also in 1871, aged 14. The census states that Sarah was born in Hemington.