Robert Marsden Jnr
I am indebted to friends on RootsChat and the Baslow History site for information about Robert Marsden Jnr and his antecedents.
The Derbyshire branch of the Marsden family trace their line back to Hugh Marsden and Alice Brough, who married in 1596. Hugh was a wool merchant from Blackburn in Lancashire and Alice was the daughter of the curate in Baslow. They settled in Baslow and began the dynasty.
Their youngest son Edmund was granted the tenancy of the land known as Oxclose by the then Duke of Devonshire. The land is near Chatsworth House (one of my favourite haunts when I lived for a time in Chesterfield, my father’s hometown).
Edmund’s eldest son was Robert Marsden Snr, the father of Robert Marsden Jnr. He had seven children, one girl and six boys, of whom Robert Jnr was the youngest.
With five older brothers, Robert is unlikely to have inherited any of the farmland and the various records give no indication of his occupation. He married Elizabeth when he was twenty-four and she was eighteen and in their twenty years of marriage they had eight children.
Their second child Alice sadly died in infancy, the only baby to be lost as far as I can discover. However, Elizabeth herself did not long survive the years of childbearing. She died when her youngest child, Elizabeth, was two years old.
Robert was widowed at the age of 44 and died aged 79 so it is very likely that he married again. I have found the marriage records of four Robert Marsdens but none of them are convincing. I know other people are researching this line so further information might be forthcoming.
Father of Joseph Marsden and son of Robert Marsden Snr
Baptised on 21 September 1679 at Baslow, Derbyshire
Married Elizabeth White on 27 September 1703
Buried 1 January 1758