Rampton of Tadley Family Chart no. 57

	William WATMORE		Vashti RAMPTON
	born circa 1832		bapt. 5 Jun 1836 at Tadley
			mar. 30 Mar 1856 at St Mary's, Reading, BRK

Children of Marriage

Vashti Rampton WATMORE	William WATMORE
born circa 1858 at Newbury, BRK	born circa 1862 at Newbury, BRK

Additional Information

I had given up hope of finding anything on Vashti - she is not in the 1851 census as far as I can tell - but then her marriage came to light enabling me to trace her history a little further. Her name is an unusual one, but appears to have been quite popular in the early part of the 19th century. Vashti appears as a character in the Book of Esther, a Persian queen in the city of Susa, considered to be a great beauty (VAHSTI is a Persian name meaning beautiful one). King Xerxes her husband ordered her to come out of the harem and be seen by his guests - probably a shocking breach of protocol. She was haughty and refused, so he cast her off and took the Jewish maiden Esther as queen in her place. No doubt some local priests had mentioned this story in their sermons and the name caught the imagination of mothers eager for their baby daughters to be haughty and beautiful!

She was a servant at the time of her marriage, living in Reading. Her daughter, also called Vashti, said in the 1881 census that she had been born in Newbury, so the family obviously moved around. Daughter Vashti was a dress maker, living in St Lawrence Winchester in 1881, and son William was a painter living in Basingstoke. So far I have not found any other children of the marriage.