25. John and Mary Lewty of Nottinghamshire

Of Lewty, according to Surnamedb.com "This rare and interesting surname is of French origin and is a nickname given to a loyal trustworthy person. The derivation is from the Old French 'leaute', the Latin 'legalis', meaning law, obligation, from which the Middle English 'lawty', loyalty, is derived." Other sources suggest that the name comes down from Ayrshire in Scotland but it is more prevalent in Lancashire in more recent times.

The Doncaster name can only come from the place in Yorkshire, itself named for the River Don (British for water, with the goddess Danu having the same root) and the Roman caister (fort at a staging post on the road to York bypassing the Humber). The Scottish connexion here is that Doncaster was ceded to Scotland in the 1136 Treaty of Durham, and never formally returned!

Our Lewt(e)y family is very likely to have come from Bottesford, which is in Leicestershire but close to Nottingham. There is a possible father in Yorkshire. Several researchers believe John to be our connexion back to the UK. It could be wrong but there are no older colonial records of the family, and it is not a common name anywhere, meaning that all bearers of the name are related. Doncaster is not a common surname either - our immediate forbears appear to have come from the Lincolnshire / Nottinghamshire border area.

I have recently identified an alternative worth investigating in Liverpool, where a John Lewty - solder with the local militia - married Catherine Marsh in 1798.

If we have correctly identified the UK link, then my oldest direct ancestors we know about in this part of the family are: Andrew Lewty (1723, Yorkshire), Joseph Castledine (1715, Bottesford), John Doncaster (1730, Lincolnshire?), William Caunt (1714, Southwell) and Mary Fletcher (1718, Nottingham).

John Lewty (1777, Bottesford) married Mary Doncaster (1774, Nottingham) in Thorpe-by-Newark, Nottinghamshire in 1799.

Bottesford Church (credit)

They had nine children but it's not completely clear that this is (or is not) one family. The first four (including both Marys) were born in Farndon, Nottingham and the others in Bottesford. It is not easy to explain the two Williams (the younger may not belong at all).

• 45.1.1 Elizabeth Lewty (1800)
• 45.1.2 Mary Lewty (1802). Mary died in 1803.
• 45.1.3 William Lewty (1804)
• 45.1.4 Mary Lewty (1806)
• 45.1.5 Ann Lewty (1809)
• 45.1.6 John Lewty (1813)
• 45.1.7 Harriet Lewty (1816)
• 45.1.8 Sarah Lewty (1816)
• 45.1.9 William Lewty (1818)

More on these individuals in Chapter 45 but I haven't traced the family all the way forward due to doubts on the connexion.

Mary and John died in Bottesford in 1855 and 1860 respectively.

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