Nat Gould

William Gould born 1560

Front door of Herbage Farm

William Gould was born in about the year 1560 at Herbage farm in the moorlands of north Staffordshire, the ancestral home of his family (1).

He was the son of William Gould of Herbage. The maiden surname name of his mother Joan is unknown (2).

He married Joan Slack of Warslow in Staffordshire at Alstonefield parish church in 1608.

The stone lintels over the front and back doors of Herbage Farm bear the date 1608, and suggest that the house was built or rebuilt in that year.

A "William Goold of Harbache" was recorded in a deed of 1403 (3) and there had been a house at Herbage in 1439 (4), so the building was probably due for replacement.

Herbage Barn

Farmland of Herbage

(1) Information concerning this family and the photographs illustrating this webpage were kindly provided by Ann and Michael Hanson whose extensive and scholarly work on the Goulds of Herbage has been carried out over many years. Origins of the Goulds of Pilsbury, near Hartington, Derbyshire (2009).
(2) A recurring problem with parish registers is incomplete coverage and loss of sections, as well as deliberate Civil War omissions. The Alstonefield registers record no burials from 1625 to 1638 nor marriages from 1612 to 1637 and from 1643 to 1650. So gaps in the lineage of the Gould family of Herbage are unavoidable.
(3) Beresford of Beresford: Part I A History of the Manor of Beresford in the County of Stafford W. Beresford and S.B. Beresford (1908) page 45.
(4) www.british-history.ac.uk Leek - Leekfrith C.R.J. Currie, M.W. Greenslade (editors) and others (1996) pages 191 to 201.
(5) Of the five siblings of William Gould, John Gould was buried at Alstonefield on 1 April 1576, Grace Gould was buried there on 5 September 1577, Agnes Gould was buried there on 24 June 1587, a second John Gould was buried there on 12 January 1590, and Dorothy Gould married Henry Smith in Alstonefield church on 11 April 1611.