Known facts about John Lock(e) include marriage dates, baptism of children and date of his death and burial. The first confirmed fact for John comes in the Parish Records of Langtoft, Lincolnshire and this shows he married Dorothy Roy on the 27th Oct 1664 at Langtoft. There is no mention of him or any other “Lock” in the Langtoft records before this date, meaning he is the first Lock in this area and must therefore have originally come from elsewhere, either as a result of his marriage to Dorothy or through work. John Lock and Dorothy had a son also called John baptized on the 26th November 1665 at Langtoft. John Lock (junior) was buried in 1670. The records show “Dorothy wife of John Locke was buryed on May ye 28th 1669.” John Locke is then shown in the Langtoft records as marrying Alice Tory on the 30th September 1669. Alice is buried on the 25th May 1678 and John marries his third wife Elizabeth Baines on the 14th Nov 1678. The Langtoft records then show John Lock died on the 7th May 1682 and was buried on the 14th May the same year. The burial records also state John Lock was a Labourer.
The only other mention of John Lock in the Langtoft records is for the baptism of Alexander Lock his second son.
It is worth mentioning the fact that the burial record for John Lock states he is a “Labourer” as in 1686 “family legend” has it that Alexander Lock inherits a deed of right to drive cattle through Stamford. For this to be true the obvious candidate to inherit this deed from would be his father John Lock but as John dies two years before this so called deed is inherited and the burial register shows he is “merely” a labourer it is difficult to know how or why John Lock would have such a deed in the first place. Of course Alexander may well have inherited this deed if it did exist from somebody else, but that needs further investigation.
Trying to find out where John Lock originally came from leads to a couple of plausible possibilities. Firstly knowing that John married in 1664 if for arguments sake we say he was 20 years old when he married this would put a year of birth around 1644. It is known that an Alexander Lock from Thurlby by Bourne married a Rose Chessington in Stamford in 1654, with John naming his second son Alexander does this point to Alexander also being the name of John’s father. Thurlby by Bourne is only a couple of miles away from Langtoft so this is not out of the question. John would have been around 10 years old when Alexander married Rose Chessington but if it’s assumed this is a second marriage the scenario could work.
Alternatively……..
Wayne and Sandra's Family History 