Week 4: Close to Home

St Mary’s Church, Clymping
When I decided to take early retirement and come back to England after 32 years living and working in Belgium, I toyed with several places to live. I wanted to be nearish the coast, my parents were living near Ely at the time so investigated Norfolk and Suffolk but decided that transport links weren’t going to be too good. I knew Chichester already and in the and plumped for a smallish village between Littlehampton and Bognor Regis, It had a regular bus route (I’m a wimpy driver and who on earth invented roundabouts?) along the coast, a couple of shops, a hairdresser and village hall as well as post office and surgery (and good broadband). I found a house and I settled down to continue my family history research.
More and more was coming on line in 2008 and I started to revisit people I had tentatively found but been unable to go further with. One was the first husband of Elizabeth Adams, my paternal great great grandmother.
I had found Charles Reed my ancestor already and had only recently managed to work out their marriage. I knew their places of birth from census returns but it had taken some serious cross matching with census returns, FreeBMD and GRO references to get the correct certificate for Charles Reed and an Elizabeth! I still remember that sense of satisfaction when I found it.

William Cheesman. St Mary’s Church, Clymping
She gave her birthplace as a different but close parish around the West Sussex/East Hampshire borders every time, he was from Chichester, but they married in London in 1857. It was my first second marriage certificate and there it was – Elizabeth Cheeseman formerly Adams – and it was the same surname of a visitor to the family.
Finding the marriage helped me find her location in the 1851 census. It was less than two miles from where I was sitting! She was with her mother-in-law, Martha; both widowed and they were listed as laundresses, hmm.
Now I knew that she had been married before, I found her first marriage in August 1850 very quickly but was unable to find her first husband’s death for a couple of years even with a short timeline of August 1850 to April 1851. There were several possible candidates but I left it alone for a while. Then the British Newspapers went online and I eventually found his death notice in a Hampshire paper. He had died in Portsea in the January and his body was to be buried in Climping. Climping churchyard is not far from me. The SFHG burial search confirmed that he was indeed buried there. I decided to visit the churchyard and found that not only was he buried there but his headstone is still there alongside that of his mother – Martha Cheesman nee Till, whose mother was born in .. .. the village where I live.
When looking up the references today for this article I found a reference to an Elizabeth Cheesman who was arrested for stealing four pairs of stockings in August 1851. She was sent for trial and was sentenced to 3 weeks hard labour for larceny, presumably in Portsmouth Borough Gaol which was the one in operation at that time. There were other Cheesman families in Portsmouth at the time so not necessarily “my” Elizabeth at all but this will give me something else to research.,
My investigations into the Cheesman family have also led me to some very enjoyable art workshops in Littlehampton, but that is another story: 1 and 2 Pier Road. Littlehampton
52 Ancestors in 2 Weeks – 2020
For some time, I had spotted references to Amy Johnson Crow's genealogical writing challenge, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, and often thought it would be a good idea but simply never got round to it. This year I saw another reference and as it was at the end of December, ...
Week 1: Fresh Start
Where to begin? I could write about my personal disappointment about the UK's fresh start tomorrow, or I could write about my own fresh start when I first took advantage of FOM in 1976 and moved to Belgium to work or when I came back to England in 2008. However, I...
Week 2: Favourite Photograph
This is a hard one. Should it be the picture of Sarah Jane Tompkins née Godfree, a maternal great x2 grandmother, which I see every day as it is hanging over my mantlepiece? She also appears at the top of every page of this website. Perhaps it could be the group one...
Week 3: Long Line
I was wondering which ancestors to choose this week, but I have decided to interpret Long Line as Long List. As soon as you start your family history research, you start collecting bookmarks, favo(u)rites – whatever your browser of choice calls them. The list gets...
Week 5: So far away … from “home”
........ a light hearted look at genetic heritage. Both my grandmothers were Essex girls, but that is nothing to do with why I support West Ham! The theme tune for Sports Report (right click for the appropriate background music) brings back memories of being...
Week 6: Same Name
When I saw this prompt, I immediately thought of Jessie Ann Lewcock, who baptised and buried five babies, three of them called Seth, their father’s name. Only her two oldest children survived to adulthood, a daughter, Grace Agnes, and Lewis named for her brother. Her...
Week 7: Favourite Discovery
I can't write in great detail about my favourite discovery as it involves living people, but it was very early on in my genealogy research days when I was one of the first members of Genes Connected as it then was. My family had lost touch with a paternal first cousin...
Week 8: Prosperity
George Godfree was my great x2 uncle, the sixth child and second son of George and Mary Ann, nee Smith, Godfree of Great Rissington. His father died in 1850, leaving the farm to Mary, "if she wants it", and then to George's older brother. Like many other younger sons...
Week 9: Disaster
William George Lewcock died on the 3rd May 1887 leaving a wife and 8 children, three of whom were under twelve years old. If we have connected the twigs and branches correctly, he is a very distant relation, my paternal 3rd cousin 3 times removed. His youngest son,...
Week 10: Strong Woman
I have been fascinated by the story of my great x2 grandmother, Catherine Whitehill, born in Glasgow on the 31st May 1847. She had a tough life judging by where she lived, yet she raised 9 children to adulthood in 3 cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, at a time when infant mortality was high.
Week 11: Serendipity
Researching our family history depends on careful research over time, but is often progressed by a large slice of luck! I have had two major ones - both when I was looking for something else, one for my paternal line and one on the maternal. Maternal lucky find My...
Week 12: Very “historical” fiction
While I am doing my research I am mentally visualising the people I am looking at in the census or on a certificate and trying to imagine what their life was like; their house, the street, what they were wearing and how they spent their time. Because I read, and still...
Week 15: From Fire to Form
A quick query of my family tree software shows me that of those who have an occupation entered, I have 32 smiths or related occupations of whom 8 are blacksmiths, 2 gunsmiths, 3 silversmiths, and 4 whitesmiths and also some charcoal burners.
Week 16: Air
Flying, civilian pilots and air crew, RAF & Fleet Air Arm, ornithologists, fresh air .... When I saw this week's prompt I wasn't sure I had anything to really write about and was intending to write about fresh air as most of the world including me are under...
Week 23: Wedding
Marrying the sister of a deceased wife was illegal in Victorian England. " ...under the Marriage Act of 1835, which had the support of the established Anglican church, it was prohibited for a widower to marry his wife’s sister on the grounds of a passage in Leviticus,...
Week 24: Handed Down
I have already got a post about my "hand-me-downs", so I have recycled that one this week. It traces the story of Suie Gillett, my maternal great grandmother and shows how easy it is to get things wrong when tracing your family history! The Gillett Spoons Since I...
Week 27: Solo – choice or circumstance?
Catherine Godfree, born in 1844, was the youngest child of George and Mary Ann Godfree of Great Rissington. She had three older brothers and seven older sisters. Five of the sisters married and had large families, two sisters married but had no children, while two of the brothers never married and the one that did had emigrated to Australia following the death of his father.
Week 30: The Old Country
Because we moved around a lot when I was small, it wasn't until I was about 7 years old that we settled in one place when my parents bought a new build bungalow in Rockdale Drive, Grayshott. Four years later they moved on to nearby Headley and then on to...
Week 48: Gratitude
Thank you very much .... The world of amateur genealogy would not be where it is without the selfless help of fellow genealogists. I learned enormous amounts from just reading other peoples' queries and the solutions. They gave me ideas of where to look and, more...