#52 Ancestors Month 3 : Females - Alice Tilbee's daugher in law: Elizabeth Linkins

 The suggested topics through out the month have been Females: Worship; Flowers; Joined Together and sisters.  The previous post talks about Alice TILBEE's sister Louise and the church she was baptised in as well as about her husband.  Louise and Robert Cook were married in St Mary's church, Westwell.

However, another appropriate relative of Alice is Elizabeth LINKINS who married Alice's son Thomas WHITE born 1855 in Egerton Kent.  Elizabeth and Thomas are my great grandparents.

Elizabeth was born in 1854 in Wye, Kent and married Thomas in the Congregational Chapel in Ashford.  They had 9 children and only 5 were still alive in 1911 and living in Chilham.  The children were born in different parishes in and around the villages in proximity to Ashford, Egerton, Boughton Aluph, Kennington etc.

Elizabeth died in 1932 and Thomas in 1924.  Both Elizabeth and Thomas were buried in Chilham churchyard but we couldn't their graves when we visited but it was a very overgrown churchyard.

I had a church services book given to me after their daughter and my grandmother, Annie White, died in 1975.  I treasure it as been inscribed with the name Elizabeth White.  It looks like Annie's writing so I always wondered if Annie had given this to her mother and when.  Did Elizabeth use it in Chilham Church? Was I named after Elizabeth?

#52 Ancestors Month 3 : Females - Louisa Tilbee

 This topic was all about females so I looked to Alice Tilbee and her siblings and found she only had one sister LOUISA TILBEE/TILBY and she had a short life.  

She was born abt 1831, married Robert Cook in April 1852 and died in 1856.  She had a son Thomas who was born and died in 1852, a daughter Jane Ann Cook in 1853 and another daughter Emily Cook in 1855 and died in 1860, .  

Jane Ann COOK was their only surviving child for the 1861 census and she was living with her grandparents Henry TILBEE/TILBY and Dorcas VANT (my 3 times great grandparents).  Robert was an Ag Lab and boarding elsewhere in Westwell in the 1861 census.  He remarried in  1862 and had a large family with his new wife.  At least searching more about Louisa for this #52 Ancestors project has added this bit of information to my tree and clarified an outstanding research question!!

Louisa was baptised at the start of winter in November 1831 in St Peter and St Paul Church in the market square of Charing Kent.    It's tower has a buttress and battlements and dates original from the late 1400s.  The interior is a mixture of old and new fittings.

Charing is a pretty village and the Market Place is lined with old buildings of flint and brick, including the ruins of an archbishop's palace.

Louisa and Robert Cook got married in Westwell, Kent.  The church of St Peter's dates from Saxon Times but very little structure of the Saxon or Norman times left standing.  It lies in the centre of the village, under the North Downs and on the Pilgrims path to Canterbury.

I have found very little more online about Louisa.  So sad that she only lived abt 25 years and she had already seen her first child, Thomas, die in infancy.  At least she was spared the knowledge that her second daughter, Emily, died in 1860.