My great grandmother, Annie Elizabeth Gadd was baptised on 7th November 1857 in Etchingham parish church. Born two months earlier, at the beginning of September, she died just 5 days short of her 75th birthday and was living in Robertsbridge, Sussex. For many years she had been living at Salehurst with her husband, firstly at Redlands Farm and latterly at Lodge Farm where her husband Albert Weston died. They had been married for 52 years when he died.
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| Albert and Annie. |
My great grandfather, Thomas White was baptised in Egerton, Kent almost exactly a month after he was born on 19 September 1854. He married Betsy Linkins in 1873 at the Congregational Chapel in Ashford.
Over more than 20 plus ago I created a website for Cuckfield to help family and local historians. It was a way of passing forward some help I had had received from someone who helped me with Kilbarchan ancestors, some 450 miles away. You can see find the website at Cuckfield Compendium.
I joined the Society for One Place Studies for my place of Cuckfield earlier this year and have recently expanded that to having its own blog which you can find at cuckfieldcompendium.blogspot.com. There is obviously not a lot there yet but I will be posting regularly. I am hoping that two places of presence on the internet will find more people finding information to help them.
My 3 x Great Grandmother, Esther (Hester) Dann, was born in 1775 and baptised on 8 October 1775 in Burwash, Sussex, England. Esther married Zachariah Weston from Etchingham on 31 March 1800. In 1851 she is on parish relief and living with her son Samuel in "Underwoods", Etchingham. She died a widow in 1854 and is buried in Etchingham.
On this day in 1889 my great grandparents, George Clark and Ellen Eldridge, got married in Salehurst, Sussex, both aged 20 years old. George was born in Ashford and was a postman and Ellen born in Bodiam, Sussex. Ellen died in her early 30s and George later remarried. They had 5 children; 4 boys and one girl.
I am a month late due to personal issues but ....never late than never.
"Social" had me pondering as I really don't know much about that aspect of the family I have been researching to date and then WHAM the content for my topic just dropped in my lap!!
Recently my granddaughter got formally admitted to her church choir and that got me thinking back to my grandfather, Frank Horace WESTON who had been born in Etchingham, Sussex in 1886 and moved with his parents to Salehurst. Frank sang in Salehurst church choir as did his older brother Henry John Weston whilst his younger brother Percy became the church organist. There are plenty of newspaper reports of weddings, funerals and social occasions where they either played or sang.
Frank married and had two daughters both of whom sang in the church choir. My mother married one of the boys in the local village school and he too was a member of the church choir.
Both my sister and I have sung in a church choir. My two children joined me in Cuckfield church choir and now my daughter's youngest daughter has joined her church choir in Hertfordshire.