12.1 4xgreat grandparents John Hill & Mary Kemp: Births, marriage, deaths

In the 1851 census, three generations of John Hills – my 2x, 3x and 4x great-grandparents – are living next door to each other in the West Sussex village of Elsted:

4xgreat grandfather John Hill b1780 and wife Mary
3xgreat grandfather John Hill b1804 and wife Mary Upfield
2xgreat grandfather John Hill b1836, who later married Fanny Taylor (1859) and Elizabeth Sarah Windebank (1869).

 John Hill senior is shown as ‘infirm, formerly Ag.Lab’, aged 70. Both he and his wife Mary (74) are from Elsted, Sussex. Ten years earlier, the families are living a few houses apart, still in Elsted Village. John Hill senior is shown as 60 years old (b1781), while wife Mary is 50 (b1791) and son James is 34. The men’s ages are consistent, advancing ten years between the censuses as expected. Mary, however, ages 24 years!

 Given that their son John Hill was baptised in 1804, I looked for a marriage in Elsted around 1800-1803. A copy of the parish register shows that bachelor John Hill married spinster Mary Kamp in Elsted on 16^th February 1801. The marriage record at FamilySearch (extract below) is a bit of a mess: the groom’s name is almost illegible on the signature line, crossed out and then obscured by his ‘mark’; while the bride’s name is shown as Elizabeth on the signature – even though it is clearly Mary Kamp in the banns section above. The witnesses are Thos. Mills and a barely legible ‘Hill’ or ‘Mill’.

The bride’s surname is written as Kamp, but it seems more likely that this should be Kemp. On the 1841 census, a James Kemp is living next door to the Hill family. He is about the same age as the couple’s son, James Hill. A Jemima Kemp and family is living next door to their son John Hill junior a few houses away.

 The parish registers suggest they only had three children: Mary (b1801), John (1804) and James (1806). Mary married William Knowles in 1823 in Elsted, but moved to Hampshire with her new husband. Son James, a shepherd, married Mary Parr in Elsted a year after the 1841 census. They are with his parents on census night in 1851.

His parents had already died by the 1861 census, when James Hill and wife Mary are recorded still living in Elsted, James a Shepherd. I found a burial record at FamilySearch for John Hill, aged 73 years (b1780) in St Paul’s church, Elsted, on 10^th July 1853 (extract below):

I have not been able to find a formal death index entry for the Midhurst district, nor any other John Hill entry of the right age range anywhere else in the country.

Mary Hill (Kemp) died on 1^st May 1860 in Elsted, aged 84 years (b1776). On her death certificate, she is described as the widow of John Hill, a Shepherd, and the cause of death is given as Decay of Nature, not certified – in other words, she died of old age. The informant was another Mary Hill, present at the death (one of her daughters-in-law, wife of James or John). 

It seems that her age on the 1851 census was correct, and that she was 3-4 years older than her husband.

There is a baptism at FamilySearch in nearby Trotton for Mary Kemp, daughter of Richard Kemp, Labourer, on 26^th January 1777 (extract below), which I believe is her. Research in the parish registers suggests that her parents were Richard Kemp and Elizabeth, formerly Cawood, and that her brother James Kemp’s widow Jemima was living near them in the 1851 census. 

John Hill was baptised in Elsted on 4^th May 1780. The fairly illegible copy of the parish register at FamilySearch shows he was the son of Nicholas and Mary Hill:

So the line of John Hills of Elsted stops at 5xgreat grandfather Nicholas Hill. 

For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view