When my 2xgreat grandfather John Hill was baptised in Elsted, Sussex, on 11th December 1836, his parents are named as John Hill and Mary (transcript at FamilySearch, extract from register, below, from FamilySearch).
Five years later, at the time of the 1841 census,
the Hill family, comprising John Hill, aged 35 (b1806),
wife Mary, 30 (b1811), and five of their children, are living at Elsted,
where John Hill the father is an Agricultural Labourer. John Hill the son is five years old; his youngest sibling is sister Lucy, aged 1. On the previous
Elsted, census page, there is an entry for another John Hill and wife Mary,
aged 60 and 50. Both Hill families have immediate neighbours or other
household members with the surname Kemp.
The eldest child listed with John Hill in 1841 is Ann, aged 11, which might suggest that he married around 1829-30 (assuming Ann was their first child). The youngest, Lucy, was born around 1839-40, after the introduction of civil registration, so if her birth was registered, her mother’s maiden name will be recorded. A search for her birth in the indexes at the GRO show that a Lucy Hill’s birth was registered in the Oct-Dec quarter of 1839 in the Midhurst district (which covers Elsted), mother’s maiden name Upfield. The youngest child on the 1861 census is George (aged 6), and his birth was registered in the September quarter of 1850, mother's maiden name Upfield.
Lucy Hill witnessed her brother John Hill’s first marriage to Fanny Taylor in 1859, with her husband-to-be Thomas Saunders.
Searches for the marriage of John Hill and Mary
Upfield in Sussex around 1830 revealed one result at Ancestry (transcription)
and FamilySearch (image, extract below) on 14th November 1829, at
Bepton, Sussex:
Bepton
is in the district of Midhurst, near Chichester, West Sussex, as is Elsted, three
miles away, where the family is presumably living by 1831 when their eldest daughter
Anne was baptised, and still there ten years later in 1841. The ancient
church of St Mary, Bepton, was built in Norman times and still stands, grade I
listed, in the village today.
By the 1851 census, the two John Hill families
in Elsted are living next door to each other; John Hill was born around
1804 in Elsted, while his wife Mary Upfield was born in what looks like ‘Honiker’
(probably Halnaker, West Sussex). They have eight children still at home,
including John Hill born 1836, and his younger sister Lucy, now 12. Next
door, the head of household is listed as John Hill Snr, presumably to
distinguish him from his son next door. He is 70, his wife Mary 74, and
their 44-year old son James Hill, a shepherd, is with them on census night with
his wife Mary, and a Thomas Parr, aged 12, described as ‘Nephew’. The latter’s
place of birth looks like ‘Paris and ?, Middlesex’. That means three lots of John
Hills living next door to each other:
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).
By the 1861 census, son James Hill and his wife Mary have moved next door to his parents John Hill (b1804) and family. We know that John Hill b1836 had left home and was living with his first wife Fanny in Sunbury on Thames at the time. John Hill senior (b1780) and his wife Mary are no longer living in Elsted, and would appear to have died in the intervening ten years since their last appearance on the 1851 census.
As far as I have found out, John Hill and Mary Upfield had ten children in total between 1830 and 1854: four girls and six boys. They had two sons called George, the first born in 1850 who died aged two years. Their next and last child was also George, born in 1854, two years after the first George’s death. The family has been frustratingly difficult to trace after the 1861/1871 census. More research needed.
For
the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history:
Sources and resources: A quick view
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