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. However, their children have mostly been frustratingly difficult to trace after the 1861/1871 census, not helped by their common surname and little to distinguish them from others in terms of occupation.
Ann Hill was their first child, b.1830. She appears aged 11 on the 1841 census, then seems to disappear from the record. FamilySearch has marriage banns in October 1851 in Harting, Sussex, of Ann Hill, spinster and James Glen, bachelor of Idsworth. The Genealogist has an Ann Hill, aged 22, in the 1851 census, Servant at Idsworth Farm, Idsworth, b. Harting, with James Glen, 20, also a servant. Possibly 'our' Ann? However, there appears to be another Hill family from Harting, so probably not the correct Anne. But there is no other sighting of Ann Hill in the records that I have found.
James Hill was their first son, b.1832. He is at home with his parents in Elsted in the censuses up to 1861, by then an Ag.Lab, aged 27. I initially ‘married him off’ to Louisa Bleach in 1865, but a further look at the marriage record showed that this James’ father was William, not John. There is a death record for 1862, but this person was too old. Again, no reliable sighting of James after 1861.
William Hill was born in 1835 and is still at home in 1861, aged 25, an Ag.Lab. In the 1871 census, he seems to be living with his widowed mother in Harting, but I’ve not otherwise found any further record of him, unless he is the William Hill who married Caroline White in Harting in 1885. But where was he then in 1881?
Lucy Hill was born in 1839, the first of her siblings to be born after civil registration; her birth entry therefore gives us her mother’s maiden name, Mary Upfield. Lucy is at home in the 1841-1851 censuses. She marries Thomas Saunders in Treyford-cum-Didling on 19 July 1862, three years after they both stand as witnesses to brother John Hill’s first marriage there to Fanny Taylor. By 1881, they have moved to Linch, Sussex, where Thomas is working as a Gamekeeper. They have three children: Rhoda, Lucy and George. In the 1891 census, they are still at Linch, and while Thomas is a Gamekeeper, their son George, 20, is a carpenter. They are still at Linch in 1901; Thomas dies in June that year, and Lucy dies on 28 April 1909, leaving her effects amounting to £190 17s 8d to son George Saunders, Carpenter.
Thomas Hill stayed at home like his siblings until the time of the 1861 census. His birth name appears to have been Alfred (registered Midhurst, in the June quarter of 1842, mother’s maiden name Upfield), but baptised that September as Thomas. In the 1871 census, he is living at No.1, Stock Heath Field, Bedhampton, in Hampshire, working as an Ag. Lab, born Elsted. His wife is Jane, born 1844, from Rogate, Sussex. They have two children: Mary J (4) and Dorcas (2). Jane’s name is given as Smith on their birth index entries, but I have so far not found a marriage record for Thomas and Jane, nor found the family in the censuses after 1871.
Harriet Hill was born in 1846, but I have not found her in the 1861 census (other than a Harriet, born Treyford, working as a servant in Brighton, aged 16). There is a marriage for a Harriet Hill, father John Hill, in 1869, to George Bartholomew, in Harting. A daughter – Annie Eliza - is born to (apparently) the same couple in Brighton, Sussex, in January 1869, before the marriage. The child dies in 1870, also in Brighton.
A Harriet Bartholomew, aged 24, born Sussex, is shown as unmarried, working as a servant in Brighton in 1871. Did her husband desert her after the death of their child (or did she leave him)? Is he the same George Bartholomew, with wife Harriet b. Calne, Wilts, in the 1881 and 1891 censuses, working as a Fishmonger at 218 Euston Road, St Pancras?
Fanny Hill was born two years after Harriet, in 1848. She is at home, aged 16, working as a chambermaid in Elsted in 1861 and is still a chambermaid, this time in a hotel in High Street, Petersfield, Hampshire, in 1871. After that, she also disappears from the record.
George Hill, born in 1854, was the last known child of John Hill and Mary Upfield. His older brother George was born in 1850 and died in 1852. The last sighting of him is at home with parents and siblings in Elsted in the 1861 census.
I suppose it is possible that several of the siblings
emigrated en masse in 1861-1871; it seems strange that they all disappear from
the records without reliable trace of deaths/burials or marriages.
For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view
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