My 5xgreat grandparents Thomas
Topper and Elizabeth
Selway married at St George, Hanover Square, London, on 12 April 1798.
Their marriage lasted 40 years, before Thomas Topper’s death, aged 69,
of apoplexy, on 27 September 1838.
Their fourth son, George Prest Topper was baptised at
Norwich on 4 August 1811 (his birth date shown as 20 July that year, and his
mother’s maiden name helpfully included as Selway). His parents were in Norwich
at the time while his father – my 5xgreat grandfather Thomas Topper -
worked on the Admiralty’s shutter telegraph there.
On 10 February 1819, aged 7, he was admitted to the Royal
Hospital School, Greenwich – now the Royal Naval College buildings – like his
older brothers Charles James Topper (my 4xgreat grandfather) and Thomas
Robert Topper. It seems that the school didn’t suit him, as his father placed a
notice in the Morning Advertiser on 31 May 1825, asking for information about
him for his ‘disconsolate parents’:
The description is clear, with the ‘old straw hat’ a rather poignant touch. Unfortunately I have not been able to find out whether he was indeed returned to his disconsolate parents, or what might have happened to him after 1825. Did he run away to sea?
I have found no navy or merchant marine records for him, he doesn’t appear in the 1841 census under the name George Topper (or variants) with other matching details, and I haven’t found a death or burial record for him either. A George Topper did marry at St George Hanover Square in 1830, but he would only have been 19 at the time. The bride’s name was Elizabeth Bowen. Ancestry has a copy of the register, but it gives no other information other than both were ‘of this parish’. St George Hanover Square was the venue for other family events in previous decades, but by 1830, his parents were at Upper Garden Street, and the closest church would have been St James the Less.
For the sources mentioned in bold, see blogpost: MyRoots: Lesly's family history: Sources and resources: A quick view
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