DAWESROOTS

SENT from KENT

I found my earliest ancestor in Kent, Hadlow to be exact.  Here, in 1809, I find the family of Thomas Daws (my 3G-GF) and wife Elizabeth Whitebread with three children, William aged 5, Jane Ann aged 3 and Susan aged 2.  The reason I was able to find them was they were ordered back to Uckfield in Sussex by a removal order dated 9 August 1809.  Thomas was an agricultural labourer and I have labelled him as ‘Thomas the Labourer’ because I descend from a whole line of Thomas’.  I also have Thomas the Bricklayer (my 2G-GF) and Thomas the Builder (my G-GF).

Thomas, the Labourer, married Elizabeth in Tudeley and Capel on 8 March 1804.  The Whitebread’s are an old Kent family and they have been in Hadlow a while, at least, since 1700 according to my research.  Henry Whitebread, who would be my sixth great-grandfather, was buried there on the 13^th of May 1752.  I’m assuming that this would be in the St. Mary’s churchyard although I have no proof of this.

Why did Thomas and Elizabeth marry in Tudeley and Capel although the twin parishes are adjacent to Hadlow?  Maybe the church was closer to where they were working.  I’m assuming that Elizabeth was pregnant when they married as their first child, William, was baptized in Hadlow on 12 April 1804 just a little over a month after their marriage.

The Daws’ family weren’t very obedient.  They managed to have my second great-grandfather, Thomas the Bricklayer, baptised in Hadlow on 12 November 1809 a full three months after the order.  But wait, they also had Sarah baptised on 3 November 1811 more than two years later and still in Hadlow.  Did Thomas find work which would have negated the need for them to remove to Uckfield?  Elizabeth was from Hadlow so why were the poor law overseers so keen to have them gone, not that they rushed to leave.

Next they appear in East Peckham, not Uckfield as you might expect.  Frances, a daughter, is baptised there on 6 December 1814, then Elizabeth is baptised on 1 December 1816 still in East Peckham then Mary on 27 June 1819 and finally George on the 6 January 1822.  George is the last of the East Peckham children so their dalliance on the way to Uckfield added another four children to the family.  As you’ll see later, William, their oldest even gets married in East Peckham before they leave.

Finally, in 1829, a daughter, Harriet, is baptised in Holy Cross Church, Uckfield on the first of March.  Elizabeth would have been forty-four so it’s not unreasonable to assume that this is her child but they also had three daughters over eighteen so Harriet may have been a granddaughter.  Harriet does list Thomas the Labourer as her father on her marriage registration in 1856 so there’s not proof either way.

The family is last found in East Peckham in 1822 and then in Uckfield in 1829 leaving a seven year span during which they could have moved or removed.  The 1831 census for Uckfield, which was published by PBN Publications in 1988, shows two Daws families living together at Grants Hill with a total of eight females and eight males.  This matches my tally for Thomas living with his older son, William, and their combined spouses and children.

William has been a real pain!  He married an Elizabeth in East Packham around about 1826 so that may make the Daws departure later than I thought.  I have never found a marriage or Banns for William and Elizabeth.  Elizabeth dutifully reports East Peckham as her birth place on every census from 1841 to 1861.  Her death in 1867 doesn’t record any family other than her deceased husband and a neighbour who was the informant.  I have tried to reverse engineer her surname from all the available Elizabeth’s of which there are ten born between 1803 and 1805 in East Peckham which corresponds to her census reported age.

The Daws’ did not follow any naming convention with their children as is found with many English and Scottish families in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  This means that I can’t predict her parents forenames from the names William and she gave to their children.  I find it irritating that I have the family so well documented from about 1873 with this one missing bit that I can’t fill in.  It also makes me feel that I haven’t properly recognized Elizabeth even though she’s only related to me tangentially.  As I work on my family history, I like to believe that I am remembering each ancestor I record and acknowledging their contribution to the family fabric.  I hope a future descendant of mine feels the same way when they discover me.  Maybe through this article?

William and Elizabeth’s first child, Elizabeth, was baptised in East Peckham in 1828 while their second child, Henry, was baptised in Uckfield in 1831 which narrows the move date even further to sometime between 1828 and 1831.  I don’t know if his parents moved first , vice versa or all together.  The only thing I am reasonably sure of is they are living together in Uckfield by 1831.

While daughter Elizabeth was born in East Peckham and moved to Uckfield she is the only child of the whole family group to return to Kent.  She married George Gurr, a native of Isfield, Sussex in 1850 in Uckfield but returned to Penshurst between 1871 and 1881 where they both died.

From this point on the family are stationed in Uckfield, Sussex eventually migrating to Brighton where Thomas the Builder became a prominent house builder with over one hundred houses to his credit.  In fact, if anyone is familiar with the Cutress’s or Round Hill Mill which was purchased by Thomas who used the 50,000 bricks for building fourteen houses on Belton Road.  The lumber was used for the window sashes and the metal was sold for scrap.  My grandfather Tom (not Thomas) inherited two of these houses but sadly they were sold shortly after his death in 1933.  The rest of the story is in Sussex.