George DAWES Line - New Development

The marriage certificate for George DAWES (1821-1869) and Esther COTTINGTON (1831-1863) arrived in the mail yesterday. Until then, I assumed that Esther was George's first wife, however, the certificate shows him as a widower.

Therefore, there might be more children from this family that we don't know about. George had five with Esther and two more with his last wife, Sophia SANTER (1831-1914). See more about George's families in a previous post here.

Now, I thought that solving this would be easy. Look for marriages for George in Uckfield before 1849 when he married Esther. EUREKA there is one! BUT, the marriage registration page for
the December Quarter 1844 has four possible spouses.

The good news is that they all have different given names which is not usually the case. With my luck, they are all Sarah or Harriet. Now, all I had to do was find a death between 1844 and 1849 and I would have her. EXCEPT, Sarah DAWES died in Dec. 1845 and Elizabeth DAWES in Sep. 1847. It's never easy, is it? Given that Elizabeth died closest to the marriage date with Esther of 1849 and that one of the witnesses was William HARVEY, I am going to guess that Elizabeth HARVEY is the best candidate. I have ordered this certificate so we'll see if I am right in a couple of weeks.


There are three DAWES births in Uckfield between the marriage date of 1844 and Elizabeth's assumed death date of 1847 (2 in Mar. 1846 and 1 in Mar. 1847) that could be attributed to George and Elizabeth. Although, there are no children who are unaccounted for in 1851 unless they were living with extended family, maybe the HARVEY's.


Now, to try and find the HARVEY family in the census.

NEWS FLASH: I checked my research spreadsheet that I enter all my B,M,D notes into and found a marriage between George DAWES & Sarah PECKHAM registered in Holy Cross Church, Uckfield 01 Dec 1844. So Elizabeth was the wrong choice!

The George (1) DAWES Line

George Dawes (1821-1869) is the last child born in East Peckfield before the family moved back to Uckfield. George first married Esther COTTINGTON (1831-1863) in 1849 Uckfield and had five children with her. Esther died in 1863 and George married the widow of his nephew Henry who died in 1864. This line connects the COOPER and MUGRIDGE families to the DAWES.

George and Esther had 5 children and all except Fanny married and had families that can be flound in later posts of this blog. George and Sophia has 2 children and I only have additional details for Charles also found later in this blog.

The William (1) DAWES Line

William DAWES and his wife Elizabeth (surname unknown) had five children. Henry b. 1831 married Sophia SANTER. Henry died in 1864 at age 33 and his widow married his uncle George b. 1821. George was also a widower after his first wife, Esther COTTINGHAM, died in 1863 so between all parents the final family consisted of eight children. Both Catherine and Daniel died young. Elizabeth (1828-1883) married George GURR and started a large family group while Charlotte (1838-1914) married Thomas BARTON and also started a large family group.

The DAWES surname wasn't carried on by any descendants of William. Henry's only child with Sophia before he died was a daughter, Elizabeth (1856-1935) who was in service all her life and never married.