This week I am returning to the Carver’s who originated in Lodsworth, Sussex.
It is December with short days. I wonder what life was like in agriculture in those mid-19th Century days. Tending cattle and looking after the farm land would have been a brutal lifestyle in the rain and wind. While writing this I am also acknowledging the current 21st Century protests by farmers who are not wanting to pay inheritance tax. My ancestors came into the world with very little, learnt skills to earn a living, lived in tied or rented cottages, or shared them, and left the same world with very little. Not far off from what we did in the 20th Century.
I can clearly trace the Carver’s back four generations with accuracy. Instead of going backward, I shall start from the first of the four generations. My Great Great Grandparents were William Rapson and Caroline Ayling.
William was born in 1837, and it seems that he was born in Canada. How and why is still a problem for my research. William was listed in the 1861 Census return as being born in Canada. Later, in 1901, decades after his wife, my Great Great Grandmother, had died, William was recorded as being a boarder in a house in Bersted, not far from, Bognor. The clue to him being the same William is that he was described as a Blacksmith in both returns. In the 1901 document he was listed as having been born in America. The return was not compiled by individual entrants but by the local enumerator and it could be that his landlady had thought he was born in America. Or William himself might have said this.
I do know that William was a Blacksmith in Lodsworth for a decade and he and Caroline had three children together. Although Caroline had a child, William Myrtle Ayling, before she met William Rapson. (This has been explained to me by another family historian in Australia who I have been corresponding with. William Myrtle was his Great Grandfather who married Alice Sadler in Petworth, and they lived to have 12 children).
I can go back to another, fifth generation, but I am not ready with my research to do that. The connection with Canada intrigues me and I think there is a lot more to discover.
So, William, a Blacksmith at the age of 22, married Caroline Ayling who was 21. Their witnesses at the marriage, in the parish church at Lodsworth, were William and Frances Leggatt. Three months earlier my Great Grandparents had been witnesses at the Leggatt’s wedding. The Rapson’s wedding was on July 18th, 1858. Unbeknown to both, they were to be together for only 11 years.
I look to their first Census return together. This would have been 1861. They were established in Lodsworth, and they had two sons. The enumerator was not clear about the name of the road and it maybe that at that time in its history, there were not named roads. Just lanes with some houses with names, farms with names and then cottages where the workers lived. For some reason, the enumerator has labelled each household as ‘private’, which I understand to mean that it was their own private residence, but not necessarily owned.
The two sons are named William aged 3, and George aged 1. I have searched for Caroline’s first born, William Myrtle Ayling, and discovered that he was born in January 1858. His baptism record shows that he and his mother were living in Graffham, a small village directly below Lodsworth, about four or five miles away. William was recorded as being illegitimate. Six months later, Caroline married William Rapson. He claims William Myrtle as his son in future records.
I have tried to trace young George, my two times Great Uncle, but I cannot find anything conclusive without purchasing certificates. He may have had a short life and died in infancy in 1862 at the age of 2.
William and Caroline moved around for his work. My Great Grandmother, Emily Annie, was baptised in 1871 at the age of 7 in Wykeham, a suburb of Southampton at that time. Her older sister, Catherine Mary Fanny Maud was also baptised on the same day, she was aged 8.
It is not exactly clear to me how many children my Great Great Grandparents had nor their dates of birth. Which is surprising because their footprint via public records is quite large.
1861 Census return
The Rapson family were living in Lodsworth and the children in the house were:
William aged 3, born in Graffham
George aged 1, born in Lodsworth
1871 Census return
The Rapson family were living in Wickham, where Catherine and Emily were baptised in 1871, although the name of the village was previously known as Wykeham. William is described as a Farrier which firmly places him in the horse shoeing business. The children in the house were:
Catherine aged 9, born in Petworth
Anna aged 7, born in Chichester
James aged 5, born in Westbourne
I have to make the assumption that Anna is in fact Emily Anne, my Great Grandmother because of her age and the fact that she and Catherine were baptised Wickham in the year of the Census. Some Ancestry researchers believe that my Great Great Grandmother, Caroline, had died in 1869. This would follow that she is not showing in this Census return. Also note that William was missing from the family on the day of the count and note that I believe that George died in infancy.
Also in the house are a widowed housekeeper and her two children.
1881 Census return
This has been a challenging search, and I can find no return for William Rapson and family members.
1881 was also the year that Emily married William Carver, and their marriage records are not available online which means that a copy certificate will have to be purchased from London.
1891 Census return
I have found William Rapson living as a boarder in South Bersted, Bognor, Sussex. He was 52 and described as a Blacksmith but states that he was born in Lodsworth, not Canada. He was living at Chapel Street in the house of a widow, Martha Squires, a laundress.
1901 Census return
This is the last Census return that my two times Great Grandfather appears in. He was still working as a Blacksmith at the age of 63. He continued to live as a boarder in the house of Martha Squires and her two sons are living with her. William was 26 and he is officially described as Blind in the last column of the return which records disabilities and mental health. He worked on his own accord at home as a Chair Caner. Martha had another son, aged 22, a bricklayer.
William Rapson states that he was born in America which would follow on from previous records that state that he was born in Canada.
Plotting the lives of my Great Great Grandparents has not been easy but I was given some helpful pointers from a researcher in Australia. Caroline died at an early age. William left Wickham where he had been working as a Farrier and moved to spend the rest of his life in South Bersted, a village outside of Bognor. Bersted, co-incidentally, was a stone throw away from the pub that my Great Grandfather Spillett ran with a wheelwright business at the back. One of his daughters married William Rapson’s Grandsons, which is how the Carvers and Spilletts came together.
William Rapson died in the Infirmary in Chichester 1905.
In future posts I shall plot the life of Emily, William’s daughter, my Great Grandmother.