James Brown (1813-1879)
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Helen Glenmire Davidson
James Brown
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- Birth:
- 1813 Pershore, Worcestershire
- Death:
- 1879 Keymer, Sussex
- Spouse:
- Mary Ann Staples
- Lived at:
- Sussex
- Occupation:
- Labourer, gardener, toy dealer
- Children:
- Jane (b. 1850, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex)
- Mary (b.1853, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex)
- Hannah
(b.1856, Clayton, Sussex m.
William Martin, 1890, East Grinstead, Sussex) - Sarah (b. 1859 Clayton, Sussex)
- Joseph William (b.1861 Clayton, Sussex)
- Susan (b.1867 Clayton, Sussex)
Tracing the early history of James Brown has proved a little difficult
.... In all the records so far found, James gives his birthplace
as Pershore, Worcestershire, c1813, but no baptisms for a James Brown
can be found in the registers for around the right time. The family
tale for James hints at a scandal of some sort - that due to a family
dispute, he changed his name from 'Bell' to 'Brown', but no record
under that name can be found at Pershore or nearby either....
Pershore has a striking Anglo-Saxon abbey church, now the Anglican parish Church of the Holy Cross. The church that's there today is all that remains of a magnificent structure destroyed in 1539 as a result of the Protestant Reformation. Centuries later, it is still imposing, although it has had a more modern support structure built on one side
Above: One of the intriguing historic houses in Pershore, this from the early 16th century, now a private residence.
So far, we've been unable to find a marriage record for James and Mary Ann Staples from Netheravon in Wiltshire...However, by 1850 the couple were living together in Sussex, where they started their family with the birth of their first child, Jane, in 1950 at Hurstpierpoint, just north of Brighton.
James
was a labourer all his working life. In the two censuses
which have survived in and which James and his family are
recorded, he is described as either a labourer, or a
"labourer on the roads", while his death certificate says "farm
labourer". He was probably a jack-of-all- trades - on one of
Mary's documents, he was described as a gardener, and in another
document (the marriage certificate of his daughter Jane in 1877),
he is recorded as a "toy dealer", an occupation which was also
noted for Mary Ann a short time later in the 1881 census
James and his family lived in various villages and hamlets in Sussex, a fair distance away from James' birthplace of Pershore. Travelling from Worcestershire or Netheravon in Wiltshire (Mary Ann's home town) to Sussex would not have been easy and, since Mary Ann was a servant girl and James a farm labourer, it was probably not undertaken in any degree of comfort.
In Sussex, their lodgings would almost certainly have been conditional on their working arrangements. The Brown family moved around over the years, but always close to Hurstpierpoint and the larger town of East Grinstead. They had six children, but only five survived childhood. Their fourth daughter Sarah, born in 1859, died within a month of her birth.
Of their six children, only one, a son Joseph, was given the distinction of having a second name, William - all the girls had to make do with a single Christian name.
Work
for James was probably mainly on the farms around Hurstpierpoint or
East Grinstead - the births of the youngest four children were
registered in the tiny village of Clayton, which, in the 21st
century is really nothing more than a hamlet; but it also has a
church of some note, dating back to the Domesday Book.
(right): Clayton village houses
Just a few kilometres away from Clayton is Keymer, which also has records going back to the Domesday era. Keymer is where James lived for the last part of his life before he died from a long term "general debility", and an eight-day bout of bronchitis. From the address on his death certificate, Church Road, Keymer, it seems that he was living in one of the charity houses associated with the local church - but that street no long exists (at least under that name) in Keymer.