Sarah Green (1804-54) and John Gilbert (1804-1874).
My 4th great-grand aunt and uncle.
Sarah Green was born on 28 July 1804 and baptised two days later at St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Her parents were Edward Green and Mary Bustard.
She grew up in the coastal town, where her father worked as a beachman, and married John Gilbert on 30 May 1827 St Clement and St Edmund in Norwich, Norfolk. He was also a Yarmouth native, born on 11 May 1804. Their children were all born and baptised in Great Yarmouth but only two of them were living with them in the town at the time of the 1841 census, along with Sarah’s father.
John Snr was described as a policeman in the census and I suspect he was the officer referred to in a report in the Norfolk Chronicle of 28 December 1844, in which he caught two men – Robert Loudon and Robert Roat – in the act of supposedly stealing a truss of hay from the Angel Inn, Great Yarmouth, on the 6th. Gilbert was making his way home at about 5.15am when he heard unexpected noises coming from the stables. “Suspecting all was not right he secreted himself and soon saw Loudon (who is a cow-keeper and coal-heaver) with a truss of hay on his back. Gilbert stopped him and asked where he got the hay. He said he had borrowed it from the other prisoner,” the newspaper report stated. The men were ultimately found not guilty despite the best efforts of Gilbert’s testimony.
By the time of the 1851 census, which shows the family living in Regent Road, Great Yarmouth, John Snr had become a rope maker. Living with them at the time was John Jnr, a sailmaker, and James, a bricklayer’s labourer. Sarah died in the summer of 1854 but John lived for another 20 years. In 1861 he was with his son James in George’s Buildings and both were listed as fishermen. It’s likely they were the James and John Gilbert who were, somewhat ironically, sentenced to three months’ hard labour in 1868 for stealing 23 pairs of soles worth 30 shillings. They were boatmen of the carrier-cutter Silver Cloud but were caught leaving it on another boat and throwing something overboard. When this was recovered it was found to contain the property, reported the Norfolk News of 5 September 1868.
In 1871 John Snr was living with son John and his family in Bermondsey Place West, Great Yarmouth, but described as a labourer. He died in the town’s hospital in March 1874 and was buried at the Old Cemetery on the 15th of the month.
- Sarah Gilbert (1830-????).
- John Michael Gilbert (1832-1915). A sailmaker in Great Yarmouth by trade, John married Harriet Leech in 1857. They had children and continued to live in the town all their lives. Harriet died a year after John.
- James Gilbert (1835-1869). A fisherman, he died young.
- Joseph Gilbert (1836-1838).
Sources. All data has been gathered from Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.co.uk, the British Newspaper Archive and Norfolk Family History Society.