Susan Budgen (1795-1870).
My 4th great-grand aunt.
Susan Budgen was baptised on 19 April 1795 in St Nicholas’s Church in Worth to parents William Budgen and Betty Streeter and grew up in the village.
She married George Tulley on 16 October 1820 in Nuthurst, Sussex, an 11 or so mile walk from where she grew up. He hailed from Slaugham, a village between Nuthurst and Worth, and was born in around 1787 (he was baptised aged about five on 7 December 1792).
George was described as a farmer on the first two baptism records for his children but after this he became a publican. The Sussex Advertiser of 13 May 1833 mentioned the sale by auction of several pieces of land in Slaugham that were occupied by a George Tulley, and this is likely to be our man. The sale was on behalf of the executors of a John Tulley of Bath, who sounds like a relative. George was occupying a messuage or tenement, large garden and three fields of excellent meadow land totalling 5 acres called Polestub or Pollards, yielding an annual rent of £12 9s. He was also occupier of a barn, stable, yard, cow hovel, cart shed, other outbuildings and about 10 acres of good arable land, all called Parcel of Herrings. The annual rent was £19.
Whether George and his family continued to work the land after the sale is not known but he became a publican before his death aged just 47 in 1837. He was buried in Slaugham on 20 January. Susan took on the pub licence and she’s listed as a publican in her own right in the 1841 census, although the pub itself is not named. However, the 1851 census and Kelly’s Directory for Sussex of that year names it as the Half Moon in Warninglid (a settlement within the Slaugham parish). The Sussex Advertiser of 11 March 1856 reported on the meeting of the Cuckfield Petty Sessions at which the transfer of the pub licence was made from Susan to her son George Jnr.
By the 1861 census Susan was living with her agricultural labourer son Joseph in Slaugham. A Susan Tulley was buried in the village on 14 November 1870, said to be aged 78 and from Horsham. Her son Joseph had, by this time, moved to a hamlet near to Horsham with his family and was working as a cowman. The hamlet was Crab Tree, close to the village of Lower Beeding. It’s also possible that she was living with other family members or alone at the time of her death.
Susan and George Snr’s children were:
- Harriett Tulley (1821-1909), married farmer Charles Gander and raised a family with him in and around Slinfold.
- William Tulley (1822-1846).
- Francis Tulley (1827-1881), a stonemason by trade who married Fanny Pellett of Ditchling and raised a family.
- George Tulley (1829-1901), who variously worked as a publican, dairyman and gardener in Sussex, Surrey and Stratford (now in east London). He married Philadelphia Baines and raised a family.
- Joseph Tulley (1832-1892). He married Margaret Gasson, had a family and worked as an agricultural labourer in Sussex.
- Charles Tulley (1833-1870). A wheelwright, he died young.
- John Tulley (1834-1935). Married Maria Rudrum and ran his own building business, moving around the south east until dying at a grand age in Bournemouth.
Sources.All data has been gathered from Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.co.uk and the British Newspaper Archive. Slaugham Archives.