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 to parents John and Mary Tulley. 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 five 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. The 1851 census and Kelly’s Directory for Sussex of that year named 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.
Susan and George Snr’s children were:
- Harriett Tulley (1821-1909) was baptised in Slaugham and married farmer Charles Gander in Bolney, Sussex, in 1840. She raised a family with him in and around Slinfold at Old House Farm and later lived in Billingshurst as a widow. Charles died in 1891, Harriet in 1909.
- William Tulley (1822-1846) was baptised and buried in Slaugham.
- Francis Tulley (1827-1881) was baptised in Slaugham and became a stonemason by trade, although the 1881 census listed him as a hawker. He married Fanny Pellett of Ditchling, Sussex, in 1849 and raised a family in Cuckfield and Slaugham. He was buried in Slaugham in 1881. Fanny died in 1891.
- George Tulley (1829-1901) was baptised in Slaugham and had a number of occupations. He became a publican when he took over the licence of the Half Moon in Warninglid from his mother in 1856 but also worked as a dairyman and gardener in Sussex, Surrey and Stratford (now in east London). He married Philadelphia Baines, who died in 1896, and raised a family. George’s death was registered in West Ham, east London, in 1901.
- Joseph Tulley (1831-1892) was baptised in Slaugham. He married Margaret Gasson and spent their married life living in her home village of Lower Beeding, Sussex. They had a family and Josephn worked as an agricultural labourer. They both died in 1892.
- Charles Tulley (1833-1870) was baptised and buried in Slaugham. He worked as a wheelwright and died in Horsham, Sussex, in 1870.
- John Tulley (1834-1935) was baptised in Slaugham and became a carpenter. He married Maria Rudrum of Camberwell in South London in 1863 and had several children, moving around the south east of England as he built up his own building business. Census records put him in Preston, a suburb of Brighton, Croydon in Surrey and around Bournemouth in Hampshire. He retired in his 50s. Maria died in 1913 but John lived to a grand age in Bournemouth and died in 1935. One of his passions was gardening and growing chrysanthemums (Hampshire Advertiser 26 October 1935) – he’d even survived falling through his greenhouse at the age of 95 without injury (Bournemouth Graphic 26 October 1935).
Sources.All data has been gathered from Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.co.uk and the British Newspaper Archive. Slaugham Archives.