Sarah Rice and my other Rice ancestors

Sarah Rice (1791-1871). My 4th great-grandmother. Sarah was the first of the Rice family to join my family tree. She was baptised on 3 July 1791 at St Mary’s Church in Balcombe, Sussex, to parents George Rice and Mary Harman. She married William Budgen at St Nicholas’s Church in Worth, Sussex, on 2 November 1808. […]

Maud Jane Wetherall (1881-1958) and a golden wedding

Maud Jane Wetherall (1881-1958). My great-grand aunt.  Maud was born on 15 June 1881 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and baptised in the town’s St Nicholas’ Church on 29 November that year. She grew up with her parents Benjamin Thomas Wetherall and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Green and siblings in Admiralty Road. By the 1901 census she was living […]

Mary Bilcliffe and my other Bilcliffe ancestors

Mary Bilcliffe (1735-1783).My 5th great-grandmother. The Bilcliffe surname is a rare one in the UK and appears in several forms in the records (like many other surnames of the time), for example as Billcliff, Billcliffe, Bentley and even Bentlet. The first to marry into my Surrey-based Finch family was Mary Bilcliffe – but who was […]

Sarah Ann Green (1829-1902) – a troubled marriage

Sarah Ann Green (1829-1902) and Jonathan Jary (1831-1890).My 3rd great-grand aunt and uncle. Sarah was baptised on 5 June 1829 at St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, and grew up with her siblings and parents William Green and Willoughby Staff in the town. The 1851 census recorded her living with relative and mariner’s wife Elizabeth Saunders and […]

Susan Budgen (1795-1870), a Sussex publican

The Half Moon in Warninglid in the early 20th century

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 […]

Mary Ann Budgen (1863-1953) and her family’s brush with poverty

Mary Ann Budgen (1863-1953). My great-grand aunt. Born in 27 August 1863 in Worth, Sussex, Mary Ann Budgen was baptised on 4 October that year at St Nicholas’ Church. Her parents were Thomas Budgen and Maria Dolamore. At the time of the 1881 census she was living at the 123-acre Hazel Grove Farm in Abbots […]

George Budgen (1826-1893) – Brighton publican

George in the 1891 census

George Budgen (1826-1893), Anne Maria Baker (1826-1873) and Margaret Cole (1835-1903) My 3rd great-grand uncle and aunts. Baptised on 28 January 1827 in Worth, Sussex, George was the son of agricultural labourer William Budgen and Sarah Rice. In 1841 George was living with his parents at Standing Hall Farm in the village and also working as a […]

William Budgen (1820-1864) – killed on the railway

The railway at Marden in 1890, a few years after William's accident

William Budgen (1820-1864) and Amy Frith (1826-1921). My 3rd great-grand uncle and aunt. Baptised in Worth, Sussex, on 6 February 1820, William was the son of William Budgen and Sarah Rice and would meet a gruesome end. But that was some years after he married Amy Frith, the 18-year-old daughter of a gamekeeper, on 6 April 1844 […]

Edward Thomas Budgen (1868-1925) – he took his family to Australia

The Kingstonian - the ship Edward sailed on to Gallipoli

Edward Thomas Budgen (1868-1925) and Alice Jane Hacker (1868-1943). My great-grand uncle and aunt. Edward Budgen was born in the Sussex parish of Worth on 28 April 1868, and was baptised by his parents Thomas Budgen and Maria Dolamore on 7 June that year. He went to live in Australia, served in the Great War […]

Emma Budgen (1861-1925) – Mayoress of Reigate

Reigate in the First World War

Emma Budgen (1861-1925) and George Alfred Reynolds Ince (1863-1951).My great-grand aunt and uncle. Emma Budgen was the oldest of Thomas Budgen and Maria Dolamore‘s children. She was born in 1861 in Worth, Sussex, and baptised in the village on 1 September that year, but went from humble beginnings to become the Mayoress of Reigate. As […]