With such a common name and occupation, I knew that my 2xgreat grandfather, Labourer John Hill, was always going to be difficult to trace before his marriage to Elizabeth Sarah Windebank in 1869. From the later censuses, I knew he was born in Elsted in rural Sussex, and from his marriage certificate, that he was the son of another John Hill, Labourer. I finally found him in earlier censuses, which not only took me back another generation – to yet another John Hill, my 4xgreat grandfather – but also revealed a mystery first marriage, which he didn’t declare when he married my 2xgreat grandmother. This is how I tracked him down …

John Hill, son of John and Mary Hill of Elsted

The only John Hill I could find in the 1861 census, born in Elsted, and of a similar age range to those he gave in the later censuses, was a married man living in Treyford, Sussex with his wife and baby daughter. He had declared himself a bachelor when he married in 1869, so I searched further back.

In the 1851 census, I found a John Hill, aged 15 (1836), born in Elsted and still living there with his father John Hill, an Agricultural Labourer, and mother Mary Ann. He had older brothers James and William, and younger siblings Lucy, Thomas, Harriet, Fanny and George. The same family was in Elsted in 1841, with John Hill aged 5 (b1836), and parents and siblings of relatively consistent names and ages. Unfortunately this suggested that John Hill was born just over a year before civil registration of births started (July 1837), so no birth certificate would be found. Happily for my family explorations, I found that he was baptised in Elsted church on 11 December 1836:

So how did he come to travel from rural Elsted and its Saxon church where he was baptised, to South London, where he married?

Discovering a hidden first marriage and daughter

I returned to the 1861 census record of John Hill, b1836, Elsted, living at Gravitts, Treyford, Sussex. He is an Agricultural Labourer, living with his wife Fanny, aged 20, and a one year old daughter Mary Ann. They are sharing their home with a John Taylor, his wife Eliza and their children. Could this be ‘my’ John Hill?

I found their marriage record in the indexes at FreeBMD, and the resulting certificate (below) ordered from the GRO, together with linked family information, suggests that my 2xgreat grandfather had first married in 1859, ten years before marrying my 2xgreat grandmother Elizabeth Sarah Windebank in 1869.

There are discrepancies: John Hill signs his name (whereas ten years later he makes his mark, and says he is a bachelor), but his father’s name and occupation – though very common – are consistent. His birth place in the 1861 census is consistent with later censuses, his age within an acceptable range. Even so, I was wary of accepting it, until I later found that John Hill’s sister Lucy Hill married Thomas Saunders in Treyford in 1862 – and these were the witnesses to his marriage to Fanny Taylor. It looks as though the young couple were sharing a home with her parents and siblings in Treyford by 1861.

Treyford is under a mile from Elsted, where John Hill was born, and about four miles from Harting, where they married at the congregationalist Harting Chapel, established in 1800. There are several other households in the 1861 census for Treyford showing the ‘address’ of Gravitts. An 1880 OS map at The National Library of Scotland shows a small settlement called Gravets to the East of Elsted and North of Treyford (Sussex Sheet XXXIV Surveyed: 1873 to 1874, Published: 1880). It looks like it may be a collection of farm buildings or cottages. Find more maps at: https://maps.nls.uk/

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

A map of the same area from 1939 shows the place now named Grevatts, and there are estate agents’ details online for Grevatts Cottage, and other properties on Grevatts Lane.

I have found no record of his young wife Fanny Taylor’s death (or any likely trace of her under another name) after 1861, so her later life remains a mystery; perhaps they simply separated, as divorce wouldn’t have been available to them then, or she died and I just haven’t found the record. I found a death index entry at FreeBMD for a Fanny Hill, who died in Plumstead in 1868. Unfortunately, when I received the death certificate, this Fanny Hill was 27 and the wife of Thomas Hill of Royal Arsenal.

At some point in the intervening nine years, John Hill moved to London, perhaps to distance himself from his previous marriage, which he certainly didn’t declare when he married again in 1869, or simply to find work. But what of the daughter, Mary, who appears with John and Fanny on the 1861 census? Did he leave her behind too?

What happened to Mary Anne Hill?

Mary Hill’s birth was registered in the Midhurst district in the third quarter of 1859, mother’s maiden name shown in the GRO index as Taylor – so she was probably born about a month after the wedding. Her middle name in the index is Matilda, not Ann.

In the 1871 census, she is 11 and recorded as a lodger in Treyford, in the household of Caroline Taylor – possibly some relation by marriage to Mary’s mother. Her father had by then been married for two years to my 2xgreat grandmother. Mary went on to marry William Parsons Gretton in 1880, with whom she had at least four children, and later moved to Northamptonshire.

I wonder if Elizabeth Sarah Windebank ever knew of her husband’s first marriage and child, and whether my great grandmother Susan Caroline Hill was ever aware that she had an older half-sister? Was Fanny Hill still alive in 1869? Did Mary Ann Hill have any contact with her father? Was John Hill’s second marriage a bigamous one?! He probably took the answers to all those questions to his grave – but his death is also a mystery and another story to be told.