BURCHETT Family History
Page 5
WHO WAS WILLIAM MARK BURCHETT'S FATHER?
If family rumour is true, is it based on the strange fact that Mark William was registered at birth as Mark William Burchett but baptised as William Mark Ticehurst Burchett? Was the reference to "Ticehurst" because this was the name of his father.
Also, why was Mark William's name later transposed to William Mark? Did Lucy Ann originally wish to acknowledge the father by giving her son the father's forenames? Did she then decide to "go public" and make it explicitly clear who the father was by actually using the father's surname at her son's baptism, albeit now reversing the forenames?
I started looking into this by assuming that Mr Ticehurst would be about twenty years of age when William Mark was born, so he would have been born about 1848. Was he born in the same area as Lucy Ann? If so, he may have appeared in the 1851 census, at about 3 years of age, in the 1861 census at about 13 years old and he may have disappeared to America or Canada by the 1871 census, three years after William Mark's birth. He may have appeared in Kent census records in the 1871 or 1881 census records.
I searched the census returns and came up with the following possibility.
In the 1851 census, a William and Mary Ticehurst were living in Ashburnham, Sussex, with their 7 children, including Mark Ticehurst who was aged 2, and born in Ashburnham. In 1861 the family was living at Ticehurst in the Parish of Burwash, with the father's occupation given as a butcher. Ticehurst is about 8 miles from Heathfield where Lucy Ann was living in 1861.
In 1868, when Mark William was born, Mark Ticehurst would have been about 19 years of age, and Lucy Ann 21.
In the 1871 census Mark Ticehurst's family had moved to Hastings, the father still a butcher. However I was unable to find any trace of a Mark Ticehurst in the 1871 census who was born in Ashburnham about 1850. So, if this was the father of Mark William Burchett perhaps the family rumour is true, and Mark Ticehurst was sent to America or Canada, which is why he was missing from the 1871 census.
In the 1881 census I found a William M Ticehurst, age 30 (so born about 1851), having been born in Ashburnham, Sussex. He was married to Charlotte, living in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and his occupation was master butcher. The marriage was registered in 1875 in East Grinstead. There are sufficient similarities to assume that this is the same Ticehurst as in the 1851 and 1861 censuses, especially as he, too, was a butcher like his father, born about the right year and also born in Ashburnham. So, again perhaps family rumour is true, as Mr Ticehurst had reappeared in Kent. Most surprising is that he was now known as William M Ticehurst, the exact names that William Mark Burchett was baptised.
In the 1901 census William M Ticehurst and his wife had moved back to Sussex, to Rotherfield. He was still a butcher.
A
recent internet contact has told me that there
is also an unconfirmed family rumour in the Ticehurst family about a William Ticehurst
fathering a child and being sent off, or ran off, to America.
They
sent me a copy of a page from the 1870 U.S. Census. It
shows a William Ticehurst, age 20 (so b abt 1850), working as a farm labourer on
1 June 1870.
His place of birth is England, and parents not American. He is working as a farm
labourer for Joshua and Annie Knight, farmers, with a John Shay who was Irish.
This was in Cheltenham, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, in the borough of Jenkintown.
William Ticehurst's whereabouts in England are unknown
between about November 1867 (William Mark Burchett was born 6 July 1868) to May
1875 (he married in England in April/June 1875).
The
contact also told me the following story, although of course, this is
unconfirmed:
“There
is a further interesting story regarding William Mark which occurred while he
was in America. Apparently he got into a fight and his opponent died (I
don't know if it was during or after the fight). It is said that he objected
to the way the other man was treating a woman, possibly an Indian Squaw.
Subsequently the Squaw somehow freed him before he could be lynched and he fled
back to England”
What I find to be quite a coincidence is that near where William was born in Sussex was a tiny hamlet called "Jenkins Town". Strangely, the William Burchett in the 1970 U.S. Census was in the borough of "Jenkintown" in Pennsylvania. Is this too much of a coincidence?
DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY OTHER INFORMATION CONCERNING THE MYSTERIOUS WILLIAM M TICEHURST?
DO YOU KNOW WHERE HE WAS IN THE 1871 ENGLAND CENSUS?
DO YOU KNOW OF SUCH A RUMOUR IN THE TICEHURST FAMILY?
DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT A WILLIAM MARK TICEHURST BEING ON THE PASSENGER LIST OF A SHIP BOUND FOR AMERICA AFTER NOVEMBER 1867 AND HIS RETURN BEFORE APRIL 1875?
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT THE 1870 U.S. CENSUS REFERS TO THE SAME WILLIAM TICEHURST?
IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE THAT THE STORY ABOUT THE FIGHT WAS TRUE?
ARE THERE ANY OTHER POSSIBILITIES THAT I HAVE NOT CONSIDERED?
IF YOU HAVE ANY ANSWERS OR SUGGESTIONS AS TO HOW I CAN SOLVE THIS MYSTERY, PLEASE E-MAIL ME AT:
FamilyHistoryReplies@btinternet.com
PLEASE NOW GO TO PAGE 6 TO TRY TO HELP ME FIND OUT WHEN LUCY ANN BURCHETT'S HUSBAND, JABEZ KEMP, DIED