Joseph Rumble and Sarah Bayford were the parents of Susan Rumble and grandparents of Lena Parry. That makes them my 3rd great-grandparents.
Joseph Rumble was born in Great Chishall, Essex in about 1803. His was probably the first child of Thomas Rumbold and Mary Dowcett story I told a few weeks ago..
Sarah Bayford was born May 1808 in Anstey, Hertfordshire. Her parents were William Bayford and Sarah Wisby who have also been covered recently.
Joseph and Sarah were married in Anstey in October 1826. They settled down in the village of Barkway, which was the next village to Anstey. They had six children born between 1828 and 1840. Joseph worked as an agricultural labourer. Life would not have been easy for the family with increasing mechanisation of farming and declining wages for farm workers.
Their eldest child, Anna Maria died in 1840 aged eleven. Then in 1841 Sarah died. She was 33. Joseph was left with five children, all under the age of 12. The youngest child, Mary Ann, was less than a year old.
Joseph moved his small family back to the Little Chishall area, where he continued to work as an agricultural labourer. Mary Ann died in 1844 aged four and was buried in Great Chishall.
Rebecca was 18 when she married Joseph Evennitt at Great Chishall in October 1848. Rebecca died about a year after her marriage, and the death was registered at Royston in the last quarter of 1849. Her burial has not been discovered. I guess it is reasonable to assume that Rebecca died in childbirth.
In 1851 Joseph was living at Little Chishall when the census was taken. This census gives a little more detail and Joseph was shown as a widower, aged 48, an agricultural labourer and born in Little Chishall. Living with him were his daughter Susan 19 and son Joseph 13. Joseph Jr died soon after the census and was buried in Great Chishall.
Thomas’s daughter Ellen was working as a servant on the farm of Thomas Pilgrim at Great Chishall when the census was conducted.
In 1861, the census shows Joseph was 58 and living as a lodger at 92 Malting Yard Great Chishall. He was still an agricultural labourer. By this time his surviving children Susan and Ellen had had both emigrated to Australia. They had both married and had families of their own in Victoria and Western Australia. Thomas could not read or write, so he would probably have had no news from his children, unless it was through the other relatives or acquaintances who had their own children in Australia.
In the 1871 census Joseph gave his age as 70. He was a servant at 103 Bridge Farm and his calling was shepherd. By this time, Susan, was living in at Wellington in New South Wales with her husband Job Miller and six children. Ellen was living at Greenough in Western Australia with her husband James Rumble (a second cousin). They had eight children.
Joseph died 1873, aged 69. He was buried in Great Chishall.
As I write up this family story, I was struck by the sadness that Joseph must have experienced through his life. His working life may have been tough, but as 1840 dawned, he was married with five children and one on the way. 14 years later he is living alone without any contact with his immediate family. His wife and four of his children had died and his two remaining adult daughters had emigrated to Australia. I like to think that he was happy that his grandchildren would have better opportunities in Australia than he had experienced in his homeland. But it must have been a lonely existence for his last 20 years.
There is an interesting issue in this story for anyone doing family history work themselves. The villages of Great Chishall and Little Chishall present a problem for the search engines. First, they have moved from Essex into Cambridgeshire in more recent history, but also the spelling of the names have changed to 'Chishill'. Some of the family history websites standardise the spelling of place names used in searches, so if you put 'Chishall' into the search, it may get changed to 'Chishill'. But it is the old spelling in the records. I have found it very difficult and at times frustrating at times!
As is my normal practice, the draft chapter on this couple is now up on the website, with the resources used.
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