New Buckenham Castle and the village of New Buckenham
As these pages have grown you will find many family groups from surrounding villages who, it would seem, are likely to have some link with the CHILVERS in Old Buckenham. None more so, perhaps, than the CHILVERS from New Buckenham.
Old and New Buckenham have, since the time of the Norman Conquest, been sister villages, being a mere mile apart. If there are no links between the CHILVERS in New Buckenham at the turn of the 19th century and the Old Buckenham CHILVERS then I'll give up this genealogy lark!!
The earliest CHILVERS reference we have in New Buckenham is 13 November 1750 when Sarah CHILVERS married Richard CATTERMOLE. The couple were both stated to be from New Buckenham. They had five children recorded in the New Buckenham registers: Elizabeth (bapt. 2 Oct 1763), Richard (bapt.16 Sep 1751), James (bapt. 2 Feb 1751 or 1752), Mary (bapt. 5 May 1754) and John (bapt. 1 Jun 1756). We have no links with Sarah to anyone other CHILVERS at present - but I'm sure time will change that.
We start our quest with a John CHILVERS who was baptised in Old Buckenham (see - told you there was a link with my branch of the family!!) on 21 October 1766. His parents were John and Mary CHILVERS. The date of baptism would put John snr's birth date around 1740-ish with their marriage somewhere around the early 1760s. If you remember that Joseph and Margaret CHILVERS, my ancestors, were married in Carleton Rode in 1759 we could be getting close. Absolute, pure speculation, but could John and Joseph have been brothers? Joseph certainly had a son named John, and although clearly not an unusual name may it be significant as a "family name"?
But to get back to "young" John. He married Ann ALDOUS on 11 October 1796 in New Buckenham. Ann was baptised on 5 January 1766 in Wilby, about 3 miles west of New Buckenham. They had three children that we know of: George (born 30 July 1797), Henry (born 23 September 1799) and John (born 7 May 1806).
At this point we can also note the marriage of John ALDOUS, a widower and one of Ann's brothers, to a Mary CHILVERS from Winfarthing on 4 January 1802 in New Buckenham. This perhaps indicates a link between the CHILVERS around the Buckenhams, and CHILVERS just slightly further afield - Winfarthing is part way to Shelfanger, where another group of CHILVERS lived.
As I've mentioned elsewhere on 1st and 2nd August 1803 a list was compiled in New Buckenham of individuals "between the age of 15 and upwards". This shows a John CHILVERS, a labourer aged 32, married with two children. Accepting that ages are very inaccurately recorded at the time this would appear to be the John we're interested in. There is a George CHILVERS too, 67 and a widower. We don't know who he is - but with another 1740-ish birth date he could be an uncle maybe, brother of "older" John and/or Joseph of Old Buckenham?
Henry married Sophia CATERMOUL on 12 October 1820 in New Buckenham. Remember that our earliest (to date) CHILVERS reference in New Buckenham is Sarah marrying Richard CATTERMOLE in 1750. Obviously there were close family links.
But it's George we'll stick with at present. He married a widow, Sarah MOORE née DIXON on 2 May 1820 in Burston, again not too far away, just a bit further south past Winfarthing and Shelfanger.
John and Ann both died not long afterwards - John in August 1829 and Ann in September 1832, both being buried in New Buckenham.
George and Sarah had a number of children in New Buckenham: Mary Ann (born 9 February 1821), Elizabeth (born 22 December 1822), John (born 21 February 1825, but died 21 May 1826), Pamela (born 25 February 1827 but died two weeks later on 7 March 1827) and another John born 5 December 1831.
In the 1841 census shows the couple in Marsh Lane, New Buckenham. George, described as a Hawker, and Sarah are both said to be 45 (but this was inaccurate in the 1841 census) and had one child at home, John aged 9, as well as a 15-year-old girl Maria HOWLING.
They then made a monumentous decision to emigrate, and on 9 June 1849 George and Sarah, and a son and daughter, and two grand-children arrived into Botany Bay, Sydney, Australia aboard the James Gibb having left London on 24 January 1849 and the Downs on 29 January. The James Gibb was a ship of 815 tons and sailed under Master Jackson. It was described as carrying "284 immigrants - English, Irish, Scot - mostly mechanics". Years later the ship itself foundered on Seska Reef in the Gulf of Finland on 7 June 1862.
The children were Mary and John, and the grand-children were Mary's Eliza (born 1844) and William SPARROW (born 1846). She had married Jeremiah SPARROW in Guiltcross in the December quarter of 1843 (Vol 13 Page 404 refers). There is the record of the death of a Jeremiah SPARROW in Thetford RD in Norfolk in the December quarter of 1846. Jeremiah can be found in the 1841 census as an Ag Lab in Old Buckenham in the household of William and Mary WINGFIELD in Church Green. The name has been incorrectly transcribed as SPARSON.
George and Sarah and family moved west a few days after arrival to Bathurst, about 200km from Sydney. The town was transformed soon after the couple's arrival in Australia, by the discovery of gold in 1851.
Mary did not remain a grieving widow too long in her new-found life and remarried on 18 March 1856 in the Wesleyan Parsonage in Bathurst to John SANDERSON. The couple had some children, and she died on 29 April 1909 in Leichardt NSW.
Sarah however died relatively soon after, on 31 January 1857, but there were more celebrations in the family a few months later when John married Ann FROST on 16 Apr 1857 in Bathurst Wesleyan Parsonage. Ann was born in 1826 in Northampton and had arrived on the Ascendant on 25 May 1855 in Sydney, the ship having set sail from Southampton on 17 November 1854.
John was a bootmaker, and was a member of the Loyal Kincora Oddfellows from around 1857, presumably actually the founding of the Bathurst Odd Fellows Lodge on Anniversary Day 26 January 1857. He and Ann had a number of children: Sarah Ann (born 23 April 1858), John (21 November 1859 - became a bootmaker), Mary Elizabeth (6 October 1861), William Henry (1863 - he too was a bootmaker), George (1865), Harriet (6 September 1867) and Thomas James (29 March 1870). All the children were born in Bathurst.
George snr (John's father) died on 10 May 1865 in Liverpool NSW, the same year that "young" George was born to John and Ann.
Ann died on 23 February 1900 in Bathurst, and John died on 10 October 1906, the local press reporting "Another old and highly respected identity of Bathurst passed away yesterday afternoon at 1.30 in the person of Mr. John Chilvers at the age of 75 years."
The children all went their own ways - Sarah married George Walter WOOD in 1883, moved to Liverpool then Granville where she diedin 1933.
John married Mary STREETER also in 1883,moved to Waterloo then Millthorpe before retiring to Strathfield where he died in 1943. Mary moved to Sydney where she died on 1 June 1913. William married Mary RYAN in 1893, and the couple had 5 children, born variously in Orange, Waterloo and Lithgow in NSW, and William was in Newtown at the time of his death in 1935.
George moved north to Queensland, and Harriet married Nelson Howe John McAPPION in 1884 in Waterloo, Nelson was a blacksmith from Tambaroora, the son of a gold miner. Harriet and Nelson moved back to Bathurst before moving to Surry Hills, then to Burwood/ Strathfield. From the latter part of the 1920�s John and Harriet actually lived in adjoining suburbs. The couple had 6 children, two sons of whom also became bootmakers. Harriet died in 1942, but Nelson lived on until 9 December 1951 (when I was 15 days old), to the age of 86. Thomas married Bridged CAREY in 1892, and he died in 1938 in Mascot NSW.
Page last updated 18 February 2007