Researching a family's life
By Nicola Benge
June King and twin brother Jack in Fittleworth unveiling new village sign
Photo from WRVS Heritage Plus archive
June King and twin brother Robert in the back row
photo from WRVS Heritage Plus archive
JUNE KING TALKS ABOUT RESEARCHING THE KING FAMILY
The Tree Family
Before I talk to you, I'd like to show you this little book, The Tree Family... it's only handwritten, but I wrote it for my nephews. I have left free pages for them to illustrate it. It's the story of some trees, and how they become useful in the world. I don't suppose it's much good, but I am fond of it.
(June's book is indeed handwritten, and hand sewn into a binding. It is beautifully written...VG)
Starting out
My researches go back to 1983, when a friend of mine was studying with the Open University. She'd done courses on Palladian Houses, I remember that. Then she started something to do with social history. She needed to go to Brighton Library, to consult some old voting records, and I accompanied her.
It's extraordinary, you know. In the 1800s and early 1900s, only men were able to vote. There were only really two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories (Liberals and Conservatives in today's parlance) and whoever won an election was obliged to publish a list of those who had voted for him, and how. Not exactly secret ballots! But it's those records that are so interesting to consult today.
Women finally got the vote in 1918, but you had to be thirty years of age to vote if you were female.
I was born in 1924. And it wasn't until 1928 that women got equal voting rights with men. I find that extraordinary.
Anyway. That was fascinating, that visit.
Then, my friend had to produce a paper for her Open University course saying what she had looked up. And another paper on genealogy. So she decided to go to where all the family records of births marriages and deaths are kept, in St Catherine's House, London. A huge place.
I am so glad I went with her!
Births, marriages and deaths
Let me describe this place to you. It is vast. It holds these huge indexes, great books, each containing three months of records. There is so much to wade through. And sadly, my friend couldn't find her family at all, for some reason. We tried her husband, who had a slightly more unusual surname.
Her family had all lived near Chichester. After she had finished with her own family, "Try the Kings," I said... my family all came from near there... Fittleworth. So she did, and I was off then. So it all started really just to help a friend get a degree. 1984, this was.
Discovering connections
The records for the county of Sussex are kept in Chichester, in an old records office. Everything is on microfiche. My friend was with me when we went to Chichester to start looking up the Kings, and we found so many! All from Fittleworth.
"Write them down, June," my friend said. That was good advice. We wrote down name after name after name from these microfilm records. And do you know, I was able to fit 90% of those names into the family tree later?
I got some information from Parish Registers. But the most interesting sources of information, listing all the names of people living at any one time in the village going back into history, were the Bishop's Transcripts. These were documents that every village had to send to the Bishop each year. The years ran from Easter to Easter, which can cause a little confusion with research... but they record every single birth marriage and death in that year... this is the sixteenth and seventeenth century.
I also used Census Returns, and funnily enough Grandfather King was the enumerator for a number of years. But you have to watch the early census returns. They rounded up children's ages to the nearest five!
I wasn't doing this research all on my own, luckily... I had various friends helping me. And there was already someone who had recorded all the births and deaths from Fittleworth and the surrounding area.
I didn't learn much from gravestones in the local graveyard, actually. There was a very helpful person in the Chichester records office. A very helpful chap.
Research leads to fame!
I became quite well known in the village. So much so that when they were planning a new village sign, and wanted someone to unveil it, and they were looking for a relative of a member of the first village council I was in the right place. And of course, there'd been a King on the Council, so I was chosen. More of that later.
But during the celebrations for that I saw a huge plan of the graveyard, done by some friends of my brothers, I think. There was so much going on that day, it was so noisy, it was hard to concentrate on anything, and I didn't get a copy.
But I have researched the King family, my father's family... who all came from Fittleworth, right back to the 1630s. Before that they lived in Tillington. With the help of their wills, I have traced the family back to 1490.
Tracing back
They were all yeomen farmers, but it's funny... there was one man right back in 1630s, who also is recorded as making waistcoats for the poor. That is interesting because my father was a tailor. Then there was Richard, who died in 1634, he was a weaver... I know this because I have seen the inventories that were made up following the deaths at the time... he is recorded as leaving weaving equipment, as well as land, chickens, sheep, and a painted cloth on the hall of the Pitt garden in Fittleworth.
His son Richard must have also had some interest in weaving... when he died in 1673 he had the same equipment in his inventory, and a small holding that is described as having 'wheat and rye standing", that is, not yet harvested.
Stories in family histories
I found out all sorts of little family histories. Incidents like the burning down of the Stretch Hill cottages in the 1700s... they burned down because the fire brigade couldn't get to them in time. And then there was the man who fell out with his son in the 1700s, again, and left everything to his grandson. There are stories everywhere, I suppose.
My great grandfather Henry King was a middle child, born in 1837. He didn't own his own house, but rented it from the then Lord Leconfield.
It was interesting, when I visited Fittleworth on one occasion I met a woman who told me, that her family had rented one of her fields to my great grandfather so that he could drive his cows in.
He wasn't just a farmer... he also ran the Post office for a time, and ran a mixed farm... dairy and meat. His wife Mary's family were butchers...but he also did building work on the Leconfield Estate. He had the contract to keep the estate houses in order. The doors and windows on every one was painted a bright yellow. I think they still are, today.
Family exploits
This ability to turn his hand to many things seems to ruin in the family. One of his sons, not my grandfather, was a bricklayer, a plumber and a carpenter. It was said to me that they were a useful family to know in the village.
Then there was a Ted, or a Charles, who fell off a roof and had to have a metal plate in his head. He has a half crown pension for the rest of his life. That happened roughly in 1880 or 1890.
I turned up a ghost story too! When Henry and his wife moved to Ivy House in Fittleworth, they turned out an old lady called Biddy. She is supposed to have cursed all the King's women after that, and her ghost used to turn up in Ivy House.
They used to take in paying guests... Ivy House was a guesthouse for a while. And my grandmother saw old Biddy. And so did my father's sister Hannah... she reckoned Biddy came and looked at her when she was in bed, then went out through the wall. Hannah would never stay in ivy house after that!
Gladys was Dad's cousin, and she went to help in the guesthouse... and she used to say she saw Biddy a lot. Apparently, Biddy was all in grey... but it was believed that people in grey who came back were not a threat.
Some time after that, Ivy House was turned back into two cottages, as it had been originally, and its thought that put Biddy to rest. I have spoken to the lady who lives in the house now and she has never seen Biddy, so maybe that's right.
The cursing of the King women
But Biddy had cursed the King women. And there was Aunt Polly who never married. She had a hard life running things and her mother to look after, as well as three unmarried brothers. My grandmother was not cursed, but she lost a son in the Great War. Then Dad's sister Hannah, called Nan, the one who saw Biddy go through the wall... she was killed in 1943 in a plane crash in the Mediterranean. They'd survived the bombing there in Malta, took off on a foggy day, and the plane went into the sea with her husband Ted. They had no children.
My grandfather's other daughter, May, had two sons in the navy. The older one, Donald, lost his life on a ship in the Mediterranean. My grandmother told me that she saw Donald after that, coming down and gathering Nan and Ted from the sea. Grandma was a very down-to earth woman. She was not fanciful at all.
I suppose as they say there's more in heaven and earth...
Unveiling of the village sign
Well, back to the village sign unveiling. Mrs Salmon, of Fittleworth, who ran the education college, got to know of me, and I was asked to do the unveiling. I had been down to the village so much... poked around in Ivy House with my nephew and niece, and Met Mrs Jean Harvey who lived in Ivy House then. She'd had lots of work done. They'd uncovered old ovens and so forth. There were some very old wall paintings. They're now at the Weald and DownlandMuseum.
Mrs Salmon had done much research, and knew of properties where the King family lived in the area going back centuries. The owners of the Pitt garden were most helpful and I was taken all over the house. I sat in the window seat my family had known since 1600.
It was 100 years since the formation of the parish Council, hence the new village sign as part of the celebrations. One of the first members of this parish Council had been my great grandfather. He had been chairman for several years.
Fittleworth were tracing family members of those first councillors, and I was the only one they could find. It was a very special occasion, in September 1994. I went down with my twin brother. It is fascinating... the mix of people on the parish council now is builders, farmers and so on. Exactly as 100 years ago.
Research decisions
Still. What am I going to do with all my research now? (She shows me two huge files, tied with tape) I thought it might go to my nephews. Steve indulges me, his old Aunt June, and funnily enough, my brother just wasn't seriously interested in all this.
I have no interest in tracing living relatives. There are too many and they don't mean much really now. I remember when a distant relative of my father's died, and they advertised for relatives, hundreds turned up! They weren't family, they were all in laws.
I've never known a family with so many people dying without issue. Maybe Biddy had a point after all.