FAMLY HISTORY UPDATES

More about mariners: Clarence, Henry and Sidney Barcham

When researching family history it is remarkable what turns up in the most unexpected places. By family lore it was known that Clarence, Henry and Sidney Barcham, sons of Ann (née Edwards) and William Ayres Barcham, became mariners, but only Henry’s career was known until this year when Chris Farrow visited the Scilly Isles. At the Isles of Scilly Museum on St Mary’s, Chris had a chance meeting with Roger Banfield, a local genealogist who is a descendant of Francis Banfield, owner of the three-mast barque Chieftain, a tea-clipper built by Thomas Edwards and commanded by Anne’s brother Richard Edwards. Roger had a transcript of the 1851 Crew List of the Chieftain which named Clarence and Sidney Burcham [sic] indentured to their maternal uncle. [previously, Chris had assumed that the brothers had sailed to China with their paternal uncle, Robert Barcham, aboard the Salamander. The Chieftain made a number of voyages to China from 1847 until May 1855, when she was dismasted and badly damaged in a typhoon off Pollilo Island, Phillipines, while sailing from Shanghai. She put into Hong Kong for repairs, then sailed to Rotterdam where the ship was condemned and sold for scrap.

It is known that Captain Richard Edwards became master of coastal trading ships, sailing from the Scilly Isles. Clarence and Sidney may have joined another ship in Hong Kong, because it is known that Clarence was murdered by a ship’s cook on 22 November 1866, and buried on Formosa by his brother. It is not known if Clarence received his Master’s Certificate of Competence because the surviving Lloyd’s Captain’s Register lists only those who were in active service in 1859. The Mercantile Navy List for 1861 shows that Sidney gained his Second Mate’s Certificate of Competence in London in 1855, presumably before sailing on the Chieftain’s last voyage to Shanghai. Since he is not listed in Lloyd’s Captain’s Register, Sidney probably left the merchant navy in about 1865, and settled in Australia before migrating from Melbourne to Dunedin as a steerage passenger aboard the South Australia in December 1865.

Meanwhile Clarence and Sidney’s brother, Henry, had married Jane Richards in 1854 and settled in Portland, Victoria. This year, Chris visited the tiny, picturesque Zennor Church Village, near St Ives on the north coast of Cornwall, where Jane’s father had been a shoemaker before he and his large family sailed to Australia aboard the Nestor in 1854. Sidney was probably going to visit Henry and Jane in Melbourne when he died aboard the Te Anau on 14 July 1882, aged 48.

Descendants of Benjamin Barcham of Sherringham

This year we have heard from persons related to five different limbs of the Sherringham branch of the Barcham family, two of whom are in Australia:

Karly, wife of Benjamin John Barcham: Benjamin is a third-great grandson of Neal Raven Barcham’s son James (b. 1826 at Sherringham) who married Susan Ann James. Susan Ann and James Barcham lived at 71 Wellesley Street, Mile End, London. They had nine children, of whom the third was George Nicholas (b. 1857) who married Amelia Noakes and had six children, the fifth being Leslie Raven (b. 1904) who married in 1949 and emigrated with his wife, Mavis, to Australia in 1950, at which time she was pregnant with her first child. Mavis died in 2004, and Leslie, now 79, is ‘often caught tinkering with things’ according to his daughter-in-law Karly.

Muriel Crowe, a great-great-niece of Nicolas Harland Barcham’s wife Maria Crowe: Nicholas Harland (b. 1830 at Sherringham) was the son of Neal Raven Barcham. Nicholas Harland and Maria Crowe (b. 1830 at Roughton, Norfolk) lived in the small town of Holt, Norfolk, where their four children were born. The two eldest, Catherine Maria and Frederick lived in Heigham, a suburb of Norwich, and in Fishgate Street, Norwich respectively. The third child, Alfred Charles (b. 1861 at Heigham), was a draper’s assistant at a large general drapery and clothing store on Westbourne Grove, Paddington, London, belonging to Owen Williams. The single employees, aged in their 20s, were accommodated in residences in Westbourne Grove Terrace - living, working and playing together - Alfred with about 20 other young men at number 4; and unmarried women in another residence in the terrace. Maria and Nicholas Harland’s youngest child, Eliza (b. June 1864 at Heigham), married William Parfett, a hansom cab driver, working from cab ranks at Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross stations; they lived in Islington, London.

Robert Emery, related to James Emery, a carpenter living in Beeston Regis, Norfolk in 1881: James married Eliza, the granddaughter of Maria Ann (nee Sunman) and Barcham Barcham. In about 1896, Eliza and James adopted Eliza’s nephew Stanley (b. about 1887) whose mother had just died: Stanley took his step-father’s name: his birth parents were Rachel Ester (nee Grimes) and Benjamin Barcham. Beeston Regis, one mile south-east of Sherringham, was a village and parish of 850 acres of land where Samuel Fuller (b. 1824), son of Mary Ann Barcham and Samuel Fuller, was farming 160 acres in 1881.

Judy Brown, sister-in-law of Julie Ann Barcham, and Nicola, wife of Paul Yorke, gave us information about the descendants of Stanley Emery’s younger brother Reginald Barcham. Reginald (b. 1889 at Sherringham) married Eileen Kerr of Dublin; and their son Kenneth Grosvenor Barcham emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in about 1950.

There is an interesting link between the Barcham/Shalders family of Worstead and a branch of the Emery family that lived in Scottow. John Barcham of Church Farm, Edingthorpe, married Elizabeth Helsdon of Bradfield in 1755. Their grand-daughter Elizabeth Shalders (b. 1811 at Worstead) married Helsdon Learner (or Larner). The latter was the nephew of Benjamin Helsdon (b. 1792 at Antingham), whose daughter Caroline (b. 1829 at Antingham) married James Emery (b. 1811 at Sidestrand) in 1857, at Northrepps. In 1881, Caroline, James and their four children were living in Scottow, where James was farming 273 acres of land. One of their sons, George (b. 1864) married his cousin, Alice Helsdon (b. 1863 in London).

Sheila Tytel provided information on the descendants of Maria Banfather, the sixth child of Maria Ann (née Sunman) and Barcham Barcham. Maria (b. 1831, at Sherringham) married Richard Cox (b. 1825 at Sherringham), in 1852 at Sherringham. Richard’s parents were John Cox and Phoebe (née Pegg): these were Sherringham families linked by marriages to other members of the Barcham family, but the common ancestors have not yet been identified. At the time of his marriage in 1775, John Cox was living in Beeston Regis, and Phoebe Pegg was living about 15 miles away at Wood Dalling. Until about 1865, Richard Cox was a fisherman in Sherringham; then he and his wife and four children moved to Great Yarmouth where their fifth child was born; and where Richard owned a fishing smack, Chosen, and a lugger, Cynthia. After a change of ownership, the Cynthia was lost with all hands in October 1876. It is not known if these fishing boats were built by the Barcham shipwrights in Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft.

Descendants of John Barcham

Simon Barcham Green, a descendant of Elizabeth and John Barcham’s daughter Rachel, born 12 February 1788 at Edingthorpe. On 1 February 1809, when she was 21, Rachel married James Beard, a watchmaker residing in Tonbridge, Kent. The marriage did not last long: James died on 21 January 1813. Rachel’s second marriage was to Samuel Green, a builder and surveyor, living in Sevenoaks. Kent.

One of Rachel and Samuel’s four children was John Barcham Green (b. 1823), who owned Hayle Mill at Maidstone, Kent, renowned for Barcham Green handmade art paper. The mill was renowned for making fine, handmade paper – especially artists’ watercolour and printing paper. Hayle Mill was built in 1808, and operated by the Green family from 1813 to 1987, when the production of handmade paper ended. Unfortunately, the mill house was destroyed by fire in June 2003, but the Mill itself was saved and is presently being converted to accommodate residential units, but some areas in the complex will be preserved as an industrial heritage site. Work on the Mill will be completed by 2008. The Green family also kept all the Mill’s production records, and this now comprises the Hayle Mill Archive, still in family ownership. Simon Barcham Green’s wife is presently working on a book about the Mill, which will be published by the Janus Press.