Person:George Hammond (25)

George Hammond was baptised on 5th September 1780 at South Bersted on the Sussex coast, son of Sarah Hammond, formerly Stocker, and her husband George Hammond, a blacksmith.

On 7th July 1803, aged 22, George married Ann Ewen in the nearby city of Chichester, at the church of St Peter the Less. She appears to have been from Mid Lavant, a couple of miles north of the city. Three months later they had a daughter, Harriet, baptised at Funtington, about three miles west of Mid Lavant.

Ann died when she was only 25 years old, having been married for less than eighteen months. She was buried at Mid Lavant on 7th January 1805.

Just over a year later, George married again. His second wife was Elizabeth Ewen and they married on 19th January 1806 at St Andrew’s church in Chichester. An Elizabeth Ewen had been one of the witnesses to George’s first marriage – it is entirely possible therefore that Elizabeth was a relative of George’s first wife.

George and Elizabeth went on to have another nine children together between 1807 and 1825, although their eldest appears to have died as a baby, being buried at Mid Lavant a month after her baptism. All the children were baptised in Chichester, although in three different parishes within the city – St Andrew, St Peter the Great and St Pancras. George worked as a baker.

Back in South Bersted, George’s mother died in 1827.

George died in 1835, aged 54. He was buried at St Pancras’ church in Chichester on 7th July 1835. Elizabeth survived him by nearly nine years. His father also outlived him.

1. ↑ Church of England. Parish Church of South Bersted (Sussex). Parish registers of South Bersted, 1564-1904. (Chichester: West Sussex County Council).

   1780 / Sept[embe]r 5th / George; Son of George & Sarah Hammond

   This baptism has been linked to the George Hammond who married first Ann Ewen and second Elizabeth Ewen on the basis that George and Elizabeth’s daughter Louisa’s son William Butt appears in the 1841 census living with this George’s sisters Elizabeth and Grace, and in the 1851 census just with Elizabeth but explicitly described as her great-nephew. The 1841 census also finds George and Ann’s daughter Harriet’s son Henry Rush living with George’s widow Elizabeth and two sons from his second marriage, indicating that it was the same George Hammond who married both Ann Ewen in 1803 and Elizabeth Ewen in 1806. The other similarly aged George Hammond from South Bersted, who was baptised there in 1782, will therefore presumably be the man who married Sarah King and remained in South Bersted.

2. ↑ Sussex Family History Group. Sussex Burials.

   bur. 7 Jul 1835, Chichester (St Pancras): George Hammond, 44 [1790/1]

   Although the age is ten years out, this seems to be the only plausible burial, being in the parish in which George’s youngest son was baptised in 1825 and in which George’s widow and children were still living in 1841.