Person:Mary Farr (29)

Mary Farr’s origins are unclear. Her first confirmed sighting is her marriage on 24th December 1792 at South Bersted in Sussex to a blacksmith called William Hammond. At that time she was said to be twenty years old, implying that she was born around 1772, and her marriage licence records that her father was a husbandman called George Farr who was living at Fernhurst at the time, about twenty miles north of South Bersted, although Mary was said to have been living in South Bersted for a year by the time of her marriage.

William was a widower whose first wife had died just over a year before William and Mary’s marriage. He was about 26 years Mary’s senior and had seven children from his first marriage who became Mary’s stepchildren, although the youngest died aged one about the same time as William and Mary’s marriage, being buried just four days later.

Mary and William went on to have another ten children baptised at South Bersted between 1793 and 1814, although at least one died young. Their youngest daughter’s baptism notes that the family lived at North Bersted, which was a hamlet in the parish of South Bersted. The parish of South Bersted also included the fishing village of Bognor, which was just starting to be developed into a seaside resort at the time of their marriage. By 1830 Mary and William had moved into Bognor.

Mary died in 1830, being buried at South Bersted on 5th July 1830. She was said to be 53 years old, although the age given when she had married would suggest she was actually closer to 58. William survived her by three years.

1. ↑ Easebourne, Sussex: Parish Registers (West Sussex Record Office, Chichester).

   Mary’s marriage licence of 1792 says that her father was a husbandman called George Farr who was then living at Fernhurst, and implies that she was born around 1772. A couple called George and Mary Farr were having children at Easebourne, the neighbouring parish to Fernhurst, in the 1770s, with a gap between their children baptised in 1770 and 1777. In the Easebourne parish registers for that period there is also a gap, with a note:
   
   “That part of the Register, which is here omitted is reported to have been accidentally burnt by the clerk of the parish, several years back.
   Dec[ember] 11th 1820”

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

   BURIALS in the Parish of South Bersted in the County of Sussex in the Year 1830
   No	Name	Abode	When buried	Age	By whom the Ceremony was performed
   457	Mary Hammond	Bognor	July 5th	53 years [1776/7]	E. Eedle Vicar