Person:Susannah Bollard (1)

Susannah Bollard's origins have yet to be established. If the age quoted when she died is correct then she was born around 1765. Her first confirmed sighting is on 17th September 1787 when she was married at North Mundham in Sussex to a James Edwards. At the time of their marriage she was described as living in North Mundham, although there do not appear to have been any other Bollards (or variants) recorded in the parish registers at North Mundham prior to this, with the exception of a single marriage in 1769 between a John Ballard and Sarah Ailing. At the time of Susannah and James's marriage she was living in North Mundham, whilst he was described as living in Eastbourne, fifty miles east of North Mundham.

After their marriage, Susannah and James moved from North Mundham to the neighbouring parish of Pagham, where they had ten children between 1787 and 1807. Their eldest daughter was baptised just two months after their marriage. This was the period of the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Wars. The threat of a possible invasion from France was much feared in Britain, and low-lying coastal Pagham with its beaches and natural harbour would have felt particularly vulnerable.

Susannah and James's son Henry would later give his birthplace as Lagness, a hamlet in Pagham parish on the road linking Pagham with the nearby city of Chichester. Of Susannah and James's ten children two died as babies.

James has yet to be traced after the baptism of their youngest child in 1807. Susannah's daughter Mary was married later that year and Susannah's first grandchild was born the following year. All eight of Susannah's children who lived to adulthood married, and she lived to see 38 grandchildren born in her lifetime, all born in Sussex.

Susannah was buried on 7th February 1832 at Pagham. She had been living at Lagness immediately before her death. She was said to be 66 years old.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Burials register, in Church of England. Parish Church of Pagham (Sussex). Parish registers for Pagham, 1707-1901. (Chichester: West Sussex County Council).

   BURIALS in the Parish of Pagham in the County of Sussex in the Year 1832
   No	Name	Abode	When buried	Age	By whom the Ceremony was performed
   341	Susan Edwards	Lagness	Febr[uar]y 7	66 y[ea]rs [1765/6]	G.T. Hudson, Curate