Three Sisters: Fifteen Counties. Lasses from Gunville take on the South.

These are all the counties where it is known the Dibben sisters lived.  I can only count fifteen, but as this is in the space of 1 or maximum two generations, the girls have done very well indeed.

They came from Gunville, in Cranborne Chase, near where Tess of the D'Urbervilles kept poultry for her beloved - that village is named 'Trantridge' in Hardy's chronicles.

The address of Gunville goes back to the will of William Speed of Ansford, 1800 who makes it clear that Mrs Dibben is his sister.  She is quite some way from home, but the whole family were comfortable with long journeys - to markets, to distant churches for weddings.  Her own parents had left their family in Somerset for a rather belated wedding in Dorchester some 30 miles away.

Here are the various places the daughters lived - explaining why it took some time to find them.

• Buckinghamshire - Richard Welford had land here
• Cumberland - Rebecca Dibben journeyed up north with her second husband, a widowed Cumbrian.  Her husband died up there within weeks, and Rebecca returned to Dorset some time later - it is not clear whether she returned immediately or after the birth of her son.
• Hampshire - Abraham Mackreth married here; his mother Rebecca lived here with her third husband John Spragg, market gardener, Ringwood
• Dorset - the Dibben sisters were born or at least grew up here
• Somerset - this is where the Dibben parents married and the eldest child (Mary) was born.  She recalled this fact in her 80s in the 1871 census for Guernsey
• Guernsey - three of the Dibben sisters are documented to have visited Guernsey, two had children there, and one died there
• Sussex - three of the Dibben sisters died here, the eldest one had her eldest child here 70 years previously.  The key draw in Sussex must have been Buggins's Bathing Bath-house in Brunswick, Brighton.  This was technically in Hove and run by Rebecca Dibben's son-in-law, Henry Buggins
• Middlesex - Jane Dibben married her second husband here and possibly lived with her husband in Chancery Lane; she certainly lived briefly at Ashford, Middlesex in a census.  Rebecca Dibben's granddaughter and alleged granddaughter were both born or baptised here.
• Surrey - Jane Dibben's two children were born in historic Surrey (Stockwell and Newington), one was baptised at St Matthew Brixton where the massive nightclub now is (in the crypt).  Later, in 1851, her niece Rosa from Guernsey would be working here as a nursery nurse - in the town of Reigate, before emigrating overseas.  Finally, Jane's eldest child Ellen would ultimately die in this county, in Putney, in her forties.
• Wiltshire - Jane Dibben lived here with her first husband in the market town of Marlborough.  Her eldest sister is stated to have had a child here, too.  Though he was a seafaring man, and it is not a seafaring county.
• Devonshire - Mary Dibben had at least one of her children here, Elizabeth in Plymouth in about 1820.  It has strong seafaring connections
• Herefordshire - Rebecca Dibben's daughter Rebecca Cox found work as a nurse in this county, and married here in 1852 at Little Hereford to the bathing house proprietor of Hove, and it is this marriage which causes many family member to come to Sussex.
• Hertfordshire - Jane Dibben settled here with her second husband, barrister Richard Welford.  It is likely he commuted into London.  He had his own large stables at Goff's Oak House.  His previous residence in the county was at Northaw Downs.  Jane's elder daughter married here at pebbled St Mary Cheshunt
• Kent - this is where Jane Dibben's only surviving child made her home
• Warwickshire - Jane Dibben went to live in isolated Allesley, outside Coventry after her husband become district judge.  Although he retired here, and her daughter married here, she left for Brighton immediately after his death.

Plus:

• Cheshire - this was the home of Rebecca Dibben's son Abraham's in-laws.  He stayed with them briefly, but the marriage broke up

There was actually a fourth sister, but she is not as exciting as the others.  For starters, she actually gets married in the local church - none of her other sisters do that.  In fact all the other sisters have missing marriages.  Also - she never branches out on her own.  She does visit her sister in Guernsey and of course end up in Sussex, but she is not the trailblazer.

 

  A family history video story has been uploaded to YouTube.

Everything but the Pit Yakkers: Counties Occupied by a Somerset Farming Family

Have you ever dreamt of your descendants occupying the whole of England?*

With scarcely any artistic licence, the Hutton family from Ditcheat, Somerset, stand out for me as having occupied every single English county (bar one - clue is the accent) since the original couple married in 1788.  As you'll see the majority of these counties were populated within three generations (number in parentheses) and by folk of the actual name Hutton.  These were offspring of the eldest son, by and large, William.  Several sons and grandsons managed big estates, which accounts for a new jumping-off point for the next generation.

I have left in Nottinghamshire, as surely somebody from the Warwickshire or Leicestershire families popped across the border at some point or other.  This post will self-destruct by 2016 if I haven't found a Nottinghamshire Hutton by then.

I have included counties if someone was documented to have lived there, or if a vital event took place there.  Weak counties so far include Bedfordshire (1881 census only) and Cumbria (where a birth happened in 1918).

The list of ceremonial counties are minimised to include all the amalgamated counties of 1974, but none of the new ones that were introduced the same day *wink*.  A poncier definition might be - all current ceremonial counties are included, except where these were wholly contained in one or more pre-1974 counties.

Bedfordshire - Harry Hutton (3)
Berkshire - Arthur Alford (4)
Buckinghamshire - Pat Haill (5)
Cambridgeshire - Henry Plaister (2)
Cheshire - Martha Preece (4)
Cornwall - Dawn Cossey (5)
Cumbria - Gladys Hutton (4)
Derbyshire - Alfred Moody (3)
Devon - Richard Plaister (3), David Hutton (5)
Dorset - Mary Hutton (Beck) (4)
Durham (Co) - 
Essex - Francis Price (3)
Gloucestershire - Emily Plaister (2), Reginald Hutton (4)
Greater London - Jane Hutton (1), William Plaister (2), Evelyn Hutton (3)
Hampshire - Elizabeth Hutton (Morrish) (1)
Herefordshire - Thomas Hutton (3?), Annie Griffin (4)
Hertfordshire - Annie Price (3)
Huntingdonshire - Mary Plaister (3)
Kent - Edmund Hutton (3)
Lancashire - William Preece (4)
Leicestershire - Philip Hutton (4)
Lincolnshire - Jane Chippett (2)
Middlesex - Mary Chippett (2)
Norfolk - Alfred Morley (5), Molly Snelling (5)
Northamptonshire - Robert King (3), Philip Hutton (4)
Northumberland - Anthony Beck (5)
Nottinghamshire - surely somebody!
Oxfordshire - Maurice Hutton (4)
Shropshire - Thomas Hutton (3)
Somerset - Robert Hutton (2)
Staffordshire - Nellie Moody (4)
Suffolk - Mary King (3), John Preece (4), Ernest Hutton (4)
Surrey - Henry Hutton (2), Arthur Barlow (3)
Sussex - Ellen Hutton (4), Herbert Hutton (4)
Warwickshire - Ellen Hutton (Pullen) (2), Albert Tilling (3)
Wiltshire - Elizabeth Hutton (Preece) (3), Robert Hutton (3)
Worcestershire - William Kingston (5)
Yorkshire - Ethel Snape (4), Ronald Heard (5)

*It is hard work creating catchy first-lines

The Something, The Baker, the er- Mint-cake Maker?

Everyone knows the fiction: get within a dilating pupil of a mountain and you need ridiculous amounts of sugar.  Now!

Considering the last relative in Windermere was a mint-cake millionaire, how come we never saw a single SLICE.  Or even a photograph of someone else eating a slice.

My aunt writes:
'I was fascinated by all the family news but it has stretched so far that I can only really grasp the Aireys and the Bagshaws. I remember my mother visiting her Atkinson relatives when staying with Auntie Louie who had a parrot.'

T

Now she gets down to business:
'They went to see the mint cake being made at the factory and my mother having the sweet tooth that you have correctly shown as running through the family, even to its outer-most edges, was disgusted when they were not given a sample or better still a few whopping slabs of the mint cake. Atkinson's meanness was legendary!'

The Atkinson brothers had married into the Aireys (twice in fact). They were based in Windermere, apparently, but this is the first I'd heard of them.  In fact, I'd never heard this story before, which seeing as it is about the absence of sweets, rather than sweets themselves is perhaps not surprising.  Stingy sweetmakers not being our finest family product.

Rivalling the claim for best family product is our excellent sweet tooth.  My dentist hasn't seen me for years as he says there is 'no point'.  His busy accounting software beeped several times when I came in - perhaps it knew there was no money to be made here.  Five generations of eating baked northern goodies have kept the plaque-monkeys at bay!

There is a business called Country Confectionery in Bowness, which seems to be run by the Atkinsons.  It is quite a small shop, but doubtless does a good trade and the above comments concerning 1940s Atkinsons are in no way meant to apply to the current ones (phew).  The Kendal Mint Cake by a rival company dwarves the shop in the above illustrations, doesn't it.

Umpteenth cousins Ken and Lorraine couldn't resist calling into a great cafe in Ambleside when they visited.  Lots of cakes were consumed.  In fact, Ken's Whiteheads were bakers who got ousted from their property in town by the more money-grabbing Airey cousins.  Presumably the Whiteheads actually let people eat some of their produce.

Our childhood family holidays centred around amazing moments when Eccles cakes, lardy cake, cream horns, mint humbugs - or our favourite calling point - a sweetshop on a hill in Guildford, all came to fruition and waxed their lyrical bounty.