Susan Budgen (1795-1870) and George Tulley (1787-1837).
My 4th great-grand aunt and uncle.
Susan Budgen was baptised on 19 April 1795 in St Nicholas’s Church in Worth to parents William Budgen and Betty Streeter and grew up in the village.
She married George Tulley on 16 October 1820 in Nuthurst, Sussex, an 11 or so mile journey from her home. He hailed from Slaugham, a village between Nuthurst and Worth, and was born in around 1787 to parents John and Mary Tulley. He was baptised at St Mary’s in Slaugham aged about five on 7 December 1792.
George was described as a farmer on the first two baptism records for his children but from the 1827 baptism of his third child he was listed as a victualler or publican.
The Sussex Advertiser of 13 May 1833 mentioned the sale by auction of several pieces of land in Slaugham that were occupied by a George Tulley. It’s possible this is our man but there were others by the name in the area. The sale was on behalf of the executors of a John Tulley of Bath, who sounds like a relative. George was occupying a messuage or tenement, large garden and three fields of excellent meadow land totalling five acres called Polestub or Pollards, yielding an annual rent of £12 9s. He was also occupier of a barn, stable, yard, cow hovel, cart shed, other outbuildings and about 10 acres of good arable land, all called Parcel of Herrings. The annual rent was £19.
Whether this was our George or not, my ancester died aged just 47 in 1837. He was buried in Slaugham on 20 January. Susan took on the pub licence and she was listed as a publican in her own right in the 1841 census, although the pub itself was not named. The 1851 census and Kelly’s Directory for Sussex of that year named it as the Half Moon in Warninglid (a settlement within the Slaugham parish). The Sussex Advertiser of 11 March 1856 reported on the meeting of the Cuckfield Petty Sessions at which the transfer of the pub licence was made from Susan to her son George Jnr.
By the 1861 census Susan was living with her agricultural labourer son Joseph in Slaugham. A Susan Tulley was buried in the village on 14 November 1870, said to be aged 78 and from Horsham. Her son Joseph had, by this time, moved to a hamlet near to Horsham with his family and was working as a cowman. The hamlet was Crab Tree, close to the village of Lower Beeding.
Susan and George Snr’s children were:
- Harriet Tulley (1821-1909) was baptised in Slaugham and married farmer Charles Gander in Bolney, Sussex, in 1840. She raised a family with him in and around Slinfold at Old House Farm. He died in the village in 1891 and Harriet went to live in Billingshurst as a widow. She died in 1909 and was buried back in Slinfold.
- William Tulley (1822-1846) was baptised and buried in Slaugham.
- Francis Tulley (1827-1881) was baptised in Slaugham and became a stonemason by trade, although the 1881 census listed him as a hawker. He married Fanny Pellett of Ditchling, Sussex, in Brighton in 1849 and raised a family in Cuckfield and Slaugham. He was buried in Slaugham in 1881. Fanny died in 1891 and was buried in Staplefield.
- George Tulley (1829-1901) was baptised in Slaugham and had a number of occupations over the years. He became a publican when he took over the licence of the Half Moon in Warninglid from his mother in 1856 – the same year that he married Philadelphia Baines – but also worked as a dairyman and gardener in Sussex, Leatherhead in Surrey and Stratford in Essex. The couple had children. Philadelphia’s death was registered in Essex 1896. George’s death was registered in West Ham, Essex, in 1901.
- Joseph Tulley (1831-1892) was baptised in Slaugham. He married Margaret Gasson in Staplefield, Sussex, in 1856, lived for a time in Slaugham but mostly were found in Lower Beeding, Sussex. They had a family and Joseph worked as an agricultural labourer. They both died in 1892, Margaret a few months before her husband.
- Charles Tulley (1833-1870) was baptised and buried in Slaugham. He worked as a wheelwright and for a time was employed by and boarded with a wheelwright in Charlwood, Surrey. He was living in Horsham, Sussex, at his death in 1870.
- John Tulley (1834-1935) was baptised in Slaugham and became a carpenter. He married Maria Rudrum of Camberwell, Surrey, in 1863 and had several children, moving around the south east of England as he built up his own building business. Census records put him in Preston, a suburb of Brighton, in 1881; Croydon in Surrey in 1891 and around Bournemouth in Hampshire from 1901. He retired in his 50s. Maria died in 1913 but John lived to the grand age of 102 in Bournemouth and died in 1935. One of his passions was gardening and growing chrysanthemums (Hampshire Advertiser 26 October 1935) – he’d even survived falling through his greenhouse at the age of 95 without injury (Bournemouth Graphic 26 October 1935).
Sources: Birth, marriage, death and burial records including civil registrations from the General Register Office, census returns and other records at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Sussex Family History Group. British Newspaper Archive, titles referred to in text. Slaugham Archives.