7. BUSHELL-HOGBEAN

Baker Tree

JAMES BUSHELL and MARY HOGBEAN (7)

 

JAMES BUSHELL. This couple raised their family in Margate on the north-east coast of Kent. From the date of their wedding we would expect James to have been born around 1745. There is just one baptism that fits this, in Minster in Thanet, five miles south of Margate

Baptism. St Mary the Virgin, Minster in Thanet.
1743 May 5  James son of Richard & Anne Bushell
His mother was the yeoman’s daughter Anne Minter.

James’s father was also a yeoman’s son, but he appears not to have followed in his father’s footsteps. At his burial, he is “Richard Bushell, housekeeper” (householder). As a younger son, he inherited only a quarter of his father’s estate, and may not have been able to afford a viable farm.

The family used Minster church, but James’s grandfather’s farm appears to have been in Monkton, just east of Minster.

When James was 13, he was apprenticed to John Baxter, carpenter of Monkton. The fee was 10s.

 

MARY HOGBEAN. Weddings usually take place in the bride’s parish. We know from the banns of her marriage that Mary married in St John in Thanet (Margate) but that she was of the parish of Monkton. This makes it most likely that she was the daughter of Michael Hogben and Elizabeth Merriams, baptised in Birchington, a village on the coast just west of Margate, on 18 Oct 1747. Her parents had married in Monkton that year.

Monkton was also the home of the early Bushells.

This marriage between James and Mary took place at the parish church of St John the Baptist, possibly on 10 June 1770. Mary would have been 23 and James 27.

Banns. St John in Thanet (Margate)
1770 May 27, June 3, 5, 10.  James Bushell of this parish & Mary Hogbean of the parish of Monkton.

The couple had a son James, born on 7 April and baptised in Margate on 28 April 1771. No other children have been found for them in that parish, and the dates would fit well with a subsequent move to Deal. We know that they had three daughters baptised in the parish of St Leonard’s there.

Baptisms. St Leonard, Deal.
1773 May 23 Elizabeth
1775 Dec 10 Ann
1781 May 27 Mary

James senior died five years after Mary’s birth.

Burial. St Leonard, Deal.
1786 Nov 2  James Bushell   Parish.
This meant that he was given a pauper’s burial, at the parish’s expense. The young family would have grown up in poverty.

Their son James became a baker.

When she was 20, their eldest daughter Elizabeth had an illegitimate son, Thomas, followed by two others, Daniel and Henry. This suggests that she may have been a prostitute. It was quite common for grandparents to absorb one such fatherless child into their family, even passing it off as their own, and Mary may have kept Elizabeth and Thomas with her to begin with. But it is questionable whether she would have continued to do so as more illegitimate children followed.

Mary lived to the ripe old age of 83.

Burial. St Leonard, Deal.
1829 Nov 9  Mary Bushell  Chapel Street  Lower Deal  83yrs

Since she lived in Lower Deal, she was probably buried at St George’s, which had been built as a chapel of ease, to serve the mariners living by the sea. These records were transferred to the mother church of St Leonard’s on the hill above the town.