Great-Grandma was a Zillwood

Mrs Ruth Samuel, 12 Park Road, Sudbury, Suffolk CO10 6QB

Historian Vol 9 No 5 March 1991

We all come into family history in our own way. I got the urge because I discovered that I had a sister who I never knew even existed and I enjoyed searching for her so much that I decided for the fun of it to look further into the past.

Zillwood is my 92-year old mother's middle name and it was her grand-mother's maiden name. I was always fascinated by it and wished it had been part of my name. So it seemed logical to start with the Zillwoods especially as my mother had many stories to tell of the family which she got from her grandmother who, along with her grandfather, brought her up. I had heard about "Bosham in Sussex" before I could find it on a map and of a cottage where her grandmother and her sister used to pick leaves off a creeper when put to bed early on summer evenings and pass the time pricking out their names on them with a pin.

As a Carer I am limited in the amount of travelling I can do, trips away are great luxuries but, with the ready help of Family History Groups, I find I can do a lot by mail. I had a fortunate start too, in that several years ago when we lived in London my husband had copied a considerable number of entries for Zillwood from the St Catherine's House index volumes. He had done this simply because the name intrigued him. I took only a passing interest at the time though I always had it in mind to do something about it one day. I decided to write to every Zillwood in the telephone directories of which our local library kept a complete set. This was not too arduous a task as they totalled less than twenty and many of them were in Hampshire. I had nine replies and was fortunate enough to gain the willing help and support of Ted Zillwood of Southampton who had done painstaking research on the name over several years. But his studies barely touched the Bosham Zillwoods which left me in the happy position of having a good background for reference and a large group to study for myself.

My great-grandmother Louisa Churcher, nee Ziliwood,had always spoken with great affection of her father. He and his daughter 'Janey' had raised the family after his wife had "run off with the squire". I heard the tales so often. There was Janey who kept house and always made the younger children wipe their feet. One sister married the man "who built the Brighton Aquarium" she kept a boarding house where Louisa worked for some years, making twenty-four beds every day. The other sister went to the Crimean War with her sergeant husband and nursed with Florence Nightingale but, said my mother, "don't go talking about that, sergeants weren't much in those days". As evidence I have a bookmark which is said to have gone to the Crimea with this sister, it has a cross-stitched cross with 'Jesus Wept' on it and a faded green ribbon. There were also two brothers, one being John with whom great-grandma went to school in Chichester "across the fields". She told my mother that he was drowned in his 'teens in Portsmouth Harbour when he fell between two ships and his body was not found for three months, or was it six? The other brother "went to the Gold Fields and was never heard of again". California? Australia? I have still to find out.

I got my great-grandmother's birth certificate. She was born in Old Fishbourne, Bosham in 1838. Her parents were Richard and Ann Zillwood. Richard was an agricultural labourer, and Ann's maiden name was Billbrough. She signed her name on registering baby Louisa.

I turned to the IGI print-outs of the Southern counties and later to Parish Registers for more information. My first surprise was the discovery that there had been eight children and not the five I had expected. There were six girls and two boys (though later I found another boy who was for a while an intriguing problem for me). I also found that Richard Zillwood had several siblings and that his parents, John Zillwood and Ann Hill were married in Bosham in 1794. John was from Sherfield English in Hampshire and Ann Hill was from Bosham. At this time I was unable to find Richard's birth, marriage or death, and I knew that Ted Zillwood had had problems with the Bosham Zillwoods and had decided to leave them aside once he had established that they were not in his direct line.

During one precious day trip to London I encountered the horrors of Portugal Street which I found to be a terrifying place from which I nearly ran away. Everyone except me seemed so sure of what they were doing. I got a broken reader and thought that it was my inexperience that was the trouble. I pressed on in spite of unhelpful staff too busy serving their 'regulars' and of earnest researchers of the less congenial variety. It was not a happy day on train, tube or foot either but I did establish that Richard Zillwood was 50 in 1851 and was born in Bosham. Four of his children were with him when the census was taken and there was a new name, William Zillwood, a D Labourer aged 23. What does the D mean? I am still not sure. William must have been born circa 1828, a year earlier than Mary Ann who I had thought to be the eldest child. He turned up again in l862 as a witness to my Great-grandmother Louisa's wedding in Havant. So I had found nine children, seven of whom at least survived into adult life.

Meanwhile I could not find anything of Ann Zillwood (Billbrough)'s background. I assumed (foolishly as it turned out) that Richard never strayed far from Bosham. Even now there are scarcely any Zillwoods to be found north of Watford. Richard was an illiterate agricultural labourer almost certainly born in Bosham and still living there at fifty.

While checking the extracts which my husband had made in St Catherine's House, I saw that a William Bilibruff Zillwood had married in Brighton in 1854. He surely must be the William referred to above, the variation of the spelling of Billbrough being quite understandable. I hoped to check this in due course but there is a limit to the number of certificates one can buy on speculation.

Another fairly successful day at the Institute of Genealogists produced Richard's baptism in 1799 at Bosham, something a friend had been unable to find for me at Chichester.

Then Mr R V Morgan, an SFHG member, found a reference at Chichester to Ann Zillwood being charged in 1850 with stealing 2s 6d from the person of Thomas Cross a Coldstream Guardsman; the charge was dropped. Could this have been my errant Great-great-grandmother cast aside by the squire and reduced to being no better than she should be? She would be in her late forties at this time, I suppose, and had left Richard after 1842. So she stayed in Sussex but where had she come from? The squire, if he ever existed, had been no gentleman.

It now seemed a good idea to get the marriage certificate of William Billbruff Zillwood but I was confused by two consecutive entries in the Index with the same reference number, one for William and the other for Eliza Zillwood. Had William married his Uncle Philip's daughter Eliza (also of Bosham) or was he not, in fact, Richard's son and had married Richard's daughter Eliza? Which was which? After many weeks St Catherine's House wrote to me, keeping most of my money, to say that insufficient evidence had been provided. I did not feel inclined to spend even more there but I was learning and contacted the SuperIntendent Registrar at Brighton. Within a few days I learnt that William Billbruff Zillwood had married Emma Grimsell on Christmas Eve 1854 in a double ceremony with his sister Eliza Zillwood who married Thomas Levis Wells, a bricklayer. Both Zillwoods lived at 36 Borough Street, Brighton and Louisa Zillwood, my Great-grandmother, then sixteen, had witnessed both marriages.

Meanwhile I had enquired through this Journal for information about Zillwoods and Billbroughs. By happy coincidence, Mr P Bilbrough had just joined the Group and in no time at all he telephoned me with some exciting news. Among his IGI print-outs he had the marriage of Ann Billbrough to Richard Zillwood at Pontefract, Yorkshire in 1825. So much for my belief that the Zillwoods never wandered north of Watford. Mr Bilbrough sent me his IGI entry and I got the IGI entries for Zillwoods in Yorkshire. There were two, the 1825 marriage and the birth of William Billbrough ZilIwood at Tadcaster in 1827.

At Mr Bilbrough's suggestion I wrote to the Wakefield Record Office for a copy of the marriage entry and at the same time requested the entry for my Great-great-grandparents Hargrave's marriage which I had In mind to confirm. This may not appear pertinent to the Zillwood story but I find it an amazing coincidence that two sets of my known six sets of great-great-grandparents were married in the same church in Pontefract within five months of each other. The one pair stayed in Yorkshire, the other for reasons unknown went to Bosham, and a century later two of their great-grandchildren met in Newcastle-on-Tyne, married, and became my parents.

As of now I still do not know what happened to Ann Zillwood nee Billbrough. I do know that the Billbroughs were and still are Pontefract people. Nor do I know why Richard, a groom, went to Yorkshire for a few years. Ann, apparently, was literate as were the Billbrough witnesses at the wedding. Richard was not. Did Ann find Bosham stifling and if so why did she bear nine children before she left Richard? I do not know when either of them died although I have all the Zillwood entries from St Catherine's House. The only possible Ann is not her but a widow from another branch of the family. I know that Richard was alive in 1851 but I cannot find his death or that of his sons John and Henry. Henry may have been the one who disappeared in the gold fields. Ann could have changed her name but it is surprising that there is no record for the deaths of the three men.

Who went to the Crimea? Probably Mary Ann but until I can get to London I cannot get her marriage certificate and married name. Chelsea, where she married, cannot supply the certificate. Eliza's husband may have been a bricklayer/builder but he was not present at the opening of the Brighton Aquarium. Perhaps he was one of the brickies and his role, with time, grew in importance in family stories.

Unlikely as it seems, my Great-grandmother Louisa was the only one of the family to have children. Jane, later Wadey, almost certainly married in Brighton at nearly thirty when living in Elder Street. Did she, the housekeeper, wait to marry until after her father's death? I have not fully investigated Jane, Eliza or Mary Ann. One of the sisters used to send parcels to Louisa's girls and there is a family tale that once she sent an old fur cape which my great-aunt Ruth, then a child, wore when in the earth closet where it fell in. She rescued it, rubbed it clean, and never told her mother.

The only other important fact I learnt from my mother was that "there were relations at Midhurst". In fact, Jane Zillwood, Richard's sister, had married Charles Duff there in 1826 and had had a large family before being widowed in 1848.

ZILLWOOD TREE WITH READABLE CHARACTERS BUT NOT IN TREE FORM.

John ZILLWOOD = (1794 Bosham) Ann HILL

of Sherfield English |

1765-1844 |

Phillip Richard John Mary Ann Jane Louisa William Henry

1798-1844 1799- ? cl805- cl805- 1807- 1809- 1812- 1814-

=(l822) Alive in 1851 =(l826)
(Bosham) =(l825) (Midhurst)
Charlotte (Pontefract) Charles
Boyles Ann Duff
â Billbrough

2 sons | 10 sons

5 daus | 1 dau

William Mary Sarah Jane Eliza Henry Louisa Hannah John
Bilbruff Ann 1831- c1833- 1834- 1837- 1838- 1840-1 1842-
1827-79 1829- =(l862) =(l854) =(1862) =(1854) =(1853) (Brighton) (Brighton) (Havant)

(Brighton) (Chelsea) W.Wadey T.L.Wells J.R.Churcher

Emma (Unconfirmed) â

Grimsell 7 daus

I rather fancy a few days in Brighton's sea air when the time is possible to do some more work and oh! for a sight of the Census returns from 1851 to 1881. Meantime the shadows slowly come to light and maybe one day I shall be able to write the full story for my currently completely uninterested children.