In 1820, Sarah Wills sailed to South Africa, with her mother (also Sarah), her father having died nine years earlier. The ship was the Northampton, which sailed from Gravesend on 13 December 1819 (yes, okay, it was 1819, but it was part of the 1820 settlers), as part of "Clark's Party". On the same ship, albeit with the "Pigot's Party" was Charles William Webb.
Charles was a wheelwright, and I suspect he paid his fare to South Africa by becoming an indentured servant. He later became a millwright and painter, and for some reason was known as "Doctor".
He married Sarah Wills 25 December 1823, in Grahamstown, and went on to have fourteen children with her. Though married in an Anglican church, they would later become Methodists.
Their eighth child was Jonathan Webb, born 24 Oct 1835, and baptised as a Methodist. He would go on to marry Matilda Ann Hill, also born in Grahamstown, to parents who had emigrated from England, her mother, Cecelia Jane Eastland, in 1820 too, but on another ship, while her father, John Hill had arrived three years earlier than that.
Jonathan trained to be a Methodist minister, and during that time was sent on 3-month trip into darkest Africa. He let his studies lapse, and ended up getting demoted, and consequently became a wheelwright like his father, though it appears he also set up a church. He inherited a farm called Hancock Grange, though it is not clear how.
They had nine children. One of his daughters, I think Evelyn, the oldest, died quite young when she drowned in a waddy.
Jessie was the second oldest; she married Joseph Benson.
Joseph was from Yorkshire...
He got a job at Hollingrake (or Hollindrake) and Clegg, a local store, when his father deserted the family, giving up his plan to be a teacher, but later left that to be a minster, and his brother Tom took over the job. He trained at Richmond, Surrey, and went to South Africa in 1883, where he met Jessie.
They married at the Wesleyan chapel in Potchefstroom. They had five children in Africa, but had to return to England due to his ill health in 1894, possibly Malaria. The last of the five, Bernard, was born in Johannesburg, while they were in the process of moving - possibly delayed by the birth of a new baby.
Back in England, Joseph worked at a series of churches in England, the policy being to more a preacher on after three years, the first to Moss Lane, Manchester. As Bernard would later say "A most unsuitable appointment for both him and for mother too". Whilst there, they visited New Brighton, and on the way back Bernard contracted scarlet fever from a girl they shared a compartment with on the train; he was four at the time.
From 1897 to 1900, they were in Derby, then Crewe to 1903, Middlesborough to 1906, Redditch to 1909 (where Bernard was one of the first to win a Worcestershire Intermediate Scholarship, despite being "an unruly pupil").
Did Enid settle here? She would be 22 when they left, and it would explain why they returned.
The rest of the family moved on to Hinckley, where Bernard thought he had met the love of his life, the organist's daughter, but his mother insisted he have a career first! They moved to Kings Lynn in 1912, where Bernard was a teacher for a while (something they all seem to have tried), though not a very good one by his reckoning.
While there, war broke out, and Bernard went to fight the Hun!
Joseph and Jessie continued to move around the country every three years until Joseph retired due to ill health in 1923, and settled in with Celia at the forge (I think) in Redditch, near Enid.
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