#52Ancestors - Coincidences

​This week’s #52Ancestors theme is Yearbook but being British we don’t really do Yearbooks.  Thinking about a conversation I was having yesterday evening I decided I would write about some of the coincidences I have found in my family tree.  Coincidentally they all have something to do with the Sussex Trug.

Image of Dora Reed and friend showing off Sussex Trugs

​The first coincidence I found when I started researching my other half’s family tree.  He was born and grew up in Hammer, near Haslemere on the Sussex/Surrey border where his family had lived for a couple of generations before him and I have not found any link with East Sussex at all.  Except for one in 1861.  His great x2 grandfather, Charles Marden, born in Wateringbury, Kent in 1827 and died in Camberwell, Middlesex in 1891 was a blacksmith.  I could not find him around the Wateringbury area and couldn’t find him in Middlesex on the 1861 census, and he eventually turned up in Burwash, East Sussex for no apparent reason and wasn’t there for any other census return.  The coincidence is that a number of the families on my tree came from Burwash including the Pilbeams, Eastwoods and Westons and would probably have gone to Charles to shoe their horses.  

Image of a Blacksmith shoeing a horse. Edwin Landseer 1844

​Talking of my other half he has been a Sussex Trugmaker now for nearly 30 years, since he moved to East Sussex when we first got together.  That leads to my second coincidence, my grandmother told us that my grandfather, Alf Baldwin had made Sussex Trugs when he was employed at Green Brother’s in Hailsham.  Recently I have been researching David Smith who informally adopted my grandmother with his wife Emily, (my grandmother’s aunt) and on the 1921 census he was taking part in a Government backed employment scheme at Green Brother’s making Sussex Trugs.  I wonder if he met Alf there and introduced him to my grandmother. 
I recently researched and wrote a history of the Truggery at Herstmonceux for Sarah Page, the owner.  As part of that research, I looked at the family of Reuben Reed who turned what had been a Carpenters workshop into the Truggery in 1899.  Reuben’s mother was Sarah Winchester who appeared very distantly related to my Winchesters, from the Warbleton area.  A part of the family that I hadn’t until now researched but can now be added to the tree.  The common ancestors being Thomas Winchester and Elizabeth Wenham who were married in Folkington in 1708.  I also have Reed/Read in my family but at the moment I’m not going to go there!
I am beginning to think I have the Sussex Trug in my DNA.  Have you found any coincidences like this in your own tree.  Please share.

Image of the Truggery house and shop