#52Ancestors - Road Trip

​This week’s theme for #52Ancestors is Road Trip and I am taking a road trip to a more distant part of my ancestry, the Rhoads family from Lincolnshire.
 
Smith Rhoades was my great x3 grandfather and he was born 1833 in Orby, Lincolnshire.  His parents were William and Elizabeth Rhoades and he had 4 brothers; John born 1821, William born 1823, Charles born 1824 and Joseph born 1831 and 4 sisters; Betsey born 1826, Emma born 1829, Susannah born 1835 and Mary Ann born 1840.  His father William was a farmer on land in Orby that he owned. 
 
If we follow Smith through the census returns it shows the following:
1841 living with his parents on the farm in the village of Orby
1851 Groom at Boothby in the parish of Welton Le Marsh, a tiny hamlet between Orby and Welton Le Marsh
1861 by this time he had married and moved to Hurstpierpoint in Sussex where he was a Farm Bailiff
1871 Farm Bailiff in Eastbourne, Sussex
1881 Farm Labourer in Eastbourne
1891 Farm Labourer in Eastbourne
1901 Foreman on a Farm at Upper Dicker, Sussex
1911 retired Farm Bailiff living in Hove
He died in 1919 on 6 June in Aldrington, Hove, described as a Market Gardener and died of Senile Decay.

​I don’t know why he left Lincolnshire for Sussex although I can speculate he was following work.  But how would I find any clues as to why he left; find out where he was working at the time he left Lincolnshire and were there any links with Sussex, look at wages and conditions for farming in Lincolnshire and compare with Sussex in the 1850s.  I’m guessing this all because it may not have been work at all.  He married Maria Lee whose ancestry, as far as I have traced it was in Lincolnshire.  In fact they don’t seem to have moved very far and back to the early part of the 1600s were all that Wolds part of Lincolnshire.  The Civil War seems to have caused a problem in going back further on all 4 lines of her grandparents.  I keep searching!
 
One of the biggest problems I have found with searching for the Rhoads family is the amount of different spellings, Rhoads, Rhoades Rhodes, Roads, Roades and Rodes have all been found so far and I am sure there are more to be found. 

Map of Orby, William Rhoads had his farm next to the Chapel on the lane out of the village

​Smith and Maria had 10 children including Alice who was my Great x 2 Grandmother who married James Cruse and brought her family to Hailsham. 
 
One of my few families that didn’t originate from East Sussex and take me to a part of the country I know very little about, at the moment.  

Image showing Alice Cruse nee Rhoads in the middle and her daughter, Ethel on the right. William Baldwin on the left with one of the boys in the middle