Great Uncle Pharaoh

A few years ago, following online publication of the 1901 Census, some of us traced our ancestors back to the end of the 19th Century. Since then, more resources have been made available online and I’ve been delving a bit more deeply.

Pharaoh Turpin was born in February 1801, in the village of Little Saling in Essex. He went on to become the village blacksmith, married Elizabeth Turner from nearby Finchingfield and had a son, William, who also became a blacksmith.

My Great Great Grandfather – William – was also born in Little Saling (also known as Bardfield Saling.) But he moved to Steeple in Essex, working on the farm at Stansgate Abbey, near Steeple in Essex. In 1855 he married Caroline Rush and they had at least ten children, including my Great Grandfather – also William – who in 1877 married Alice Allen. They had at least three children, including William George Turpin – my Grandfather. He was known as Willie in his early years. He continued the farming tradition and in 1911 married Ethel Bridget Clark, a servant at ‘Lavenham’ in Southminster, Essex . They had three children, including my Dad – who married my Mum.

When I first made the connection to Little Saling, I secretly hoped that I’d be a direct descendent of a Pharaoh – poetic justice perhaps for my posting about Egypt in the past. But my Great Great Grandfather wasn’t a son of Pharaoh, but of Nathaniel Turpin who on current evidence seems to be Pharaoh’s elder brother – near enough! And talking of common ancestry, you may have heard of one Dick Turpin – the highwayman. He was born in 1705 in Hempstead, in that same part of Essex as Little Saling. The villages form a triangle between Dunmow, Braintree and Saffron Walden, some of which you can read about in White’s 1848 History, Gazetteer and Directory of Essex. From the comments of other online researchers, it appears everyone wants to be related to Dick Turpin!

On my maternal side, I’ve traced the Samms/Sams line back to at least 1835, and the Ministers (from Norfolk and Suffolk) back to around 1850. They were all farming families. The Samms and Turpin families would have been part of the same farming community on the Dengie peninsula for some 60 years.

My research continues. I can probably take the Turpin line back another 100 years but I’ll need to get concrete evidence of every link. It’s easy to follow false leads when several individuals with identical names, of identical age, all live in the same small area of Essex. I’ve obtained a few birth and marriage certificates but the next step will be a visit to the Essex Records Office. Fortunately, they have an online catalogue to their records, so I’ll hopefully know what to look for when I get there!