William Harman my great-great grandfather was born on Wednesday 18th November in the year 1818. The son of James and Mariah Harman my great-great-great grandparents and the grandson of Thomas and Hannah Harman my great-great-great-great grandparents. William like his father James, was baptised in the parish church of Rotherfield, St. Denys on 3rd January 1819. At the age of 10 years his grandfather Thomas died at the age of 72 years. His grandfather, like his father James, was a stonemason and bricklayer plus builder and craftsman of repute. This enabled them to live in comparative comfort.

The feudal system was very much in evidence with the Lord of the Manor surveying all. Criminal and civil offences were dealt with in minor cases by the Lord of the Manor or in some cases the church. This varied according to the offence - vagrancy and settlement being dealt with by the overseers appointed by the Lord of Manor and church authority, plus submitting more minor cases to the magistrates (later styled Justice of the Peace). The more serious cases were referred to the assizes. The local trials were called quarter sessions and tried minor cases in petty session. Cases were myriad - vagrancy, witchcraft, stealing, slander, murder, adultery, bigamy, assault, rioting, poaching, trespassing etc. Punishments ranged from fines to property confiscation, to ducking, flogging, pillorying, imprisonment, the stock's, hanging and transportation for any period up to life. This continuing up to the year 1870 when my own grandfather William Edward, grandson of William was born. Lot of the crimes listed above carried capital punishment, i.e. hanging offence and there is well documented evidence of this, i.e. hanging for stealing. In today's climate, hanging would be ludicrous for such trivial crimes.

In the year my great-great grandfather James was born, George III was King of England but two years after his birth, George IV to be followed by William IV in 1830 and Queen Victoria in 1837. He was to live through four reigns. So my great-great grandfather James was born in a period of harshness for the general populace. Working long hours and where children could commence work from five years of age onwards. Dying of starvation was not uncommon and many parish burial records record 'traveller - found by wayside buried such and such a date'.

In this environment William grew up and even attended St. John's former charity school with his elder brother James. This when schooling was non-existent for the general populace or your children were needed to work to assist in survival. William was therefore fortunate that he was selected and his father James could afford to release him from a life of drudgery to attend school. William had four sisters, Leah and Caroline and Sarah all older than him and Harriet the baby of the family. He also had four brothers, James his elder brother, followed in age by Thomas, Charles and John. As the family grew, James his father, could ill afford to send the younger sons to school and this is proven by their inability to write their name on documents in the researching of their particular family history. However, despite the handicap of being illiterate, the younger brothers did succeed in their later lives.

Ships at the time of William in his youth were sailing ships, in the style of H.M.S. Victory in Portsmouth dockyard. Again the life of a seaman was hard with pay at starvation level, brutality ruled and men died from pox, falling from rigging, and suffered scurvy etc. From 1817-53 convicts transported for life or a period of time were lucky to survive the journey and in this period 20% i.e. 20 out 100 failed to survive. Those emigrating were not much better off. Press gangs were also a part of life and the general population had no rights or liberty as such. As for women their life was far from a happy one. For those who were lucky to get employment, invariably this would be as a servant. Again poor wages, a life of drudgery, working possibly eighteen hours a day, seven days a week and, in some cases, seeing their families once a year. Even when married some were treated as chattels and there is recorded evidence of the selling of ones wife to another man, this up to the year 1871. Plus bringing children into the world of deprivation, drudgery and epidemics such as diphtheria, typhoid, pox and other illnesses of the time of William's youth and adult world.

William was apprenticed as a stonemason/bricklayer to his father James. Most of his young life was spent on the outskirts of the village at Yew Tree cottages, Jarvis Brook, Gillams Birch cottage and in later years in a house in the centre of Rotherfield, next door to the left when facing Catts Inn. However all locations were within 10 to 15 minutes walk to the village. Water would be drawn from wells and we have recorded evidence that Harman's had the specialist skills for bricking inside wells, plus the skills for dry-wall erection. This much in evidence by the skills that had been handed down from my great-great-great-great grandfather Thomas and recorded in the family history of Walter Harman and Ellen (nee Groombridge).

William's elder sister Caroline, was working as a servant in Crowborough and when she was twenty-one had an illegitimate child baptised Eliza in 1835. William was aged seventeen and would be working through his apprenticeship. Today an illegitimate child is not a stigma but in William's young days, it was a major crime and women in this situation were in some cases made to give evidence of how pregnancy occurred in front of the whole congregation attending the parish church and again non-attendance by villagers at church, could be reported to church authority. But back to the illegitimacy of a child, in the time of William. The issue was not really a moral one, but more an economical problem as the child needed to be kept by the parish. In reality, the trend seemed more to the following format: boy meets girl, courts and eventually girl gets pregnant, parents confer and regardless of whether love or lust involved, boy must marry girl. It would seem by research, that a great many marriages took place this way and was common practice. If parents of boy was not known or in another parish, then church wardens and magistrate would enforce marriage on reluctant father of child. So as can be seen the issue was more economical as opposed to a moral one. Custom and practise being - meet, mate and marriage.

A case in point is also Leah, William's older sister, who also had an illegitimate child Sarah Ann two years prior to Caroline, when William was age 15. Leah's daughter was looked after by my great-great grandparents James and Mariah. Leah eventually married Edward Dadswell.

In 1834 William parents had another brother Obediah. William was at the age of 15 and his father and mother being respectively aged 46 and 47. This last brother died within 5 months of birth as recorded in parish records of James and Mariah's son private baptism - Obediah 1st January 1834.

A further case is Harriet the younger sister of my great-great grandfather William. Harriet was 19 when she married William Hallett on 8th February 1842. Harriet was eight month's pregnant and on 1st March her first child born. All the above bearing out the custom and practice at this point in history of a general trend and in some ways continued up to present times where marriage was undertaken because of pregnancy.

My great-great grandfather William was now aged twenty-three and in the following year he married Charlotte Moon at St. Denys, Rotherfield on Christmas day Monday 25th December 1843, probably one of the few days in a year for a days holiday. As holidays as we know them were virtually non-existent. On the marriage certificate the rank or profession within the certificate states that Charlotte Moon was aged 29, 5 years older than William, and a spinster of Rotherfield and her rank a servant. The marriage certificate gives her step father's name as John Gaston a labourer. Charlotte's mother had obviously married again, as widow's did as soon as they could after the death of a husband to assist in sustenance for themselves and children with the only other option being placed in a workhouse. This meant that when her father had died, Charlotte would have been placed as a servant at a very tender age. So possibly at the worst, from the age of 10 years old until her marriage to my great-great grandfather William, Charlotte would have had a life of drudgery for at least 19 years. The marriage was undertaken, after banns being called, by the Reverend Robert Greame who conducted the service. A best man at the wedding was Thomas Harman, my great-great grandfather William's, brother who was to marry Ann Martin in the following year. James and Mariah would also have attended the wedding as they were both alive at this point in time, aged 55. The other witness at the wedding was one John Wood and of him we know nothing, except he was also a witness to other Harman weddings. James Harman name was given as the father of William.

William on the marriage certificate signed his name which meant and confirmed that he had also attended school with James his elder brother. However, Charlotte Moon could not write and therefore the certificate shows the mark of Charlotte Moon and neither could William's brother Thomas who also used the sign of the mark of Thomas Harman. This bears out that Thomas never had schooling and certainly Charlotte as a child would never had attended school. Schooling for the mass of the population was discouraged. Even in 1907 as Ella Mary Harman writes in her auto-biography that prior to her entrance exams for secondary education, a school manager quoted, "these working class children should not be encouraged to rise above their station". If this is in 1907 what chance for Charlotte born in 1814 - the year of the battle of Waterloo where Wellington defeated Napoleon. William was lucky that he had some form of education.

Unfortunately the school manager who commented on Ella, was not aware of the Harman trait of battling for something they desire, if that is the right word. I think it is, it is the desire to excel with an inward confidence that it can be accomplished, and with the excitement of achievement and awareness of self-belief and pride on gaining objective. Ella Mary Harman showed this in being the first person in Rotherfield to have secondary education and gaining scholarship at a teacher's training college. Finally gaining her objective to be a teacher. Ella Mary Harman was the grand daughter of John and Rhoda (nee Martin) Harman - William's younger brother

In the year 1841 the Tolpuddle Martyrs would have been one of the topics on the day. These men, for organising an agricultural union, were transported to Australia for seven years. The sanitary conditions of the times were not any better and cholera and other diseases were rampant. An official report was carried out in 1841 the 2 years before William and Charlotte married by a Henry Mayhew. As follows is an extract is from his report:Immediately under the railway bridge there stands a court, the filth and horrors surpass all others by far. Everywhere before the doors refuse and offal. Privies are so rare here that they are either filled up every day, or are too remote for inhabitants to use them. The absent of main drains in these times meant that excrement oozed down the walls of cellars, each of which may have been a home for several families. Death therefore was a common companion. Sometimes a coffin may lay for several days, with the family living about it, until burial arrangements had been made. Rats may gnaw at the corpse in its open coffin. Urban grave yards in the cities and towns, so full that the grounds were set artificially high and with a peculiar, indescribable putrefying smell of bodies pervading the air.

The report continues with the statement that water supplies were a another problem, and if water was drawn from a local river it was liable to be contaminated by drains and sewage. Inhabitants were emptying their filthy contents into it with door-less privy's built over the river. Henry Mayhew stated that he watched in horror at the fluvial sewer as a child from one of the galleries above lowered a tin can with a rope to fill a bucket beside her. In each of the rude and rotten balconies, that hung over the stream the self same bucket was to be seen in which the inhabitants were wont to put the mucky liquid to stand, so they might skim the fluid from the solid particles of filth and pollution which constituted the sediment. Such was the conditions of the common working man, exploited by the rich, and forsaken by the church.

For the Harman's of Rotherfield living in a small village as country folk, and though the rigours of life were harsh, the general environment was far better than that in the cities and small towns. Wells had been dug and in existence for many years. Woe betide any villager who would dump rubbish down a well. Though that would be very rare as all the village was dependent on the clean water supply. Again privies were normally buckets for many many years situated under a wooden structure. I, as a young boy in the 1940s, remember these sort of privies still in use by the villagers of Fovant in Wiltshire. This a hundred years after William and Charlotte in 1841. In their time the privy contents would have been used to fertilise the land and were dug into the soil. To us in this day and age this would be repugnant, but then it was an economical way of fertilising the land, and better for healthier conditions than the people who lived in the towns. Again I have seen this happen in Fovant when the sewerage vehicle failed to turn up as a means to empty the sewerage buckets. Consequently, life expectancy was far higher in the villages than those in the towns and cities, especially the industrial areas where for a labourer in a factory or mining would be as low as 17 years, and in rural areas 38 years. As can be seen from the Harman family trees the Harmans, in most cases, reach to a higher level than the average ages given in records. Also the children lost in the Harman families of East Grinstead and Rotherfield were lower than the norm. That does not mean they were infallible, for they too had losses of children at a low age and also as young adults.

Sussex did not have the industry of the north where the cotton and mining were under taken, and working conditions for women and children were horrific. The rich, famous, and clergy lived a life of luxury in England, and mostly lived in the country. Not for them the stench of the cities. To farm the land they employed local villagers, and to keep the wages down, employed at times the agriculture gang system. An agriculture gang was a number of persons employed by one person, who hired them out to different farmers in turn for different kinds of work - a gang would comprise of 12 to 30 persons. The gangs were employed in removing or hoeing up weeds of various kinds - especially twitch, red weed, docks and thistles - and stone picking. The hoeing would be of turnips, swedes and mangolds, and the topping and tailing of them. The gang would work from eight in the morning till five in the evening, and more hours if required. The work was hard and the land to be gleaned with in the day was stated by the gang master. The gang mostly consisted of women and children who were very the unfortunates of society, and men who were vagabonds or farm labourers on hard times.

The gang will often walk three, four five, and even more miles before it started work. In the evening the same distance to return. The rate of pay was 4d (today 1 1/2p) for children, 8d (today 3p) for lads, girls, and women. The advantage to the landowners and farmers was that it enabled him to sack a number of labourers (male). He can then get help at exactly at the times he required it. The work being done quickly and cheaply.

The dress of women was to a certain extent indecent. When the crops were wet they would need to tuck their dresses up between their legs with no under clothes being worn the long hours absence from home meant that men, women, and children need to answer the call of nature - in front of all the other workers. These gang workers, because of their hard background, were coarse in language and in their sexual behaviour. Once in this background there was little chance of their children escaping the life, or going into service. The mothers were slatternly, careless about their homes, and not over worried about their children. These poor souls were the dregs of the country side, and had no bright prospects of life from the day they were born till the day that they died.

There were cases of girl child abuse by the gang masters, but with threats of flogging or no work so it was not reported, and this only rarely. Girls of thirteen and fourteen were taken into an infirmary pregnant from gang rape by the boys and such men that worked within the gang. So this was the life style of the poorest of the ordinary men, women, and children. In both cities, towns and country side, slowly the ordinary people were showing their discontentment for the lives they were leading, and regardless of the oppression levied against them by the upper class whenever they attempted to change their lives. But with the help some of those among the elite, and those of the church who could see the suffering being imposed and the resistance to the lives they led by the ordinary man, a slow change was developing. However many ordinary persons were fortunate not having to exist under some of the above conditions that I have written about in the previous pages. Not that life was not harsh, but their standard of living was far better, and among these we find the Harmans, and this can be seen more adequately by the long levity of many of my forefathers in the family trees. It is a simple fact that many were merchants, tradesmen, farmers, carpenters, bricklayers ,and stonemasons.

But back to William and Charlotte - after their marriage William and Charlotte were living at Stone Cross where they were to return to in later years. At Stone Cross the following children were born:- Herbert Rebboth the eldest son born 1844 and baptised 4th January 1852 at St Denys, Rotherfield. Joseph the second to eldest, my great grandfather born 27th June 1846 and baptised 4th January 1852 at St Denys, Rotherfield. Joseph's date of birth was found by obtaining copy of his birth registration at Uckfield. My great grandmother Charlotte registered him herself on 6th August 1846. This we know by details on birth certificate and by again, the mark of Charlotte Harman. To register Joseph, by great grandmother Charlotte would have had to walk at least ten miles there and back with, possibly, the two children as public transport was non-existent. So it would have been a walk across footpaths through woodland and meadows till reaching highway to Uckfield and this highway deep rutted due to horse and carts traversing the highway between Uckfield and East Grinstead. Great-great grandfather William would certainly not have time off from work, as we would say today, for registering a child, as work and earnings would be the first priority as the provider for his family.

After the birth of my great grandfather Joseph, my great-great grandparents moved to Frogs Hole and there they remained for approximately 14 years. Frogs Hole was centred in the village and, today, a railway station is on the site. Many of the five Harman brothers were living there together. With the move to Frogs Hole my great-great grandparents William and Charlotte had the following children:- James third son was born in 1848 at Frogs Hole. It was this year when James was born that Mariah died and was buried at Rotherfield on the 11th November 1848, at the age of sixty. Eunice Ann the eldest daughter was born in 1849 at Frogs Hole and Julie the second daughter was born in 1850.

Two years after Mariah's death in 1850 James the widower married Barbara Blundell a widow at St. Denys on the 9th May 1850. William and Charlote had four more children: Sarah, the third daughter, born in 1853. Harriet, the fourth daughter, born in 1854. William, the fourth son, born 11th January 1856. Edwin, the fifth son, baptised 10th April and buried 31st August 1859. In the above it will be seen that nine children were born over a period of thirteen years. The last child to be born Edwin was baptised on 10th April 1859 at St. Denys, Rotherfield. Five months after his baptism he was buried at St. Denys Rotherfield on 31st August 1859. During her pregnancy of Edwin, Charlotte would have been at the age of forty-four and once again at that age pregnancies and the outcome of the actual child born, would not have been very favourable at her age.

Normally most children were baptised within six weeks of their birth and generally this was custom and practice. However, there were families who grouped their children all together at one particular time for baptism. William Harman must have been one of this minority as the following children were baptised all together on 4th January 1852 - Herbert born 1844, Joseph born 1846, James born 1848, Eunice Ann born 1849 and Julie born 1850. The others were baptised as follows - Sarah baptised on 29th March 1853, Harriet baptised on 2nd July 1854 and the youngest son William was baptised on 11th January 1857. All the children of this marriage were baptised at St. Denys church, Rotherfield. As his first son was born in 1844 William, my great-great-grandfather, and Charlotte, my great-great-grandmother, attended the wedding of Thomas, his brother, and Ann Martin in 1844 with William and Charlotte, being witnesses to the wedding and best man.

In the census in 1861 the following information was elicited. William and Charlotte were still living at Frogs Hole, which was two years after the death of Edwin. In the intervening years all my great-great grandfathers brothers joined him at Frogs Hole - James his older brother and his wife Mary Ann (nee Bourdon), Thomas his younger brother and his wife Ann (nee Martin), Charles his younger brother and his wife Jane (nee Head) and John the youngest brother and his wife Rhoda (nee Martin). In the period 1854 - 1858, his brother James and Mary Ann was suffering with loss of children by possibly the same diphtheria epidemic as his brother Thomas and his wife Ann who had lost two of their children. The effect of epidemics of diphtheria on children prior to the introduction of immunisation generally introduced in 1937 was appalling as can be established by the three families above. Twenty-four children being born to the above families from these, sixteen survived to adulthood. What of the masses of families who were not situated with trades and comparative wealth? William and Charlotte suffered less, I feel could be due to their location at Frogs Hole and I wonder if this is the reason why James and Thomas decided to move into the area with William.

In approximately 1850 John the younger brother of William and Thomas, was married to Rhoda Martin and resided firstly in the village. Rhoda was a sister of Ann Martin who was married to Thomas Harman. Research has discovered that both John and Rhoda joined brothers William, James and Thomas at Frogs Hole for approximately two years and this in the period prior to the epidemic. Thomas as we already stated, was in a reasonable position with not an overly large family to support having only the three children, and not as most families in that day and age eight to twelve. But with the hard conditions of the times, they also had their fair share of personal tragedy. In 1866 tragedy struck again, with the death of William's brother Thomas at the age of forty-five years old. This leaving Ann a widow also at the age of forty-five with three children. In the year 1866 with the growth of the five families of the Harman's at Frogs Hole, William and Charlotte after twenty years at Frogs Hole moved to Stone Cross, where they had lived previously in 1846 and where Joseph was born. And in the year 1867 William and Charlotte were at Stone cross for the wedding on the 29th September my great- grandfather Joseph married my great- grandmother Margaret Turner who was also living at Stone Cross. Joseph's parent's William and Charlotte were to remain at Stone Cross the place of Joseph's birth until the end of their days.

Harriet their daughter married next in 1872 to a farmers son named John Walters. Julie who attended the wedding of her sister Harriet's wedding to John, met his brother Stephen and fell in love. They were married the following year in 1873. Herbert was the next to marry in 1875 to a young widow Elizabeth Lockyear and had a young son named Amos after his father. William the youngest son of William and Charlotte had married in the year 1879, though the actual date of marriage is not known. What we do know is that he married the daughter of Frederick John and Anna Novice, the innkeepers of the Bricklayers arms, Whitehill, Crowborough. There are two children that further research has not elicited any information on. They being James and Sarah.

The census for 1881 was in the April of that year. Great-great grandfather and grandmother, William and Charlotte were living at Stone Cross. William was aged 62 and charlotte aged 66. From 1881 for the following nine years William and Charlotte's family was growing. From the various sons and daughters they had thirty-one grandchildren by 1890.

Charlotte was now aged 74 and was in poor health at the beginning of this year. On Tuesday 29th July 1890 Charlotte died and was buried at All Saints church at Crowborough. William had a memorial stone made probably by Herbert his son, as he was a monumental maker. The monument is on the left hand side as you enter the churchyard. Charlotte was born in 1814 in the parish of Framfield. Probably prior to marrying William she had had a very hard life. Her father died and her mother remarried John Gaston. Charlotte herself went into service and servitude like a lot of women. Charlotte my great-great grandmother had been married to great-great grandfather William for forty-seven years. Further research of Framfield parish records may reveal more of Charlotte's life as a child.

William was to live another ten years after Charlotte's death. Towards the end of his life he left Stone Cross and lived with his with daughter Harriet Walters wife of John Walters at Alderbrook farm, Crowborough. It is here that William died aged 81 on Saturday 7th July 1900. In his will he appointed daughter Julia Walters wife of Stephen Walters of Waste farm, Hadlow Down in the parish of Buxted and his son Herbert Harman a Crowborough builder as executors. The will states basically that monies were to be shared among the three girls and the three sons. It then gives the addresses of Joseph Harman a stone mason at Jarvis Brook; daughter Eunice Ann husband of Henry Neville a farmer at Jarvis Brook; daughter Julia Walters wife of Stephen Walters at Waste farm, Hadlow Down, daughter Harriet Walters wife of John Walters at Alderbrook farm, Crowborough; and son William the younger, a builder at Whitehill. Probate was granted to Herbert and Julia on the 23rd of August.