News Archive 2005

March 2005
George Weekes's Diary
In March we finished transcribing George Weekes's diary. At the same time, by sheer coincidence, we obtained a transcript of William Borrer's 1831 will. Both documents are rich in family detail. As these families are closely linked to each other and also tenuously to Thomas Marchant we have devoted much time to researching the families and added the information gleaned to the Family Database. At the same time we have prepared a final edition of the Weekes Diary. These updates will be made available to you before the middle of May.

April 2005
Visit to Little Park
In April of this year two long lost cousins and their families met up in Hurstpierpoint after the two branches had gone their own ways some 250 years ago. Dave Upshon of Johannesburg and 5th cousin Anthony Bower of Hamburg made contact via this website some months ago. It was a pleasant family reunion, Dave being accompanied by his wife Liz and son Andrew, Anthony by his wife Renate. Dave and Anthony’s last common ancestor was William Marchant, an army surgeon of Cheshunt (1759 - 1790).William was a great-grandson of Thomas the diarist of Hurstpierpoint. It was Dave’s first visit to Hurst and he was anxious to see Thomas’s ancestral home.

July 2005
Ancestral Gallery: Call for pictures
At Ian Martin’s suggestion we are introducing an ancestral gallery of photos of our forefathers and will be grateful for any pictures you can supply. These will only be viewable by Subscribers. Each picture should be labelled with name and (if possible) years of birth and death.

15 July 2005
The Diary of Carey Hampton Borrer
Lastly Ian Nelson of the Hurst History Study Group has now unearthed the as yet unpublished diary of Carey Hampton Borrer who was rector in Hurst for over 50 years in the 19th century. Every fifth year has already been transcribed on a "steam" typewriter by Ray Packham. Antony Bower shall be copying the whole thing mid-September if there is anybody out there who would fancy helping with the transcription of the rest. It sounds as though it is a massive document so we would spit it up into chunks.

20 July 2005
1793 Loyalty Declarations
In 1793 the general public was very much disturbed at what was going on in France and the citizens of Hurst and Keymer both prepared documents declaring their allegiance to the King. The Hurst document was signed by 65 inhabitants - many of them related to us.

Dave Upshon has spent the last couple of weeks cleaning up the document and we now have something almost as pristine as the day it was issued. The Hurst Declaration is online now and can be downloaded by subscribers in our download section (Thomas Marchant Related Wills and Document). However, we will add a last page at some time giving details of the signatories we can track down.

Dave has now turned his attention to the Keymer document.

21 July 2005
Hurst Loyalty Declaration Including Signatories' Details
We have now added the details of the signatories of the Hurstpierpoint Loyalty Declaration. Subscribers can now download the new pdf document in the appropriate download section (Thomas Marchant Related Wills and Document).

22 July 2005
New Wills Master Document Now Ready for Download
It contains, in chronological order, every document and will in our normal document dowload areas (i.e Thomas Marchant related and unrelated) and makes electronic searches very easy. The only documents excluded are the two Loyalty Declarations which do not lend themselves to electronic searches. See our download section.

29 August 2005
Keymer 1793 declaration online
In July 2005 - thanks to some hard work put in by Dave Upshon - we published the Hurstpierpoint Loyalty Declaration of 1793 containing so many signatures of our ancestors. Now Dave has done the same good work on the Keymer 1793 declaration and, no doubt, there are also some of our ancestors appearing there although nobody has researched this yet. Subscribers can download the declaration from the "Thomas Marchant Related Documents" in our download section.

3 September 2005
Clarke's Directory Online
The Clarke Directory is now online and can be downloaded from the General Reference download section. The directory has been meticulously put together by Ian Martin in 15 years of painstaking work and we are grateful to him for putting it at our disposal. Over the next weeks and months we will be marrying his data with various datbases already in our possession and will come up with a huge master database - we hope.

24 September 2005
HHGS Meeting: Anthony Bower now Chairman of Hurst History Study Group
At a meeting of the Hurst History Study Group on 20 September 2005 Denis Wardell confirmed his intention of stepping down from the chairmanship of the Group and was thanked for his past dedication. The Group went on to elect Anthony Bower as its new chairman with immediate effect.

24 September 2005
The Study Group Needs You!
"Blood sweat and tears and a little warm glow for a job well done." The Hurst History Study Group has just taken on two major projects and needs volunteers to help in transcription and copytyping etc. We can offer no material reward. The two projects are: "The diary of Carey Hampton Borrer" and "Restoration of 3 old 19th century books in collaboration with the West Sussex Library."