31/52 Help: Sarah Godlee: 1798 - 1866

 31/52 Help. Sarah Godlee, 1798 -1866

I did a search for Godlee and Rickman in the British Archives before I left Tasmania. I found quite a lot at the East Sussex Record Office. I had to register and put in a request for the documents that interested me. That was all done before I left home. I had also been advised by my 5th Best cousin to make sure I could charge my phone if it went flat taking too many photos. 

In June 2019 I went to Lewes, going to the opera at Glyndbourne,  exploring the ruins of the Lewes Priory, taking snaps of the White Hart where Thomas Paine met with the Headstrong Club, checking out the ancestral sacred sites: the Quaker Meeting House and the streets in the Cliffe where the Godlees lived. Eventually I caught the train to The Keep, the purpose built Records Office,  which is half way between Lewes and Brighton. It looks like a castle keep and I enjoyed the play on words. Records are kept there.  It was a hot walk from the railway station, following along by the railway line, English wildflowers - plants that to my Australian eyes were weeds, - lining the path: Queen Ann’s Lace, blackberry, plantain, briar roses, buttercups and daisies.  When I arrived there is a bit of palaver getting in: you need your passport and to have booked a spot. You have to give up your backpack and handbag. It all goes in a locker. Once in, clutching your phone and a pencil,  you go to the desk and tell them the documents you previously requested. 

I had no idea what to expect. 

What arrived at the desk was a big red folder. It was chock-a-block with typed pages, hand written family trees, photos and newspaper clippings. To say i felt overwhelmed is an understatement. I didn’t know how to proceed. I took a lot of photos with my phone, grateful to cousin John for the tip about the charging of it, starting with the families that I recognised. Later I went back for another day and tried to take photos of every page, realising that if I didn’t recognise these people on that occasion, the time would come in years to come, back home, when I would want to know them. When I was home in Tasmania, I needed to have all this information at my finger tips, even if it didn’t seem relevant on that day at The Keep. Looking at those photos now, all that feeling of being unprepared and overwhelmed returns to me. 

In fact what I had in my hands was the work of my third great aunt, Sarah Rickman née Godlee who had researched the Rickman family tree back for twelve generations. Someone after her had typed this up and collated it in this folder. 

 Sarah had created this work for her cousin Matilda Rickman, whose father was Sarah's mother's brother. 

One of the items in this list of contents is a poem Sarah wrote for Matilda when she presented her with the work:

Verses composed by Sarah Rickman, née Godlee, and inscribed in the family book which she prepared and presented to Matilda Rickman of Wellingham. 

TO MATILDA RICKMAN.

  

Dear Friend and Cousin, not in vain

To me thy wish was told

To see, at large, distinct and plain

The Rickman line unrolled. 

And gathering up the threads for thee

With care I’ve twined them here,

Twelve generations wilt thou see

Arranged in order clear.

And FIVE of these have passed from earth.

Nor left a trace below,

Their names alone, and date of birth

And death, are all we know.

Last of the SIXTH, a faded face

And in her coffin laid, 

My mother saw, and kept the trace

In early childhood made.  

Thus to our eyes the SEVENTH appears

But two or one we find

Faint, gleaming through the mist of years, 

Just sketched upon the mind. 

The EIGHTH - we heard upon their knee   

The long remembered tale;

They led our tottering steps with glee

Their own almost as frail. 

The NINTH, so honoured and so dear    

Are quickly passing on -

E’en while I write their record here 

One, and one more, are gone. 

Some linger yet, an aged few

Most precious in our sight,

Be theirs to prove the promise true, 

‘At eve there shall be light.’

Amongst the TENTH our station lies, 

It spreads a numerous band,

And blood an faith and friendly ties, 

Link many hand in hand. 

But snows upon our temples fall,

Strength fails, and eyes grow dim, 

Be ours to wait the Bridegroom’s call,

The burning lamp to trim. 

Our children NEXT, in power of youth

Breasting the storms of life;

Well may they battle for the truth,

And conquer in the strife.

 

And now the TWELFTH comes on , - their heads

Like buds of Spring arise

Fresh with the dews that morning sheds

Unfolding to the skies. 

Sarah was born in 1798, a year before her cousin Matilda. She married her cousin-once-removed,  John Rickman in 1828 at the Lewes Friends Meeting House. He was 48 when he married the 30 year old Sarah, his second marriage.  Sarah and John had two children, a daughter named Elizabeth, the first name of John’s first wife and a son Barnard, his first wife’s maiden name. They were married for seven years but in 1835 John died. 

Sarah and her one and two year old children moved home to her mother and father’s place. There were three sisters, Mary Ann, Rebecca and Lucy and her twenty year old brother John, also living in this house. It would have been a very supportive household to raise her two children. She and her sisters opened a Quaker girls’ school in main street in Lewes. Sarah’s mother was Mary Rickman who has been the subject of an earlier blog. https://sowheel.blogspot.com/2022/04/1652-negative-mary-rickman.html

Sarah had been sixteen when her baby brother, John, was born and I think Sarah and Mary Ann played a big part in his early care. His mother had undergone so much tragedy prior to his birth that she wouldn’t have been in a very good place to care for a baby.  He had been a troubled youth and in 1838, aged 24, was shipped off to the Colony of South Australia. Sarah would have been sad. She never saw John again. 

That may have been  pivotal year for Sarah. She was forty. Her parents were ageing. She undertook to record her father’s life story: his 'Recollections of Early Life'. I wonder if this peaked her interest in family history. The 'Recollections' begin with an exploration of her father’s genealogy :  

I was born in the year 1762 in Ratcliffe High Way, London.  My father’s name was Thomas Godlee.  He was the only son of Thomas Godlee of Narrow Street, Limehouse. Thomas Godlee, my grandfather, was the oldest of three brothers, who came originally from Southwold, in Suffolk. 

And so it begins. In his voice she scribes the story of his early education and apprenticeship as a cabin boy, his arrival in New York in 1777, his abandonment by his captain and his work on British ships during the American War of Independence, the wreck on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, salvaging the cargo of furs and other adventures on the high seas. The book records the last days of her father in 1841. Is it the passing of one’s parents that lights the family history fuse? As recorded in her poem : 

E’en while I write their record here 

One, and one more, are gone. 

Sarah’s father’s family were not from Sussex but the Rickman’s, her mother’s family, were all from Sussex and many of them were based in Lewes. As Quakers she had access to excellent records. Was this the time, or soon after this, that she made up her mind to explore her family tree back for twelve generations?

So when I consider who has given me the most help in doing family history, after my mother and my grandmother, I think of our aunt, Sarah Godlee. She passed the baton - to the nameless family who typed up her work and deposited it in the Keep, to her grand niece, (my grandmother) and her great grand niece - mum. And now it is mine.  Thank you Aunt Sarah. You are not forgotten. After three generations,  I came back to Lewes to discover your work, the great great grand daughter of your baby brother.