Sarah Tinker’s life

So on the name will mean nothing to you but to me it is the name of my great, great, great Grandma and 205 years ago this week she married my great, great, great Grandad. But first some background.
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Sarah Tinker was born around 1796 in either Horstead or Worstead in Norfolk. Little is known about her until she married William Weeds on the 18th May 1815 at St Michael’s at Plea in Norwich, Norfolk. She was listed as a single woman and William was a widower. His first wife Mary had died the previous October. 

St Andrew’s Church, Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk. ©Family History Research England 2020.

Sarah moved to the village of Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk with William where they raised their family. William worked as a baker and carpenter and Sarah ran the home and raised their 7 children and possibly the 2 surviving children from William’s first marriage.

There children were as follows:
Frederick Weeds 1817-1856 who married Harriett Todd and had 3 children.
Amelia Weeds 1819-1894 who married James Copsey and had 3 children.
Emma Weeds 1821 to 1895 who married William Mace and had 8 children.
Edward Weeds 1823 to 1870 who married Mary Charlotte Voyce and had 7 children.
Louisa Morgan Weeds 1826 to 1902 who married Ebenezer Richard Glanville and had 4 children and then William Martin Hingle and had one daughter.
Julia Weeds who was born in 1828 and married William White.
Jesse Weeds 1831 to 1915 who married Samuel George Miles and had 2 children.

In 1841 Sarah and William were living on Turnpike Road in Thorpe St Andrew and William was a baker. 5 of their children were still living at home with them.

On the 19th February 1848 William died. He was 61 years old and had been working as a carpenter. He died of inflammation of the lungs. This left Sarah a widow in her early 50’s. She never remarried.

In 1851 Sarah and her daughter Mary A (I think this was Jesse but I’m not sure) were still living in Thorpe St Andrew. They were shopkeepers living on Thorpe Row. By 1861 Sarah was living in Norwich with her daughter Julia. Sarah no longer worked but Julia was a shoe binder. The next we hear of Sarah is in 1881 when she was living with her daughter Jesse, her son in law Samuel and granddaughter Jesse in Coltishall in Norfolk. By now Sarah was 89 years old.

Sarah lived for another 10 years. She died on the 20th August 1890 in Coltishall aged 99. Her cause of death was given as senile decay. When you consider the average life expectancy when Sarah was born was around 40 years old she didn’t do too bad. It would really have annoyed me not to get to 100!

So again from a family historian’s point of view consider how much her life changed and the world around her. What did she see during her lifetime. Yes she may possibly have stayed in Norfolk all her life but she did travel in the county. She started in Worstead/Horstead and moved to Norwich about 25 miles away. What prompted the move I don’t know? She then went to Thorpe St Andrew which was around 3 miles away from Norwich where she moved into the large family that was the Weeds family, her husband William was 1 of 10. Presumably she was away from her family. She may have helped raise her step children as I have no idea what happened to the 2 surviving children from William’s first marriage. She was a grandmother to 28 grandchildren and a great grandmother to 27 in her lifetime with more born after she died.
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So why not have a look through your ancestors and find out who lived the longest of them all.