The appropriately named
Richard Christmas was baptised on Christmas Day 1838 in Chiddingly.
Christmas is one of the rarer
surnames (it is ranked 26,344th in the world) but it is not so
unusual in Sussex. It may have its
origins with a 12th century Cristemass family although it is often
thought to be a surname given to those involved in organising Christmas
celebrations or to someone born at Christmastime.
Richard Christmas’s family
were sometimes recorded as Christmas but more frequently their surname was spelled Chrismas.
Richard's father was Treyton
Chrismas who was born around 1810, possibly the son of James and Sarah Chrismas
of Wartling. Treyton married Mary Ann
Sargeant on the 22nd September 1833 in Ticehurst (this made his wife
Mary Christmas and the marriage was witnessed by Henry Cole aka Old King!).
Treyton and Mary had a large
family beginning with Frances baptised in Ninfield in 1834 and followed by
Orpah (1835), Benjamin (1837) and Richard; all baptised in Chiddingly. The family then moved to Battle where Treyton
farmed at Beech Farm and the family grew with the addition of Mary (1840),
Tilden (1841), Jane (1843), Trayton (1844), Thomas (1847), Charles (1848), Sarah Elizabeth (1850) and Frederick George (1851).
Jane doesn’t appear in the 1851
census with the family so it’s probable she died in infancy despite the lack of
burial record and there is no baptism record for Thomas but he appears with the
family in 1851. Treyton junior died in
1846 but all other children appear to survive to adulthood. The 1851 census entry refers to a daughter
named Charlotte but this appears to be an enumerator error as Charlotte was
actually Charles.
Treyton and Mary’s youngest
son was born posthumously after his father died on the 3rd May
1851 aged just 43 years. His will is straightforward and
leaves everything to his wife who moved to Hastings where she continued to
bring up their young family.
Richard, according to the 1861
census, trained as a blacksmith and by 1861 was working just down the road from
his mother’s house. He married Mahalath
Dabney in 1860 when he was just 21 years old and she was only 18 years. A year later their daughter Mahalath Jane was
baptised in St Leonards church on the 7th April 1861.
Mahalath was to remain an only
child, Richard sadly died just a few years later at the age of only 25
years. By 1871 Mahalath was living with
her maternal grandparents, William and Sarah Dabney, in Hastings – her mother had probably
remarried but this cannot be confirmed at present. In about 1880 Mahalath met Constantine Maguire
who was working at a drapery shop in Hastings high street. They soon found themselves having to marry
and just a few weeks later their eldest son Horace was baptised. Horace was followed by May Frances in 1883
and after moving to Newhaven they also had Hubert Joseph in 1888.
Like her father Richard, and
her grandfather Treyton, Mahalath died young.
She was only 28 years old when she died in Lewes. Constantine and their three children moved in
with his parents. Constantine never
remarried, by 1901 he was working in an iron foundry as a foreman in Lewes but
by 1911 he was a house painter in Eastbourne.
He may have died in 1924 in London.
Richard’s grandchildren were
slightly longer lived than their mother, grandfather and great grandfather. Horace began working as a
footman in Kensington before setting up his own business as a newsagent in
Pimlico. He married Rosa Blatchford in
1912 and they had three children – Anthony (1914) and twins Mary and Winifred (1917). He died in 1963 at the age of about 73 years. His sister May never appears
to have married. She worked as a school nurse in Lewes for a while and died in
Somerset at the age of 83 years. Their younger brother, Hubert,
began by following the same career path as Horace as the 1911 census shows him
working as a footman in Marylebone. He
married Jane Leachman in 1915 in Lincolnshire and they had two children Albert
(1918) and Alaric (1924). Hubert was the
first of the three siblings to die - he died in 1947 at the age of 58 years.
