The TURFITT family originates from the Lincolnshire, England and due to the unusual nature of the name, very few descendents have been located. Firm information has been gained back to the 1800s but there are numerous mentions on the IGI as early as 1567. Some descendents are still living in England and are known to be active in Family History research.
Our ELIZA TURFITT married into the Fletcher family.
Traces have been made to find the origins of Eliza Turfitt. It is an unusual surname, one to be found only in several small villages around the Nottingham, Lincolnshire area of the country. Verbal records relate Eliza to other names like Alice, Lydia and William, a gamekeeper from Newark who married Bessie, although not all names can be found in the same Turfitt family. There are also memories of an Aunt Alice, 'a very nice lady'. One family headed by another William Turfitt were living in Market Deeping where Eliza was believed to have been born. In the family a sampler still exists. This is a fine silk tapestry displaying the letters of the alphabet which Eliza may have been given at the age of ten to help her read or just as a present. Could she have made it herself? Perhaps it was pinned up on her bedroom wall as it does now on her grand daughter Kathleen's bedroom wall.
All the Turfitt families identified appear to have come from village in and around Market Deeping.
Market Deeping where she was born is the most southerly town in Lincolnshire and was granted its Royal Charter in 1304 by Margaret the Queen through Joanne, wife of John Wake about whom the village history is surrounded. Joanne remarried the Black Prince and their son became King Richard II. The Bull Hotel in the village gained notoriety as a halt for passing coaches. The River Welland runs through the village and it was by this river in the wild and desolate fens known as Crowland that St Guthlac came down in the 7th century to live. From here Crowland Abbey was established and the monks built the village church. The oldest stone part of the church dates from 1179.
The Turfitts were Shepherds and William is recorded as having two lodgers who were horse keeper and groom. The only Eliza Turfitt to be identified in the census was living nearby in Edenham with her parents John and Sarah. In the census she was recorded as being 7 years old which would have been too young to fit the Eliza who married Samuel. Ages do become falsified for vanity or commercial reasons but she would certainly have been too young to marry. It can only be assumed that Eliza was on the move at the time of the census and has therefore not yet been located.
Samuel Hunt Fletcher
Searching the databanks at the Family Records Centre in London revealed a marriage certificate between Samuel Hunt Fletcher and Eliza Turfitt dated 1st December 1892. The marriage took place at a Registry Office in Nottingham. The ages of the 2 parties was recorded as 28 for Samuel and 27 for Eliza. Samuel's age confirms the birth record on the 1881 census but now we have Eliza born in 1865 which would have made her 16 at the time of the 1881 census. There is no record of an Eliza Turfitt in the census aged 16 but we do have a Turfitt family headed by William Turfitt, the name of the father on the wedding certificate. William, was married to a Frances Turfitt born 1843. They were living at Chestnut House, Mapperley Road when Eliza was married.
Mapperley is a small village just outside Ilkeston where Samuel was working as a provisions dealers assistant in the grocer's shop. It may have been the same shop that he had been working in earlier but the address for his home then was Queen Street. He must by then have moved out from the Keeling family home at Granby Street. Perhaps Eliza would go to the local village store to buy provisions and that may have been how she would have met with Samuel a dashing ambitious business minded young assistant According to the 1881 census, William and Frances Turfitt had other children including Alice, a name recalled by current family members.
Whilst surfing the internet further for various names, a Turfitt contact was made in Sheffield who had traced his family back many generations around the Lincolnshire area. After contact was made he provided a very comprehensive family tree containing many Turfitt names and dates. There were two Eliza Turfitts on his chart but neither correlated with Samuel's wife. There was however a William Turfitt of about the correct era. He like many others on the tree was born in Swayfield, just North of Market Deeping on 27th September 1840. It might possibly be that he was the father of Eliza Turfitt. If so, then the chart shows William to be the eldest of 7 children who include a Lydia and an Eliza. His father was another William Turfitt born in Swayfield in 1814 and his wife was called Eliza Suter born 1816. Could Eliza have been named after her Grandmother? William and Eliza had 5 other children. The chart, with some uncertainty, traces back a further generation to a John Turfitt born 18 August 1788 at Hacconby Lincolnshire who married to Elizabeth Scotney perhaps around 15th May 1812, when the revolution was taking place in Russia about which Tchaikovsky wrote his 1812 overture.
The data was later confirmed and extended by a further Turfitt contact in Cornwall who provided me with a Turfitt family tree starting with Eliza Turfitt, her parents William and Frances as concluded earlier and 7 further generations leading back to a Laurence Turfitt born 1605 and married in 1631 in Welbourn, Lincolnshire to Helen Sparrow. Each successive generation appears to have grown up in Welbourn or very near by. The Turfitts have therefore been a Lincolnshire family for almost four hundred years.
Further information indicated that Eliza had 6 brothers (William bn1868, Thomas Bn1870, John Bn 1872, David Bn1876, George, Jack) and 3 sisters (Sarah, Alice and Nancy died 1950). This confirms a family belief that Eliza had a sister Alice who married Joe and had 2 children Wilfred and George. Many of Eliza's brothers and sisters had children and grand children of their own.
There are connections with Turfitts living in Mississippi USA which is a place Eliza and her husband Samuel went to live for a while.
A search of the internet electoral roles for the whole country revealed only 21 Turfitts with most living in neighbouring counties to Lincolnshire any of whom are most probably related.