Emigration Learning Resource 4
The journey to a new life in America: the experiences of a West Sussex family getting to New York
Suggested age groups: KS3 and Lifelong Learners
Subject areas: History, Literacy, Numeracy, Geography,
CONTEXT
Tourle Family Background
The Tourle family of West Grinstead emigrated to New York in October 1849.
William Tourle was born in West Grinstead to an unmarried mother – Sarah – and was baptised in July 1802. He served in the army in his early years, including a period in Ireland, and it is likely that he met his future wife Mary there. Their eldest daughter, Maria, was baptised in Drypool, East Yorkshire, in January 1830. Shortly after Maria was born, William left the army, and the family moved south, to his home parish of West Grinstead in Sussex. Over the next decade and a half, William and Mary had seven more children identified in parish baptism records.
William’s job, as given in the 1841 census, was an agricultural labourer. The jobs listed for him in his children’s baptism entries include servant, (general) labourer as well as agricultural labourer, showing he was taking any work he could get. In the 1849 Parish Rate Book the Tourles are listed renting a small property of 8 perches (about 200 square metres) called Butchers Row. This was located near other family members, across the river from the parish church of West Grinstead.
Life was hard for William Tourle as an agricultural labourer in the 1830s and 40s. The booming population did not correspond to the amount of work available, and because there were so many people looking for work, employers did not have to pay particularly high wages. There was always someone else who needed the money – any money – if you felt your pay was too low. Also mechanisation was increasingly putting people out of work; what would take four men all day to complete often took a machine one morning, and some machines only required one (trained) man to operate.
Many agricultural labourers had little choice but to move to towns or even overseas to find work. It became clear there was greater job security and higher wages abroad. The Government, trade unions and many local parishes began to encourage emigration, printing posters and paying emigrants’ travelling.
George Thorns was the Overseer of the Poor in West Grinstead in 1849. He was responsible for getting the funding together and accounting for all the expenses paid out to any emigrants.
So the Tourles, with the support of the parish of West Grinsted, left for America in October 1849.
Parish Records: a useful source for tracing emigrants
The parish is the smallest unit of church authority in England and can cover a very large or very small area, being dependent more on the size of the population. Parish records are those generated by activities undertaken by the parish and are many and varied in scope, not just baptisms, marriages and burials.
Parishes had responsibility for caring for old, poor, sick and orphans – those who could not work and could not support themselves. Rates to support them were set at vestry meetings and discussions conducted about individual cases. The burden on the Poor Rate was getting particularly problematical after 1815, as rates of unemployment grew. The idea emerged to offer payments by parishes to individuals and whole families, for travel and expenses to emigrate, so they would no longer be a burden on the Poor Rate. Vestry meeting minutes and papers provide invaluable examples of named emigrants, as well as information on emigration processes to America (and Canada) from various West Sussex parishes in the first half of the 19th century.