Has Samuel Chittock been found at last?

According to a quick search on the new Family Search Beta.org site, a reference to a Saml Chittock baptised on 17th March 1799 at Loddon, the son of Elizabeth Chittock.

Aha, could be him. He gets married in 1820 just after he turns 21. I have suspected he may have been illigitimate. It is only the 1871 census when he is an inmate at the Great hospital where he mentions Loddon in the census.

But a quick peak at the Loddon registers reveal no such entry. Nor in the Arch Deacon's Transcripts held at the Norwich library at the Forum. A real puzzler.

So I gets in touch with the people who run this site, the mormon lot and they very quickly replied thus:

"The film number is 1471002 which is the source of the digitized images. We went to the library catalog and searched for this film number and discovered that it is the Bishop's Transcripts for the Arch Deaconry of Norfolk That particular film number is for certain parishes in the Arch deaconry where your ancestor was found."

I can only assume this entry may refer to a later baptism, an adult one as had his youngest son, Joseph. Or perhaps he was baptised in another parish near Loddon and the transcriber did that ghastly thing of just writing down a few things. Who knows.

Anyway, the next step is to get in touch with a local Mormon centre, who are supposed to be rather good at this sort of thing, and see if they can find the digitised copy for there is another pointer that it is not in the local church of England our Sam was baptised.

On 23 of February 1800, an Elizabeth Chittock was baptised, also at Loddon. Or at least, from Loddon, perhaps just staying. Her mother was Ann Chittock, another illigitimate birth. Whatever would the neighbours say?

If you are related to Joseph Chittock and his wife, Mary Jay, you may have found out that one of Mary's grandparents or great grandparents (I forget which) called Michael Jay shacked up with his widowed house keeper following the death of his wife Deborah and had prodigious amounts of children, and they never married. It was possible to have a family and not get married. Providing you could afford the children. As usual, when the parish had to cough up, like now, no one approves except the most understanding of people when a child was born outside of marriage. Ann Chittock may have been deserted, or a planned wedding delayed... but if I'm right, she married in Heckingham, next door to Loddon, in 1802 to a widowed Robert Waller who comes from St Michael At Thorn's parish in Norwich which is slap bang next to St John Timberhill where all our possible relations lived. James Drane was a witness. The chances of two illigitimate Chittock baptisms within a year of each other, and other connecting factors does seem to indicate that Elizabeth Chittock and Ann Chittock are related. Also, returning from Norwich to be buried in 1790 was Charles Chittock, and another Elizabeth Chittock, a very elderly one returns from Norwich to be buried in 1808. If Elizabeth (Sam's mum) and Ann are the eldest and youngest daughter of Robert Chittock (married to Ann Lacy) who is Charles's cousin (as mentioned in his will), it is possible that these two sisters were sent out of the way to spawn. And back to the ancestral seat, as it were.

Who is Elizabeth Chittock?

Anyway, the above is the first possible Elizabeth. The eldest daughter of Robert Chittock, shoe maker, and Ann Lacy his wife. Baptised in 1769 at St John Timberhill (which I pass twice a week when I take my boy to Judo so I always nod hello to the graveyard) we have yet to find any possible marriage for her, disproving the theory. We can't easily find any Elizabeth Chittock spinster burial either. Why assume this? Well, there is an Elizabeth Chittock in Norwich who has at least three illigitimate children. A Robert William Chittock in 1803 at St. Edmunds, and two in St George Colegate - Elizabeth in 1804 and Ann Martha in 1807. Robert was buried at St John Timberhill before he turned one. This suggests a connection with the Chittocks there. So Samuel being born in 1799 is not out of the question for being one of her children. Our Sam, his first daughter was baptised at St George Colegate. He then moved to St Edmunds, or at least had his kids baptised there.

This is, of course, assuming the Loddon Elizabeth and the Norwich Elizabeth are one and the same, but I think they are, there are still links between the two places with their Chittocks. And the Waller wedding in 1802 also is interesting.
Robert the Eldest, as I have to call him, had a short lived son Robert whose widowed wife married William Norton who considers himself a gent when he witnessed the letter of administration for a Maria Roberts, spinster of Loddon in 1821.

The second candidate for Elizabeth, if we want a Norwich link, is the one born in 1775 to Robert Chiddick and Rebecca Bush of St Gregory's parish. As of yet, I can't find this Robert's birth. He was born in 1744 time, and married twice. He seems to been called Chiddick everywhere he went. But since Chiddick and Chittock appear sometimes in the same record (a cornoer's inquest actually) for the same person, thats the Norwich norfolk dialect for you. DDs and TTs can be misheard.

The third possible Elizabeth is the one in Suffolk you see on the A2A lists if you type in Samuel Chittock. A Sam Chittock was baptised in Weybridge in 1803 and she was the subject of a settlement examination in 1800 time. This could be ours, baptised a good few years after birth, but unlikely. I hope.

So, one step forward, and a whole nest of niggly noos. Who is the Daddy!

Anyway, if this is accurate, dear Samuel Chittock, will no longer be known as circa 1800