Norwich – Rosary Cemetery (John Carsey)

Since I’ve been grounded again by the Government, I thought I’d meander around the Rosary Cemetery located near to me in Norwich, in an attempt to see what stories lie there. It might not be the most fascinating blog content, but it’ll keep me quiet for a few weeks….

John Carsey was born in 1776, marrying Ann who was born in Mulbarton in around 1767. As to where their marriage record has gone, I have no idea. There’s something quite intriguing about looking at graves of people who were born before the United States was independent. Well, there is to me….

John was the sole executor of the will of Jabez Chittock (1805-1831) in 1831 and he also showed potential purchasers around properties in the Lakenham area. I’m assuming from these two facts that John worked as a solicitor or something similar, but he did amass some money.

At the time of the 1841 census, John and Ann were living alone at 3 Grove Road, West End Place in Lakenham. As a freeholder, John was entitled to vote, and at the July 1847 General Election, he voted for the Marquis of Douro (Tory) and Samuel Morton Peto (Liberal). Peto was one of the great railway engineers of his time and this was the first time that he was elected to the House of Commons (he later represented Bristol and Finsbury) and he held this seat until 1852.

John died on 24 August 1849, at the age of 78. Beckwith, Dye and Kitton, the solicitors for John’s estate, advertised in the Norfolk News in December 1849 asking for anyone who had a claim on his estate to contact them. John’s wife, Ann, died on 7 May 1851, at the age of 84. She had remained living at the same property in Lakenham following John’s death, living just with her servant Sarah Parnell.

There’s some link, which I might come to understand later on, between this grave and the neighbouring grave of Alfred Spooner. Spooner’s sister married Timothy Chittock and they had a child in June 1838 which was named John Carsey Chittock.