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Kate Greenstreet
Sales

Edith Annie Sales

Tony Eames tells the story of his Great-Grandmother:

Ann, who seems always to have been known as Hannah, was the eighth child of Hookey Southerden, by his third wife Charlotte (née Greenstreet).   She appears to have been born at Winchelsea in December 1844 and was a sickly child, as she was baptised privately by the incumbent there, and it was not until February 1845 that she was strong enough to be taken to church in Lydd for formal baptism.

Her mother died when she was five, and she went to live with her mother’s brother, William Greenstreet, in Lydd.   William and his wife Kitty were childless, and appear to have been happy to have a little girl to look after.

By 1861 Hannah was a 16-years old servant, and on Census night was a visitor in the Tenterden home of her half-sister Rebecca and her husband John Austen, a fruiterer, who had no children of their own.

On 14 December 1869 at Lydd parish church she married Charles Sales, a farm bailiff, who was nearly five years her elder.   William Greenstreet was one of their witnesses.   They moved to Kings Hill Farm, West Malling, and in early 1871 their first daughter, Kate Greenstreet Sales, was born there.   Photographs show Hannah to have been a beautiful, albeit rather delicate, young woman.

Charles later became bailiff of Woolsey House Farm at Yalding, the village where he had been born, and in December 1880 their second child, Edith Annie Sales, was born there.   The nine years gap between their children is, perhaps, an indication of Hannah’s rather delicate health.

The last farm Charles and Hannah managed was at Somerhill, Tonbridge, where he was bailiff and she the dairywoman.   Hannah died there on 3 April 1894, aged only 49.
 

Photograph supplied courtesy of Tony Eames