St Peters Churchyard, Preston Park, Brighton.

[julie7239]

I noticed something odd about some graves in St Peters Churchyard, Preston Park Brighton.

I just found this photograph taken in the 1860's of the grave of Benjamin and Amelia Travers.
http://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume18/source/jg_18_153.html

I had already put a photograph of the grave of Amelia Travers on the Find a Grave website.
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSsr=41&GSmcid=48905387&GRid=156970194&
 She is the daughter of the gentleman Benjamin Travers.  The photograph  I took was a small stone laid into the ground, with another name, Harriet Madge, on it.  It looks nothing like the grand gravestone in the 1860's photograph.

The Regency Society website does say there was a fire at the St Peters Churchyard in the early twentieth century, so maybe some of the original graves were destroyed, and the one I photographed was only done then, from what was salvaged?  Does anybody know?  Maybe that is why there are so many insignificant looking little gravestones laid into the ground, overgrown with grass and moss, with minimal information on them?

[groom]

When did Benjamin die, was it after her? I wonder if she died and was buried with the smaller stone, perhaps that's all they could afford at the time and then when he died her name was added to his larger headstone?

[julie7239]

I assume from the information I could find that the daughter Amelia died before the father Benjamin, as she was only 21 when she died.  Her obituary was in the Gentleman's Magazine, so I assume they weren't poor, but maybe they were.

Birth:  Apr. 29, 1796
Death:  Jan. 11, 1817

Maybe by 1906 when the fire was, if the big gravestone was destroyed maybe there was no family left.  Maybe these small stones laid into the ground with minimal information, just a name and year, were because the original damaged stones were a hundred years old and no family remained to pay for a new one?

[jonw65]

Marriage, 30 September 1819, St John Hackney
Thomas Madge
+
Harriot Travers

Harriot seems to have been another daughter of Benjamin and Mary Travers, and born 1790?

[jonw65]

The European Magazine, and London Review
1819
30 September
At Hackney, the Rev. Mr. Madge, of Norwich, to Harriet, fifth daughter of the late Benjamin Travers, Esq.

Benjamin seems to have died in Tunbridge Wells in April 1817

[jonw65]

I just found this photograph taken in the 1860's of the grave of Benjamin and Amelia Travers.

Benjamin was not buried at St Peter Preston Park
He was in fact buried at Ticehurst, Sussex, 3 May 1817
Age 65

[jonw65]

I just found this photograph taken in the 1860's of the grave of Benjamin and Amelia Travers.
http://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume18/source/jg_18_153.html

As it says
"Its age, the 1860’s, is supported by the reference on the stone to a death in 1817."
But they both died in 1817, and anyway, as said, from what we can see there appears to be only one date on the stone

To find out who is actually buried there, you really need the burial register.

[julie7239]

I just found this photograph taken in the 1860's of the grave of Benjamin and Amelia Travers.

Benjamin was not buried at St Peter Preston Park
He was in fact buried at Ticehurst, Sussex, 3 May 1817
Age 65

Thanks, that is interesting.  I wonder who these people were?  I vaguely remember from trying to find out years ago, that Benjamin Travers was a London surgeon?  I think they were Quakers.