William Chiddock Ellis CULLING is a cousin of mine twice over. His mother AND his father link into my blood line, but they are not related to each other. Other CULLING people also married CHITTOCK people from the same 2 families, in various generations. I guess this happened a lot in small places.
I have done a fair amount of work on him. I believe he was born in Alpington, Chr in Yelverton, 19th Dec 1836. The 2 parishes were often run as one by the same parson I think.
He was indeed the illegitimate son of Charlotte, and the grandson of John CULLING and Sarah nee FLATMAN. Charlotte married Jeremiah LESTER in 1838 in St Michael at Thorn. In 1841 William was with Charlotte and her husband Jeremiah.
In 1851 he was with his mother who by then was on her second husband, Utting William COOKE, a shoemaker. William, aged 14, is listed as a visitor, NOT a stepson? He had at least 4 COOKE half siblings.
I fully understand that you would like to know exactly what the PR says. I think you will find his Chr in the Yelverton parish register. The film of the PR is on line, and available completely free provided you register.
FamilySearch has over 200,000 scans of Norfolk Parish register pages on line. They are not easy to find, but are certainly there. The wiki for Yelverton is here -
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Yelverton,_Norfolk_GenealogyScroll down to the coloured 'spreadsheet'. This has links to the family search Norfolk parishes where you then get access to the films.
By 1911 William was in Essex, where he died in 1917. My research notes regarding William father are::The theory is that William Chiddick Ellis CULLING was the illegitimate son of Charlotte and an Ellis CHIDDICK (or CHITTOCK).
* For the purposes of elimination, I checked free bmd and there are NO Ellis CHIDDOCKs listed at all. In fact, there are only 19 entries in total in the free bmd database for the surname. There are only 9 christenings in free reg in Norfolk, and at least one of these is actually a CHITTOCK who has been mis-listed by the parson (or mis-transcribed by the volunteer?).
* There is only one Ellis CHITTOCK in our tree who could be this man's father, so I have linked them BUT note we have NO CONFIRMATION. I think it is significant that William named his second son Ellis CULLING and this name was given to the first son for 2 more generations.
SHIRLEY
