| Notes |
- John was born in 1776, the youngest of four children of William and Mary Tusting. His parents married quite late (William was 46, and I believe his wife was in her early 30's), and John was born after ten years of marriage, so was certainly a late child. He was also the only surviving boy, an earlier child (also called John) having died aged 2. He was born and brought up in the parish of Marton, close to the banks of the River Trent around four miles upstream from Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. At the settlement of Trent Port in the parish there were wharves which would have been used by substantial vessels bringing in goods, maybe from the Continent, and it is interesting to speculate whether this had a bearing on his later career. By 1797 he was living in Lincoln, some 10 miles away, and in this year he was married to Elizabeth TAYLOR in her home parish of Stow (Stow-in-Lindsey), not far from Marton, her father being a butcher in the parish. The church would have been large then as now, but it is now in far better repair, having been faithfully restored in the 19th C. Its origins are Saxon, and it was once the main church of the area prior to the building of the original Lincoln Cathedral.
The couple's first child, Mary, was born in Lincoln in 1798. Nothing more is known, and I believe the child died young, but all John's subsequent children would live to adulthood and marriage. John's father died in Marton in January 1800 and, as the only son, I imagine John would have been needed at home. Elizabeth was either heavily pregnant or with a newborn at the time, so it seems they moved back to Marton, as second child Frances was baptised in the village in March of the same year.
John's father must have ensured his son got a decent education in the days before this was mandatory, for in 1802 he secured his first post in the Excise service. In those days, Customs and Excise were separate government departments, and excise duty was levied on all goods, whether inland or from abroad. Their officers would inspect and measure stills used in the brewery and liquor trades and collect the necessary duty, and were also at this time responsible for administering the Candle Tax. The job would require good reading, writing and arithmetic skills, honesty and a good character, and was a responsible job working for a government organisation with career progression. It did, however, demand mobility, as even in the early 19th C officers were moved often from place to place. Progression seems to have been from an Assistant to an Officer with responsibility for a 'ride' (area), moving perhaps to rides of greater importance as experience developed, with possible promotion to Supervisor, responsible for a whole district. Rides were so called as the round of inspections would be made on horseback.
John left his home area completely in 1802, when he entered the service as an Assistant in Tamworth nr. Lichfield, Staffordshire. His third child Millicent was baptised in Tamworth in 1803, but after only 8 months or so he was moved to a country ride in the Daventry area, in the far west of Northamptonshire. His home parish was Byfield, and it was here that his next two children were born, Ann Ursula in 1805 and Thomas Taylor in 1807.
By this time he had been promoted to Officer, and in 1808 he was moved the relatively short distance to a Northampton area ride, and lived in the parish of Great Creaton. Here two further children were born, John in 1809 and Robert (father of John Thomas) in 1812. The use of variant spellings of the surname during the few years in Byfield and Great Creaton reflect the fact that they lived in an area home to members of the Tustin and Tustain families for centuries. At around the time of Robert's birth John was moved to a new ride in the Stourbridge area of Worcestershire, but later in 1812 was moved to the '1st ride' in Bedford, where he lived in the town iteslf. It was here that John and Elizabeth's eighth and last child, Elizabeth, was born in 1814.
Events then took a sudden and unexpected turn. In 1817 wife Elizabeth passed away in Bedford at the age of 42, leaving seven children ranging in ages from 2 to 17. The very day that Elizabeth was buried, the Excise Board confirmed the exchange of appointments between John and a William HERRING, who held a similar Officer's post in the town of Baldock, not far away in Hertfordshire. He had been widowed himself (in 1812) and had only recently married Margaretta WHITE, herself a widow. It is possible that the exchange was in some way a response to the respective family situations, and one wonders if they knew each other. Soon Margaretta was expecting the HERRING's first child, yet only two months after confirmation of the move to Bedford, William HERRING was granted leave to relinquish his post. Their child Sarah (HERRING) was baptised in Baldock in April 1818 (suggesting the family were back in Baldock, Margaretta's birthplace), and in June William died and was buried there. As a recently widowed mother with an infant, and having married an Excise Officer, there must have been at least empathy between her and widower John, both now living in Baldock.
In September of 1818 John (aged 42) married Margaretta (now HERRING) (37) in Baldock, and they thus became parents to a total of eight children.
Promotion came in 1819, when John was appointed as an Examiner, the preliminary to a permanent appointment as Supervisor. This involved examining officers' records and deputising for other Supervisors when required. Twice during the year John was called away (as far apart as Stockport nr. Manchester and Gloucester) to be acting Supervisor for incumbents who were ill. The following year, John was appointed as Supervisor for Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. So the family moved to the open expanses of the Cambridgeshire Fens, where John and Margaretta were to remain for the next eleven years (it seems Supervisors were not moved around as were Officers). They lived on the North Brink, an elegant riverside street of mainly Georgian style houses on the bank of the (navigable) River Nene, and John would surely have been familiar with the nearby warehouses, a few of which still remain.
Also in 1820, the (presumed) eldest surviving daughter Frances was married in Wisbech to a Cambridgeshire gardener. Margaretta's daughter Sarah HERRING sadly passed away in 1821 aged just three - however, the following year, after four years of marriage and at the age of 41, Margaretta bore John a child, a girl christened Emma Fitzjohn (Fitzjohn being Margaretta's maiden name).
In 1828 John was ill, requiring someone to deputise for him as supervisor at Wisbech. Also in that year, the eldest boy Thomas (Thomas Taylor) was married in the town of March, not far from Wisbech. Most of their seven children were to die in infancy, and within a generation the Tusting line died out in Cambridgeshire. All three of John's sons followed their father into business or professions, Thomas starting out as a printer and becoming a bank manager and land agent, as well as holding other positions in the community.
Early in 1830 John (senior) was again ill, and a deputy was required to perform duties at Wisbech. In the December his daughter Ann Ursula was married in the town - she appears to have borne just one child, and later remarried, so her husband is presumed to have died.
It seems discipline was tight in the Excise service, for in 1831 John was found not to have paid expenses to one of the Officers under his superintendence, despite having been reimbursed for the same, and was reduced to the role of Officer. This meant, of course, leaving Wisbech, and the new posting was in Stamford, an attractive town on the Great North Road in Lincolnshire. In 1832 John was transferred to Wellingborough in Northamptonshire.
John was ill again in 1834 and, having been unable to perform his duties for 24 weeks, was ordered to relinquish his post. He was paid a superannuation in the Wellingborough area, and two of his children were married in the town in the succeeding years. In 1835 son Robert, by then a local grocer, was married to a confectioner's daughter. From his second marriage in 1841 comes (as previously noted) the 'Bedfordshire' and 'Norfolk' branches of the family via his son John Thomas. John's widowed daughter Ann Ursula (then HOBSON), now a confectioner herself, was married again in 1838 to a Northumberland bookbinder and printer in Wellingborough, and there were four children born locally. The family later moved to Oundle (Northamptonshire) and then Bury St. Edmunds (Suffolk).
Requests by John for alteration of his superannuation payments show that during 1839 he spent time in the Lichfield area, but by the end of the year had moved to Bedford, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. The likely reason is that his eldest surviving daughter Frances and her growing family still lived at Erdington, not far away from Lichfield. It seems only his youngest daughter Emma Fitzjohn now remained at home, since by 1839 Elizabeth was a schoolmistress in March (Cambridgeshire), where her brother Thomas lived.
In January 1839 Margaretta, his second wife of 20 years, died in Bedford and was buried, like his first wife, in St. Paul's churchyard. Unlikely though it seems, John was committed to a debtors cell in Bedford County Gaol for 17 days in August of that year (why remains a mystery). Late in 1840 Emma Fitzjohn, aged just 17 or 18, was married in Bedford to a wheelwright from Lincolnshire. She was a dressmaker, and after marriage lived in nearby Elstow before moving back to Wisbech, and later to London. The only remaining unmarried child, Elizabeth, was married in the town of March in 1842 and raised a large family, first in that area, and later in King's Lynn (Norfolk) and Linton (Cambridgeshire). Her husband (originally from Kent), and some of their children, were involved in the grocery and drapery businesses.
On the 1841 census, John, 'of independent means', was living in Bedford in the company of a Mary RICKWORD, around 25 years his junior, who perhaps was looking after him in his old age. In 1844, however, they were married in Bedford.
John passed away on 12th November 1846, and was buried in St. Paul's, Bedford. His third wife continued to live as a housekeeper in the town, and later was resident in the Hawes almshouses there, provided by a local benefactor for poor widows. She died in Bedford in 1863.
All but one of John's children are known to have lived to adulthood, married, and lived into their 60's at least (most longer than that). The last surviving child was his youngest, Emma Fitzjohn, who died in the St. Pancras workhouse in London in 1902.
Mike Sasse 2015
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Abt 1776 - 1846 (~ 70 years)
