Alice Wickersham

Daughter of Richard & Alice Parnell. Wife of Thomas Wickersham, they married They were married on Aug 27, 1700 at Thomas Parson's house, Cowfold, Sussex, England, (1700) per International Marriage records.

The most distinguished of the Hogge clan in Sussex was ironmaster Ralph Hogge (d 1585), who was Queen Elizabeth's "crown gunfounder" with a monopoly on the export of ordinance to the continent. He had two iron furnaces in operaton and his firm exported its iron goods via the port of Newhaven on the Channel. In the Middle Ages and early modern times, Sussex was one of England's major iron-manufacturing areas. Buxted, the center of Ralph Hogge's iron furnace activity was quite close to Fletching, 14 miles from Bolney, 17 miles from Ifield, where our Hogge family was located in the 17th century. It is quite possible that the two Hogge families were related. In the 1680's, one William Benge operated iron furnaces in Sussex. He may have been related to the Richard Benge who in 1679 married Alice Hogge, an aunt and namesake of Alice Hogge Wickersham. Buxted village contains the Hog-house, from its having on its front a stone carved with a rude figure of a hog, with the date 1581. The original house was the habitaation of Ralph Hogge, a celebrated iron-founder, who in conjunction with Peter Baude, is believed to have cast the first cannon ever seen in Europe. Casting and boring before Hogge's time were unknown. The older ordnance was made of iron bars placed together with great compactness, and surrounded with strong hoops after the manner of a barrel.

Alice Hogge's father died when she was one year old. It is not known whether she was raised by her mother or other Hogge kinfold in Ifield, but we do know that by 1700, she was already, before her marriage, a resident of Bolney.

- "The Wickersham's in America" book and "smanastas" for sharing this.

Family Records on Ancestry have her date of passing as June 16, 1730. I will be looking in MM records for evidence of this, as her husband having passed just 12 days prior, that is documented, seems suspicious to me.