some detective work ...
... and a theory
Some people are just plain hard to find in the censuses.
In 1851 John Letts was an innkeeper at Haselbech (a.k.a. Haselbeech,
Haslebeech, Haselbeach, Hazelbeech, etc) but the local census merely
remarks "husband absent" above the name of his wife Lucy.
He was eventually found to be visiting an inn in Fazeley, Staffordshire,
half-hidden under the name "John Litts". Was it his accent or was it just
that the enumerator couldn't read his own writing? No matter, a small
puzzle had been cracked.
It did beg another question, though. What was John doing in Staffordshire?
One of his descendants, Jean Buswell, began to investigate ...
I searched all the households in Atherstone Street, Fazeley in 1851
and only one is a pub. The Plough & Harrow Inn, a coaching inn, was built 300 years ago and
is still in use.
A bit of research produced the following information about
Fazeley from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of
England and Wales (1870-72)
"Fairs are held on the second Monday of Jan., Feb., April, Sep.,
and Dec.; on the third Monday of July, Aug., and Nov.; on the
last Monday of March, May, and June; and on the first Monday
after Old Michaelmas."
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/place_page.jsp?p_id=8065
The 1851 census was taken on 30th March, a Sunday, so could he have been there for the fair the following day, 31 March?
Fazeley, on the outskirts of Tamworth, is 38 miles from Haselbech by the shortest route. Why go to
Fazeley and not to a market or fair closer to home? Interestingly,
all the other men staying at the Fazeley inn that night were
drovers.
What is so
special about Fazeley/Tamworth fairs?
"The Tamworth breed pig originated in
Sir Robert
Peel's Drayton Manor Estate at
Tamworth,
Staffordshire,
after the existing herd was interbred from 1812 with pigs from
Ireland known as
'Irish Grazers', that Peel had seen in Ireland in 1809. Much of the
improvement of the breed took place in Staffordshire and also in the
counties of Warwick, Leicester and Northampton, England. The breed
appears among the least interbred with non-European breeds, and
therefore one of the closest to the original European forest swine."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tamworth_(pig)&oldid=358886245
(last visited Apr. 29, 2010).
On the 1851 census
John was recorded as just an Innkeeper, but on the 1861 census, he was a Licensed Victualler and Farmer. So that's my theory. He was going to buy Tamworth pigs!
Jean Buswell