The Sharpes Come to Kansas

Among the family papers collected by Laura and provided to me by Cindy is the following narrative of the Sharpes' journey to Parkerville in Morris County Kansas. I've tried to verify that they lived in this pub at Mareham-le-Fen, but I haven't been able to do that through census records in England. But there are other pieces of information that do support it. Laura and Dorothy Leib traveled to this pub as their grandmother's home place. Since Laura had kept all the family memorabilia and is the daughter of Lily, Edward and Betsy's oldest child, I'm assuming she's right. More evidence comes from James Homer Sharpe and his wife, Avis who wrote about their trip to Mareham-le-fen in 1964. James is the son of Betsy's brother James who was 9 when the family immigrated. The photo of the pub is from James Homer's trip in 1964. The following is the link to the pub's current web page. http://www.diningpubs.co.uk/pub_details.asp?id=495

A Methodist minister, Rev. Wake form England, came to Kansas and sent back to his friends, the William Sharpes.in New Bolingbrook, England, a can full of Kansas rich black soil. He told them of an ideal opportunity of getting land to homestead, for men with large families and not much of an opportunity to advance there.
We know they had friends who wished them “God Speed.” We have a bible from one “To Mr. and Mrs. Sharpe on their leaving England with best wishes of their sincere friend, John Tattersall, New Bolingbrook, April 11, 1870. He was an ancestor who lived in the Tattersall Palace place, where the Sharpe children played around the moat.
In April 1870 they were packed and ready to start on the long journey via ship to New York City in the USA with their children.

We traveled to Marehem-le-fen in 2009 and took the two color photographs in this article. The one is the Tattersall castle and the other is the moat. The moat seemed to have seen better days in that there was not much indication of water in it at present. We were unable to get into the castle because it was closed for an event, but the servers setting up waved to us across the moat.

The Sharpes, William and Rebekah and their ten children, would have set off from Mareham-le-fen to cross from the east side of England to the west to sail from Liverpool. It's not a great number of miles from east to west England, at least compared to their journey from New York to Kansas, but it couldn't have been simple. In 1870 the children would have ranged in age from 19 or so down to perhaps twins who were less than a year old. I'm trying to determine the ship they would have sailed on to America, but haven't pinned it down yet.

To be continued.