CHILDHOOD
Anna Matilda Goodhew was the first born of Phillip Goodhew and Harriet Sargent. Though they lived in Borden, the Goodhews attended the Methodist chapel on High Street, Sittingbourne. Anna was christened there on May 26, 1833.
She appears to have been close to her brother Herbert Goodhew, who was both seven years her junior and the only boy in a family with four sisters. She gave her firstborn the middle name "Herbert" in his honour. When Herbert Goodhew married, in 1862, Anna and her husband Stephen Hales served as the witnesses.
MARRIAGE
Anna Goodhew married Stephen Hales in the parish church of Minster in Sheppy, June 14, 1855. Their ages were 21 and 20, respectively and both could write well enough to sign their names. The bride and groom both residing within the parish, which is about 9 miles north of Anna's parent's home in Borden and 12 miles from Stephen's in South Dean, Stockbury. Phillip Goodhew Chrisfield and Mary Ann Chrisfield served as witnesses.
Arthur Mee described Minister in Sheppy as "one of the marvels of all England .... This place grew out of a green hill. This gem was once set in a silver sea." From the church "we look out and see the Medway and the Thames moving into the ocean of waters that have not ceased to move since time began." (THE KINGS ENGLAND: KENT, pp 317-319)
This may have been one of the Hales family's favourite spot, for Anna's son Stephen Richard Hales retired here in 1922.
MARRIED YEARS
We do not know if Anna was still alive.
I suspect my cousin John Cox was thinking of Stephen and Anna, when he told me the Hales family were "gypsies." They did not stay in one place for too long. After their marriage, she and Stephen resided in his ancestral hamlet of South Dean, which is in a wedge of trees on the hilltop across from St Mary Magdelene parish church,Stockbury. A decade later they were in Milton Regis, which Mee describes as lying beside "the flats with the great red sails of barges passing by." (KENT, p 315) By 1879, they were living in Prospect Cottage, Headcorn. Mee wrote that this village "pleases all who come, with its wide street and its great square church, a fine windmill, an old bridge, splendid timber houses, some of the loveliest craftmanship in England, and a living giant at which it is said Queen Elizabeth wondered" He was referring to the giant oak, "the oldest survivor of the original forest of the weald." (KENT, p 231) Stephen and Anna finally left these rural settings to take up residence in the county town of Maidstone. That is where we find them when the 1901 and 1911 census were taken.
They raised nine children.