William Wallis Titt was very much a son of Salisbury Plain. He was born in Chitterne and brought up mostly in the Shrewton area. He’d have been there for the great storm of 1841 for he was born in the 1830s.
His dad was a blacksmith and by the time William was 13 he looked set for a lifelong job on the land. He was an agricultural labourer.
But William had other ideas. He married young, Market Lavington born Caroline Gauntlett in 1858 and in 1861 the couple, with baby Alice lived on High Street, Market Lavington. William was a wine and spirit merchant. We have one of his large stoneware bottles at Market Lavington Museum

W W (William Wallis) Titt bottle at Market Lavington Museum
Perhaps the 1860s were not a good time to be in the wine and spirit business in Market Lavington. William failed to make a go of the business. The British Antique Bottle Forum (http://www.britishantiquebottles.co.uk/) were able to send us this report of a bankruptcy.

Financial troubles for William Wallis Titt of Market Lavington
It would seem that William’s business folded in 1867. We note that James Farmer, a butcher of Market Lavington acted as a trustee. James was the stepfather of William’s wife, Caroline. Caroline’s mother, also a Caroline had married James after being widowed.
Perhaps it was James who gave William and Caroline a chance to get their lives back in order. In 1870, William and Caroline along with Lucy and an England born son, Ernest, were living at Junction City, Kansas, USA where William was an agricultural labourer who had property worth $200
By 1880 William was listed as a farmer in the town of Highland, Kansas. Eva, Francis, Walter and Emily had been added to the family.
By 1900 the family were still in Highland, Kansas. William and Caroline had been married for 41 years and Caroline had borne 11 children of which 6 survived.
The couple celebrated 50 years of marriage in 1908 and were still in Kansas in 1910 with just 5 of their children still living – two of them with the parents.
If anyone out there has any further information about William Wallis Titt, we’d love to hear from them.
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