Charles Moses PEGGS
The son of James PEGGS and Sarah Ann GIBBS,
and a brother of John PEGGS who drowned in 1913
His family lived at Johnson's Corner, Horsey in 1861, and Horsey Corner in 1881.
"I was born in the year
1864 in the Parish of Horsey 12 miles North of Great Yarmouth on the sea coast of Norfolk. My father was a
farm labourer a ploughman working from 5.30 in the morning until 7 o'clock at night for 12 shillings a week and a
family of little children to keep, thank God we always had bread though sometimes nothing to eat with it, then
Mother would give us some pep[p]er and salt sop.....
There was no school [so] I went to work when I was 8 years old for 2/- a week scaring
crows or trying to scare them. I would run from one end of the field to the other and the crows would just
fly past me and light down then I would cry because I could not keep them of[f]. I could run fairly
good. One Sunday dinner time the mistress sent me some turkey broth by the young Miss. I was very
bashful and would not let her get near me. She ran after me but could not catch me and lost her shoe.
She left my dinner and I had to take the things up to the house, then I got a good talking to.
There was no Methodist Church in Horsey so they used to preach in our house and after
in another house further up the row..... After a while we got a little chapel. I remember sitting in the
chapel waiting for the preacher. Presently, in he came with his corduroy trousers and big heavy boots, long
sleeved waistcoat with velveteen front double bre[a]sted with brass buttons on each side [and] a tall silk hat out
of it he took a large red handkerchief with white spots in. He bent a few moments in prayer and then he gave
out the no. of the hymn and started to sing with a loud voice: "Plunged in a gulf of dark despair we wretched
sinners lay without one cheering beam of hope or spark of glimmering day. Oh the lamb the bleeding lamb the
lamb on Calvary the lamb that was slain and liveth again to intercede for me." .....We always had a prayer
meeting after the preaching service on Sunday night."
Charles Moses PEGGS became a preacher and moved to Cowpen in Northumberland, where he worked as a
preacher and then Sunday School teacher, before emigrating to Western Australia in 1912, and farmed in the
south-west of Western Australia. He died in 1941 aged 77 years.
The above memories taken
from his recollections, kindly sent in by his
great granddaughter Shelley Campbell.
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