The Petworth Emigration Project began in Canada and in England as a collaborative case study in the social history and genealogy of nineteenth-century emigration and immigration. Under the sponsorship of the third Earl of Egremont, the Petworth emigrations were a remarkable example of sustained assisted emigration.

Assisting Emigration to Upper Canada uses the sources of landlords and government to narrate the emigration of some 1,800 emigrants from Sussex and near-by English counties to Upper Canada (Ontario) between 1832 and 1837. English Immigrant Voices turns to the emigrants and the letters they wrote describing their life-altering decisions and their new lives in Canada.

Through biography, the project has taken new directions to follow two people who rose from humble beginnings through their connections with the third Earl of Egremont and Petworth House.

Poor Cottages and Proud Palaces follows the full life of Thomas Sockett, the rector of Petworth and the man behind the Earl’s Petworth Emigration Committee. Elizabeth Ilive, Egremont’s Countess as the mistress, and eventually the wife, of the 3rd Earl participated in the society of artists, scientists, and experimenters in agriculture who frequented Petworth House.

This website includes Lists and Indexes designed to aid genealogists interested in Petworth emigrants and their descendants of the first generation.

The authors associated with this project gratefully acknowledge Father Edward Jackman and the Jackman Foundation who have supported their work from the inception of the Petworth project.