The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.49 No.2 | September 2022

Member’s article

only his father’s Christian name but also apparently some education. He was (unlike his mother and maternal grandfather) literate and is recorded around 1874 as acting as an “agent”. Family legend held that he played the violin and had invested in property in the Fratton district of Portsmouth. It is to be noted that the first Gosport school was opened on the west side of Holy Trinity Church in 1831 when John would have been about five years old. It was certainly in Gosport that Eliza settled with her young son. On 10 December 1832 at Alverstoke parish church she married John LEAL, a 44 year old, Gosport born cordwainer and widower. If he was taking on the additional responsibility for a 7 year old child with his young bride, he was also gaining their help with his work. John Isaac evidently learned the trade from him and censuses show that Eliza became a shoe binder. She stitched the parts of shoes together before the soles were nailed on. John Isaac Stoneham John Isaac Stoneham married Lavinia VINER at the North Street Chapel, Gosport on 6 September 1846 and over the next two decades they had eight children. Although the tale of their bumpy lives – eventually in Portsmouth – is for another time and place, a further word should be said of Eliza Leal née Stoneham. The end of her story remains unclear. No evidence has been found that she remarried after John Leal’s death in 1857. By 1861 she seems to have been living alone at Darby’s Yard, Gosport, but the information in the census of that year and thereafter is inconsistent with her known history. It is to be hoped she was not the “Eliza Leat” recorded

that his father was “Isaac Wilson, Physician”. I then obtained an article about Wilson by John J. Marshall from the Ulster Journal of Archaeology (“Marshall’s biography”). This showed that Wilson was an Ulsterman born at Drumrusk in 1757 who, after many years as a Royal Navy surgeon and having indeed served between 1821 and 1837 in the prestigious role of Physician at the Haslar Royal Hospital, had been knighted in 1838. But who was John Isaac Stoneham’s mother? Research in parish and census records eventually presented her as Eliza Stoneham. She had been born in 1806 to a Fareham labouring couple who seemed to have been making a living, at least in part, by servicing the needs of the monied classes in Fareham and Gosport. Whether this was how Eliza and Isaac WILSON came together is unknown, but it appeared very likely that it was through domestic work she had caught the eye of this elderly but authoritative and affluent local figure. Although now approaching 70, Wilson held an impressive place in society but also, retained a vigorous demeanour that belied his age. The young Eliza might understandably have been dazzled by his attentions. In the event, John Isaac, was born to Isaac Wilson and Eliza Stoneham in 1825. Given the wide gulf between them in age and social status, it would have been surprising indeed had they actually married. Eliza seems, nonetheless, to have been a feisty young woman. On 21 August 1825 at St Peter and St Paul, Fareham, she had her new born son baptised “John Isaac Wilson”. Although there is no evidence that Wilson made any provision for John and his mother, it seems possible that he did. John received not

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