The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.3 | Dec 2023

Member’s article

times. (1) Mary PECKFORD , on 22nd July 1806 at Milton; by whom he had 7 children: 4 baptised in Milton (Henry, 1807; John, 1808; James, 1810, Harriet, 1812), and 3 in Eling (Charles, 1814, Mary Ann, 1817; Samuel, 1820), and an illegitimate birth Eleanor, 1821, by Martha GILFORD , after wife Mary’s death in 1820. His marriage (2) on 1st March 1821 at Marchwood by licence as ‘widower’, to Margaret FENTON (born Scotland), resulted in 9 baptisms in Eling (Peter Fenton, 1822; George, 1823; Elizabeth, 1826; John, 1827; Margarette, 1830, Jane, 1832; Fanny, 1834; William, 1836; Charlotte, 1839). A tenth child was stillborn on the death of his wife Margaret on 26th August 1842. His marriage (3) has not yet been traced, but the 1851 and 1861 censuses record him as married to Ann, born in 1796 or 1799 of Beaulieu. When married Ann would have been in her mid-40s and there were no further children listed in the censuses. My interest in Henry comes via his daughter Jane, born on 4th January 1832, baptised on 26th February 1832 in Marchwood. She is my great grandmother, married in 1855 to Edward BENNETT . He was baptised on 18th May 1828 at Southampton, St. Mary’s, and died young in 1872 aged 43. Jane lived on as a widower and died on 24th July 1919 at the great age of 87 in Southampton. In the 1911 census she was head of house and hence recorded the number of children born to her, as four. Only three of these children survived to be recorded in any census and the fourth has not been traced. Life must have been difficult for Jane after her husband Edward Bennett died in 1872. She was then 40 and left with 3 children: Edward

(14), William (9), and John Thomas, conceived a few months before Edward’s death and born in 1873. In 1881 she was a charwoman, and in 1891 and 1901 a washerwoman and laundress, common occupations for widows. In 1911 she was a pensioner. She continued as the anchor of this family until her death, living in Highfield and then 13 Handford Place, Southampton, where she died. In the 1881 census she was bringing up John Thomas then aged 7, whilst eldest son Edward had moved to Freemantle and married Susan MILLER (from Halstead, Essex), and William was in Southampton lodgings as a tobacco cutter. But in 1891 William was back with her, and in 1901 all three children were with her: Edward working as a tailor in Southampton while his bricklayer’s labourer; and John Thomas a groom. However, by 1911 although Edward was still with her while his wife and family were in Lymington, William was away, and John Thomas had married Florence Ann SHORTER from Hampstead (Middlesex, London) and moved to a house round the corner in Upper. Bannister St. and had two children (Edith Florence and Thomas Edward, my father). Jane’s role is crucial for the survival of the Norris photograph. According to John Thomas, as recounted to his son Thomas Edward, the photo stood on the mantelpiece in 13 Handford Place and was referred to as ‘grandpa’. Exposure to the light even in this dingy house accounts for its fading, although the deterioration of the original would have occurred earlier. With her father dead in 1866 and her husband in 1872, it is easy to see why wife and seven children remained in Lymington; William unmarried now a

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