The BRISTOL Pinsents seem to come from a Pinson family that lived in Lustleigh, a parish just to the north of Bovey Tracey. The family can be traced back to Richard Pinson who married Elizabeth Gregory in Lustleigh in 1775. Richard’s father is not known with any certainty, so he is deemed to be the patriach of the family.
Richard may have been the son of an earlier Richard Pinsent (1718 – xxxx) whose family farmed at Yeo, in Bovey Tracey. If so, his line is an extension of the TEIGNMOUTH branch discussed elsewhere. Unfortunately, I cannot find any record of Richard being born in Lustleigh, Bovey Tracey (or any other parish, for that matter) in-or-around 1745 (the calculated year of his birth). The births and deaths in Bovey Tracey were, for some reason, very poorly recorded for about thirty years (between 1740 and 1770) and those pages that do exist are now corroded and torn. There are large breaks and it is quite likely that family members fell between the cracks; alternatively Richard’s birth may have been registered in a non-conformist register. There was a strong streak of non-conformity in the West Country at this time and one of Richard’s sons, Abraham Pinsent (1787 – 1871) certainly had his sons baptized by a dissenting minister. Perhaps the family had been Baptist for a generation or two.
Lustleigh’s Anglican parish records start in the early 1600s and from then on “Pinsons” and “Pinsents” seem to have wandered in and out of the parish. Robert Pinsent and his wife Elizabeth (née Delve) from Kelly in Hennock lived there in the 1690s and Edmond Pinsent married Mary (née Satterley) of Wreyland there in 1716.
Our Richard may have been a local, or he may have “come from away” (as they would say in Newfoundland). In the 1700s and 1800s, people moved around more readily that they did in earlier centuries and it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate between “Richards”, or indeed “Johns” and “Annes” that drop out of one parish only to pop up in another. The fact that this particular Richard Pinson was a farm labourer and not a farmer makes a difference too. His family will have left a far lighter footprint in the public records than most of the families discussed in this account. Nevertheless, parish records and census data provide some insight into labouring families, and apprenticeship records and other documents help in sorting out “who was who”.
Richard and Elizabeth Pinsent (or “Pinson” as they were known) had six sons, but only two can reasonably be traced. Abraham moved to Chudleigh where his name was intermittently written as “Pinsent”. This is probably because it was by then the regionally acknowledged way of spelling the family name. However, Abraham and most of his brothers, who also changed their names, came from an illiterate family. Who were they to argue?
Abraham had several sons, including one Thomas Pinsent that left the farming world and was apprenticed to a printer. He became a printer’s compositor and his descendants remained in commerce and trade. Richard’s other traceable son, John “Pinson” moved to Ilsington. He had several sons of his own, including two (James and John) who stayed on the district as “Pinsents”. When not on active service, their descendants worked in the Bovey Tracey Potteries and in Plymouth.
John also had a son (Joseph) who married and went out to New South Wales in Australia. He took the “Pinson” name with him and his family flourished there and produced several generations of “butchers”. Joseph’s descendants are still living in and around Sydney.
John’s son (William), who also went by the name of “Pinsent”, probably married Sarah Eales in Plymouth in 1932 and had two children who also went out to Australia. If so, William’s son rightly becomes the Patriach of the AUSTRALIA branch of the “Pinsent” family. William later married Harriet Morgan and had a second family that is more directly linked to Bristol; hence the appellation. Although there are no more BRISTOL Pinsents left on the male side, several daughters married in Bristol and the family will have made its mark that way.
The following is a brief summary of the BRISTOL Branch of the Pinsent family. For a full listing of individual members visit the FAMILY BRANCH page and for more information on individual sons click through and read their biographies.
Lustleigh, Bristol
Richard Pinsent (1745 – 1825) (a.k.a. “Pinson”) was an agricultural labourer who married Elizabeth Gregory, in Lustleigh, in 1775 and had ten children over a period of twenty-five years. Whether he actually favoured the name “Pinson” over “Pinsent” is hard to know, as he was likely illiterate and it would have been left up to the clerk to decide which spelling to use. The early members of this branch of the family are poorly document.
Parish records show that Richard and Elizabeth (née Gregory) had six sons, Thomas Pinsent (1776 – xxxx), Richard Pinsent (1778 – 1868), John Pinsent (1782 – 1849), William Pinsent (1784 – xxxx), Joseph Pinsent (1788 – xxxx) and Abraham Pinsent (1794 – 1871). They also had four daughters (Elizabeth, Mary, Rachael and Loyalty). There is not a lot known about any of them.
Richard and Elizabeth (née Gregory) would most likely have asked the parish Guardians to arranged for their children to be apprenticed to local farmers or tradesmen, when they attained the age of nine or ten. The child would be committed to serve and live with his or her master until aged twenty-one or some other deal was struck. Ideally, a child would be assigned to a Master who lived in its own parish; however, if there were no one available, they could be sent further afield. Where they landed up and what they did was important as the parish Guardians kept a watchful eye on who came and went. They were responsible to the ratepayers who resented having to pay for the relief of the poor and wanted reassurance that the recipients were qualified. The Parish Guardians periodically brought paupers in for “Settlement Examinations” to confirm that they did.
The Lustleigh Guardians took a look at Richard Pinsent (1778 – 1868), Richard’s second eldest son, in 1845. They found that he had originally been apprenticed in Lustleigh, and he had then moved to Bovey Tracey where he had worked until he was twenty-three years old. After that, he moved to East Teignmouth and worked as an ostler (stable-hand) at a coaching inn for several years before returning to Lustleigh. He applied for relief in 1812 and at that time he seems to have qualified; however, by 1845, the parish had had enough of him and they returned him to East Teignmouth. Richard never married and census records show that he was living with his sister Mary Northway and her husband, in Stokeinteignhead, when he died, in 1868.
What happened to Richard and Elizabeth oldest son, Thomas, is uncertain. Similarly, their sons William and Joseph are largely unaccounted for. However, we do know that William was apprenticed to Joseph Wills at South Harton, in Lustleigh, in 1792 and Joseph was apprenticed to John Wills, at Petherbridge in 1797. Richard’s two other children, John and Abraham, married and had children. They are discussed below.
Abraham Pinsent (1794 – 1871)
Richard and Elizabeth’s youngest son, Abraham Pinson was another agricultural labourer. As a boy, he was apprenticed to John Wills, a farmer in Lustleigh. He seems to have married Mary Willmington, in Dawlish, in 1819. However, she must have died as he had remarried and moved to Chudleigh by the early 1830s. Abraham and his second wife, Anne (surname unknown) had their two sons, Joseph Cook Pinsent(1832 – xxxx) and Thomas Pinsent (1834 – 1917) baptized by a dissenting minister. Abraham stayed on in Chudleigh and we find him called as a witness to a minor assault that took place in 1866.
I know very little about Joseph Cook; however, he is not readily identifiable in the 1841 census and he may have die or perhaps been apprenticed out of parish. His brother, Thomas grew up to become a Corporal in the Second Battalion 17th Regiment of Foot, which was based in Leicestershire in the 1860s. He seems to have left the army in 1868 and returned to Chudleigh, where he married Mary Anne Gilley and took a job as a printer’s “compositer” in Torquay. Thomas and Mary Anne had two surviving sons, Alfred John Pinsent (1869 – 1939) and Frederick William Pinsent (1872 – 1912). A third son, William Thomas Pinsent (1870 – 1871) died while still an infant.
Alfred John, the elder son, lived with his father and followed him into the printing trade. He married Rosina Train in 1893 and they too had two surviving sons, John Thomas Pinsent (1896 – 1958), who served with the Royal Engineers in France during the First World War and later became an electrician in Guildford, and Robert Cecil Pinsent (1898 – 1920). He also joined the Royal Engineers but was discharged in 1918 for an undisclosed medical condition. It may have been tuberculosis as he died of it two years later. John Thomas, the electrician, married Annie Violet Keenor in 1921 and they had two sons before their marriage fell apart in 1928. Their descendants may still be around today.
Frederick William (the younger son) appears to have been an able seaman in the merchant marine. He survived the abandonment of a disabled steamship, (S. S. Coquet) in the North Atlantic, in 1899 – the ship lost its propeller and thus means of mobility. He went on to serve on various ships on the Australia run. He does not seem to have married. Frederick was killed accidentally on the dock at Liverpool while helping to unload a ship, in 1912.
John Pinsent (1782 – 1849)
Going back a few generations, Richard and Elizabeth (née Gregory’s) middle son, John Pinsent (1782 – 1849) was apprenticed to a Thomas Amery at Higher Combe farm. He then moved to Kingsteignton. John was described as being “a miller from Kingsteignton” at the time of his marriage to Mary Follett, in Hennock, in 1808. However, elsewhere, he is described as being a “labourer” so presumably he just worked at the mill. The couple settled in the nearby parish of Ilsington and had ten children between 1809 and 1830. There were seven sons, of whom four: William Pinsent (1811 – 1879), Joseph Pinsent (1819 – 1881), John Pinsent (1823 – 1902) and James Pinsent (1825 – 1886) had families of their own. The others, an earlier John Pinsent (1817 – 1819), a Samuel Pinsent (1828 – 1833) and a Thomas Pinsent (1830 -1832) all died young. John Pinsent (senior) lived at Birchanger Vale, in Ilsington, in 1841 and died there in 1849.
John Pinsent (senior’s) eldest son, William (above), married Harriet Morgan in Somerset after the death of his likely first wife Sarah Eales (see AUSTRALIA branch) and had his first child by Harriet, a son, William Henry John Pinsent (1841 – 1923) while living there, in 1841. Thereafter, he returned to Ilsington, where he worked alongside his father as a day labourer. The census records show that William was a tin miner in 1861 and his wife, Harriet, kept a shop – probably of a grocery store. William died at Haytor Vale, in Ilsington, in 1879 and Harriet went to live with her daughter, Laura Emily and her husband Samuel Lambshead, in Chudleigh. Before her marriage, Laura Emily worked in a pottery in Bovey Tracey. While still a young girl, in 1857, she made a mug that is now on display in Bovey Tracey’s “House of Marbles” Museum. William and Harriet had two surviving sons.
When he grew up, William Henry John moved to Bristol as a labourer and married a local girl, Louisa Broad, in 1864. He eventually became a successful jobbing gardener and had a large family that we will return to later. His younger brother, Sidney (1846 – 1880) also moved up to Bristol. He had had enough schooling to be a “clerk” by the time he met and married Anna Clark, in 1871. Sidney was a solicitor’s clerk when he died, in 1880. Sidney and Anna lived at Wrington in Somerset and had a son William Edward Sidney Pinsent (1876 – 1911) and a daughter Eunice Bell Pinsent. The former seems to have been apprenticed to a jeweller as a boy; however, it looks as if he later became a mariner and ran away to sea. William Edward Sidney had his problems. He was charged with indecency in Cheltenham, in 1906.
John and Mary Follett’s second surviving son, Joseph Pinsent (1819 – xxxx) was a miner (most likely a tin miner) who married Elizabeth Snell, in Ilsington, in 1843. They had two (surviving) sons, William James Pinsent (1846 – 1899) and Richard Thomas Pinsent (1850 – 1913) in Ilsington and then took off for Australia, which was in the throws a gold rush. The family arrived in New South Wales, in September 1850 and promptly drop out of sight as “Pinsents” as Joseph reverted to using the name “Pinson.” Joseph and Elizabeth proceeded to have a large family and their off-spring have added significantly to the population of Sydney where they can still be found. Joseph was a quarryma but several of his son, and theirs’ became butchers.
John and Mary (née) Follet’s third son, another John Pinsent (1823 – 1902) was a farm labourer in Ilsington – at least until he married Elizabeth Loveys in Bovey Tracey, in 1850. Elizabeth was a live-in servant of a “gentleman” Mr. Joseph Steer. John seems to have moved in, so they were all living on Fore Street, when the census-takers to call, in 1851. Mr. Steer died later that year, and left his house, Bridge End Cottage, to Elizabeth’s illegitimate daughter, Jane Anne Mead Pinsent. She was still a child, so he gave Elizabeth control of the cottage until her daughter became off-age. She also received much of the residue of his estate. Not all servants were that lucky! John had been in trouble with the law in 1847 and he was back before of the Magistrates in 1856. The second time he was convicted of receiving six pecks (roughly 12 gallons) of chaff and bran stolen by a young boy – at his direction. Elizabeth was charged with obtaining a pair of shoes from a cobbler on false pretenses that same year. Neither seem to have appreciated how lucky they were.
The couple also made the mistake of alienated their distant cousins who owned the brewery in Newton Abbot. In 1854, the brewers summoned John Pinsent to recover costs for 17 gallons of beer at 6d per gallon. John’s wife answered and claimed she had put in the order for Mr. Steer before he died and it was his … I am not sure how long the bill had been outstanding but how could their Lordships in the County Court (“Pinsent v Pinsent”) say otherwise? Doubtless John consumed at least some of the beer! He outlived Elizabeth and died in the Union Workhouse in Liskeard, in Cornwall, in 1902. The couple had had two sons, John Pinsent (1852 – 1917) and William Pinsent (1860 – 1936), and also two surviving daughters.
John and Elizabeth’s eldest son, John Pinsent was a coal miner in Lancashire for a while but spent most of his life working in the clay pits in Bovey Tracey, either as a clay cutter or as a general labourer. The “Indeo” and “Bovey Heathfield” potteries had been founded in the mid 1700s and they had become an important and reliably source of employment in Bovey Tracey in the 1800s. John married Ann Paddon, in Newton Abbot, in 1874. They had two sons, Wallace Pinsent (1877 – 1955) and Albert John Pinsent (1882 – 1928), as well as five daughters, most of whom spent at least part of their lives working in one or other of the potteries.
Wallace was a brick maker and “fireman” (furnace man). He was also a volunteer in the local Militia prior to the First World War. Despite his relatively advanced age (38), he attempted to sign on with the 3rd Devonshire Regiment, in January 1915; however, he failed the medical and went back to the pottery. Wallace married Emily Caroline Readstone in 1899 but they had no children. Wallace’s younger brother, Albert John Pinsent, joined the Royal Devonshire Artillery in 1902 and then transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery. He served in Gibraltar and Malta before the First World War. His term of engagement ended in March 1914, so he promptly re-enlisted – this time as a Sergeant in the Devonshire Regiment. Albert John survived the war and then went back to the clay works.
Albert John married Hilda Maude Brimblecombe, in Newton Abbot, in 1912, and they had two surviving sons. The eldest, William Edwin Pinsent (1912 – 1985) married Agnes Foster, in Llanaber, Merionethshire and had two daughters. The family lived in Lancashire for a short time during the Second World War and then settled outside London. The youngest son, Wallace Frederick (1920 – 2004) joined the civil service, married in 1946 and had at least one son to carry on the family name.
Just to complicate matters, John and Ann (née Paddon’s) daughters contributed several illegitimate children to the gene pool. Their eldest daughter, Laura Ann Pinsent, was a lathe-treader and potter who had no less than four illegitimate sons before she married Charles Heath and settled down, in 1900. The local papers tell us that when her third child died, in 1896, Laura asked the Parish Guardians to assist with the cost of his burial. They were not amused. They looked into the family’s finances and declined when they found that at it was far from destitute – collectively John and his family earned around £100 per annum! Only one of Laura’s sons, Sydney John Pinsent (1891 – 1968) survived.
Sydney John was brought up in the Heath family and worked with his stepfather in a brickyard before joining the Royal Navy as a stoker in 1913. He served on H.M.S. Conqueror during the First World War and on H.M.S. Warspite and H.M.S. Frobisher in the years that followed. He left the Navy with a good character reference in 1929. Sydney may have re-enlisted during the Second World War, as the London Gazette shows that a “Leading Stoker Sydney John Pinsent, of H.M.S. Carlisle” was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal in 1942. He would have been over fifty years old, so it may have been a retroactive award.
Sydney John Pinsent married Beatrice Mary Drew in 1919 and they had a son, Ernest John Pinsent (1920 – 2011) who served in a tank regiment during the Second World War. Afterwards, he married and settled in Uplowman, near Tiverton. I am not aware of any children.
Laura Ann’s sister Ada Pinsent also worked at the pottery. Her illegitimate son, William Henry Pinsent (1900 – 1965) was too young to see active service, so he missed the war. He stayed on in Bovey Tracey and became a clay worker and, later a (probably stationery) “engine driver.” He married Olive May Perry in 1928 and had two sons who have families that have carried the name, if not the male DNA, forward into modern times.
John and Ann’s youngest surviving daughter Lily Blanche Pinsent contributed yet another illegitimate son, Albert George Pinsent (1907 – 1976). She was a domestic servant at Upton House in Chudleigh before marrying John Pettyjohn in 1911. Albert George started life as a quarryman. He married Bessie Edith Froom, in 1927 and had several children, including two sons while living in Chudleigh before and after the Second World War. Albert George served with the Military Police during the war, and then worked for an electrical company. Both of his sons married and had families of their own in and around Newton Abbot. They too have carried the name forward.
The three sisters were not the first or the last girls in the neighbourhood to have had illegitimate children. In fact, the “Devon House of Mercy”, which was dedicated to “the reclaiming of fallen women,” was built in Bovey Tracey in 1861 in response to the rapid increase in number of “base” children born after the potteries grew in size and importance.
John and Elizabeth Lovey’s second son, William Pinsent (the wayward womens’ uncle) went up to London and married Lydia Florence Warren, in Woolwich, in 1890. He became a baker and confectioner in Greenwich, which is south of the River Thames. At some point, William moved north, over the river, and settled in Essex. His only son, Sidney Carton Pinsent (1891 – 1961) married Ethel Ida Mann and became a builder’s painter and decorator in Essex.
Going back a few generations, John and Mary Follett’s youngest surviving son, James Pinsent (1825 – 1886) seems to have been in “domestic service” for a while before leaving to join the Royal Marines. Perhaps he was looking for a more adventurous life. He married Elizabeth Ann (née Perkins) in 1852. James Pinsent was a private of marines in the 1860s, a “Greenwich Pensioner” at the time of the 1871 Census and a licensed victualler at the “Turk’s Head” in Devonport when he died in 1886. Perhaps it really is every serviceman’s dream to run a pub. James had two daughters and one son, Frederick James Pinsent (1857 – 1873) who, sadly, died while in his teens.
Richard Pinson/Pinsent and Elizabeth (née Gregory’s) descendants (both male and female) have added considerably to the family’s presence in the Teign Valley – albeit partially through illegitimate sons who complicate the genetic profile. However, it is to their grandson, the William Pinsent, who married Harriet Morgan in Dursley, Gloucestershire that we must look for the Bristol connection.
William Henry John Pinsent (1841 – 1923)
William and Harriet (nee Morgan’s) son William Henry John Pinsent, lived “in service” in Clifton as a coachman and a gardener as a young man. He married Louisa Broad, in 1864 and then moved to Westbury on Trym as a professional gardener. William and Louisa had no less than eleven children between 1865 and 1883 and most of them survived. The quality of life in Bristol must have been better than for their Pinsent “cousins” in London or Leicester.
Perhaps it helped that the family was active in community organizations and that both parents and children regularly exhibited items at the annual “Redland and Kingsdown Workman’s Flower Show and Home Encouragement Society Exhibition”. The Bristol papers tell us, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they were particularly successful in floral competitions. The children also did well in religious writing competitions in the 1880s. The Society generally encouraged clean living and good nutrition to the benefit of all.
William Henry and Louisa’s eldest son, William Henry Thiery Pinsent (1865 – 1915) was apprenticed to a baker. He married Hannah Ann Cox, in Bath, in 1889. “Thiery” as he was generally known, seems to have moved around the neighbourhood. We find him working near Corsham in Wiltshire, and in Tiverton in Devon before he eventually returned to Bath, in around 1898. Thiery had a son. Thiery George Pinsent (1891 – 1967) who served in the Northumberland Fusiliers during the First World War and then ran a grocery store at Foxley, near Malmsbury in Wiltshire.
Thiery George married twice: his first wife, Florence Maud Fisher must have died before 1928 as he was classed as a “widower” when he sued an erstwhile friend for “alienation of affection” – for turning Miss Lily May Jefferey against him. Unfortunately, His Lordship could find no evidence of financial “damage,” and he felt obliged to give for the defendant. A few years later, Thiery George, or “George” as he was commonly known, did remarry. In 1933, he married Edith Emma Sussemilch. They had no children that I am aware of. “George” Pinsent came to the attention of the national press when he stipulated in his will that his widow, Edith, could only inherit “so long as she did not live closer than 90 miles from London” – which he thought was a “wicked city”. She readily agreed to abide by the terms.
William Henry and Louisa (née Broad’s) second son, Edwin John Pinsent (1868 – 1949) was a wine and spirit merchant’s warehouseman in 1901, a milkman in 1911 and, like his father, a professional gardener in 1919. He married Emily Mary Vowles in 1895 and had six children (four boys and two girls) before his wife died, in 1912. Edwin later married Clara Clarke and had another six children (two boys and four girls).
Of the sons from Edwin John’s first marriage, the eldest, Eric Henry Edwin Pinsent (1896 – 1959) was a driver in the Royal Artillery during the First World War and a warehouseman when he married Catherine Agnes Coles, in 1920. Not much else is known about him, but he had become a work’s manager in a paper factory when he died, in Surrey in 1959. Eric and his wife, Catherine, had no sons but they had two daughters that both married in the 1940s.
Edwin John and Emily Mary (née Vowle’s) second son Leslie Donald Pinsent (1900 – 1972) married Gertrude Martha Nichols in 1929 but had no children. Their third, Samuel Claude Pinsent (1904 – 1988) became a butcher. He married Florence Emily Boshier and they too had a daughter who married. Edwin John and Emily Mary’s fourth son, Alfred Edwin (1906 – 1907), died as an infant – so there were no sons from the marriage to continue the line.
However, Edwin John married Clara Clarke after Emily’s death and they added two late sons and several daughters. The first of the sons, Ronald Leslie Pinsent (1926 – 2007) married Muriel Gilbert, in Bristol, in 1966 and had a daughter. The second Cyril Edwin Pinsent (1928 – 2003) became an electrician. He married Phyllis Dorothy Parsons, in 1960. In this case, there was a son as well as a daughter to continue the family line into modern times.
William and Louisa (née Broad’s) third son Alfred Louie Pinsent (1880 – 1944) grew up to become a clerk in an accountant’s office. He married Rosalie Noble Sage, in 1912 and they had a daughter but no sons. The fourth son, Sidney Pinsent (1883 – 1947) appears to have helped his father as a gardener before enlisting in the Labour Corps at the outset of the First World War. He was assigned to “438 Agricultural Company” which was billeted in the London area. There is no record of his ever marrying or having children.
Survival rates seem to have been better in Bristol than in London or Leicester but on aggregate there seem to have been fewer surviving sons. Nevertheless, the line continues and lots of daughters have married into the local population.
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